The Moments Before Sleep

by v_for_verona

Summary:

Ben rolls over to his side, moving with surprising grace considering that he’s built like a kriffing bantha. His eyes start fluttering open and now… now Rey does touch him. On the arm, just below the elbow which is curled under his head, serving as a makeshift cushion.
“Don’t?”
His eyes slide open all the way, revealing gold-speckled irises. There’s a sharp crease between his brows as he blinks at her in confusion.
“What?”
“Don’t…” Rey chews on her cheek. “Don’t open your eyes. When you’re asleep, when we’re both asleep… it’s easier to pretend that we’re on the same side. When you can’t see me.”
He wets his lips, thinking.
“And you’d like to pretend?” He asks softly, after what feels like a century has passed.
Rey’s eyes meet his and she slowly nods.
Yes.
Please.

Or: Some secrets are easier to tell in the dark, when no is listening.

(Or: Rey uses Ben as a Ben-shaped sex toy. Ben doesn’t mind.)

Notes:

As the tags say, this is just something completely deranged (but, you know, also quite soft, because I wrote it) that I came up with in the shower.

Title - paraphrased - from Ann Voskamp (whoever that may be): “I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.”

(NOT REALLY A) CW // There’s a few dark-fic tags on this one, but I promise the fic isn’t in any way, shape, or form dark. Ben and Rey just can’t talk about things when they’re awake, because they’re idiots.

Chapter 1

There’s a cricket somewhere outside her window. They’re everywhere, here on Ajan Kloss, and they’re the size of karking skittermice. Usually Rey can ignore the critters just fine. Their sound is a monotonous buzz not unlike the hum of the Falcon’s hyperdrive that her brain has learned to simply edit out, but tonight…

Tonight, sleep won’t come easy.

She feels overwrought. Unsettled. Melancholic for things that could have been. Tired of waiting for… she doesn’t know. For something.

Maybe she’s just waiting for the waiting to be over.

After the Resistance had fled from Crait, and hidden on Ajara’s jungle moon to lick their wounds, they’d settled into an uneasy state of stasis.

There had been grief - they’d lost so many friends, so many good people, during their escape from D’Qar - but transforming the abandoned Rebel Alliance outpost into a functioning Resistance base had kept everyone busy enough not to dwell on that for too long.

And even once the base was up and running there had been many tasks to keep the small number of Resistance fighters occupied. Foraging for food and medicinals in the Klosslands. Setting up a functioning defense perimeter. Repairing a myriad of small problems the Tantive had accrued during her three decades in storage.

In a way, it reminded Rey of her life back on Jakku. Performing the same menial, almost senseless-seeming tasks day in and day out, just surviving from one day to the next, until the weeks and months start to bleed together into one big, gray whole.

The only thing that’s missing are the marks on her wall.

Of course it isn’t all just drudgery.

Ajan Kloss, with its verdant forests and abundant wetlands, was at first a miracle to Rey, the former scavenger.

In her first weeks on the planet she loved running her training course, or just walking among the slim-trunked broadleaf trees and enjoying the sights and sounds of the forest.

Now, six months into their stay on the jungle moon, these sights have become commonplace.

If, a year ago, someone had told Rey that she’d eventually grow tired of the humidity, of hearing the chirps of zymods high up in the trees, of the frequent rains on Ajan Kloss? That one day she’d have seen her fill of green?

She would have laughed in their faces.

But she has.

Now she longs for the stillness of space. For distant planets and adventures. For green places, yes, she’ll never tire of green, but she also wants to see the Icefall Plains of Hoth or the endless oceans of Kamino.

Or, failing that, just for some change in this state of slow-moving, never-ending war against the First Order.

How can one be so tired, but never tired enough to rest?

She grinds her face into her pillow, willing herself to sleep. In her desperation she even tries to count nerfs, but realizes before she’s even reached twenty that all that’s accomplished is making her feel like an idiot. Seriously, who counts nerfs? She’s pretty sure that has never actually worked for anyone. Ever.

She turns to the other side, but - surprise - her pillow is just as lumpy from this angle as from the previous one. Rey groans and rolls onto her back and beats her fists against the flimsy mattress of her bunk.

Her thoughts are swirling around a myriad of topics, and most of them are not conducive to restful sleep.

Their dwindling supplies. The First Order patrols that seem to draw closer and closer to the jungle moon with each passing week. To her training, which is starting to feel like it will never end. To Kylo karking Ren and his mournful, brown eyes. To the people they have lost.

Somewhere across base, Poe and the others are having a… party. A wake, truly. There will be spicebrew and shaakroast - the last of the smoked shaak that Chewie had brought from his recent supply run to Naboo - and tears.

Because that’s what you do when someone you hold dear is killed. Another custom that’s unfamiliar to her, the scavenger girl from Jakku, just like counting karking nerfs. Another thing that never actually helped anyone.

Rey just wants them to stop losing friends.

After the disaster on Crait, the losses had just kept coming. A x-wing on the Hydian way, during an unforeseen encounter with a First Order patrol two months ago. One of their contacts during a raid on Lothal last week. And today they had gotten news that they lost Na'tina, Hawwaa and Hysio along with another one of their steadily diminishing fleet of x-wing and one of their freighters and… it’s just too much.

Rey can’t help but feel guilty.

While everyone else is out there, risking their lives day after day after day, all she does is run her training course until she’s sure that her striders have worn a groove into the soft jungle soil.

Training for a battle she hopes will never come.

Like a karking coward.

Rey shrugs her thin blanket to the floor. It’s nowhere near as hot in her little room as it was in her ATAT, but still precipitation is beading on her forehead and neck.

Her little cot is an upgrade from her care-worn hammock, but tonight she feels like she can feel every spring of the bedframe and every lump in the thin mattress.

Even her nightclothes - a gift from Leia, made from pale-green Onderon silk and the softest thing she’s ever owned - feel itchy and wrong tonight.

Rey sighs and tries to punch her pillow into submission, but she knows it’s all in vain. She won’t find sleep tonight, not without the help of a generous dose of spicebrew or some other mild narcotic. Poe and the others have access to both she’s sure, but getting up and finding them is off the table. She knows that she’ll only feel like an interloper.

Or, worse, like the person her friends secretly hold responsible. That’s all in her head, she knows it is, but still it’s not easy to shut that little, needling voice up.

A small growl escapes her. The worst part is that she knows exactly how she would have solved this problem on Jakku.

It’s not like there was much else to do in her ATAT after dark. The energy cell of her little chemlight had been too precious to waste on reading her decrepit datapad, and any scavenger with a lick of sense knew that Niima outpost wasn’t a good place to be after nightfall.

And, lacking other alternatives, taking care of her own needs had become an almost nightly ritual.

That had stopped, after Crait.

On Jakku she’d imagined a faceless, formless man who’d wordlessly crawl between her thighs to pleasure her with his hands or with his mouth.

Hardly a man, really, more like a shadow. None of the spindly, weedy males that inhabited Jakku had ever caught her eye, so Rey hadn’t quite known what to model her nighttime fantasies on, settling on something shapeless and eager to please.

But since Crait… since Crait her mind always drifts, unbidden, to something else. Someone with broad, freckled shoulders. With a mop of dark hair that she can twist her fingers into as he laps at her core.

Rey scowls. The last thing she wants to do is think of Ben karking Solo a-kriffing-gain, but just the mere thought of his damnably thick curls and his alabaster-pale chest make her core clench.

In her dreams - both in the waking ones where her fingers are frantically rubbing at her clit and the ones when she’s properly asleep - he’s never silent either. When her mind is lax and her defenses are down, his voice drips like molten honey over the cracks in her soul. He whispers to her how good she is, how perfect she tastes, how he wants to own every inch of her, inside and out.

Kark. At night, when she’s alone in her bunk, this line of thought is dangerous.

But… she can feel her basics stick to her skin as she rubs her thighs together.

Dangerous it might be, but Rey wants more of it.

He’d whisper, this dream-Ben who’s so much more agreeable than the waking version of him. Soft as silk, he’d say that she wouldn’t be alone anymore if only she gave in to him.

Rey slides her fingers under her waistband and finds that she’s soaked. She is panting lightly, even though all she’s done is lie in her bunk.

How would his skin feel against hers? How much would she have to stretch for him, as his much thicker fingers part her folds?

Rey sighs as her own fingers - so small in comparison - slide across slippery, swollen skin.

His eyes… the eyes of that specter are the worst. At night, when she dares to dream, his eyes look at her like she’s precious. Like she could belong to him.

Rey whimpers needily as she cants her hips against her palm. She knows, she karking knows, alright - why she doesn’t do this anymore. Because once it’s all over and done the thought of what could have been always - always - hurts more than that one quick orgasm was worth… but right now she feels like she will combust if she doesn’t come soon.

If she can’t have belonging, and love, and - yes - a karking fuck from Ben kriffing Solo, because he’s evil and he chose power over her and also he’s a nerf-herder, then she’ll take what she can get from this dream version of him.

She slides her hand deeper into her basics, chasing her pleasure, when-

It’s like the kriffing giant happabore has been summoned by what she’s been doing - now, isn’t that a karking terrifying thought - and Rey can barely wrench her hand out from underneath her waistband as all sound in the room dulls and the walls seemingly fade into nothing. Rey almost pitches out of bed with a startled oath.

Kriff.

The world seems to throb in time with her core. The damnable cricket, along with all the other nighttime noises of Ajan Kloss, fades away into a strange, echoey silence. And Ben Solo is in her bunk.

She used to think that her quarters on Ajan Kloss were huge, certainly in comparison to the interior of the Hellhound or the little bunk on the Falcon that she uses when they’re away on a mission, but right now? Right now her quarters seem positively miniscule.

It shouldn’t be possible, because he’s lying down and not looming over her like a moody mynock like he usually does when they meet like this, but Ben seems even bigger now that he’s next to her.

His bulky body, clad in a black sleep shirt and - equally black, because of course every single stitch of clothing he owns is as black as his karking soul - sleep pants, seems to swallow-up every photon of light and every molecule of oxygen in the room.

Rey relaxes marginally once she notices that his breathing is even and his beautiful, plush mouth is slack and slightly opened. Ben appears to be asleep.

It takes a moment for her thundering heartbeat to slow down. It’s okay. She’s okay. Everything is a-karking-okay. He’s asleep and he has absolutely no idea what she was doing just now and who she was thinking of while doing it.

Rey takes another shaky breath, before turning to her side, keeping her movements as slow as those of a cliff-snail in order not to wake him, and looks at her interloper.

Something in her chest flutters.

Just a minute ago she might have been getting off to thoughts of mole-speckled skin, raven locks and plush, pink lips, but somehow - for all her yearning and dreaming - she hadn’t managed to do him justice.

Ben looks almost ethereal in his sleep. His space-pale skin, with constellations of moles painted across his features like a map to an uncharted star system. His raven-hair, tousled from sleep. His lashes, so unfairly thick, flutter against his cheek. He looks so young. So innocent.

It’s an illusion, of course, but as illusions go this is a damn good one. A tempting one.

“What do you have to be so damn pretty for?” Rey mutters, angry with herself more than with him, although objectively speaking he’s the mass murdering maniac that’s popped into her bedroom and she’s just a barely trained Jedi who’s futilely trying to somehow keep the Galaxy from falling apart at the seams.

Rey blinks and looks at her outstretched arm.

Huh.

She’d reached for him, the tips of her fingers almost all the way to the ridge of his long, slightly crooked nose. Hovering over his pale skin without any conscious permission from her brain, yearning to touch and pet.

Kark.

She snatches her arm back as though she’s been burned.

“Sithspit,” she mutters. “Like this day wasn’t karked-up enough.”

To her surprise Ben’s generous mouth twitches upward at the corners.

“You know I’m awake, right?”

“Oh.” Not the most intelligent thing she could have picked to say, but at least better than petting her kriffing arch-enemy’s nose while he’s karking awake. “You heard.”

“I did.”

“Oh,” Rey wheezes again, just in case there was any doubt on his part that she’s an idiot. “I didn’t realize.”

Ben rolls over to his side, moving with surprising grace considering that he’s built like a kriffing bantha. His eyes start fluttering open and now… now Rey does touch him. On the arm, just above his elbow, which is curled under his head in lieu of a cushion.

“Don’t?”

His eyes slide open all the way, revealing gold-specked irises. There’s a sharp crease between his brows as he blinks at her in confusion.

“What?”

“Don’t…” Rey chews on her cheek. She wants to claim that she doesn’t know why she said that, but that’s a rotten lie. She knows… “Don’t open your eyes. When you’re asleep- when we’re both asleep… it’s easier to pretend that we’re on the same side. When you can’t see me it's easier to lie to myself.”

His tongue darts out to wet his lips as he thinks. Rey wills her eyes not to look at that small flash of movement, and fails.

“And you’d like to pretend?” He asks softly, after what feels like a century has passed.

Another eon comes and goes before Rey’s eyes meet his and she slowly nods.

“Please. I…” she swallows around a lump in her throat. “It’s been such a long day. Such a long… year. I…”

“Yes?” Ben’s dark eyes have fluttered shut again, and like this it’s easier to spill her next little truth.

“I can’t talk to anyone here.”

“What about my mother?” He murmurs. “Or FN-2187?”

“His name is Finn,” Rey corrects him automatically.

“Finn, then,” Ben rolls his jaw like he’s tasted something unpleasant, but his eyes are still closed. “Can’t you talk to him?”

Rey shakes her head against her pillow, then realizes that he can’t see her.

“Leia is my Master, I can’t talk to her about this…”

“This?”

Another shrug. The sheets rustle with the slight movement.

“That I doubt myself, sometimes? That I don’t know what I’m doing? Leia’s working so hard, just trying to hold the Resistance together, how can I tell her that…” Rey feels her eyes grow moist and she rubs her face against the roughspun pillow cover to hide her tears. “How can I tell her that I’m struggling every day? That… that night after night, the Last Jedi can’t sleep? Everyone here depends on me.”

The crease between his eyes is back in full-force as Ben frowns.

“You shouldn’t have to hide yourself.”

“Isn’t that what you did, with your mask?”

He ignores her, infuriating man that he is.

“What about Finn?” The accusation in his tone is unmistakable. It makes a part of her bristle - because what gives him the right? - and another part clenches pleasantly at the thought that Ben Solo might be jealous because of her. “I’m sure you share everything with him?”

“Finn is a good friend,” Rey says softly, deciding she’s too tired to get mad at this jealous moof-milker. “I can tell him a lot, but I can’t tell him about the bond. No one here knows that you killed Snoke. That we fought together. Not even Chewie, although I’m sure he suspects.”

Ben hums.

“I haven’t told anyone either.”

Of course he karking hasn’t. To admit it would be tantamount to treason. He would lose his power, his position, likely his life. But Rey swallows her flare of anger. She knows what he’s truly saying.

Just like herself, Ben doesn’t have anyone to talk to. They’re both alone, caught on opposite sides of the same war.

“Talk to me then,” Ben rumbles.

Rey is silent for the longest time. Between them, the Force hums, but otherwise the room is eerily silent.

“Please?”

That word. It’s always had the power to undo her. She shivers and reaches out again, touching his elbow with her fingertips. His eyelids flutter at the contact, sparse as it is, but for once he does as he’s been bid and keeps his eyes closed.

“We lost another x-wing today, and one of our freighters,” she finally says, haltingly. “Three of us are just… gone.”

“I didn’t get any reports…”

“It wasn’t the First Order. Pirates in the Mykapo sector,” Rey licks her lips. That probably was too much intel already, but a part of her doesn’t even care anymore. “They were after our supply shipment.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben says. He pauses again, clearly weighing what he should say. What he can say. “We’re not currently looking for you, Rey. My troops have been instructed to engage the Resistance, but only if they infringe on our territory.” His plush lips pinch, corners downturned into an unhappy moue, before continuing in a softer tone. “You… probably don’t believe that, but it’s the truth.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” Only that she does. He never lied to her.

Ben chuckles.

“As you wish.”

His arm shifts, removing his elbow from her reach, and now his hand rests on the mattress between them. Rey could - theoretically - just take it. If she was bold enough.

She’s feeling bold tonight.

Ben jolts at the contact, and then his fingers close around hers. His hand is so kriffing big.

“Are you running out of supplies?”

“Rations, spare parts, water filters… It would be easier to list the things we’re not running out of.” She huffs angrily. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this either.”

His long, warm fingers squeeze hers again.

“I’m asleep, haven’t you forgotten? I won’t remember any of this in the morning.”

She squeezes his hand back.

“Dream-Ben is usually a lot less accommodating,” she teases him.

That makes him crack open an eye.

“You dream of me?”

All the time.

“No?” Rey squeaks. She can feel herself blushing furiously, and Ben - the cheating bastard - can almost certainly see it too.

“Ah… you do,” his full lips curve into a smirk, but - mercifully - his eye slides shut again. “What do you dream about?”

“Nothing!” His smirk grows and Rey growls. The sound just slips out, without any conscious permission from her speech centers, and Rey feels even more mortified. It’s a good thing that he’s no longer looking at her, because she’s certain her face is no longer pink, but the color of an over-ripe muja fruit.

“Is that so?”

“We fight,” she mutters mulishly.

And sometimes you kiss me. Or you hold me. Or you bend me over your throne and…

Rey screws her eyes shut tightly, willing those images away. They’re very much not helpful right now. Not when her thighs are still sticky from her earlier activities.

“What else would we do?” She adds, a little defensively. A little meanly, if she’s honest, but then again it is the truth. “You’re my enemy.”

Ben doesn’t seem to be offended. He just hums softly.

“I dream of you too,” he whispers, so quietly that she almost can’t hear him.

“Like now?” Rey croaks.

“Yes.” His thumb strokes across the exposed, sensitive skin of her wrist. “Like now.”

She swallows to work some saliva into her throat, but her mouth suddenly seems as dry as the salt flats at midday. It’s too much. He’s too close. His scent - leather and ozone and sun-baked pine needles - is invading her nostrils, making it hard to breathe. His huge frame seems to suck all the light from the room. He’s too gentle. Kylo Ren is not supposed to be gentle.

Rey wrenches her hand away from his grip and rolls onto her back with a near-pained gasp.

“Don’t…” she says, perhaps more sharply than she intended to.

Instead of arguing with her, Ben seems contrite.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and his karking eyes are open again - can’t he do this one karking thing right, just this once? - looking at her all wide and pleading. “That was too much, wasn’t it?”

Now it’s her turn to ignore him.

“I thought you were asleep,” she bites out.

There’s a short pause, during which she can still feel his eyes on her, even though she refuses to look at him. Then, finally, Ben rolls onto his back too.

“I am, you’re right.” He rakes his hand through his hair, a gesture that makes Rey feel oddly envious, before he lets his arm flop to his side. “I… I guess I’ve never slept very peacefully. Sorry. I got carried away.”

Rey’s mouth is still so karking dry.

The ceiling of her room is hewn from uneven, grayish-green bedrock. The only illumination in the small chamber comes from Ajan Kloss’ two moons, which have risen across the treetops outside the narrow, heigh window. It paints soft shapes across the ceiling - a face, the outline of Kelvin ridge, waves crashing against the shore of Luke’s island. Rey focuses on that, rather than the man lying next to her.

“I suppose that can happen, in dreams,” she murmurs softly.

Ben is silent too. All she can hear is the even, rhythmic sound of their breathing as they both stare blankly ahead. She wonders if he sees the same shapes she does.

It feels like hours pass before he speaks again.

“Are you safe?”

Rey chuckles darkly.

“I’m stuck on a decrepit base, on a moon infested by stinging insects the size of my fist, and the largest military organization in the Galaxy wants to kill me and all my friends,” she snarks. “What do you think?”

He exhales slowly enough that it’s almost a sigh.

“That was a stupid question. I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that.”

“I just…” he inhales audibly. “I know it’s not my place to worry about you.”

“You’re right, it isn’t.”

“But I do.”

“A day might come when we face each other in combat, Kylo”. The name must strike true, because she can feel the bunk tremble as he jolts. “One would think that worrying about me is the last thing you should do.”

His breathing has turned heavy, labored, and again a long time passes before he answers.

“We don’t always get to choose how we feel, Rey,” he whispers.

It’s like he punched her, and Rey curls to her side, arms wrapped around her stomach, like she wants to protect her soft middle from this man who crawls under her skin like a nightwatcher larvae.

“Don’t say that.”

He’s still lying on his back, with his eyes closed and his arms stretched out limply along his torso. He could be asleep. Or dead. He’s so pale that he might look lifeless, if it wasn’t for the jerky fall and rise of his sternum. The thought makes her chest squeeze. For all that they’re enemies, sworn to kill each other in combat one day, she can’t bear the thought of losing him.

“What if it’s the truth?” He asks softly.

Rey feels like crying again. Kriff him.

“It can’t be.”

“Rey…”

“It can’t be!” She hisses. “You took that away from us that day on the Supremacy.”

Awesome. Now she is crying. Fat tears spill across her cheeks, into her hairline, into her cushion. Rey curls deeper into herself, until she must look like an amarill, all her vulnerable parts tucked safely on the inside. Ben has a way of taking her apart at the seams, even if he doesn’t mean to.

He lets her cry for a little bit, perhaps sensing that she’d only lash out at him if he tried to interrupt. After a while she feels his hand on her shoulder, rubbing slow circles into her tense frame.

“I’m sorry.”

“I told you to stop saying that.”

Irritated - because who gave the moof-milker the kriffing right? - she half-rears on her elbows. Rey shoots him a glare he can’t see, because his eyes are still closed… and freezes.

Rey thought she got a good look at Ben Solo before, but clearly she didn’t look closely enough.

She’d apparently missed one little, crucial detail.

Ok. Maybe it’s not that little.

Ben makes an unhappy sound.

“I'm sorry,” he gulps. “There's a beautiful woman in my sleeper, and my body doesn't know what the kark it's doing. It will go away.”

Rey eyes the very substantial bulge that’s tenting his blanket at the waist. It makes her belly feel funny, tight and warm, and she involuntarily rubs her thighs together.

And… oh, the mess between her legs is still there, and whatever is happening right now - in this room - isn’t making it any better.

Rey is suddenly aware that she is sharing a bed with Ben Solo. And that he’s so gorgeous that it makes her ache. And that he just said-

“You think I'm beautiful?”

Ben shifts uncomfortably. The blanket moves, drawing tighter against his crotch, and like this she can almost see the outline of his cock through the thin material. Rey isn’t exactly an expert in these things, but it looks absolutely massive.

“I said I dream about you, didn’t I?”

Rey thinks of her own dreams, the ones that she’s tried so hard to forget. About how he worships her body in those dreams. About how she’s never been filled, but in her dreams he fits her like the last missing piece of a puzzle. Of how she - inevitably - wakes panting and needy.

At the same time, like clockwork, they both draw a sharp breath.

“Rey…”

“Tell me you didn’t just… tell me that didn’t spill over the bond,” she whimpers, feeling torn between embarrassment and arousal.

Ben gulps audibly.

“I can’t.”

Karking moof-milker and his karking honesty. How hard can it be to grant her a little white lie every once in a while?

“I’ll… I should… let me…,” Rey desperately clears her throat. “I… I’ll go outside. To the corridor. Or… I don’t know. Somewhere that’s not here.”

Not in your bed.

She makes to roll off the mattress and slink from the room like a kicked Loth-wolf cub, when his hand closes around her shoulder, stalling her movement. Through the thin fabric of her night-clothes his skin feels unbearably warm.

“Don’t.”

“What?”

She can’t have heard that right.

Ben inhales shakily. Rolls onto his side, until he’s close enough that she can feel the heat of his skin through the twin layers of their sleepwear. Exhales. His breath stirs the fine hairs on her neck.

“I’m asleep,” he whispers. “Don’t you remember? In the morning this will just be another dream.”

Rey’s mouth runs dry.

Dryer, at any rate.

He can’t mean that.

“What… I… I don’t know what… that’s not…” That’s all that her brain seems to be able to produce anyone. Broken, truncated sentences. A jumble of words that might as well be meaningless. She feels like her mind has been replaced with a wad of cotton.

Rey tries to pull away again, but his hand is still on her arm. And she knows that she could break away from his hold, but there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to.

“You… you don’t mean that.” She finally managed to grind out.

“I do.”

“Ben…”

“Rey, listen-”

“You don’t mean that!” Now there’s an edge of panic to her voice. It’s like her entire world has tilted off its axis. His hand on her arm is the only thing still keeping her anchored.

His fingers tighten then, and he pulls her in, until she’s wedged against his ribcage. He’s lightyears away… and yet he’s so solid. She can feel the muscle in his arm coil as he tugs her into his side. His breath fans over her face as he turns his head towards her. Ben’s eyes are still closed, which is a good thing, really. She might die if he looked at her now.

“Rey.” His other hand finds her cheek, pushes an errand strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s okay.”

“You… you don’t…” She stammers.

“I do,” he murmurs softly. “I mean it. You can…” his Adam’s apple bobs in the long, pale column of his neck, before he adds. “You can use me. I want you to. Maybe… maybe then we both can finally sleep.”

And he sounds so… calm. Rey doesn’t understand how the karking moof-milker can be so karking calm, because she feels like she’s about to vibrate out of her skin.

“You really mean that?”

A smile ghosts across his full lips.

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t…” Kark, she’s really shaking. Like a fucking leaf. A mixture of fear and adrenaline and naked want is cursing through her veins. He’s so close. So warm. She wants to bury her nose in the valley between his pectorals and forget how to think. But she can’t do that. Ben - Kylo - is still her enemy.

“It wouldn’t mean anything.” She says. The sentence trails up at the end, aimless. Not quite a question, not quite an answer.

“If that’s what you want.”

Yes.

That’s what she wants. She’s sure of it. She just… she just needs the release, and then she can sleep, just like he said. This is nothing more than a… transaction. A mutual exchange of favors. Two lonely people in need of rest. Nothing more.

Still it’s hard to say.

“Can I touch you?” Rey asks instead.

Ben’s breathing stutters. He squeezes his eyes shut - properly shut, like that’s the only thing he can do to keep them closed - and then he exhales shakily.

“Yes.”

Oh.

His voice sounds so deep. That’s new.

Rey survey’s him for a moment. This mountain of a man that wants her to use him. She almost wants to laugh, because she has no kriffing idea where to start.

She’s seen animals mate. Mostly happabore bulls mounting the smaller (though still absolutely massive) heifers during the brief breeding season in the spring, but also the occasional vworkka and - once - a pair of ripper-raptors tearing at each other so viciously that it looked more like they were fighting than mating.

Rey shudders. That doesn’t seem to be very appealing at all.

This… this should be soft. Gentler than that. After all, they’re both asleep.

She’s not sure where Ben expected her to touch him, but when she pulls his sleep shirt up to expose his flat stomach he jolts so that his abs stand out stark against his creamy-pale skin, before he relaxes again.

Rey reaches out, curiously, to touch the thin trail of hair that leads from his navel to… further down. His skin is just as silky as it looks, the dark hairs almost startlingly coarse in contrast.

Ben makes a soft sound as her fingers explore. It’s not quite a gasp, not quite a sigh. His muscles relax slowly as her hand sweeps up, revealing more of his pale torso.

“You’re so beautiful,” she murmurs. “I never… I never thought of men as beautiful. Or women, I suppose. Handsome. Distinguished. Graceful, maybe… but never beautiful.”

Ben makes another sound, this one a lot more like a snort.

“What?”

“You talk a lot,” he mutters. Softly. His voice sounds… strange. Heavy. Fond, she thinks. Maybe that’s what that sounds like. “Given that you’re asleep.”

Rey bites her lip to hide a smile he wouldn’t be able to see anyway.

“I can stop?”

The pillow rustles as he shakes his head.

“Don’t.”

Rey hums and continues her exploration.

His upper abdominals, less defined now that he’s no longer so tense. Pectoral muscles as big as dinner plates. One pink, flat nipple, which makes Ben gasp when she thumbs at it. The lower edge of the scar that she gave him. The skin is still puckered and wrapped, but the once angry red welt has faded into a gentler silvery white.

Rey leans forward and places a kiss on the jagged ridge.

Part of her wants to apologize for what she did to him, and another part remembers how he almost killed Finn. What he did to his father. Rey pushes those memories away. All of them. All that hurt, and the anger, and the blood. This isn’t the place for them.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Sometimes,” he says. Rey’s lips curl into a smile when his voice catches on the first syllable, as though he is a boy barely out of puberty and not a man the approximate size and shape of a Bantha bull. “When I train, it sometimes smarts a little.”

Rey darts her tongue out to lick at the scar, tasting clean skin, a hint of pine from his body wash and the faintest trace of salt.

“You poor thing,” she whispers, licking him again. From the scar to the deep valley between his pectorals. She can feel his heart thunder under the questing tip of her tongue. It doesn’t sound like he’s asleep.

Ben groans and shifts underneath her. Squirms, more like. His cock brushes against her thigh, which she must have slung across his legs at some point in the last five minutes.

Rey blushes. She’s basically climbed him like a beek-monkey and she didn’t even notice.

“Sorry,” Rey whispers, against his chest where his heart still beats its frantic staccato rhythm. She tries to slide off him, but his fingers dig into her hips, holding her in place.

“We said no apologies,” he replies in kind.

Right. No apologies. They’re both asleep.

Feeling bold now, Rey slides her fingers all the way down to his navel. To the waistband of his sleep pants.

And then she doesn’t stop.

The material is soft to the touch - how is everything about this infuriating man so soft, when all he does is karking break things? - and he lifts his hips to help her slide the waistband further down, until his cock springs free of its confines.

Rey gasps, mostly because - if she’s honest - she expected him to wear underwear.

But also because this is the closest she’s ever been to a naked human male. Mostly naked, anyway.

Naked everywhere it counts.

Rey licks her lips as she looks at… well… at that.

His cock.

It’s darker than she expected. He’s so pale everywhere, and the ruddy, dark pink of his length stands out starkly against his pale abdomen.

Her fingers hover over his length, unsure if she is allowed to cross this last line.

“You can touch,” Ben rasps, and her eyes fly up to his face, only to see that his eyes are still firmly squeezed shut.

“How…”

“You’re thinking very loudly.”

Rey’s cheeks color again, from a mixture of embarrassment and… unbearable arousal. He’s right there. He’s solid and warm beneath her. Pliant and hard and large and, somehow, small. Like he’s trying not to scare her. All the impossible, infuriating angles and twists and shapes that make up Ben Solo.

Her fingers only tremble a little as she closes them around his length.

And Ben…

He doesn’t exactly jolt.

From the moment she’d pulled his pants down he’d been so tense that jolting wasn’t really in the cards. But she can hear his breath catch. Can feel his heartbeat stumble. His cock twitches in her hand with surprising force when she gives him an experimental pump.

“Is this ok?”

Ben grunts, and Rey gets the distinct impression that this is all she’s going to get out of him.

She strokes him again. He’s massive, thick enough that she can hardly warp her fingers around his girth, and burning hot. Rey shivers at the thought that that is supposed to go inside her.

His foreskin is softer than the Onderon silk of her sleepwear, and it glides easily when she tightens her fist and pulls, revealing the rigid length beneath.

The skin of his cockhead is even darker, an almost angry red, and as Rey watches - raptly and with slightly parted lips - a drop of liquid forms at the tip.

Without thinking, Rey swipes her thumb across the clear bead. It’s… oddly viscous. She rubs her fingertips together, fascinated by how efficiently the liquid eases the glide of the rough pads.

Like the slippery wetness between her own legs.

That’s what this is for.

Rey gulps, suddenly intensely aware of what they’re about to do.

She is going to take him inside her body. Take her pleasure from him.

Ben wants her to. She can feel it in the Force. The hum of his anticipation. It’s making her feel faint with want.

Her hand falters, stalling halfway up his shaft.

They’re going to have sex.

“Are you alright?” Ben murmurs.

Now it’s Rey’s turn to grunt. Because she’ll be kriffed if she can find the words.

She’s alright. A little frightened, maybe. Definitely more than a little daunted by the task ahead, because evidently no part of Ben Solo is small… and she is. Small. She feels small against him. Is acutely aware of how his hand spans her hip. Of how massive his chest is. He could crush her. He could break her in two, split her in half.

But Ben is just lying there. Patiently. Waiting for whatever she’s willing to give him.

And Rey…

… Rey doesn’t want to wait anymore.

Jakku doesn’t teach one patience. It doesn’t reward waiting. On Jakku you take what you want, or someone else will. You take what you need, or you’ll go hungry that night. And Rey is tired of starving.

Ben makes a startled little sound, rolling to his side as though he wants to follow her touch, as she lets go of him and lithely slips out of bed. She strips efficiently. Her pale-green camisole. Her breastband. Her pants, made from exquisite silk that flows like water down her long, toned legs. Her basics. It all falls to the floor with a soft rustle, until she stands naked before her sleeper. Her nipples pebble in the cool air. She can feel the wetness that coats the inside of her tights, ready to ease his passage.

Before her, Ben Solo lies on his side. His cock juts out, straining towards her, but his eyes are still closed. Rey wonders if he’s peeked, but decides that she doesn’t care.

There's no space for modesty on Jakku.

His chest rises in uneven, fast-paced breaths. She can see his pulse flutter in his neck. She suspects, if his eyes were open, he would see much the same.

Before her courage can desert her, Rey slips back into the sleeper. With her back to his chest, because everything else would mean looking at him, and she thinks she might lose her nerve after all if she can see his expressive face, regardless of whether his karking eyes are closed or not.

His cock slots neatly into the cleft of her arse.

Like it belongs there.

Rey feels her heart stutter, because that’s not quite right. Her next inhale is shaky.

Like ripping off a bacta patch, Rey, she thinks to herself, her thoughts tinged with a hint of panic.

Rey reaches between them, ready to line him up, but he stills her with a hand around her wrist.

“Have you done this before?” When he speaks, she can almost feel his lips against her skin. A whole army of goosebumps race down her spine. Rey whimpers, in equal parts frustrated and turned on.

“Not…” Kark, why does her voice sound so reedy? “Not with another person. But I've… you know.”

This shouldn’t be so karking hard to say.

Ben’s hand strokes the soft skin of her wrist, still holding her hand immobile inches from his straining length.

“You've made yourself come,” he says. It’s not a question. His voice is like crushed velvet. She can almost feel it under her sternum.

Rey nods. Her cheeks are burning. They’ve both done worse things than pleasure themselves - far far worse, truly - and yet this feels like she’s fighting the Praetorian guard all over again.

“Yes.”

“Today?”

Oh, so he did know.

“B-before,” Rey stammers past desert-dry lips. “Before you appeared. I was thinking of you. I think… I think that's why the Force connected us.”

“Thank the stars.” His exhale ruffles the hairs on her neck, and now he does press his lips to her nape. Softly. Just the gentlest swipe of his tongue across her feverish skin. “Do you use toys?”

Oh, stars, he is trying to kill her.

“N-not today.”

His lips curve into a smile. She can’t see it, but she feels it against the suddenly hyper-sensitive skin on her neck.

“But usually?”

Rey can only nod. Bereft of words. Her whole body shakes. She’s nothing but a mess of sensations, of feverish skin and burning want. It’s like her whole being is concentrated in the space where his lips touch her skin.

“I had… this…” Words, she remembers words. “This crappy little toy that I traded for three portions. It was small.”

Smaller than you.

She doesn’t need to say it. Ben makes an incoherent sound.

And then he releases her wrist.

“Go slow,” he rasps. “I don't want to hurt you.”

Force, she'll try, but she doesn't know if she'll have the strength to go slow. She feels like she's burning. She grips him, angles him and shimmies her hips until he’s nestled between her thighs, against her throbbing hole.

And yet Rey hesitates, with his cock against her lower lips. She’s apparently not completely beyond reason.

“Are you… is this safe?”

She feels his confusion through the Force and his hands tighten around her hip - protectively, her mind irrationally provides, because that’s nonsense - before he relaxes with a relieved huff.

“I have the contraceptive shot.”

A part of Rey bristles, because if he has taken that, that means that he’s having sex. She has absolutely no claim to him, or to his virginity - and he’s so much older than her anyway, it stands to reason that we would be experienced - but it still rankles her.

He’s hers. She’s his. Rey hates the Force for tying her to him, to this monster… and thanks it in the same breath. There’s a part of her that only stops aching when she’s with him. Rey doesn’t know what that says about her, what it means for her Jedi path, but she can’t deny it either.

Ben must feel her irritation in the Force, just like she felt his confusion, because he chuckles.

“It’s standard First Order procedure, Rey.”

“Oh.” She relaxes against him, and is about to finally sink onto him, when his arm tightens around her middle like a steel band. He pulls her close, until his plush lips are brushing against the shell of her ear.

“Of course,” he says lowly, “if I was truly asleep, you wouldn’t know that, would you?”

“N-no?” She stammers.

“For all you know,” Ben purrs, and his voice is like molten aurodium, “I could get you with child.”

“Oh,” Rey says again. Her belly flips. “I wouldn’t.”

Ben hums.

“No.” The vice around her middle lifts. She doesn’t miss than Ben drags his palm across her lower belly - over her kriffing womb - as he moves his hand to her hip. “Go on, scavenger. Take what you need.”

Rey whimpers. Her mind is nothing more than static at this point.

Her cunt throbs with need.

Alright. Rey swallows to work some saliva back into her bone-dry mouth. No more waiting.

Chapter 2

Notes:

I hadn't quite realized how heavily my smut usually relies on dirty talk, until I tried to write a scene where nobody says anything. Please remind me to scrap that fic idea where Ben is a Martian.

Uh, well... seeing that it's been a while since chapter one, I'd recommend re-reading that before you dive into this bottomless well of filth, because the two chapters follow from each other seamlessly and I think it needs the emotional buildup to hit properly. But, you know, no pressure. You do you.

This is, as aforementioned, mostly smut, so I hope you all enjoy, you animals.

"Go on, scavenger. Take what you need."

Rey swallows and her throat feels so dry that it almost hurts. Has his voice always been this deep? This silky?

Ben's breath fans across her neck, cool where she feels feverish, and she shivers from the contrast. He is solid against her back. A solid wall of heat and muscle, so large that it feels like he might have his own well of gravity. Maybe he does, she muses. He's certainly pulling her in, inexorably. She couldn't fight his pull if she wanted to.

But maybe that's just it.

Maybe she doesn't want to avoid this anymore. She doesn't want to fight this attraction, this cruel tug-of-war between their souls and their bodies, that has been driving her mad for months any longer.

Rey reaches between them again, where his shaft rests heavily between the swell of her buttocks, and winds her fingers around his length.

My fingertips barely touch, she thinks, and now there's a slightly hysterical tinge, a close relative of panic, coloring her thoughts.

But, she reminds herself, she can do this. Men and women - males and females of almost any species - have been doing this since before the beginning of time. This eternal dance, this meeting of souls and bodies, has been going on since long before there were the Sith and the Jedi, since before the First Order and the Resistance. Since before Rey and Ben were ever even born.

She was built for this. Built to take a man inside her.

Sometimes, when the bond tugs sharply at a place underneath her sternum, like a wound that hasn't been properly treated with bacta, she thinks that she was built to take him - Ben Solo - specifically. That they were meant to be one in every way thinkable, including in this more primal sense of the word.

Rey brushes the thought away. It's a very sober thought, best reserved for when she's awake, not for when she's dreaming, like now.

She angles him downwards, towards the apex of her thighs, where she's needy and swollen for him, and sighs when his rigid length slots between her legs.

The tip of him is slick with precum, and Rey revels in the feel of him against her, there at the very center of her. She pushes her hips back, eliciting a muted grunt from him, and teases that silky-soft, slippery skin across her clit. His cockhead is spongy, more so than she would have thought, but the rest of him is as unyielding as durasteel. She swears she can feel his heartbeat against her palm.

It's addictive, just feeling him there, so close to where she wants him. Altogether in her power, because safe for his soft pants and the occasional flex is his fingertips against her hip, Ben is entirely still.

Waiting for her to do this at her own pace. Like he just wants to serve her, to be used.

In his sleep, in this shared all-too-vivid dream that they share, Ben Solo turns out to be so much more agreeable than Kylo Ren. Rey wishes, fervently, that he was always so. That she could keep this soft, wanting, giving version of him well into the daylight hours.

A tear threatens to spill from the corner of her eye, wholly unwanted and entirely inappropriate for what they're about to do, and Rey angrily blinks it away.

She grips him more firmly, and lines him up against her core. She hopes that he can't tell how much her hand is trembling, as she notches him at her entrance.

There's sweat on her upper lip, even though they haven't really done anything, and Rey licks it away with the tip of her tongue, before she takes a deep breath to steady herself.

And then she's done waiting. She's done denying herself. He's hers, and she's his. Ben and Rey. The Dark and the Light don't matter tonight, not when it's just them. Just two dreamers in this twilight-lit room, gentle shadows shielding them from the world.

Rey pushes back against his cockhead experimentally, sheathing just the spongy, burning-hot tip in her cunt

The intrusion feels so strange. She's never had something this big inside of her. Or this heavy. Or something that feels so right.

The bond thrums. Happily, Rey thinks. In the air, in the space between their bodies, inside of her. It's dizzying. How is it that the Force seems the most pleased when they're together, even if the air between them is filled with the wicked hum of their lightsabers?

Rey pushes the question aside, ignoring this strange, ephemeral connection between their souls in favor of the much more tangible connection between their bodies.

She shifts her hips back further, seeking more of him, more of this sense of fullness that she can only begin to guess at right now. There's a moment of resistance, as her cunt contracts - her inner muscles fighting against the unfamiliar sensation of being stuffed like this - and Rey gasps in pain as her body tells her, in no uncertain terms, that there's no more space. She frowns, gnawing at her lip in frustration.

This won't do.

She tries again, pushing back against him more forcefully, and for a moment it feels like she won't succeed. Like he's too big. Or she is too small. Or like maybe... maybe they weren't made for each other after all. Maybe she was wrong.

She didn't think that the thought would wound her so much, but it does.

Ben grunts, a petulant sound that might make her smile under different circumstances, and his hips shift, just a fraction of an inch. She doesn't know if he felt the shift in her mood in the Force, of if he's just impatient - although there's his hand, on her waist, which is no longer gripping but petting and gentling and she is not going to cry now - but the movement is, somehow, enough. It's the barest twitch, the barest nudge against her opening, but Rey can feel her inner muscles yield to the intrusion.

Not willingly, no, but still... still it's enough.

There's a sensation of almost unbearable pressure, followed by a stretch so sharp that it makes her gasp, and then relief. It feels like time slows to a stop, like an eon passes before they are properly joined, and somehow it also happens too fast that Rey can't really register the myriad of sensations that curse through her.

Pinch. Pain. Give. Slide. Slick. Deep. Deep. Deep.

Someone - Ben... that's Ben, her mind sluggishly supplies - is making a wounded sound. A keening sound so deep, and raspy, and primal, that it makes her core clench. And Rey must be keening too, because she's still pushing back onto him and he's also, somehow, still pushing and he suddenly there's no more resistance as he slides into her cunt, almost to the root.

Or, at least, it has to be almost to the root. Surely... surely he has to be almost entirely inside of her, because she feels so full that it's suddenly hard to breathe. She's not in pain any longer, but not far from it either. Stretched, to the breaking point it seems. Full, so so full. He's so deep inside her, so thoroughly sheathed, that Rey feels like she can't breathe.

Her walls spasm around him, struggling to accommodate his girth, and he groans again. His fingers twitch around the swell of her hip, not quite clutching her, but very much feeling like he wants to.

"Ben," Rey moans, sounding every bit as wrecked as he does.

Rey feels more sweat bead on her upper lip and forehead. They're both panting like they just climbed the hull of a downed dreadnought. She can feel the great bellows of Ben's chest expanding and contracting jerkily against her back. His breath washes over the nape of her neck, stuttering like he's trying to control himself and failing. She wishes, for one mad moment, that she could see his face. His moist pink lips would be pursed, dark eyes surely blown wide, the exertion would have brought a flush on his pale cheeks. In this moment, Ben must be so kriffing beautiful, she thinks.

Her fingers are definitely trembling as she reaches between her thighs, feeling where she's wound tightly around him. Everything is slick, and warm, and his cock is so kriffing hard. Ben moans when her fingertips trace his length - fingers digging into her hip for good, probably leaving small, round bruises in their wake - as she trails her hand all the way down his rigid shaft to the nest of coarse curls at his base.

Rey swallows, nervously. There's... more of him outside than she'd thought there would be. And so little space left inside her.

But Rey may be many things, but she's no quitter.

Ignoring the burn, she angles her hips and pushes again, clumsily seeking to impale herself further on his length. It doesn't quite work. The angle is all wrong, and she doesn't have anything to properly exert leverage against. Her hands scramble on her bedsheet, trying for purchase, but there's simply nothing to hold on to.

It pinches, more now that she is moving again, and she remembers that she ought to go slow, but Rey is too impatient for slow.

She wants him now. All of him.

Rey growls, feeling helpless and so so needy. But try as she might, she can't get enough purchase to push herself back onto him any further.

Ben choses this moment to curl more firmly around her back. His thighs are massive against the back of her legs. The sensation of the coarse, short hair that covers his legs is strange, if not unpleasant. She rubs her foot against the flat of his shin, savoring the sensation of roughness under the sole of a foot that has grown soft since she's joined the Resistance and traded her sandstriders for proper boots. The contrast is exquisite... and brings the spark on an idea with it.

Rey shoves one of her legs between both of his, hooking her foot behind his muscular calves and this... yes... like this she has enough leverage to impale herself fully.

They both grunt when she pulls, sliding down his shaft one torturous, delicious inch at a time, and then again once he's seated all the way. Ben from surprise, and Rey as she tries to breathe through the foreign sensation of pressure low inside her belly. There's a pinch of pain too, one that rapidly fades as her walls contract and spasm around his length, each wave bringing more pleasure, less discomfort in its wake.

"Rey..." Ben gasps, his voice rough and so so deep. Pained. Like he's mortally wounded. He sounds like he wants to say more, like there's a wealth of words begging to spill forth from that plush mouth of his, but Rey stills him with a squeeze of his hand.

"Shhhh..." she whispers. "Sleep."

Rey closes her eyes, focusing only on the sensation of his heavy cock, resting snuggly in her channel, and takes a deep breath before she begins to move. Her foot, still hooked firmly behind his knee, gives her the necessary leverage to work herself up his straining length, then down again. She shudders at the sudden emptiness, then the slow slide, at the renewed sensation of being filled. Already craving to do it again, the moment her pelvis rests against his.

Ben's breath is shaky, and so is her own, as she moves her hips again and again. Using him, just like he asked her to.

She can feel the edges of his own pleasure through the bond, but - if she's brutally honest - that's not the point. Rey is lost to the sensations that have overtaken her body.

There's a thrumming feeling, deep deep inside her, in a place she has never managed to reach on her own. It's creeping up her spine, warming her belly, that place beneath her belly button where her womb is nestled. Sweat beads on her forehead, on her upper lip. She can feel the same dampness on Ben's chest as she presses back against him over and over, her rhythm still climbing, still growing more manic.

And she needs more. She doesn't quite know what, her own fumblings in the dark were usually quicker and much more utilitarian, but she knows that she needs something else from Ben.

Rey takes his hand from where it rests on her hip, and moves it to the apex of her thighs until his roughened fingertips rest over the small bundle of nerves there. Ben groans into her neck when he feels her wetness. His fingers flex, mindlessly, drawing small, tight circles around her clit.

It’s so kriffing good, but it’s not what Rey wants. Or maybe it's what she wants, but not what she's ready to take. It's complicated, this dream of hers. She grabs his wrist, somewhat regretfully, stilling his hand.

“Wha-” Ben mumbles.

“We’re asleep,” Rey whispers. “Don’t you remember?”

For a moment she thinks he won’t obey her, his fingers spasm against her core, sending delicious sparks of pleasure racing down her spine, but finally his huge hand that could overpower her so easily, goes lax in her grip.

"Yeah," me murmurs, soft and gentle again. His pillowy lips brush against her nape as he speaks, and every inch of Rey's body is so sensitive that she almost shivers from head to toe. "'s a nice dream."

"It is."

Even when he's not actively stroking her, the pads of his fingers - no doubt calloused from years of wielding a lightsaber - provide dizzying friction against her clit, and as Rey resumes her movement she knows that she's not going to last much longer. She feels like an overheated plasma coil, so tightly wound that any small movement could shatter her into a thousand pieces. The pinch of Ben's cock inside her cunt has passed, but it still feels like he's splitting her in half every time she impales herself fully on him.

Rey moans, wantonly, and Ben's hips helplessly thrust forward.

"Sor-"

"It's okay," Rey whimpers, willing to allow herself this much. "It's okay. You - aah - you can do it again."

"It's still just a dream?"

"Yeah."

He seems to consider her words for a moment, and Rey feels a shadow pass through the bond. It only lasts a few seconds, like a cloud that briefly obstructs the moon, and then he is with her again, in the here and now. His hips jerk forward. The first thrust is awkward, ill-timed as they struggle to learn how to move together. What had seemed so effortless in that burning throne room takes longer in this horizontal position, but finally Ben manages to match her rhythm. To meet every one of her increasingly desperate thrusts with one of his own. Filling her so perfectly, over and over again.

The coil inside of Rey draws tighter.

"Ben..." The voice she hears doesn't even feel like it's her own anymore. Rey doesn't think that she's ever sounded so desperate in all her life, not when she was at her lowest in Jakku, when she would have done anything for a drop of dirty water, not when she was alone in her bunk at night, whishing that her parents would return. Not when she begged Ben to stay with her, in that red room, surrounded by those red, dead guards and the slowly dying flames. "Stars... Ben."

He thrusts again, pulling her back against him with the hand that is cupping her sex, groaning into her ear in that deep, velvety voice of his, and just like that, Rey shatters into a million pieces.

Her vision whites out as her cunt constricts around him, like her body doesn't know if it wants him closer or wants to push him away. She screams, she thinks. Someone screams, and it's not Ben, so it must be her, so caught in the throes of her climax that she doesn't care if Rose hears her all the way in the hangar bay, or what Kaydel, who's sleeping at the end of the corridor, might think.

Her entire being is spiraling inwards, concentrating on Ben. Ben in her cunt. Ben like a solid wall at her back. Ben in her mind, so close that she can't entirely tell where she stops and he begins.

His rigid, thick shaft is wringing pleasure from her cunt with each ingress. His warmth is searing her inside and out. His breath on her neck and his hand... his hand is still cupping her mound. He's all around her and if she's not careful she might get lost in him.

And she doesn't even care if she does.

She feels wetness gush from her abused hole, soaking her thighs, and Rey can't bring herself to worry about the mess on her sheets.

"Ben," she moans. "Oh Force, oh stars. Please. Please."

Obediently, he pulses his hips, angling them to rub against that sweet spot on her front wall, and Rey feels herself spasm around him again and again as the waves of her orgasm hit her relentlessly.

It last for longer than it should, although that's probably an illusion. The pleasure is still surging through her, more muted now, more dull, and bone-deep contentment has settled in its place.

But they're not done yet.

Rey's still slowly coming back to herself, when she realizes that his own movements haven't ceased. If anything the small, jerky thrusts of his hips have gotten more forceful.

"Ben?" Rey asks.

He moans, and his voice is rough and tortured and so so deep that she feels it all the way in her diaphragm. "I... kriff... Rey... I'm sorry. I need... I need..."

Rey isn't entirely sure what he is asking her, but it doesn't matter very much. She doesn't think that she wants to say no to him anymore.

"It's okay..."

That's all he needs before he wrenches his cock out of her cunt with a savage growl.

Rey almost wails at the sudden feeling of emptiness, bites her lip at the last second to keep from making a sound.

You're asleep, Rey, she reminds herself.

There's a rush of fluids, warm and sticky and quite a lot more than Rey had assumed there would be, and then Rey's world tilts as Ben rolls her onto her back in one swift movement. He pushes her legs apart, spreading her wide, and as he does so he looks more than a little bit wild. Untethered. Like he's barely himself. His feverish eyes meet hers, and she nods.

It's okay, she thinks, too overwhelmed for words and hoping that he can somehow hear her. Maybe he can, with their minds and Force-signatures as tangled as they are right now.

He slots into the cradle of her thighs like she was made to keep him there, like he's the last piece of a puzzle that she's been trying to assemble all her life. The pinch as he enters her in one rough thrust is less sharp than it was before, but it's still there.

Rey whimpers from the sudden discomfort, and Ben stills, mid-thrust. There's a sharp crease between his dark brows, and she can see the whites in his eyes.

It's okay, Rey thinks again, winding her hands in the damp hair at the nape of his neck and pulling him down down down, until his pelvis is once again flush with her own.

"Oh, stars," he pants. "Rey... Rey... I..." He looks down at her, sweaty hair framing his face like midnight itself, his usually so pale face flushed. There's hardly any brown left in his eyes, only blackness. It makes Rey shiver, to see him so undone.

"Do it..."

He snarls, burying his face in the hollow of her neck. For a moment she thinks he might kiss her, but then his teeth sink into the round of her shoulder.

Ben's hips pull back, only to snap back forward a fraction of a second later. There is no buildup, no time for Rey to get used to it, he sets a brutal pace from the very beginning, filling her over and over again until she can barely breathe from the overwhelming sensations.

"Stars..." Ben grunts. "So... good. So tight, sweetheart. So good for me."

He curls his spine, trying to make more room for himself where there is none left inside of her to give. It's all Rey can do to just hold on, as he drives her up the lumpy mattress with the force of his thrusts. She feels the muscles the cord along his spine flex under her fingertip, feels his heartbeat race. Feels the coiled, barely restrained strength of him. He's so large that she can barely wrap her arms around him, and the sensation of being so enveloped by Ben makes her somehow even kriffing wetter. Tighter.

Stars. She's going to come again, if he keeps this up.

"Fuck," Ben groans into her neck, where her skin is tender from his teeth, redoubling is efforts. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry, sweetheart, I need to come... I need..."

Like he needs to ask.

She pulls him close, until there's barely any space left between them. As close as she can, with her arms wrapped around the massive barrel of a chest and his hips securely cradled in the shelter of her thighs. Until he's as close and as deep as he can possibly go. His feet scramble against the sheets, and Ben in turn struggles to bury himself as deep as he can. She feels like she's going to come apart at the seams. Like his arms around her are the only thing holding her together.

Ben ruts against her, more animal than man in his urgency, and Rey can feel the moment he loses control for good. Both in the Force and inside of her.

He snaps his hips maybe four or five more times, frenzied and desperate and increasingly erratically, and then his rhythm devolves completely. His hips stutter against her arse and she feels the heavy weight of his cock twitch against her inner walls. The wave of his release in the Force makes her shiver. It picks her up, helplessly, and sweeps her along and before Rey knows it she's coming again. Coming with Ben as he shivers and moans and spasms above her.

Filling her with warmth as her walls contract around his girth rhythmically.

Ben groans, his thrust slowing down, pumping his hips almost lazily as he spills his seed deep inside her. Aftershocks run through Rey, making her shiver in his hold, and Ben tightens his thick arms around her shoulders almost reflexively. His breath fans over her neck, slow and warm, as he sighs into her skin.

He sags on top of her, spent, and Rey is rather forcefully reminded that Ben Solo is of the approximate size and shape of a luggabeast as he crushes her into the mattress with his entire bulk.

It doesn't feel bad, not exactly, but he is nonetheless huge. And heavy. She can feel the irregular patter of his heartbeat race against her sternum, can feel how he struggles to force his breathing to return to normal.

And they're both lathered in sweat. It should be gross, Rey - who has grown quite fond of the ready availability of freshers here on base - thinks, but it's not.

Her fingers trace along the ladder of his spine, and she smiles when she feels him twitch inside her, pumping another feeble spurt of cum into her used cunt.

Rey moans, unintelligibly, and Ben must take it as a groan of protest, because he rolls off her with a soft, sated unnff. The cool air of the room rushes in, raising an army of goosebumps across her clammy, overheated skin.

Rey struggles to get her bearings, not entirely ready to leave the soft cocoon of Ben's embrace. But he's leaving her little choice.

Sometime during their exertions the moons have set, bathing the room in near darkness. She can make out his shape as he lies next to her. The barrel of his chest, still rising and falling faster than normal, the curve of his long nose, the trembling of his dark lashes as his eyelids flutter.

Rey lies next to him, her own breathing reluctant to slow down, and listens to the sound of the room. The soft creak of the bedframe as he shifts his legs into a more comfortable position, to the vaguely mournful cries of the zymods out in the forest. Even the damn cricket seems to have gentled its never-ending chirps into a more pleasant hum.

Rey lies on her back, next to Ben, and looks up at the strange shapes on the ceiling of her room. And she wonders, not for the first time that night, what it is that Ben sees as he lies next to her. If he's as alone as she is, on that vast ship that he calls home.

Rey lies, wide-awake, and watches Ben Solo, and waits for the bond to close.

Only it doesn't.

As it grows and settles and solidifies, the silence between them isn't oppressively, somehow. There's something comforting in feeling his hulking shape next to her, in the dark of her room.

It's a mad thought, but Rey almost thinks that Ben doesn't want to leave.

But then he moves, swinging his long legs across the side of the cot, and the thought that he might leave, that he might get up and leave her... the ice that shoots through her veins at that thought forces a sound from her throat that is entirely unbidden, and a thousand times as mournful as the calls of the zymods in the jungle.

Ben's silhouette freezes, and Rey only catches the edge of Ben's concerned frown, before he crawls back into her bunk, the creaky mattress dipping under his not inconsiderable weight, half-climbing on top of her in an altogether innocent imitation of their coupling. His mouth finds the spot on her shoulder again, the one he'd bitten earlier, and his soft, plush lips press soothing kisses to the abused flesh.

"I was fetching a washcloth," he whispers.

"'kay." Rey nods into his shoulder, fingers weakly gripping at his wrists, at his waist. At every inch of skin she can find. Willing herself not to cry.

His hand sneaks out after a little while, finding hers in the dark. His palm engulfs hers easily. There's callouses on the pad of his thumb. His skin is dry, his hand warm. Pleasant. Strong. Steady.

A strange sense of calmness washes over her as she lies there, watching as Ben's eyes slide shut again, a contend little smile playing around the edges of his expressive mouth.

She can't quite place it at first.

Her body feels heavy. Spent. Overheated, but pleasantly so in the coolness of the room. The space between her thighs is sticky with their mixed spent, and more than a little sore. Good sore though, like one feels after a good workout, not bad at all. Like she could imagine doing that again, at some point in the near future. If he's amiable.

But... that's not it. That's not what makes her feel so content.

She feels... safe.

It makes her gasp, that realization, and Ben's hand flexes around hers. Squeezing once, maybe as though he's asking what's wrong, but Rey is busy cataloguing this strange new sensation to answer him, so she just squeezes his hand back reflexively.

Rey has never felt safe. Not in almost twenty years.

Not like this.

Never once on Jakku, even within the confines of her trusty Hellhound. It's impossible to sleep soundly in the desert, especially not as a young girl. Not when there's so many other hungry, desperate souls lurking in the dunes.

And the last few months, perpetually hiding from the First Order, certainly hadn't felt safe. Not when any night could end, her sleep torn apart by the shrill ringing of the base's evacuation klaxon, by the otherworldly keening of approaching TIEs.

So it's a strange thing, that she should feel safe, sharing her bunk with Kylo Ren, who is the enemy.

The Supreme Leader.

But she does.

She can feel the calmness seep deep into her bones. Into the empty spaces in her soul. Filing her better than any meal ever has.

Ben Solo makes her feel safe.

Like she belongs.

The thought is so vivid that her eyes start to leak. Another thing she'd never allowed herself on Jakku. But she's safe now, so she can allow herself to cry. Just a little bit.

Another little eternity passes, as she allows this realization - this unfamiliar feeling of contentedness - to settle and grow roots inside of her.

Rey turns to her side, finally daring to look at him, finding that his bravery has superseded her own. In the dark she can hardly make out the swirls of brown and green and gold in his eyes, and she hates the dark for that, but she can still feel the weight of his gaze.

"Ben?"

"Mhm?"

"Are you awake?"

There's a pause that's long enough that suns could live and die in the space between her breath and his. Rey waits for him, as he carefully considers his answer, ignoring the frantic beating of her own heart against her ribcage.

"Yes." He murmurs, finally, and the universe dares to breathe again.

"I miss you." Rey admits, timidly. "I wish I'd stayed."

He sighs. Slowly, heavily.

His massive chest expands and contracts with a deep breath, then another one. Like he's trying to breathe her in. Or like he needs to ground himself, here, in her room, in her bunk. His face remains burrowed in the crease of her neck. His hands stroke across the nape of her neck. She feels enveloped by him, and it should be claustrophobic, but it's not. It's anything but.

And when he speaks, his voice is whisper-thin, but still she hears him.

"I wish I'd come with you, sweetheart."

Notes:

Phew, that's taken me a lot longer than anticipated, but I hope that it was a fun ride anyway.

Please mind your hands and elbows as you disembark the fic, and maybe, if you're so inclined, leave a comment or a kudos.

I'm mostly on bluesky these days and you can find me there @forverona but you can also still find me over on Twitter as @for_verona on occasion. (If I ever start calling it X, please know that it's time to put me down.) And my works page is here, in case you want to read one of my other fics, many of which are also finished!

For now I bid farewell!
See you soon & lots of love...
V