Chapter Text
Rey’s been waiting…actually, she isn’t sure. How long has she been waiting now? Hours, surely. She sighs and sits up from where she flopped back onto Ben’s bed when she came in (ah, there’s her mobile) thirty-seven minutes ago.
Really? Only thirty-seven minutes?
She throws herself back onto his bed again, glaring up at the ceiling. She’s bored.
And maybe a little horny.
Okay, fine, a LOT horny.
She supposes she could take care of that herself and then torture him later by reciting all the details and then going back to her dorm room once he’s all worked up. She could, really, but she doesn’t want to.
It’s always better with Ben. Everything is.
Rey shakes her head in amusement as her boyfriend of almost two weeks reminds her once again that he is, in fact, a nineteen-year-old college guy in a fraternity. Most of the time he’s calm and focused, usually even the most mature of her friend group.
Most of the time.
Sometimes, though…well, sometimes he gets drawn into impromptu video game tournaments and arguments over which action movie is superior and keg stands and belching contests and WHY is he running across the yard with Poe on his back?
Cheers go up as they…actually, she isn’t sure what they’re doing but it seems to involve water balloons, ping pong paddles, and a pyramid of red plastic cups.
Finn shouts something about turning on the hose and then Ben and Poe are both drenched and she’s still not sure if they won or lost or were even playing the same game as the others.
Ben swipes at his face, pushing his hair back and grins at her and she feels her stomach flutter and her cunt clench. His lucky hat nearly falls off her head when she shivers.
Rey squirms and presses her thighs together just thinking about Ben, about his hands and his mouth and how he makes her feel and his…nope, not going there. Can’t think about that, not right now. Not if she wants to wait for him to come back.
Come back…so he can make her come. With his mouth and his hands and his phenomenal cock and—Ugh. She really needs to stop thinking.
She sighs and listens to the sounds of his frat brothers going about their day. Poe must still be downstairs, but he’s loud enough she’d almost believe he was on the other side of the door.
She rubs at her face, pressing her fingers over her eyes for a moment. It was an early class day for her. She yawns and sits up, leaning against the headboard. She doesn’t want to go to sleep, not yet. If Ben comes back and finds her sleeping, he’ll decide she needs the rest and he absolutely will not wake her up just to celebrate the fact that it’s Friday by pounding her through the mattress so really, she needs to stay awake. She looks around her for a distraction and grins as she catches sight of it, still hanging there above the headboard. Ben Solo’s lucky hat. He must feel naked without it.
Smiling again at the hat and just the general thought of Ben, she walks over to the closet. His room’s not nearly as messy as some of the others in the house, and that remains the case in his closet, which is organized with almost military precision. It doesn’t take long at all to find what she’s looking for and she knows the smile on her face is one of wicked anticipation as she grabs the hanger.
“You’re evil!” he insists again, brushing past and heading for the closet as she licks and sucks the last crumbs of her blueberry muffin off her fingers.
She waits as he grabs a shirt and turns around, mouth open to say something else as he shrugs it on, then slowly pushes two fingers into her mouth and closes her eyes to narrow slits, moaning a little as she sucks. He freezes, swallows hard, as he stands there with only one arm in a sleeve.
Rey smiles. “That was a really good muffin,” she says, walking the three steps to him and settling his hat over his hair. “Thanks, babe, you always know what I need.” She can’t help herself; she just has to push it just a little farther, so she presses her fingertip to his nose and traces it down over his lips. She giggles when he bites her lightly and grumbles something she can’t quite understand.
She grabs her bag from his desk and waits with her hand on the knob as he pulls the shirt on and straightens the collar, which immediately flops back down at an angle as soon as he lets go. “Lucky hat, check,” Rey says. “Lucky shirt, also check. Got a pen?”
He gives her a look and she snorts. “You think you’re cute,” he mutters.
“You do, too, Solo,” she insists, and he grins at her as he approaches. She loves how his eyes get lighter, almost golden with maybe the barest hint of green when he looks at her like that.
“I do,” he agrees, kissing her and reaching around to open the door. “Gonna get you back for that stunt, though.”
“I’m counting on it,” she says, leading the way to the staircase and maybe adding a little extra sway to her hips with every step. She smiles again when he curses under his breath.
“Bye, guys!” Poe calls from the kitchen. “Good luck on your test!”
Ben throws up a hand and Rey calls a quick thanks as they hurry out the door. “Did you tell him we had an exam today?” Ben asks.
“Not that I recall, but you ARE wearing your exam day, shirt.”
“Hush, woman, with your slanderous lies. This is my LUCKY shirt.”
“Maybe later, if you’re a good boy,” she says, shooting him a smile over her shoulder as she breaks into a jog.
Rey runs all the way back to her dorm to grab what she wants and then back to the frat house. A glance at her mobile when she gets back into his room proves there was no rushing necessary. Ben won’t be back for nearly an hour.
She sighs. Oh well, gives her plenty of time to get ready. She tosses the small bag she grabbed onto his bed, beside the shirt she placed there earlier, and heads for the shower. She scrubs herself with the sweet vanilla scented body wash he bought her (she didn’t care one way or the other and had outright refused the flowery one for twice the price). She has to admit that it does smell nice, and her skin is softer these days, between that and the fancy lotions and creams he insists she needs.
She washes her hair and then combs through conditioner (also something Ben bought her and insists is a necessity rather than a luxury). Unable to stand the boredom of just waiting before she can rinse the conditioner (because Ben insists she should leave it at least two to five minutes) she reaches for the razor she keeps here, even though she just shaved almost everything this morning.
She can’t stop smiling as she opens the medicine chest and grabs the facial moisturizer and body lotion he gave her for her birthday (along with the body wash) because she admitted she liked it after the first time she tried it, but refused to pay mall store prices when she could get something equally effective at the pharmacy for a third of the price.
She smooths the lotion over her legs, uses his fancy hairdryer (because of course he has one, not that he uses it often—too much heat dries his hair out and he just can’t have that, now can he), and strolls naked back into his bedroom.
She can’t help a giggle as she reaches out for the pile of soft fabric on the bed.
Of course he aces the exam in the class they have together.
She does surprisingly well, too, mostly because he insists that they actually study on study dates. He’s organized and meticulous and it’s been good for her own study habits. Mostly.
They do nearly get themselves banned from the library, but the staff can’t prove they aren’t simply going over chapter outlines in the group study room they always try to claim downstairs.
They are, actually: Rey reading all the bullet points for their shared history class aloud while he rails her over the table. Her wail of “1776” on a particularly brutal thrust is loud enough to bring someone to check on them, but Rey and Ben are both calmly seated with her textbook and his laptop between them while discussing the sociopolitical implications of period dramas and musicals when the shelving assistant knocks on the door and asks if everything is all right.
“Fine, my girlfriend just really likes musicals, and I surprised her with a copy of 1776. She’s never seen it.”
He clearly doesn’t believe it, but he leaves anyway. Rey almost feels bad, almost, but Ben has his hand on her thigh and he’s going to buy her food before they go back to his room even though he watched her inhale her dinner, and she can’t really care about much else.
She shivers when they step outside, wishing she hadn’t left her jacket on his bed. He shrugs out of the faded flannel he wears so often and drapes it around her.
The fabric is soft, a faded blue with what she’s pretty sure was originally a red and golden-brown plaid pattern, although none of the colors are what they once were. It’s huge on her. Of course it is—it’s even big on Ben.
She checks the time and sees he should be back in twenty minutes or so. She frowns. Did she really spend that long just showering and primping? She knows other girls (and guys) take longer but it’s kind of been a point of pride that she can be bathed, dressed, and out the door in under ten minutes if needed. On the other hand, her skin and hair are healthier and softer than ever, and she does actually feel more relaxed, so maybe Ben isn’t completely wrong in his insistence that she take care of herself. Maybe he isn’t just saying she deserves it because he loves her and therefore is not a reliable judge. Maybe…maybe she really does?
She shakes her head and swipes angrily at her eyes. It won’t do to have him come in and find her crying and naked and cuddling his lucky shirt. Not the picture of seductive distraction she wants to present him with.
She settles in Ben’s lap, straddling his thighs on the highest end of the broken, sagging sofa in the living room. It’s apparently the second sofa one or more of the brothers have destroyed this term, this time the result of an impromptu wrestling match that broke out on Tuesday afternoon.
Ben frowns as they tilt a bit and he turns, angling his legs so she doesn’t fall over. Rey grins at him and brushes the bill of his hat with one finger. “So, what makes this so lucky?”
The look he gives her makes her blush and she bites her lip and glances away.
He laughs. “It was my dad’s. He always wore it, even though Mom hates it. She tried to get him to replace it, but he always just said she’d have to pry it from his cold, dead hands. He gave it to me when I left for college.” He shrugs and looks away, glancing around as if to make sure no one else heard his confession. She wants to ask more, knows he’d answer her if she did, but he’s so uncomfortable she lets it go for now and just kisses him instead.
“Get it, Solo!” Someone yells, and she feels Ben shifting around, then one of the arms around her waist raises and she assumes he’s responding with a rude gesture of some sort but he keeps kissing her back so she doesn’t bother to react at all.
At least not until he shifts around and stands up (with a muffled groan) and plants one hand under her ass to steady her and there are cheers and catcalls and Poe offers an enthusiastic “Yes, go Rey, ride him hard and put him up wet!”
Her only response is to snatch the hat off Ben’s head and put it on, which somehow shuts them all up. She sticks her tongue out at Poe over Ben’s shoulder, her gesture childish. His in return is…not, and she blushes but offers a thumbs up just before Ben climbs high enough up the staircase that she can't see Poe anymore.
The flannel was lightweight to begin with and is a little thin in places. The hem is unraveling (again—she can see it’s been repaired before) and there are tiny holes in the collar, but it’s soft and warm and smells a little like Ben, even though she knows he just washed it yesterday. It hangs past her knees, and she’s rolled the sleeves up as many times as she can, but they still drape a little over the back of her hands because the shoulder seams hang halfway to her elbows. She fiddles with the buttons, doing them all up, then opening them again, then trying halfway, turning this way and that in front of the full-length mirror by the door. She can see the bed behind her, and the corner of the desk, and on the wall, still—lucky hat.
She grabs it and turns, eying the room and trying to decide where and how to wait for best effect. The desk catches her eye again. Perfect.
Rey jumps a little, startled again by movement in the room where no one should be. She doesn’t yelp (er, not loudly, anyway) but Ben laughs. “Still scared of your own reflection?”
She glares at him, hands coming to rest on her hips. “Why, exactly, do you have…that?” She gestures behind her, to the full length, oval mirror in a dark wooden frame. It’s placed between the doors to the bathroom and hallway, kind of across from the bed.
He comes to stand behind her, one arm around her waist and his chin coming to rest on the top of her head. “It was my grandmother’s. She died when my mother and uncle were babies, and Mom wanted me to have it. Also, I’m too tall to see my hair in that tiny excuse for a mirror in the bathroom.”
“Ah, now the real truth comes out,” she says, leaning back against him and enjoying the way they look together. He’s got the mirror angled so it really does capture all of him…and all of the bed behind them.
“There’s other reasons I have it right there,” he says, the hand not around her waist working past the flannel of the shirt she wears more often than he does. “Lucky shirt,” he mumbles, pushing it out of the way to work his fingers under the hem of the t-shirt she has on underneath. She stares at the mirror, mesmerized by the path his hand is taking, sliding over her stomach and up to cup her breast. She shudders and presses back against him, watches as her own eyes darken, her mouth opening slightly as he pinches and rolls her nipple, and her breathing picks up.
“Let me show you,” he mumbles against her neck, pulling her gently back a step at a time.
She watches herself as he strips her clothes away and then puts the flannel shirt back on her. She stares at her own rapt expression when he seats her on the foot of his bed and kneels in front of her; meets his eyes and holds his gaze in the mirror as he takes her from behind, her body framed by the soft blue fabric.
“Fucking lucky shirt,” he mumbles, after, hand tracing over her curves both hidden and highlighted by blue plaid.
She’s waiting when he opens the door, a smile curving her lips as he starts talking before he even closes it behind him. She knows the moment he sees her, because he stutters and stumbles, hands freezing where he’d been loosening the deep red tie around his neck.
“How was the interview?” she asks, leaning back against his desk, flannel shirt unbuttoned and strategically open just enough to show the middle of her body and framing the stupid, smiling cartoon beaver on her panties. His hat sits askew over her hair.
Ben swallows hard. “Interview?”
Rey nods and bites her lip. “Uh huh,” she says, reveling in the way his eyes follow the hand she trails down her neck and between her breasts, stroking gently at her skin. “The one for the internship. You know, the reason you had to wear real clothes.”
“Ah, hm…it was good…good…you look…yeah, it’s not official but I got it.”
She squeals and hops off the desk, meeting him in two steps. “I knew you would! I told you so!” He kisses her and smiles, and she can’t help smiling back, and then his hands creep under the flannel and find her skin. “We should celebrate,” she says, and she’s already off her feet before the last syllable is out. “Ack! Ben!” she shrieks, laughing as he puts her down on the desk and starts tearing at his dress shirt and pants. He kicks his shoes off as she tugs his tie the rest of the way off between kisses, but he grabs her hand when she goes to drop it.
“Keep that close. Pretty sure that’s going to be my lucky tie,” he mumbles and she thinks maybe that’s not a bad thing. They’ve talked about it, about him maybe tying her hands, and now that the idea is in her mind she wants it, but later.
“Was this your dad’s too?” Rey asks, moving her hand so that one of the sleeves sort of flaps at him.
“Oh, God, no!” Ben practically yells and then he laughs hard enough the bed shakes under them and she’s starting to wonder if she should be offended. “Sorry, sorry!” he finally manages, trying to catch his breath. “Sorry, no, it’s just…I outgrew my dad before I was fourteen, and the image if him trying to wear that…I…sorry. No. It’s not my dad’s, it was my uncle’s.”
She makes a face. Surely he’s not suggesting this belonged to Luke.
“Not, Luke,” he says before she can actually voice it. “Chewie, Dad’s best friend. He’s not really my uncle, but I’ve called him that my whole life, and he’s been more like family than Luke ever really was.”
“Must be a tall guy,” she mumbles.
“M-hm,” he says absently, already getting distracted again by the amount of Rey-skin under his hands. “Nearly seven feet, makes me look short. Can’t wait for you to meet him one day.”
He’s kneeling in front of the desk when she plucks the hat off her head and settles it back on his. “Where it belongs,” she insists, and he grins and flips it around before reaching for the white fabric stretched across her hips.
“Well, hello there, my friend. Long time, no see.”
“Oh my God, BEN!”
He grins and blinks up at her, playing at innocence there in his hat and boxer briefs. “What? I was just being polite.”
“Please don’t talk to my pussy.”
“Rey,” he says with a sigh and a sad shake of his head. “I’m not. I was talking to your beaver. The ones with the cat on them are in the laundry. You wore those yesterday, remember?”
She nearly falls off the desk laughing at him, but he steadies her and then he leans in and kisses said cartoon beaver and she’s not laughing anymore.
She glares at Ben but there’s no real heat behind it, other than the embarrassed blush staining her face and neck. She knew better, she really did. She never should have agreed to opening Christmas gifts with their friends. Especially after he took Rose shopping with him and they came back with matching evil grins.
“What? I thought you’d like the complete set,” he insists, while Rose cackles from her perch on Armitage Hux’s lap. Well, half his lap. Kaydel, the pretty blonde Rose has been crushing on since freshman orientation, is there as well, and the three of them look very cozy.
“Open mine next!” Rose orders and Rey cringes but she does.
By the time she’s finished, she has enough white cotton panties with cartoon animals and suggestive looking plants printed on the front (or in the case of the donkey—er, ass, she supposes—the back) to last almost two weeks.
She’s not sure but she thinks maybe she should be insulted by the pair with the smiling cactus.
Ben convinces her later that she absolutely should not, and the first time he smirks at her when one of his frat brothers she doesn’t really know (or like) tells him to go fuck a cactus she wonders what she’s gotten herself into.
Rose Tico and Ben Solo are an unholy alliance, and it is all Rey’s fault.
She lifts herself up enough he can get the panties off and toss them somewhere over his shoulder. She knows what’s coming, they’ve done this more times than she can count, but she still gasps at the first flick of his tongue, Ben’s hands on her thighs the only thing that stops her from clamping them around his head and simultaneously jerking away. He grins up at her, and with the hat backwards and holding his hair out of his face she has a clear view as he flicks her clit with his tongue a few times. She braces her hands on the edge of the desk and he adjusts his position, changing the angle and tugging at her until she’s more leaning against the desk rather than sitting on the edge.
She’s not worried about falling. Ben won’t let her, and even if she did he’d catch her. She throws her head back as he settles in again, using his lips and tongue and nose and chin to great effect. He’s a man on a mission and he knows exactly what she needs.
She’s loud, she knows she is, but she doesn’t care and it’s barely four-thirty, so she doesn’t even attempt to hold back her moaning.
In turn, Ben’s making noises of his own—little grunts and growls of approval—which just adds to the sensation.
“AGAIN?” someone yells from the hall, pounding on the wall. “Shut her up, Solo!”
“You shut the fuck up, Kin!” Poe yells, followed immediately by a female voice calling out Hux’s name from across the hall (it has to be Kaydel; Rose is still in class) and then it’s all the echo of pounding headboards and Ben grabs her ass, holding her tight to his mouth as he sucks at her clit, and she screams louder than the rest of them.
She’s not embarrassed about it anymore (er, okay, she’s less embarrassed). There’s been a bit of friendly competition in the last year or two, between those in committed relationships to see who can be genuinely the loudest.
Poe and Finn usually “win” but there aren’t any losers.
Well, Beaumont Kin, but he’s an ass anyway so…
She’s distracted from her random musings when Ben stands up and turns her around, pushing at her shoulders until she’s bent over the desk.
He doesn’t waste any time, and she’s just barely able to see the edge of their reflection in the mirror as he flips the shirt up onto her back and tosses his own underwear in the same general direction where he sent hers earlier. She can’t see anything below his chest other than a faint sliver of leg but she squints and leans closer to the mirror to see as best she can.
Ben knows what she’s doing and he pauses, straightening the hat (still backwards) and moving them to the side of the desk, so that if she turns her head and presses her cheek to the desk, she can see them both in profile.
Even though she shouldn’t be (she knows herself, after all), Rey’s always surprised, somehow, that of the two of them Ben is the romantic. He’s the one who differentiates ‘lovemaking’ from good old-fashioned, animalistic fucking. He’s the one who remembers dates and events, who makes sure she eats enough by stealthily buying her favorite foods—even the ones he hates. In fact, he buys more of those.
She doesn’t mind so much, when he wants to spend hours just making her feel good.
So it shocks both of them when she’s the first to say ‘I love you.’
She just blurts it out, one night on the way back from the library, in the middle of a random conversation about microwave pizzas. She freezes, eyes and mouth equally round, then slaps a hand over her lips.
He’s just staring at her, and he’s not talking and why isn’t he talking? Has she ruined everything? Is it too much? Is it NOT ENOUGH? Oh, no, that’s it. He deserves so much better. She should have made it special, but she only just realized it in the library when he quietly handed her a chocolate dipped granola bar even though he keeps telling her a cheeseburger would probably be healthier than the candy disguised as a healthy choice.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Ben! I didn’t mean to just blurt it out like that!”
He moves so quickly she gets a little dizzy when he hauls her into his arms, and she thinks he’s crying but he’s also laughing as he peppers her face and neck with kisses and spins them in circles.
“As long as you meant it,” he insists, “As long as you MEAN it, you can just blurt it out any time, Rey, because I love you too and it was killing me not to say it, but I didn’t want to scare you away.”
Later, in his bed, she doesn’t mind so much when he keeps it slow, and twines their fingers together, and whispers over and over that he loves her too.
She likes to watch as he makes that slow, first push into her, and there’s no way she could deny it if she tried considering how her pussy clenches around him every single time.
“Gonna get you another mirror,” he says, angling her hips so the next thrust goes a little deeper and she whines. “A whole roomful. Hell, we’ll do that instead of wallpaper. Just floor to ceiling mirrors.”
Rey moans and she thinks she might be drooling a little bit on the study guide under her face but he moves again, pulling almost all the way out of her and she can see how slick and shiny she’s made his dick.
“Bennnn,” she whines, and she doesn’t even need to see his dimple in the mirror to know he’s smiling.
“What’s wrong Rey? Hm? Too slow?” He thrusts back in faster, harder, jostles her against the desk.
“Not hard enough?” He does it again, and she’s going to have bruises after this, but she doesn’t care. She wants them, wants to be able to see the proof of what he’s doing to her right now.
She stretches up onto her toes, braces her arms on the desk to lift her shoulders and push back at him.
He wasn’t expecting it, apparently, because the surprised, choking sound he makes is one she doesn’t get from him very often. His fingers dig into her hips as he jerks her backwards and she starts babbling, starts begging, and forgets about the others in the house, forgets the mirror, forgets everything but BEN and by the time she comes again she’s a sobbing, whimpering, panting mess and he’s not much better off.
It doesn’t quite register when he recovers enough to get them both into his bed, feels like she might be dreaming when he leaves her a moment and comes back with a wet cloth and a bottle of water, making her drink it while he cleans her up. She grumbles at him when he insists she get up and use the loo (she got a UTI ONE TIME, and it had nothing to do with sex, just an unfortunate result of a very unfortunate allergic reaction to something).
But she knows he’s right and he’s just taking care of her, and also her bladder’s too full to actually sleep, so she stands on shaky legs and stumbles to the loo.
He slams the nightstand drawer when she comes back and is all jumpy and won’t look at her as she crawls back in beside him.
She’s still wearing his lucky shirt, and he mutters something about that, but she just hums in response.
She knows what’s in the nightstand now, even though he believes she still thinks it’s empty since they stopped using condoms when she got an IUD. The box is small, wooden and hand-carved, and the ring was his grandmother’s too, like the mirror.
She panicked the day she found it, but that was short-lived.
Maybe she should be excited, or feel guilty, but she’s just content. There’s a stable comfort in knowing they’re on the same page.
Ben graduates in a few weeks, and she has another year left as an undergrad. They already have an apartment lined up, and she’s met his parents and honorary uncles, and Ben’s even made an effort with Luke.
Her last conscious thought is that she knows he’ll ask her when he’s ready, and she knows she’ll say yes.
There’s a hard lump against her chest when she wakes to a tray full of her favorite snacks. Ben takes the hat off when she frowns and reaches into the shirt pocket for whatever the heavy, hard lump is, and she’s crying too hard to catch everything he’s saying, and she just nods because she can’t get the word ‘yes’ to come out.
Poe makes fun of him, but it’s good-natured. His mother is confused that Rey isn’t upset. His father just laughs and says it’s because of his “borrowed” lucky hat that Ben even caught Rey’s attention. Uncle Chewie practically growls that if anything his was HIS lucky shirt.
Rey just smiles. They don’t really need to know just how lucky either of those items have been—in more ways than one.
“I was going to wait. It was all planned out, dinner and roses and all those things you probably would have hated,” Ben says as he takes the box from her and opens the lid. She just stares at the ring, glinting in the low light from his bedside lamp.
“I just…I know you deserve better than some stupid frat house and a spur of the moment proposal, but I was watching you sleep, and you look so good in my bed, in my clothes, in my hat…you fit in my life, maybe better than I do, and I figured, what the hell, you’re wearing my lucky shirt, and I’m a lucky bastard because anything you wear is lucky and I’m saying lucky a lot and—”
She cuts off the panicked rambling with a kiss and a fierce nod, and the snacks fall to the floor when he lowers her back to the pillows he bought specifically for her, and she thinks maybe she does finally understand the difference between fucking and making love (and she definitely likes both, with him).