Chapter Text
Twenty minutes. It might as well have been an eternity.
On any other day, she would have been pacing the floor right now, her heels wearing a long line into the nice, plush carpet, but, mysteriously, her nerves seemed to have abated all by themselves.
She wasn’t scared. Not anymore. The buzz she felt beneath her skin wasn’t from fear this time.
The line had gone dead some time ago, but the phone’s receiver was still clutched tightly in her hand. She hung it up with a strange sense of calm and walked over to the kitchen cabinet where she grabbed a single, dented can of peaches.
They had an electric can opener, but Rey found it cumbersome. She slowly twisted the handle on the manual one until the top popped off and then grabbed a fork from the drawer to her right.
She floated through the dining room, paying no mind to the mess on the floor as she did so - or no more mind than she needed to to side-step the smashed up bits of plastic and metal that lay around her feet. A little battlefield littered with casualties.
There were two couches in the living room, one faced the back wall and the other faced the window looking out to the front yard. She sat in the latter as she waited and ate her dessert.
The syrup was so sweet and thick. It coated each little slice of peach completely and made them taste like candy. Perhaps fresh wasn’t always best, after all.
Eventually, two headlights burned through the glass. Someone pulled into the drive and she knew somewhere deep inside of her bones that it wasn’t Beau.
Ben knocked the same way every time. Three evenly-spaced raps against the blue-painted wood that matched the heavy rhythm of her heart beat.
“Hi,” she said as she threw open the door, the word leaving her lungs in a breathless rush.
He looked different at night. The deep blues and blacks and shining silvers suited him. They made him look otherworldly and beautiful. A creature from a fantasy book young women were discouraged from reading.
His hair was slicked back more than usual. Blooms of moisture dampened the collar of his hastily buttoned shirt, the tail of which was currently only half tucked into his trousers. He smelled like hotel soap, though a few spritzes of cologne were currently trying to overtake that.
Eyes flitted over her face, wide and reverent, but then they stopped. Narrowed a bit. He pressed his lips together and frowned.
“What happened?”
Rey didn’t need him to elaborate. He didn’t need her to answer.
“Do you have any antiseptic?” He asked.
Slowly, she nodded. A bit of an odd question, she thought. Especially for what this was - for what she intended it to be, at least.
“Where is it?”
“Um - in the bathroom,” she inclined her head to the side, pointing in the general direction. “Just down the hall.”
Carefully, Ben slid past her, and she might have thought that was rude if she weren’t so completely consumed by the way his chest brushed against hers as he did so.
She wanted him to touch all of her, all at once, and wondered, dazedly, if that were possible.
He found the room well enough on his own and didn’t seem even a little surprised when he turned to find that she had followed him.
When he opened the medicine cabinet, he scanned its contents and seemed pleased when he found the bottle he was looking for. After pulling it out, he effortlessly hoisted her up and onto the lip of the sink, like she weighed nothing at all.
“This is going to sting,” he said, preparing her as he poured a bit of the liquid onto a clean hand towel he’d pulled from the wall - a monogrammed one. The very same Rey had told Beau were for guests only.
Well, Ben was a guest, wasn’t he?
“I know.”
“Where is he?” He asked as he gently stroked the alcohol-saturated towel across the apple of her cheek. She noticed a bit of red when he pulled it back, but just a little.
“I don’t know.”
Ben’s expression darkened. “Don’t protect him.”
“I’m not. I have no idea where he is.” She didn’t believe for a second that he was simply ‘going for a drive’ as he’d told her. “With his mistress somewhere, probably.”
“If you knew, would you tell me?”
“If I told you, what would you do?”
Ben huffed. Rey was sure that she was cleaned up now, but Ben kept dabbing at her skin. Which was good, because she would be devastated if he stopped now.
“Twenty-five to life, probably.” It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in, and when it did, she gasped.
“Don’t joke like that.”
His lips curled. “What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” The ‘to me’ was left unsaid but clearly implied.
“He was upset… about the, um, the air conditioner.”
Ben’s face fell. He looked simply mortified. “Rey, I -”
“No,” she rushed to assure him. “It’s not your fault - it’s not,” she repeated when he seemed less than convinced. “I bought it without consulting him. I spent his money without permission. I let a strange man into his home when he wasn’t here. And I’ve been… shirking my duties.”
She sighed heavily as she finished listing her sins and tried to look away, but Ben didn’t allow that. He placed a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face back towards his, forcing her to meet the sudden burning intensity of his gaze.
“None of that is any reason for him to hurt you.”
Well, he hadn’t really meant to, a voice inside of her head (one that sounded very little like Rey at all) said. She ought to have just left him alone. She was in the way. He couldn’t see sense when he got that angry.
She didn’t voice any of those excuses aloud. Mostly because she wasn’t sure how true any of it really was.
“Thank you,” she said instead. “For coming. I’m a little surprised that you did, if I’m honest.”
“You called,” he said in return, as if her doing so had given him no other option. As if he couldn’t have laughed at her through the phone. As if he felt the same inexplicable pull she did and any excuse at all to be together again was enough.
“I did.”
“Why did you call?”
And there it was; the question. The one she was sure he’d been dying to ask for as long as she’d been trying to come up with an answer.
How was she supposed to tell him that something inside of her woke up when he smiled at her? That she cared about things again that she had spent years trying to forget? That he had so skewed the perspective at which she looked at her life that she felt like she was standing on her head most of the time.
“When you left earlier, I wanted to stop you. I wanted you to stay, but I was afraid.”
“I didn’t want to leave.” His confession was whispered, like he was trying to keep the dish of seashell-shaped soaps nearby from overhearing.
And he was closer now, Rey was certain of it. She could smell the sharp mint of his toothpaste.
“I want you - so much it scares me. I didn’t know what to do with it then, but now…"
He leaned in. The tip of his nose brushed against hers. She could feel each slow breath as it fanned across her skin and wondered if he could feel hers or if it affected him quite as profoundly.
“But now?”
If Rey were a seductress, she might have changed into something ‘more comfortable’ before Ben arrived - like a barely opaque negligee or a robe trimmed with feathers that floated around her wrists and feet - but she wasn’t.
She was only herself. She was Just Rey, so the plain, sleeveless dress she was wearing now seemed fitting.
“Now,” she sighed, her trembling hands moving to the line of buttons on her chest. One popped open and then another, revealing a bit of flushed skin and white lace. “Now, I -”
She didn’t know how that sentence was supposed to end. Now she wasn’t scared anymore? That wasn’t necessarily true. She was still afraid, just of different things.
Before, she was afraid of what might happen if she let herself stray too close to the forbidden fruit; of the consequences that awaited her after the bite. Now, her only fear was that she might live the rest of her life without ever having a taste.
That was why she called him. She was sick of wondering, of daydreams and fantasies. She wanted the real thing - even if only once.
Her shaking fingers popped a few more buttons open, exposing her navel. “Now,” she repeated for a third time, still with no conclusion in sight.
“I wanted you too,” Ben confessed, his hands smoothing over the rounds of her shoulders. “I told myself nothing could happen - you’re married.”
“I don’t care about that anymore.”
“I’m not sure I ever really did.”
When Ben closed the distance between them, Rey thought that he might capture her lips with his own, but he didn’t. He shifted to the side, his head tilting slightly, and kissed her cheek - chastely at first, and then a bit less so.
She would have a bruise there tomorrow - a nasty one, if she had to guess - but she imagined that Ben could take that away. That his touch was healing, somehow.
Almost unconsciously, she canted into him, like she needed his warmth, even in this god-awful heat wave.
He trailed a slow line across the side of her face, up the curve of her jaw, to the corner of her mouth. He stopped there, frozen, like he was afraid to take that one step further, so Rey took it for him.
Just as she’d wanted to earlier, she turned her head and kissed him.
Like a full breath of air after a long swim, the relief of feeling his lips on hers was so sharp it almost burned.
She gasped against his mouth and he used the opportunity to kiss her deeper. He curled his fingers around the back of her skull, gently cradling it, while his other hand slipped into the open panels of her dress.
He pulled her so close, she could feel his heart beating against her own.
Her own hands went to his top-most button, pulling at it in anxious desperation to have more of his skin on more of hers.
Everywhere he touched her was electric. Lightning buzzed at the tips of his fingers as he caressed them slowly up her side.
She wrapped her legs around his waist in an attempt to get even closer, but only managed to pull herself off of the edge of the sink she’d been so precariously sat upon.
Ben didn’t let her fall, though. He quickly pulled her body flush to his and held her tight.
She kissed the scruff beginning to form on his jaw and nibbled his earlobe.
“Want you,” she said.
“Bedroom?” He asked in response. There wasn’t enough patience left between them for full sentences.
“Upstairs.”
Hooking his hands beneath her bottom, he wasted no time. Which was fair, it felt like there wasn’t any to waste.
The trudge up the stairs took far too long for Rey’s linking, but she wasn’t really helping. She ran her fingers through his hair - knotted them in, really - and pulled his head this way and that as she attempted to kiss every single freckle and mole dotting his face.
He laid her gently on the bed. Part of her wished that he had tossed her upon it, for the thrill and the urgency, but when he dropped to his knees at the edge of the mattress and pulled her underwear down to her ankles from beneath the skirt of her dress, she suddenly couldn’t have cared less.
He kissed up one of her thighs and then the other, pausing both times where they met in the middle. Then, he just stared at her (right there). For a long time, too. So long, in fact, that she began to grow self conscious.
Was something wrong with her? Beau had certainly never paid this part of her… anatomy this much attention before. He just stuck himself inside, rutted around for a bit, and rolled away when he was done.
She tried to close her legs, but Ben refused to let her. He held her open, one hand on each thigh, and actually pulled her closer.
“Wha-” she tried to scoot away (in vain), wrinkling the sheets beneath her. “What are you doing?”
Ben looked up finally. He blinked at her and tilted his head to the side, like he really just couldn’t grasp what she was asking or why, but then realization (whatever that might have been) seemed to dawn. He frowned and rolled his eyes.
“Your husband is a real asshole, huh?” He softened then and kissed her again, right on the side of her knee, assuring her that his ire was reserved for Beau alone. “Don’t worry. It’ll feel good, okay?”
She was still a bit unsure, but nodded anyway. Ben seemed to know what he was talking about and she trusted him.
He lowered himself again, slowly, his eyes remaining locked on hers. She rucked up her skirt further to compensate, so she could keep staring at him as intently as he was staring at her.
Then he put his mouth on her. He kissed her down there like he would have kissed her face, sweet and slow.
Her uncle wasn’t a religious man, but Beau’s family was devout. So, while Rey wasn’t raised in the church, she was married in one. A big, catholic cathedral filled with weeping statues and stained glass and a little room in the back where Beau’s mother and sister buttoned her up into her gown.
She didn’t remember much of that day - most of it was still a blur, even now - but she did recall a painting hanging on the wall across from her in that ready room of an angel falling from the sky. His wings, which were pitch black, had been clipped, and all he could do was look up at heaven as it fell away.
That’s how she thought Ben was looking at her now, like she was some forbidden paradise he might lose if he even so much as blinked. That was how he held her, too; tight, like he was afraid to let go.
There would be fingerprint-shaped bruises on her hips tomorrow to match the one currently blooming on her cheek, but those she would cherish.
He licked her then, his broad tongue swiping a long line up the crease of her folds, and that felt -
“Oh,” she gasped, falling back against the mattress.
He hummed into her, seemingly pleased, and she felt the sound in her chest. She felt him smiling against her too, which was just as lewd as it was wonderful.
“Good?” he asked, his fingertip replacing his tongue at the little button of pleasure situated at the apex of her folds.
“Yes,” she agreed, her own fingers twisting in the sheets. He was right. Good god, was he right.
It felt like there was a spring inside of her tummy and everything Ben did - every word he spoke in that low, silky baritone of his - only served to tighten it further.
“Good,” he repeated, no longer a question this time. Descending for a moment, he lapped at her again, long and slow at first then kittenish and teasing. “You deserve to feel good, Rey. You’re good. So beautiful. You taste incredible.”
He fed a single finger into her and that, combined with his words of praise and the ministrations of his tongue, proved to be too much for her entirely. She shattered, her body convulsing as waves of pleasure washed over her.
Ben licked her though it, refusing to let up for even a moment. He held her tight to his face and didn’t seem to mind when her thighs closed in around his ears.
Every swipe of his tongue seemed to not only heighten the sensations she was feeling, but draw them out as well, longer and longer until she was certain that she would die just like this, sated and happy on Ben Solo’s tongue.
God, what a way to go.
Eventually, the ecstasy pumping through her veins began to ease, the mist cleared from her mind, and Ben pulled his finger out of her channel with a slick pop.
Under any other circumstance, she would have been mortified by the sound, but, as it stood, she could only think about how empty she felt without him inside of her.
Her bones felt like jello, but she still managed to push herself up so that she could reach out for him.
He evaded her grasp and kissed her on the lips once before standing, his fingers already working at the buttons of his shirt. He left some taste behind that she couldn’t place, something musky and sweet that, after a short delay, she realized could only have been her.
He undressed quickly and, before she knew it, he was standing before her, fully nude. Miles of pale skin painted blue by the moonlight streaming in through her bedroom window, moles speckled across the surface like stars.
His penis sat heavy and hard against his thigh, looking much larger than the single finger he’d given her earlier and, suddenly, she was very nervous about trying to take all of that into her body.
Her worry must have shown on her face, because Ben paused his approach to the bed and asked, “are you alright?”
She nodded, determined despite her nerves, but then bit her lip. “Will it fit?”
It seemed like such a silly question, hearing it out loud. She’d been married for four years and, as such, she was certainly no blushing virgin, but, well… she just wasn’t aware they made them that big.
Ben’s responding smile was broad and, perhaps, just a little smug. He crawled up the mattress, kissing along her exposed skin as he went, and she felt the flames of embarrassment in her cheeks melt into a different kind of heat altogether.
“It’ll fit,” he promised into the valley between her breasts before looking up, eyes glowing and wicked in the low light.
He reached down to tug at himself idly and Rey’s hands began to shake with the strangest desire to help him.
“I don’t have a condom,” he continued, his lips brushing the pulsepoint in her throat as he spoke. “But I can pull out.”
That wasn’t exactly necessary, strictly speaking. At the insistence of her doctor, Rey was on the pill - ironically, to boost her fertility somehow, or reset it - but Ben’s suggestion did seem like the safest route. Plus, she was being driven mad by the heat and weight of his erection resting on her thigh and, at this point, she just wanted him inside of her, so she nodded.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeated, kissing along the underside of her jaw.
The tip of his penis nudged her entrance when he reached down to adjust himself and she shuddered, gripping the sheets below her for support. She wanted him - truly, she did - but she knew he’d be a lot.
Ben paused, a frown creasing his brow as he stared down at her. “Here,” he said, hooking an arm beneath her and rolling until he was laid flat on his back and she was sat on top of his hips. “It might be easier for you this way.”
He didn’t want to hurt her, even unintentionally. The gesture was so kind and small. Something in Rey’s chest shattered and she began to cry.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Ben asked, his hands smoothing up the curve of her waist. “You don’t have to be on top, I just thought…”
“No, no,” she wept, feeling like a fool as she did so. “It’s not that.”
Ben sat up, shifting Rey down to his thighs, and pulled her to him.
“You’re a stranger,” she told him, her face buried in the crook of his neck. “But you care more about me than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.”
It shouldn’t have been like that. Her uncle should have cared. Her husband should have cared. Someone should have, but no one had - not until Ben.
“I do care about you,” Ben said as he rubbed soothing circles across her back. “But I’m not a stranger.” He pulled back and forced her to look into his eyes. “I know you, Rey. Not everything, but what’s important.”
Rey understood. She knew the important bits of Ben too. He was good to people when he didn’t have to be - even when it gained him nothing. He laughed at her jokes and thought she was beautiful and liked being around her, just for the simple joy of it.
Sure, she didn’t know his favorite color or his parents names or the kinds of books he liked to read. She didn’t know his opinion on eating dinner in front of the television set or if he liked his bacon burned, but those kinds of things were just decoration. Pretty icing covering the good man inside.
He rolled her hair back out of her face and kissed the tears from her cheeks. “I know you,” he said again, but it sounded like something else entirely.
She nodded. “I know you, too.”
With one shaking hand, she reached down between them and lined the tip of him up with her entrance, then slowly - so slowly her thighs began to tremble and burn - she lowered herself onto him.
The groan Ben gasped into her ear as she did so was positively sinful and, suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to make him do it again.
Before she was fully seated, she raised herself up slightly and then dropped back down, taking in more than she thought was possible in one quick rush. It was heady and overwhelming and she was certain that he’d taken up every empty space inside of her, but when she glanced down, she saw that she still had quite a ways to go.
Ben’s lips were hot on her skin. His fingers danced up the length of her spine. “You feel incredible,” he whispered. “Like you were made for me.”
“Ben,” Rey sighed. No one had ever spoken to her like this before. It stoked the fire already raging in her belly and she sank down onto him just a bit more.
“You were, weren’t you?” He kissed her jaw and groped her breast. His hands covered her so completely, so wonderfully. She thought he might absorb her. She thought she wouldn’t mind. “Made just for me.”
“Yes,” she agreed easily.
She tangled her fingers in his sweat-soaked hair. All of the air in her lungs left in one great rush as her body made room for him and only him.
He rocked up into her, the roll of his hips smooth and perfectly timed.
Eventually, her confidence growing by the second and skin aflame with desire, she began to bounce back and meet him, thrust for thrust.
They sped up in tandem. Obscene sounds filled the room. Ben drove Rey to the peak and then over it twice - at least.
And then she realized - midway through her third orgasm - that this was what all of the fuss was about. This was why people had sex. She hadn’t really understood the bother before now.
He laid back against the mattress, sweaty and grunting and still pumping into her, clearly on the precipice of his own release.
“Rey,” he said, pulling at her hips in an attempt to warn her. “I’m -”
“No,” she shook her head, changing her mind at the last minute. “Inside. I want to feel you.”
He gasped. And twitched. And came.
He filled her and she kissed him - long and hard - and she didn’t cry again, but she certainly wanted to.
Because maybe this was actually why people had sex. The carnality of the act itself was nice, but this - this oneness, this belonging - it was magic.
They laid together for a long time after and a kind of glow settled around them, quiet and soft and warm - and entirely too fragile to last forever.
“What are you going to do now?” Ben asked. His fingers traced little designs over the curve of her shoulder like his question was an idle one, even though it was anything but.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
He was going to leave; that was a foregone conclusion. She knew this when she called him and invited him over - so it shouldn’t hurt this badly, right?
“You’re not going to stay with him, are you?” He had the gall to sound upset.
Rey sat up and threw her legs over the end of the bed. She curled her arms around her body, like she could keep herself from shattering. “I don’t know.”
“Rey,” he pleaded. “You can’t -”
“What other choice do I have?”
She had no family. She had no friends. There was nowhere for her to run.
“You could come with me.”
Rey whipped around, her heart beating to break free from her chest.
“What? No, I -” She stuttered around her shock and searched his face for the joke or the lie or something that would tell her he was anything but sincere, but she came up short. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” He asked, like it was simple. Like there weren’t a thousand reasons why not .
And there probably were that many, too, but Rey couldn’t think of a single one - not when Ben cradled her face in his hands. Not when the pad of his thumb gently caressed the apple of her cheek. Not when he stared down at her like he wanted nothing more than for her to jump in his car and ride off with him into the sunset - or sunrise, as it were.
“I couldn’t ask you to take me with you.”
“You’re not.”
He was very direct. No nonsense. A true salesman, through-and-through.
“I’m not a very good cook. I’ve burned every piece of chicken I’ve tried to fry.”
He smiled and Rey’s insides turned to goo. “I’m not a picky eater.”
“I snore.”
“So do I.”
“I don’t have any money.”
Ben kissed her lips and the tip of her nose. He brushed away the tears beading on her eyelashes with his lips.
“I don’t care.”
“I may never be able to get a divorce,” she said - might as well cut to the quick of the matter now. Get it over and done with. Let him know the kind of baggage she would be carrying along with her if she accepted his offer. Then she added, panic constricting her chest, “or have children.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me,” he said without missing a beat. “Not today, at least. And I’m not asking you to give me a child, either. I just want you - and if you don’t want to stay with me, that’s fine, but don’t stay here. There’s so much more to life than here.”
Rey snuffled and rubbed her nose clean on the back of her hand (how unladylike). No one had ever wanted her like this before. There was always something else they’d be getting in the deal, a bonus to make her worth their while.
Maybe finally, for Ben, she was enough.
“Will you take me to the Grand Canyon?”
He beamed and it was like the sun had risen inside of her bedroom. “I’ll take you anywhere you want. Anywhere in the world.”
"Do you have a house by the ocean?"
Ben paused. His lips twitched. "No," he said - and he sounded almost apologetic. "I have an apartment in Encino, but it's not that far from Santa Monica."
Rey smiled. He really was very sweet.
“Okay,” she nodded. “I’ll go.”
💜🏡💜
Packing was easy. She didn’t have many things, and the few dresses that wouldn’t fit in her suitcase she found easy enough to leave behind.
She didn’t bother taking any jewelry from the box on her dresser. Beau, she was certain, would go after her for that, and, anyway, she didn’t want it. The string of pearls she so often wore, with its little gold and sapphire clasp, was a gift meant to pacify - to keep her quiet and tucked away - and that wasn’t a piece of herself she wanted to bring along.
When the closet was emptied, she looked around the room. It was still dark - something about turning on the light as she prepared to run away had seemed wrong, somehow - and thought it was strange she would never see this place again.
She still remembered when Beau had taken her to see it for the first time, before the furniture had been moved in, before the walls had been painted. She’d told herself, then, that this would be her home. That she could force it to be, by her own will.
What would her past-self think of her now? She hoped that she would be happy - or, at the very least, relieved.
There was a bit of stationary in the bottom drawer of a desk - leftovers from the thank you notes she’d written (alone) for gifts from her wedding. Mr. & Mrs. Kin was embossed at the top in shining gold leaf. She grabbed a page of that and a pen and sat at the end of her bed, wondering what should tell Beau.
What she could tell him.
She could tell him that she didn’t love him. That she never had. That she didn’t love Ben, either, not yet, but that she really thought that she could. Someday. That she could love someone and that she deserved to try.
She could tell him to be better to whoever came next; to whomever moved into this house she could never call home and agreed to fill whatever size hole she left behind in it - if she left one at all.
She could tell him that they kept the rat poison frighteningly close to the sugar. That they looked enough alike if someone wasn’t paying close enough attention. That coffee masked a lot of flavors. And that his new wife might have less qualms using it if he ever put his hands on her.
She could tell him that part of her wished him well. That part of her was still small and grateful towards the man who swept her away from the uncertain future that existed beyond her uncle’s house. That she equally hoped he found happiness and that he would drown in misery over losing her.
In the end, she decided to keep things simple.
Beau,
Please don’t let the flowers die.
Rey
She set her note and her ring atop Beau’s pillow and only wondered for a moment what he might think when he found it before deciding that she didn’t really care.
Maybe he had helped her once, but she had repaid him long ago - if payment was ever even necessary.
Ben’s car idled in the driveway, the headlights shining on her like two bright, expectant spotlights. Like she was the lead in some Broadway drama at the very pinnacle of her monologue and the front stoop was her stage.
Thunder rumbled overhead, but, to her, it sounded like applause.
She looked up at the sky. At the clouds rolling in - big, dark ones full of promise. They blended with the night sky and blocked out the stars.
The temperature and air pressure dropped as one, a word of warning that came only moments before the rain.
By the time Ben returned, a trenchcoat held over his head like a make-shift umbrella, Rey was crying. He couldn’t tell, of course, which was a good thing. He might have misunderstood. He might have thought she was sad to be leaving.
She wasn’t. Not a lick.
They could see her now; any one of her neighbors. They could look out of one of their little eye-like windows and watch .
They could watch as the rain soaked her to the bone (despite Ben’s best efforts). They could watch as he took her bags up under his arm. They could watch as she left.
She hoped they did.
“Are you ready to go?” Ben asked, his voice raised to carry over the sound of the ever-approaching storm.
Rey smiled. She kissed his cheek. He tasted like water.
“I am.”