Chapter Text
I count my time in dog years
Swimming in sevens
Slow dancing in seconds
Oh, and I'm the one that loves you
Dog Years - Maggie Rogers
Rey’s not sure she’ll ever get over the floor to ceiling windows in their apartment that overlook the lake on one side and downtown on the other. When Ben had brought her to the showing, she thought, at best, he’d managed to find a quaint one bedroom in a decent building that they would be more than happy in. When they stepped through the door her breath had caught in her throat at the view.
“There’s no way this is in our price range,” she’d whispered to him behind the leasing agent’s back.
Ben had only chuckled. “You forget that you have a real job now,” he said, scanning the kitchen around them. “With my promotion and your salary, we can easily afford this.”
Only a few weeks into her job as a mechanical engineer, she still wasn’t used to not having to scrape by on dining hall meals and ramen. During their last two years of college, she, Rose and Finn had found a place near campus, splitting the rent evenly and working campus jobs to afford the basic necessities. While they didn’t have much to spend outside of their bills, those few years had been like a never ending sleepover with her best friends.
And after Phasma was promoted to general manager at the music venue, Ben had been promoted to her position, taking over the booking of bands, big and small, and curating mini festivals that brought in a younger crowd. To keep up with his work, he’d started taking night classes to work toward an associate’s degree in business administration.
“Still,” she had said, taking in the open floor plan with wide eyes. They signed a lease and moved in a few weeks later, transporting their mismatched furniture into the space between their often overlapping work schedules.
Despite over two decades of knowing each other and nearly five years of dating, Rey finds herself still learning things about Ben now that they live together. Like how, despite his often late nights at work, he’s an early riser where she likes to sleep in when she can. She often wakes on Saturdays to find that he’s been up for hours, tidying up the apartment and running errands.
But on Sundays he stays in bed with her, waking her up slowly by pressing his lips against her throat, her jaw, her chest until finally she stirs, drawing him to her lips. Their touches are slowly and heavy, as they take their time to explore each other anew.
They no longer have to worry about one of their roommates barging in on them or trying to remain quiet. It’s just them and it makes Rey giddy every time she remembers.
Living so close to the lake, they spend their time along the shore trying new restaurants or laying out in the sun. Rey joins a volleyball league with Rose and they stumble back to their place every Thursday night where Ben and Hux have snacks ready for them.
Now, she looks out the windows at the inky black waves, sparkling under the glow of the moon. She can hear Ben in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on plates of food before their friends arrive for their housewarming party.
She knows she should be getting ready— Finn had texted that he and Poe were already on their way over— but she can’t stop staring out at the flecks of white dotting the sky.
She remembers in elementary school learning that the elements that make up humans come from stars, formed over a billion years. She’d gone to Ben’s house that afternoon, insisting that they cover their bodies in tiny flecks of glitter, so that when the sun went down, they would shine like the stars in the night sky. Leia had come home and seen the mess they made, their fingers flecked with glitter that spilled across the floor.
By the time the moon hung low in the sky that night, they’d both been scrubbed clean but Ben insisted he could see her glow as bright as the stars. She’d told him that if they were made of stars, that as best friends, they must have come from the same one, separated sometime in the last millennia and brought together again as humans.
She’s replaying the memory in her head when she feels Ben come up behind her, slipping his arms around her waist as he rests his chin on her shoulder.
“Food’s done,” he murmurs into her hair as he presses his lips against the skin just below her ear.
“Okay,” she sighs. “I should go get changed.”
Ben nods but makes no move to let her go. Instead he holds her against him, his heart thrumming in his chest against her back as they stare out at the stars.
“I was just thinking about that time we covered ourselves in glitter because we thought we were stars,” she murmurs.
Ben’s belly rumbles against her back with his laugh. “My mom had to get me new bedding after that because she couldn’t get the glitter out.”
She smiles at that. “I really thought that we both came from the stars,” she turns in his arms so that she can look up at him, looping her arms around his neck. “And that was the reason we both had freckles that were shaped like constellations. It was a sign.”
Ben’s lips tip up at the corners as he smiles down at her, tracing the freckles on her nose with his finger. “I like that.”
She leans into his touch, tilting her face up toward his as he bends down, brushing his lips against hers. She opens her mouth beneath his, breathing him in. His touch, his taste is as familiar to her as her own and she loses herself in his lips. Soon, their friends will arrive and they’ll eat and drink and dance together, celebrating this little life they’ve made.
But for now it’s just her and Ben beneath the moonlight, tiny particles of stardust and atoms that have created an impenetrable galaxy of their love.