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He senses her frustration first. Hot and searing, like the burn of a blade. She materializes through the bond a moment later, torso contorted and fingers working at a strip of fabric half twined around her upper arm.
"Fuck ." Curse gritted through clenched teeth as the strip slips from her fingers and drops to the floor. "Stupid piece of bantha–”
"Do you need some help with that?"
She swirls in his direction. "–shit."
He can't help the smile tugging at his lips, he really can't. He even tries to tamp it down, to match the scowl Rey levies him with, the one she's been levying at him for weeks now, but it's as useless as a Trooper's mind under the pull of the Force.
"Go away, Ben."
His amusement doesn’t fade so much as it stops. A switch flipped on a control panel, on and then off in the span of a second. "You know I can't control this anymore than you can."
"And here I expected more from the Supreme Leader. " Her voice drips with acid and he'd be lying if he said it didn't burn.
He sighs softly, starts to turn, to make himself small and quiet the way he usually does when this happens, to wait it out. Then he catches it out of the corner of his eye. A mark. A wound.
"What did you do?" It comes out sharper than he intends and she responds before he can take it back.
"What did I do?" she repeats coldly. "I caught myself in the arm with a kriffing combat droid, that's what I did."
He swallows, takes a tentative step forward and then back. "I didn't mean–" He sighs. "Are you alright?"
"Fine," she mumbles. "Just can't get this stupid thing tight enough." As if to punctuate her point, the wrinkled bandage slips loose from its knot and slinks once more to the floor.
The wound it reveals is red and puckered, the kind of burn that burrows deep beneath the skin. A bacta patch would have her healed in a day, maybe two, but for once he keeps his thoughts to himself. It isn't lost on him that the Resistance is running on fumes, that whatever medical supplies they have access to are likely reserved for only the worst of the worst case scenarios.
He thinks of the spare med kit collecting dust in his chambers, one of dozens scattered throughout the Star Destroyer. Something twists in his chest, a sharp pain and then a dull ache. The kind of thing that never really heals, bacta or no.
"Let me do it," he says, a different kind of offering than what he wants to give, but something all the same.
He watches as she considers what to do, can nearly taste the stubborn lick of pride that makes her say, "No." And then, on a sigh, "Okay."
He tries to detach himself from the moment, to approach the task with all the emotion of a med droid, but there's no denying the warmth of her skin, the grit of her teeth as she braces for pain, the slow release of breath when she registers the gentleness of his touch.
He tightens the fabric around her arm in quick, careful strokes, thinking all the while of how often he finds himself doing the inverse of what he wants to do to her. Wrapping up instead of down, walking away instead of toward, shutting out instead of letting in. He doesn't understand it even as he does it and he certainly doesn't know how to fix it.
"How did this happen?" he says to stop himself from saying anything else.
"A combat droid, I told you."
"Since when is a combat droid any match against you?"
She shrugs, then hisses at the pain it causes in her arm. "I was distracted."
"By?"
Rey rolls her eyes. "Don't ask questions you already know the answer to. It's obnoxious."
The pull of a smile again, part amusement, part sick satisfaction to know that she's affected by him too. Infected by him, maybe, but still. It’s something.
She isn’t alone either. How many scars of his own has he earned in recent months? Clumsy moments in battle, slow reactions and misplaced parries. Moments when he sees her through the bond, when he feels her, when he misses her.
He secures a final knot, tugs it gently to test its strength. "How's that feel?"
"Awful," she says, for once meeting his eyes. And it is, isn't it? Awful. All of it, every second they spend doing this when they could instead be doing anything else. "Thanks though."
He nods, strokes her arm one more time though there's no reason for it. Then the edges of the bond start to fade, and again he does the very thing he doesn't want.
He lets her go.
- - -
It comes to him later, in the middle of a strategy meeting with Hux and a few other high ranking members of the Order whose names he’s always forgetting. The thing he didn’t realize at first. The detail he was too distracted to see.
How Rey binds her arms every morning, layers of linen she no longer needs but can’t seem to let go of, the task as easy and familiar to her as breathing.
How when it comes to the notion of her own wellbeing, Rey never seeks the help of anyone, for anything. Least of all him.
The burn, the bandage, the struggle, his offer to help and her begrudging acceptance–all the pieces to a misshapen puzzle. All the makings of a lie.
Once the realization hits, he waits for the bond with the eagerness of a loth-cat, time stalling to a slow crawl as he tries and fails to pry it open with his mind. It's unrelenting, as it always is. A door with no hinge, no key, nothing he can dig his fingers into, nothing he can wrench apart by force alone.
When it finally relents, he finds Rey alone in her quarters, legs pulled into her chest and a book balanced precariously on her knees.
She glances briefly up, then down, jaw set in stony silence. Normally he’d take the hint, leave her to her reading and her determination to ignore him. This time, he can’t quite manage it.
"How's the arm?" he says, demand more than question and too loud for polite conversation.
Rey flips past a page he’s fairly certain she hasn’t read and then replies dryly, “It stings.”
“That bandage will need changing if you don’t want to go septic.”
Another page turn. “I’m aware.”
He chuckles humorlessly. “Of course you are.”
This, at last, gets her attention. She flings the book to the bed, crumpling several pages of what must be one of the rarest of the surviving Jedi texts. She doesn't spare it a second glance, just glares at him as she spits, "What is that supposed to mean?"
He stalks toward her. Doesn't walk or step or hedge, but stalks like he once did on Takodana, on Starkiller. Propelled by an anger he’s felt for days (months, years). An anger he hasn’t let himself feel in too long. An anger he doesn’t even understand.
So she lied. So she accepted help she didn’t really need. So she let him touch her for the first time in months then refused to let it matter. So what?
So everything.
He stalks and he stomps, pulling up short at the edge of her bed. It's a blatant violation of the treaty they’ve been honoring, their unspoken agreement to keep at least a saber's length between them, but he doesn’t care. He can’t uncover the truth from a distance, where she can turn and frown and hide before she leaves. He needs to see it up close.
Rey tracks his movement the entire way, a line forming between her brows. She doesn’t move, though, doesn’t even flinch when he bends over her, forcing her back against the wall, his palms pressed to the mattress and her caged between them. She just looks at him in that way she sometimes does–eyes narrowed and chin tipped up, an echo of the righteous indignation she once wore in the face of his former master. This time, it’s a facade. A false front meant to distract him from the hitch of her chest, the beat of her heart, hammering so fiercely he feels it through the bond.
He levels his eyes with hers until there’s nothing but hurt and rage and shared air between them.
“You don’t have to lie to get me to touch you,” he says cruelly. “All you have to do is ask.”
Rey sneers at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He tilts his head, runs a finger down the length of her arm, her usual binds secured all the way to her shoulder. “You don’t?”
They’re nearly nose to nose, chest to chest, and he expects her to pull away but for once she doesn’t. For once she stays exactly where she is. “What does it matter?”
“You lied,” he growls.
“If you say so.”
“You didn’t need my help.”
“I never said I did.”
“Then why ?”
The thing about Rey is she’s very good at keeping him out. Much better than she should be given her relative inexperience with the Force. He feels it like a physical wall between them, the defenses she puts up when the bond connects, the efforts she goes to to keep him from her mind.
He’s so used to the walls, these immoveable structures she erects in his presence, that he doesn’t realize she's taken them down until he’s struck with the full force of everything they used to contain.
All the things she’s felt, all the things she’s never been able to bring herself to say. It all bleeds from her, barriers forgotten, delivered as clearly and loudly as if she’d shouted it in his face. How she’s tired, how she’s lonely, how what the Resistance is asking from her is too much and yet she can’t bring herself to say no.
How she’s angry with him too. For everything he’s done and everything he continues to do, yes, but mostly for backing her into a corner she couldn’t find her way out from. Most of all for leaving her behind.
It’s enough to steal his breath and yet there’s more. Woven through it all is a thread he follows back to Ahch-To, to a hut on a stony beach and a fire burning bright between them. To the touch of his hand igniting a hunger low in her belly and her starving ever since.
The tide recedes as quickly as it crested and his vision clears on Rey, jaw set and a new shine to her eyes.
“That’s why,” she whispers.
He's struck dumb, drained dry of all the fury he felt only moments ago. “You feel like I left you?” he asks. The hand on her arm moves to her face, hovers just above her cheek.
She pulls away from his touch with a scowl. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then what do you want?”
Rey swallows, the column of her throat working as she considers his question. When she raises her arm he half expects her to strike him, but she only takes his hand from where he let it fall by his side. She places it on her chest, on the hard line of her collarbone.
There’s hardly time to react, to marvel at the frantic beat of her heart under his fingertips before she's moving it down, over the curve of her breast, the plane of her stomach, lower and lower until his palm settles in the warmth between her thighs.
“Oh,” he says dumbly. And then, when she slides him beneath her leggings to the wet heat concealed there, “Oh.”
His brain stutters, neurons firing and then blinking out like a faulty engine on a failed shift to hyperdrive. Rey doesn’t wait for him to catch up, just locks her eyes on his as she rocks her hips into his palm.
She does it again, her hand guiding his to all the right places. He registers slick curls and parting flesh and, “ Oh, fuck. ”
The words slip out of their own volition, making Rey’s lips quirk a second before they fall open on a moan he’s certain he’ll still remember on his deathbed.
“This is what you want?” he asks dazedly, not fully trusting his senses.
Rey spreads her thighs in response, her eyes closing as she guides a finger down then pushes it slowly inside. It’s messy and uncoordinated but it doesn’t seem to matter, not with the way she arches into it, not with him finally starting to understand.
She pushes him in until his palm is flush against her, then pulls him back and tries for two. It’s a tighter fit, a slower glide, but he can taste her determination through the bond and it doesn’t take long for her body to adjust, making space where there was none and her breath hitching faster.
“This is what you wanted?” he says again, words half choked as he starts to find a rhythm of his own, his fingers drawing out then back in. “The entire time?”
“Ben,” she says, the only answer she seems capable of giving him and it going straight to his cock.
There are things he could say in return, things he probably should say. Things like Why didn't you tell me? and Why didn't I know? and We could have had so much time.
There's no space for it though, not with Rey's hips rocking and her breathing his air. Not with her stuffed full of his fingers and still needing more.
“What else can I do?” he asks, ignoring the strain of his cock, hard and pumped so full of blood it's just on the edge of painful.
She shakes her head, screws her eyes shut. “I don’t know.”
He strokes her clit and she clenches around him. “Yes you do. Tell me. I’ll give you anything you need.”
“Shut up.” Words gritted through clenched teeth as she lifts her shirt and squeezes her breast. He does the same with his spare hand, pinching at her nipples until they're stiff and pink. What a shame, he thinks. What an absolute failure of human evolution that I only have two hands.
Rey laughs mid moan, then does him the mercy of showing him what she's thinking. An image shared though the bond, Rey stripped bare and him fucking into her.
“Kriff,” he grunts, cock jumping in his pants. He looks down at her, half naked and panting, red faced and desperate. “Are you sure?”
He braces for her usual retort. Shut up or Go away or Not now Ben , but instead she bites her lip, twin lines etched between her brows as she says, “Please.”
Please , as if he would ever deny her.
Please, as if he wouldn't do anything she asked.
He withdraws his hand from between her thighs, pulls his tunic over his head and works his trousers down. Rey's eyes widen at the sight of his cock, the way it bobs with weight, bright red and leaking from the tip.
He pumps it once, her slick still coating his hand. She gasps like she can feel it and a part of him hopes she can, hopes that whatever pleasure he's about to derive is somehow double for her, if only to make up for all the other pain he's caused.
Rey shimmies her leggings the rest of the way down, makes room for him in the bed. He settles between her thighs and it's almost too much, the sight of her cunt spread wide and worked open. The way it clenches down in eager anticipation.
“Look at you,” he mutters as he taps her clit with the head of his cock. Look at us , he thinks but doesn’t say.
She flushes everywhere, red as a ladalum bloom, the color dampening where his fingertips press into her thighs. He's gripping her too tight, he knows he is, but it's the only thing that keeps him from trembling as she reaches between them and guides his cock to her slick entrance.
He pushes in an inch, then stalls to catch his breath. Her cunt is a vice around him, all wet and warmth and he isn't entirely sure he'll survive what comes next.
“What's wrong?” Rey asks, lifting her head.
He swallows thickly, tries to think of anything that isn't Rey, her pebbled nipples, her slick cunt. It's an impossible task and he trembles from the effort.
“Ben?” she says, breaking his concentration.
“I don't really know what I'm doing,” he blurts, which is altogether different from “I'm trying not to come” or whatever he originally meant to say.
The admission surprises her, he can tell by the slight pull of her brows, the way her lips form a soft, “Oh.”
She sits up on her elbows, the movement notching his cock a little further in as she does and they both gasp, briefly losing focus to the stretch, the squeeze.
“You’ve never…” she trails once she's caught her breath.
“Not never nothing ,” he says defensively. “Just never this .”
Rey's face remains carefully neutral. “I would have thought at the Temple or with one of your Knights or…something.”
The irony isn’t lost on him, that they're having this conversation now, with his cock notched half inside of her. “No,” he says, meeting her eyes. “Just you.”
A smile tugs at her lips, the first one he’s seen on her in weeks. It sparks something in his chest, a flame he thought he’d smothered flaring obstinately back to life. “Just me?” she repeats, bucking her hips so he sinks in another inch.
“Rey,” he groans, the breath disappearing from his lungs. “Fuck.”
She laughs at him, high and bright and pleased by the way she affects him, pleased to be the only one who does. The sound dies on her lips, easily replaced by a moan when he grits his teeth and edges the rest of the way in. It’s so good, so entirely consuming he loses all sense, hips drawing back and forth of their own accord, in desperate search of deeper, wetter, more .
Rey arches into it, a self satisfied smile tugging at her lips as she urges him on. “Yes,” she says. And, “Gods.” And when his cock drags just right against her walls, “Right there.”
He still technically has no idea what he’s doing, can only chase the things that draw those sounds from her lips. Quick, shallow thrusts. Her knees bent into her chest. His hands pressed to the backs of her thighs, a contradictory thing that opens her up and bears her down in a way that steals both their breaths.
It's the best thing he's ever felt and still he has to bite his tongue to keep from choking on things he shouldn’t say. Things he hasn’t allowed himself to think, let alone feel, let alone taste on his tongue. It’s a pointless exercise, as futile as every other thing that’s elapsed since the last moment that mattered. Their hands extended in a room on fire, the ripping apart of something they’d only just begun to build.
What has any of it mattered, in the end? The battles and the strategy meetings and the pursuit of a goal that was never truly his. It’s all secondary to this, to Rey. A truth he must have realized even then, with his offering of a choice that was ultimately no choice at all.
A squeeze of her cunt and he’s right back in it, weight bared on his arms and hair falling into her eyes and all the while thinking how this is it for him. How Rey is the only destiny he’s interested in having, the only one worth fighting for.
Can she feel it? In the slide of his lips on her neck, the swirl of his fingers on her clit? Every push, every pull, every stutter and gasp, every breath. A constant pulse of mine, mine, mine . An undercurrent of yours, yours, yours.
There’s a fluttering around his cock, the muscles in her stomach contracting delightfully as her face screws up, as her eyes lock on his and she shatters around him. It's a sensation he isn't entirely prepared for and he chases after it, hips bucking wildly in greedy pursuit of more.
He finds it in the wet slide of her cunt, in her sharp intake of breath. Words whispered–in his ear? Through the bond? He can't be sure. Isn't sure of anything but the feel of her hands on his chest, the spill of his come across her thighs.
He registers, vaguely, that he hasn't kissed her yet and for a moment wants to laugh. Wants to cry. Wants to go back and fix every mistake he's ever made. Wants to start again brand new.
“Sometimes I think I hate you,” Rey says, eyes half lidded and fingers in his hair. “Sometimes I think that's what you want.”
“It isn't,” he answers, not sure if he means it but wanting to mean it and hoping it counts just the same. His fingers trail her body, find the mess he made with his come, gather it and push it back into her cunt. “It isn't,” he says again, steadier now. Clear headed in a way he hasn't been in a long time.
Rey looks at him, a spark in her eyes he feels like a flame. A promise. A dare.
“Prove it.”