Chapter Text
“A lot has happened.”
He doesn’t even want to tell his therapist, to let a single person know that he’s tried this hard. To hear anyone else taint their relationship, or define it, or ruin it. There’s always the small chance that someone else will tell him the things that he tells himself—that he doesn’t deserve it, that the idea of him in a relationship is a joke—and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to bear it.
So his cheeks flush to admit it out loud. But at the same time, it’s with defiant pride that he says, “I have a girlfriend.”
Maz’s owlish eyes blink. “You do? Really?”
Ben frowns. “Is it so unbelievable?”
She squints at him, adjusting her glasses as if to reform her idea of who he is and what he’s capable of. Ben endures the scrutiny. “I'm happy for you, kiddo, but the last time we went over your treatment goals, you said romance wasn’t ever going to be on your radar.”
He stares at the carpet and shrugs. “Now it is.”
“Well, is she nice to you?”
A nod, and he can’t help his lips curving up in a love-struck smile. “Yes, she’s nice to me.”
—
It’s one of those illnesses that knocks him out cold, a flu where he barely regains consciousness after hours of delirious dreams. His muscles are so sore and aching that he moans with pain. Every movement is agony and must be planned out before he can execute them, long minutes later.
A blessed cold wet cloth presses to his face. There is a comforting scent, and he knows he’s not alone.
Rey , he thinks. He hears her move.
“I don’t feel good,” he says to the ceiling, not quite knowing where she is in the room.
“I know, baby.”
It takes him a full minute to gather the strength and mental fortitude to say, “You’ll get sick.”
“If I get sick, then you can take care of me.”
He wants to argue with that, to tell her he doesn’t want her to be sick at all, but his brain refuses to retain enough information to form any kind of sentence. And then she presses the cool washcloth to his boiling throat and chest and he wants to weep. He drinks water with her help, and swallows the medicine she gives him.
Lucky , he thinks. To have help.
He falls asleep again. When he wakes up, he feels miserable, but his fever has broken and he can think, which is one step up from being a blob of a human who could only moan in agony.
Everything is within arm’s reach on the bed because Rey made sure to leave it there. Tissues, bottles of water and medicine.
“I have to go home now or I’ll miss the train,” she says, peeking her head in the doorway.
“Stay,” he says. “Please. Don’t walk alone so late. Just stay home.”
Rey looks unconvinced.
“You have to do what the sick person says,” he murmurs. “It’s a rule. Don’t go.”
Rey stays, like he asks.
In the morning, she tempts him with soup and crackers and he manages to eat a little.
Realization then hits him. “Wait, how did you get in here? I didn’t answer the door.”
Rey doesn’t meet his eyes. “I picked the lock.”
“You did?”
Rey shrugs, picking at her thumbnail. “You didn’t answer my texts. I was worried about you. I’m sorry. I won’t ever do it again.”
He should maybe find that concerning, that she would break into his house to check on him, but he doesn’t, not even a little. Ill and brain-dull, he considers it.
Once, she was a little girl whose family disappeared without a backward glance at her. She struggles with that, still. Sudden silences must make her feel vulnerable, and make her feel emotions she doesn’t want to feel, the same way Ben has panic attacks against his will. Her reaction makes sense to him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer you,” he says finally.
Rey relaxes into glowing relief. “You couldn’t. You were sick.”
“It must have scared you.”
Ben has turned to open the drawer of his dresser, rummaging through it. He then gestures for her hand, and curls her fingers around a small metal object.
“You shouldn’t need to break into your own home.”
Rey is staring at her hand and the key in disbelief. “My… home?”
Is it too much, too soon? He’s too sick to summon up the energy to wonder. He just knows that the mental image of Rey locked outside when he wants her inside is unbearable. “My home is your home.”
“You can’t give me a key.” To his shock, Rey is near tears, clenching the key in her fist.
“Yes, I can. Everything I have is yours.”
All my worldly goods , he thinks deliriously.
Rey has a strange look on her face. “Well, not anything you have, right? What if I asked for your… your wallet? Your computer?”
Ben thinks for a moment. His brain is so muddled. “You can have it. Do you need one? I could build you a better one than that.”
Rey’s strange look deepens into a grimace like she’s in pain. Ben doesn’t know what it means, or what he said wrong. He bites his tongue.
“I could really hurt and take advantage of you,” she blurts out finally.
In his sickness, it’s hard for him to follow, but he tries. But it doesn’t make sense. “Okay.”
She shakes her head. “No, it’s not okay!”
He doesn’t understand, and now anxiety has his stomach in its fist. “Rey? Why not?”
But she’s crying now, falling forward on his bed. Ben strokes her back, his heart hurting at the sound. She’s never cried so openly before.
“Please,” he says, starting to cry himself. He can’t bear the sound of her pain. “I love you. It will be alright, I promise.”
“You can’t possibly want me to keep,” she cries.
“I love you,” he says. In his illness, it’s the only protest his heart can make.
“I’m always left behind,” she cries.
“I won’t do that.”
“I’m broken. No one wants me.”
“Don’t talk about… don’t talk about my girlfriend like that,” he says slowly, stupidly, hurt as her shoulders shake with sobs. “Be kind to her. I love her.”
Rey continues to cry, muffled. Finally, she asks, “Why?”
His heart is breaking. “Why do I love her?”
Rey nods, her face still hidden.
“She’s always nice to me even though... she doesn’t need to be. She’s patient. So patient with me. She came to help me when I was sick. It’s like she knew… she knew I needed her. She’s so beautiful. I’m always thinking about her. I dream about her. I waited... so long for her. I love her. Please don’t hurt her.”
Eventually, Rey cries herself to sleep, curled on top of his bedspread in a ball near his feet, clinging with an arm over his legs and cradling his key in her fist. He wishes he wasn’t sick so he could hold her.
He touches her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and falls back asleep, secure in the knowledge that his wife is home.
—
Rey’s face relaxes into a smile a week later. “It was just a joke. I don’t need a computer.”
“Are you sure?” His mind is still working out the details to best solve her computer problem.
“I’m sure,” she says.
He builds her a computer anyway.
—
“Can I borrow you for an hour?”
“Just an hour?” Rey asks.
They’re in his condo on his couch, with Rey picking out something to watch together. He’s staring at her mouth as if it challenged him to a duel. He looks determined to win.
“The kissing must be a phobia from when I was younger,” he says. It sounds a little rehearsed, like he’s thought about it for a long time. “Because it’s not going away on its own. I want to work on the phobia, but to do that I need your help.”
“Oh,” she says, blinking. He’s become more used to her, but she knows how hard this is still, for him. And how much he must trust her, to address it proactively. “Okay. I’ll help you.”
He looks relieved. “I’m sorry about this. I wish I could already do it.”
“I love how you kiss me,” she cuts in. At his dubious look, Rey continues, her heart hurting. “I love your kisses, just as they are. But if you need help, I’ll help you.”
“I want—for New Year’s.” He’s staring determinedly at his knee. “I want to really kiss you by then. The New Year’s countdown.”
That’s right—he would have never kissed anyone during the New Year’s countdown before, for all his life.
Rey takes his big hand and kisses the back of his wrist. Holding his hand makes her feel so protective of him.
“I need you to try not to react, at first,” he warns. “Don’t kiss me back. Just let me kiss you. Okay?”
Rey nods. She can do that for him.
Ben starts a timer on his phone and turns to consider her as if she is a challenging puzzle. They both shift to be more comfortable, scooting closer, Ben cradling her jaw like something precious, and he looks both determined and entranced.
Ben kisses her, and nothing new happens. He is completely still, and it feels sweet. It feels like Ben.
When his phone beeps, Ben breaks away and notes down a number in a black moleskine notebook. He’s breathing almost violently.
Rey shifts, already becoming aroused. Having his complete attention does that to her anyway, but his kisses are priceless to her because she knows how hard he pushes himself out of his comfort zone to give them to her.
“What are you writing down?” she jokes. “Rating how good I am?”
“I’m writing down—it’s actually…” He gives her a troubled look. “I’m writing down the Subjective Units of Distress I’m experiencing.”
“Distress?” Rey is hurt despite herself. “Kissing me distresses you?”
Ben gathers her hand in both of his, tracing her palm with his thumbs. “It’s not you. It’s just some irrational anxiety thing that happens with me and kissing. My body is convinced that if I really kiss you, I’ll die.”
“What?”
He taps his phone, resetting the timer. “The wiring is crossed, and my brain thinks that it’s life-threatening when it’s not. It’s really hard to do, but if you expose yourself to a phobia enough, after a while, your body just gets too tired to do the panic response. And then your body finally realizes there’s nothing wrong and you aren’t about to die, and the wires get uncrossed. So I just have to kiss you a lot to convince my body that kissing you won’t kill me.”
Rey smiles. He doesn’t need a big excuse to make out with her a lot, but okay. “Are you sure kissing me won’t kill you? I always have a knife on me.”
Ben considers her, a spark in his eye. “I’m pretty sure. It’s worth the risk, anyway.”
As he leans in for a second kiss, she says quietly, “You feel like you’ll die, but you kiss me anyway?”
Ben nods, gazing at her mouth. “Yes.”
She leans forward secretively. “You’d die to kiss me?”
He nods again. “Yes.”
Rey bites her lip.
He taps the timer and kisses her once more.
This time, Ben moves his mouth.
Oh.
Rey gasps, her heart abruptly pounding, both on his behalf and for how it feels to have his lips actually move against hers, pursing even slightly, after so long.
She wouldn’t change his precious kisses, his vulnerable silent requests for her to lead, but this is—
This is so much.
When Rey gasps, Ben’s lips freeze again. He pulls back, panting loudly. There’s actual sweat on his brow. “I’m sorry, Rey. I know it’s hard, but try not to react, just for now.”
“Right, sorry.”
“I’m trying to concentrate,” he says, now mock-seriously. “Focus.”
“Yes, sir,” she says, baiting him.
He can’t help smiling at the corner of his lips. She loves making him smile—it always feels like a reward, like she truly earned it, because he rarely smiles.
“Good. Good girl.”
That lowly murmured praise doesn’t help at all. She is already more than turned on because she associates his motionless kisses with tender belonging and sweet wonder and being absolutely, ruinously railed by him.
He repeats the process, kissing her again, waiting for his phone to beep before he breaks away again to write a number down. Then, he restarts the timer, turns back to her and cradles the back of her neck again to kiss her. And again. And again.
Parting his lips slowly, softly over hers once again, he tilts his head to the side slightly. His fast breath puffs on her cheek. His heart is pounding under her palms.
Her heart is, too, just from so little. He’s kissing her. Her cheeks are bright red, suddenly, because Ben is kissing her, and the motion of his lips is so delicate, so hesitant, so loving and hopeful that it hurts to be on the receiving end of it.
Rey traces his stomach with her hand, dipping lower and lower. Ben grins against her mouth, catching her wandering hand and caressing it with his thumb. “Behave, Omega.”
“Sorry,” Rey whispers against his mouth.
“I don’t think you’re sorry at all,” he says as he writes down another number.
This time when he kisses her, she can’t hold back her moan. She braces her hands on his thighs, rubbing them.
“Can we have sex?” she asks.
Ben, noting down another number, laser focuses on her, visibly shocked. “Now?”
Rey nods, picking at the fabric of his jeans on his thighs.
Ben shoots her a playful look. “But I’m not done.”
She knows he’s not actually kidding. He doesn’t do well with spontaneity. As they’re getting more comfortable with each other, it’s getting easier for him to change plans on the fly, though.
Rey tries her best to tease him. “No one said you can’t keep kissing me while we’re at it.”
He pokes her thigh to emphasize each word. “You’re. Interrupting. Science.”
“Picture this—you doing science, except with me sitting on your cock.”
His breath catches, eyes dropping to her breasts, then her crotch, his chest hardly moving. She loves that he’s easy to startle. All she has to do is just tell him exactly what she’s thinking.
When he meets her eyes again, his eyes are creased with amusement. “I think that would skew the results.”
She leans forward seductively, thumbs exploring down his thigh’s crease dangerously close to his crotch. “Would that be bad?”
“I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to the kissing.”
“Please?”
“I think you’ll come harder for me if I kiss you for the whole hour first.” He softens, brushing her cheek with his thumb. “This is important to me. I’ll make it up to you. Let me finish kissing you first?”
Her last protest is a joking grumble. “Of course I’ll wait.”
“I know. I appreciate your sacrifice, Rey.” When did he get so smug, with that little smile? “But anticipation is good too.”
There’s an unbearable tension in the next round, Rey fighting not to do something incorrigible like climb into his lap and grind into him.
He’s cradling her face, sweeping her stray hair away so tenderly. He’s going to fuck her in an hour. But not until then.
By some miracle, she doesn’t gasp this time when his lips move. It’s so good, like the unbearably sweet, worshipping way a young man would kiss his first girlfriend. She’s his first love, and she feels his hushed wonder in this kiss.
At the thirty minute mark, he starts moving his mouth more freely, and the slightest hint of his tongue is as tantalizing as the hint of an ankle to a Victorian. His kisses are sweet and passionate and she knows he means them and he truly adores her, making her blush down to her toes.
For the last few minute-kisses in the hour, Ben takes pity on her. “Rey, you can try to kiss me back now… if you want to. It’s working, and I think I can push it.”
Rey nods in understanding. He has stopped panting heavily after every kiss, so she guesses this means he’s somewhat adapting to it, like he hoped. So this time she rises up to kiss him first. When they both feel each other’s lips moving, they both gasp.
After this kiss, he has to take a minute to calm himself, breathing and rubbing his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
He shakes his head and kisses her again, and this time he forgets the timer. And now they’re kissing each other, an unstructured undocumented conversation flowing back and forth. He’s cupping her jaw gently in both hands, tilting her whole face toward him, and she revels in his delicate control, and how steady he is. She is exactly where he wants her to be, captured and found.
It’s past the hour. But for all her joking before, she isn’t in a rush.
“Tell me if you're ready,” she says. “Or we can play cards. Or you can watch me.”
“Watch you?” He licks his lips unconsciously.
She stands up, stripping off her jeans, and then straddles him, one hand bracing on his shoulder and the other dipping beneath her underwear to touch herself.
His hands return to her collarbones, thumbs feathering her throat, watching her hand fixedly. “Mmm, that…”
“Deserves a kiss?” she asks hopefully.
Ben smiles and nods, and kisses her as she gasps and touches herself.
Rey teasingly unbuttons and unzips him. When she finds him hard, grazing him with her knuckles, his breath catches.
He doesn’t stop kissing her, so Rey straddles him, hand braced on his shoulder, lining him up with her center as he gasps unsteadily. His face screams to have mercy on him.
She doesn’t want to have mercy on him. He’s a tease and so cruel to delay her. She fills herself with him, and it feels so good, she pauses to savor the feeling, just sitting on him, stuffed full. His hips shift below her, tensing.
“Start the timer again,” she tells him.
His eyes tear away from the sight of their joined bodies, and he looks completely scattered.
“The timer, Ben.”
“R-right,” he says. He fumbles, but manages to press it.
Rey looks at him expectantly, then squeezes him inside her. “Are you going to kiss me?”
He shakes his head as if trying to clear it. His jaw is set and tense. “Can you move? Or do I move?”
“Neither. I should torture you for an hour like you did to me.”
Ben nods, his hips twitching with the suppressed instinct to move. “That’s fair.”
“But I’m too worked up.”
“I know.” He smiles, a lock of his hair falling adorably in his eyes. “If it helps, I was torturing myself too.”
He kisses her.
“Holy fuck, Ben.”
His cock in her, his lips moving over hers.
“You’re so adorable,” he whispers. “Do you know how much I love you?”
When he comes, he presses down on her waist to seat his knot, and kisses her deeply. The sensation of him filling her, and her rocking against his inescapably thick knot, and his tongue in her mouth, and she’s there as well, shaking so hard and so long she has to hold onto his shoulders for dear life.
He was right about waiting an hour, how the anticipation would make it more intense.
When she comes back to herself, he looks unbearably smug and handsome, drunk with pleasure, his hair mussed in victory. Her favorite.
When she kisses him again, he delicately, shyly touches her tongue with his.
“It really worked.” Rey touches his lips wonderingly. “I didn’t really believe it. I thought you just wanted an excuse to kiss me.”
“I did want that too,” Ben says, laughing and kissing her cheek and holding her close, rich with his triumph.