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If someone were to ask Ben Solo to pinpoint the moment that he’d fallen in love with Rey Niima, he could tell them the exact time and place without batting an eye.
April 25th. 2:36 pm. Naberrie Hall, Coruscant University.
It was the end of the semester Philosophy 352: Emotion, Reason, and Law final that did him in. A debate between students, matched based on their end of the semester grade point average, revolving around a topic given to them at the whim of the professor.
By rights he shouldn’t have even been there, but he was. Tapped in at the last minute, asked to sub when a fellow professor had taken ill with a case of the flu and far too new in his assistant professorship to outright refuse.
Hux and Niima, the top of their class. He’d given them a remarkably broad topic, tasking them to discuss the moral and ethical implications surrounding the implantation of Neuralink into the human brain. She was to argue for it, her opponent, against.
And so, Ben Solo, the fresh faced English professor straight out of graduate school himself, had watched the love of his life step up to the podium armed with nothing but her simple sundress and thousand watt smile and systematically destroy every argument her ginger opponent had thrown her way.
Rey Niima was straight fire, and he would never recover from orbiting too close to her sun.
He’d known by the time she shook hands with Hux at the end of the debate that he wanted to marry her and when she gathered her things only to linger behind her friends for a chance to talk with him, it had only solidified his resolve.
She was incredibly witty, brilliant beyond belief, and her eyes… the way that they’d shone on that first day when they’d stopped at a central junction and hesitated to part had made it impossible to resist reaching out and tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear and asking for her number.
They’d spent the summer dancing around each other, a careful push and pull until she’d seized the moment and french kissed him during the annual labor day parade as if her life depended on it.
There was no stopping them from crashing into each other after that.
Ben had filed paperwork with HR the moment that she’d agreed to date him, and she had moved in shortly after that. They were constantly together, laughing and fighting and fucking and challenging each other to within an inch of their sanity.
He wouldn’t change a thing for the world.
Which is why, as Ben draws the car to a halt at the end of the long line of cars stretched in front of the Organa-Solo estate, he acutely notes her silence.
It's his mother’s annual Christmas party and, this year, he’s brought a guest.
“Sweetheart?” He asks carefully, reaching over to disentangle her fingers from the death grip she has on the carefully prepared tray of figgy pudding in her lap.
It takes effort, but eventually she peels her eyes away from the festively lit, multi-million dollar mansion his parents live in and meets his gaze with a slightly panicked glaze in her own.
And he gets it, he really does.
His parents have always been good about welcoming people into their home, in pretending that there is nothing out of the ordinary about living in a home that requires the retention of staff simply to keep it presentable, but Ben knows how intimidating his childhood home is.
It’s always been a lesson for him - in humility, in mustering confidence, in learning who his true friends are, and in proving that he’s more than his parent’s accomplishments. He can only imagine what it’s like for someone who has never laid eyes on old money before.
The air in the car is eerily silent as he reaches over to smooth a palm over her cheek, both in comfort and to keep her eyes locked on his.
“They’re going to love you, you know,” he says quietly.
“What if they don’t? What if I’m…” Rey pauses and swallows harshly, her fingers clutching tightly to Ben as if she’s in danger of drowning. “What if I’m not enough for this?”
She gestures helplessly toward the house.
Ben has never unbuckled a seat belt faster in his life. It zips past his shoulder, and then he’s surging across the center console, claiming her lips with a fervency that he hopes conveys the desperate devotion that he carries for her. She meets him with a bruising intensity, teeth clashing and tongue battling against his with insistency to claim the comfort that he’s so willingly offering her in the midst of her anxiety.
His parents will love her, not only because he does but because she’s worthy of love.
She’s worthy of so much goddamn love and he’s suddenly very angry at the universe for ever teaching her otherwise.
“Come here,” he breaks the kiss to issue the command hotly against her lips as he frees her from the belt and hauls her across to his side of the car. She comes willingly, despite the tangle of limbs and the cling wrapped tray that’s still clutched tightly in her arms.
“Ben, the figgy pudding,” she whines, even as she’s settling against him, already rocking her hips needily against his. “Nobody will want to eat it if it’s a mess.”
Ben huffs loudly. As if he isn’t the only lifeline she needs to keep herself afloat.
Gently, ever so gently, he pries it from her fingers and places it in the space that she’s just vacated.
“Rey,” he says somberly, running his hands down her body to wrap around her hips and squeezing lightly. “I’ll dip my spoon in your figgy pudding any day.”
She laughs, a little huff of air that always drives him absolutely crazy, and tosses her curled hair over her shoulder as she slips her hands down to begin working on his belt.
“I think you’re just saying that, Ben Solo, because you want to get into my pants.”
He presses his lips against her throat even before she’s finished speaking and begins working his way down, unfastening each button on her smart, crimson peacoat as he reaches it, unwrapping her like a present to reveal the emerald plunge dress below.
He fucking loves her in this dress. He loves fucking her in this dress too. Not only because she looks drop dead gorgeous in it, which she does, with her makeup done just so and the delicate body chain that disappears under the fabric just below the curve of her breasts, but because she feels confident in it. Sexy.
As if she can take on the world and be the last one standing.
It’s exactly how he’s determined to make her feel when she steps into his parent’s house.
Like an empress.
His empress.
“You’re not wearing pants, sweetheart,” he murmurs against her skin.
“Very astute of you to notice,” she whispers back, at the same moment that she pulls him free and takes him in hand.
Ben can’t help the little stutter of his hips and the catch of his breath when she touches him. She doesn’t stroke him, not yet. Instead she traces one finger up the side of his length and studies him.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” She hesitates, her eyes casting back towards the house as uncertainty creeps back into the lines of her body. It’s written in the sudden slump of her shoulders, the way her brow furrows and her hands still and then move to draw her jacket close to her again as if the air has brought a chill.
This certainly won’t do.
“Hey.” He catches her chin in his hand and turns her head gently away from the party inside the house and back to him. She turns with her wide, hazel eyes that are equal parts trusting, yet wary, and just a little sad. “All those people in that house? They don’t hold a candle to you. You are everything, and they will be lucky to have the chance to know you tonight.”
Her eyes flicker between his, taking in his words studiously, measuring them to see if the weight of them matches up with the facts that she knows about herself.
Finally, she nods.
A smile breaks across Ben’s face and he draws her into his arms to kiss her deeply, taking his time to pour everything he’s feeling into the simple touch of his lips against hers. He holds her tight against him while one hand drops to trace subtle patterns along the smooth skin of her thigh before disappearing under her dress.
She sighs against his lips as he inserts a finger into her, thrusting gently, marveling at how eagerly her body responds to his.
They rock together slowly as she leans into him, head tucked against his shoulder as he presses his lips to her hair, just above her ear, and whispers the many reasons he loves her in a voice that is meant only for her, even in the stillness of the night.
Eventually, she’s ready to take two, and when he brushes against her clit with his thumb, the breathy moan she releases is pure adrenaline to his already aching cock.
“I love you too,” she says softly, turning to press a kiss against his neck before drawing back and lifting her hips from where she’s currently seated, riding his fingers. He lets his hands fall away from her, watching silently as she holds her dress out of the way and lines herself up.
Slowly, she sinks down.
Where Rey is all quiet sighs and delicate gasping, Ben is liberal with the appreciation that falls from his lips. The indecent groan that rips from him as she sheaths him sounds positively debauched and he bends forward to nuzzle against her chest, pushing her dress out of the way with his nose to mouth at her breast.
He can feel her body react to him on a visceral level as she arches with a gasp and tightens around him and it’s all he can do to not ravage her on the spot.
He’s mid-thrust, bending her backwards over the wheel, breath falling heavily into the night as he pumps into her with wild, recklessly deep strokes, when he feels the first tell-tale signs that she’s close. Her fingers tighten minisculely, nails embedding into his shoulders, and she flutters around him.
Ben can’t help the strangled groan that falls from his lips.
He’s going to come soon too, but he wants her to be the first to fall.
“Let go,” he demands raggedly in her ear. Her only response is to push him back against the seat while she braces against the wheel, changing their angle just enough that he’s hitting her deep inside. He revels in the way he drags deliciously against her walls any time she lifts off of him, only to chase after with his hips in a desperate bid to fill the space again.
It’s enough to make him feel like he’s about to explode.
“Please,” he pleads, throwing his head back against the seat and driving up into her, uncaring when she hits the wheel with her elbow and the horn sounds sharply into the night. She flinches, but that doesn’t stop her from working him mercilessly as they move together with a singular purpose. “Please, Rey. Please.”
She whimpers and pulses and leans forward to bite his bottom lip just as he reaches to twist the bud on her breast to contrast the pleasure with pain, and she’s there.
“Ben!” Rey gasps, shriek shifting into a broken moan as her body shudders and seizes as she tumbles over the edge.
He’s just pressed his lips to her pulse point, ready to thrust desperately into her and finish himself off, when a sharp rap sounds against the window.
Han’s peering in, a cocky grin splitting his face.
“Fucking hell, Dad!”
Ben pulls Rey close to him, arms wrapping tightly around her and drawing her to his chest as if the simple action will shield her from his dad’s prying eyes.
He has never been more painfully aware of how deeply he’s buried in his girlfriend than in that very moment.
“Getting kinda steamy, kids. Why don’t you come inside before your mom starts picking out names for the grandkids?”
Rey burrows her head into his shoulder, the one furthest from the window, and he isn’t sure if the heat he feels there is from his residual embarrassment or hers.
Both. Probably both.
“Go away, Dad!” Ben shouts, slamming his hand against the window, right over his father’s laughing face. They sit in silence until the front door of the mansion slams and they’re alone in the dark again.
Rey eases off of him and then climbs back into the passenger seat. The figgy pudding is back in her lap but her hands are no longer clenching around it like a secondhand shield.
She looks looser now, calmer, despite the rude interruption.
“You ready, babe?” Ben asks, reaching over to thread his fingers through hers.
“With you? Always.”