Chapter Text
Rey moaned.
She moaned long and loud and deep.
Because the bright, sunny taste of vibrant red strawberry jam spread atop deep, golden salted butter had exploded in her mouth when she bit into the fresh baguette, and she couldn’t help but moan as she chewed.
She didn’t care that it probably wasn’t at all polite to be making those sorts of noises at their table. Not in New York, and certainly not in France.
She didn’t care if anyone around might have been staring at her over their coffee and copies of Le Monde.
When something was this orgasmically good, it had to be expressed.
Surely the French could understand that.
“Enjoying your tartine?” Ben asked while he raised his cup of coffee to his lips across the tiny table from her, the smallest of smirks tugging at the corners of his mouth before it disappeared behind the white porcelain. But she could still see the smile in the crinkles around his eyes while he watched her eat, his gaze glittering with mischief.
She nodded and hummed as she took another bite, closing her eyes at the exquisite ache of the jam dancing on her tongue. They’d arrived in Paris yesterday morning, but the whole day was a jet-lagged blur, and she hardly remembered it now. It was a whirlwind of subways (entirely unfamiliar ones, though they still smelled vaguely of piss, only…somehow different piss) and wide, structured boulevards and blue street signs on the sides of buildings instead of green ones at crossroads, and tall, white, older-looking Napoleonic buildings instead of glittering New York skyscrapers.
And, of course, there was the Seine.
Ben took her for a walk along it at night, passing in front of cathedrals and palaces and buildings older than their country, and she thought she’d never seen a city so beautiful before.
No wonder the City of Light had the reputation it did.
They were staying in a large, historic Airbnb in an area known as Le Marais in the third arrondissement, which was entirely suited to Ben and his tastes in particular. It was the traditional neighborhood of creatives, and the streets were lined with artists and “bouquinistes,” or little booksellers peddling their wares on the banks of the river. It was a romantic neighborhood if ever she saw one, full of bistros and cafés and not far from Notre Dame.
And after a hazy, delicious dinner last night, they’d made love with the top-floor windows and gauzy white curtains thrown open to a spectacular city skyline filled with lights glittering like stars.
She woke up in his arms this morning to the sun flooding into their room and a remarkable incandescent happiness glowing within her.
Her very first time abroad, and he’d brought her here.
“Oh my god,” she groaned, her mouth still half full. Breakfast was a revelation. “How do they manage to make something so simple as bread and jam and butter taste this good? It’s like I’m eating sunshine.” She paused and glared at him. “And what’s wrong with you? You’re entirely too cavalier about how spectacular this is.”
He took another slow, pensive sip of coffee in that almost irritatingly elegant way of his, even though the cup was completely dwarfed by his hands. It looked like coffee made for ants in his grasp. “It’s only because I was prepared for it. I studied abroad at the Sorbonne one summer.”
“Of course you did.”
Ever the silver spoon, as much as he tried to hide it.
Their server stopped by their table and dropped off two wide ramekins of shirred eggs (oeufs en cocotte, Ben had called them when he ordered), and Ben held up a finger. “Une carafe d’eau aussi, s’il vous plaît.” Their server nodded at him before turning back inside, and Rey shook her head once more.
“I still can’t believe you speak French. Of course you speak French. This is ridiculous. What did you even ask for?”
“Water for the table.” He eyed her half-eaten baguette pointedly. “I thought we might need some.”
“I’m eating all of this and you can’t stop me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart. I know the rules. I like my fingers just where they are. I need those.” He quieted and finally drained his coffee, gazing at her contemplatively when he set the porcelain cup back onto the saucer. His own food was relatively untouched.
She studied him now, narrowing her eyes. “You’re awfully quiet this morning,” she noted, slowing her chewing down slightly. “Are you feeling alright after the plane?”
“Yeah, actually, the plane ride was perfectly fine. I was hardly nauseous at all this time.”
When they flew down to Washington DC to help Leia get settled for her new tenure as senator, they’d discovered that Ben had motion sickness now. He never used to, not before his accident, and Rey had never seen him more confused as he was when he was retching into a paper bag on the plane just after takeoff.
Since then, he learned he needed to take precautions. Like dramamine, or other tranquilizers. He’d done alright on their flight to France, though, but he did look a little sweaty and green around the gills now, and it couldn’t be from the weather.
Because it was the most perfect day she’d seen in ages.
They sat outside of a pastel-painted café covered in fresh, spring flowers at a wrought iron table, a light, mid-April breeze just barely plucking at her hair and stirring the strands into disarray. Pink and purple petals from cherry blossoms and wisteria swirled through the air and swept along the old cobblestoned streets, and the sunlight kissed her cheeks with warmth. After a long, cold New York winter, springtime in Paris was a literal breath of fresh air.
It was the most gorgeous restaurant she’d ever been to.
It was also odd being in a foreign country. The harried and brusque way the people moved through the crowded streets reminded her of New York, but that was where the similarities ended. Everything was different, from the street lamps to the sounds of traffic, to the cadence of French floating in the air around them. It was familiar, but unsettlingly strange, and unfathomably beautiful.
She couldn’t read anything on the handwritten chalkboard menu outside of the restaurant announcing the day’s specials, and she couldn’t talk to the servers other than giving them a sheepish “Merci” whenever they brought her something, but she didn’t mind in the slightest. She enjoyed when Ben ordered for them both, his French confident and practiced.
It was sexy, listening to him.
Just like the time she’d come home to find that he’d gotten glasses.
And she’d made him read her poetry while they generated some of their own.
She flushed at the memory, her cheeks heating pink to match the flowers on the trees around them.
Ben was wearing those same devastatingly handsome glasses now, and he absently pushed the bridge of them up his nose while he watched her from across the table. His fingers twisted his coffee cup in its saucer, sending the remaining dregs of his foamy café au lait swirling inside. Rey watched his hands and marveled at how little they shook these days—but right now his right hand did tremble a bit more than it usually did. Her brows twitched together.
“Then what’s wrong?”
Something definitely was.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “I just think it’s odd that I ordered viennoiseries and you haven’t even touched your chocolate croissant.” He nodded down at the pain au chocolat on the plate in front of her and stretched a hand across the table, feeling her forehead with his palm and flipping to the back of it as if he suspected she had a fever. “Are you feeling alright? I got that just for you, and—”
“Oh fuck, that’s what that is?!” she cried and fell upon it immediately, crunching through the soft, mouthwatering layers of buttery, laminated dough and closing her eyes while she threw her head back, chewing in a state of pure and utter bliss. It was incredible. It was the best pastry she’d ever had. It was so—
“You have something on your face, sweetheart. Let me get that for you.”
When she felt Ben’s thumb swipe across her lips and stop to cradle her cheek with his massive palm, she froze. His voice had shifted closer.
He wasn’t across the table from her anymore.
She knew, because his lips had pressed a kiss at the corner of her mouth once his thumb swept the crumbs away.
He also hadn’t removed his hand.
Instead, his fingers curled softly along her neck, caressing just beneath her jaw, over and back again, slowly, carefully, delicately. His lips lingered against her own, and his nose swept soft, gentle nuzzles against her skin. Rey opened her mouth and exhaled shakily at the sensation of it. What was he doing? He normally touched her like this when they were at home, in the bedroom. Not out in public in broad daylight at breakfast.
She opened her eyes.
His glasses were off, forgotten on the table, and he’d come around to the side of it to crouch over her, his gaze locked onto hers, his swirling heterochromatic irises of cool moss surrounding warm honey refusing to leave her face. She watched his throat bob as he swallowed, and the tips of his ears turned red.
“Ben?” Rey whispered, her eyes darting to the other diners outside at the café. Their neighbors were watching them with interest. “What are you doing?”
“You’re right,” he murmured. “Something is bothering me. It’s been bothering me for a long time now.” His thumb kept sweeping along her skin, almost as if he couldn’t bear to tear himself away despite what he’d just said.
“What?” she breathed, a slight panic rising in her throat. “Did I do something? What is it?”
“No, nothing,” he said, shaking his head slowly, that same slight smirk appearing with a single dimple. “It was nothing you did. I just don’t like our circumstances right now.”
“‘Circumstances?’” Her brows knit together at the word.
“Yeah. I don’t want you to be my girlfriend anymore. I haven’t wanted that for a very, very long time, but I wasn’t really ready to tell you.”
“What?!” She couldn’t stop the panic from rising into her voice now. “But why would you—”
He finally dropped his hand from her cheek.
And with it, he bent and knelt slowly before her, dropping onto his left knee.
“Oh my god, Ben,” Rey gasped, clapping both hands over her mouth to stifle a sudden overwhelming sob. Her chest heaved at the sight of him, his shadow-dark hair glinting with rare auburn highlights in the bright, spring sunshine. Tears pricked at her eyes, and he blurred before her. “Oh my god, is it happening? Now?! Are you—”
He held up a hand. “Rey, just breathe. I—”
“YES, BEN. YES!” she cried from behind her hands with another sob. But he only laughed and reached up to peel her hands away from her mouth, keeping her left in his while he ran his thumb tenderly over her knuckles.
“Sweetheart, you can’t answer the question until I’ve asked it. That’s not how it works.” He tilted his head wryly at her, his grin so utterly wide and crooked, just like his perfectly imperfect teeth, and all of it, all of him was absolutely beautiful. “I’ve been waiting a really long time to ask this, and I had to practice. A lot. Can you, uh…can you let me do this first?”
“O-Oh. Okay.” She wiped away her tears and tried to calm her heart pounding in her chest.
Ben drew in a deep, shuddering breath. He kept his hand on hers, but she could still feel him shaking.
Though this time, it was for an entirely different reason than it used to be.
And then he finally spoke, his low tenor rich and round and sure.
“When we first met, I was at my lowest point. The very lowest I could go. I thought my life was over, and if it wasn’t, maybe it should be. I think there was a part of me that was hoping for something of a miracle, but…I honestly didn’t think I’d find it at a café. I was just trying to remember how to be human again, and I figured some coffee might be nice.”
She huffed a sobbing laugh, and he tightened his fingers around her hand. “You were my miracle, Rey,” he whispered. His lip quivered, and his voice shook with it. “I never thought I would find someone like you, or that you might love me back. And being wrong saved my life. You saved my life.” Ben drew in another deep breath and ran a hand along his eyes to wipe tears away. They were both crying now, and Rey leaned forward and put her hand on his neck to help steady him. He gave her a watery smile in thanks.
“You showed me that I wasn’t as broken as I thought I was, just that my life was different now—and that different wasn’t a bad thing. You made me want to get better so that I might deserve you. I once said that you deserved someone whole so that they could give you all of themselves, and not just pieces. And that’s why—that’s why I waited.” He paused and nodded, almost as if he himself needed the assurance. “I wanted to ask you sooner, so much sooner, but I had to piece myself back together first. I had to make myself whole again. For me. And for you.”
Ben reached into his right pocket, and when he tugged his hand free, he held a tiny, dark green velvet box. As he opened it, sunlight flashed off of an enormous, antique emerald surrounded by a starburst of diamonds and set into a gold band. Rey gasped, rendered utterly breathless.
It was so beautiful.
It was so perfect.
“I knew almost immediately that I wanted to marry you—even before I kissed you, I knew. I knew almost immediately that you were the one, that you were the only one for me, my love, my own heart, my soulmate.”
A tear streamed down his cheek and dropped onto the cobblestones next to where he knelt. “I’ve had this in my pocket for five hundred days. For five hundred days, I’ve been carrying this around, waiting for when the time was right. For when I felt healed enough to deserve you, and to give you the whole world. Because I don’t ever want to feel shattered and broken like I was when we first met.”
She blinked. Tears streamed in uncontrolled rivulets down her own cheeks.
She couldn’t have stopped them if she tried.
Ben only tightened his hand around hers and swept his thumb soothingly across her knuckles again. It wasn’t shaking now.
It was sure.
“Rey, I don’t want you to be my girlfriend anymore. I want you to be my wife.” He tugged her hand closer and clutched it to his chest, laying it perfectly against his heart and pressing his massive palm on top. She could feel it racing through his shirt. “You’re my best friend. You’re my family, my everything. And I want us to grow together—and to grow our family together, too. I want to live my whole life with you. I want to take care of you.
“If your face is the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I gaze upon when I close my eyes for the final time, then I’ll be able to die a happy man—a long, long time from now, when we’re old and grey. I want to grow old with you, Rey,” he whispered. “But first, I want to live—truly live with you. And I want to love you, with everything I have, everything that I am, my whole heart and my whole soul.”
“Ben,” she whispered. “Ben, I—”
“Rey Niima: will you marry me?”
She felt the question deep in her bones. And there lay the answer, where it always had. Where it had been from the beginning.
Rey nodded.
“You will?” Ben whispered. His smile was wide, so wide, the crinkles formed deep around those spectacular eyes of his. “You’ll marry me?”
She slid out of her chair and knelt on the ground with him, reaching out to wrap her arms around his neck and press her forehead to his while she nodded again and again and again, the words he’d stolen from her when he left her breathless finally bubbling up to her lips.
“Yes, Benjamin Organa Solo. A thousand times yes.” A kiss. One, and then another. “I love you. I love you more than you could ever know.” His eyes were wide and molten as he looked at her, gazed into her, into the depths of her soul, and all she could see was clear, crystal green mixed with whiskey and warmth. It was all she’d ever needed.
He was all she’d ever needed.
He was all she’d ever wanted.
“With my whole heart and soul, yes, I will marry you, in this life and in every other.”
There, under the warm caress of the bright Parisian sun and a breeze laced with the scent of fresh spring flowers mixed with coffee, Ben held Rey to his chest and lifted them both to their feet, spinning her wildly around to the sounds of raucous applause and cheers. Their tears wet each other’s cheeks as they kissed, eyes closed and lips burning, mouths tilted up with irrepressible grins and chests heaving with sobs. He slid the ring onto her finger, and with its weight, warm and comforting against her skin, every dream she’d ever had suddenly felt that much more real, and that much more true.
“We’re going to have to call Mom,” he finally managed to choke out while he tucked stray strands of hair behind her ears. He was grinning so widely, so brightly, it was as if his face had split clean in two, his mouth framed by twin crescent dimples. “She can’t wait to officially call you her daughter. She’s been dying to for over a year now. She wants you to call her ‘Mom’ too, if you want.”
“She does?”
“Yeah.” Ben’s face softened. “You’re family to her. You already were, and to Maz, too, but…”
Family?
Rey sobbed.
“I’d love to.”
At 10:23 am on a Sunday in Paris, the stranger who’d walked into Rey’s café nearly two years ago wearing a mask he never took off to not drink the coffee he was almost too anxious to order asked her to marry him.
She said yes.
They swore they would love every version of each other, every single one, no matter what that Sunday.
And the Sunday after that.
And the Sunday after that.
Every Sunday, and every day, for the rest of their lives.
🌸🌸🌸