Chapter Text
Ben Solo knew Rey Kenobi was trouble on her first day at the firm.
She smiled blithely at him in the elevator after spilling her coffee on his shoes. That was before he knew she was new project engineer. She poked her head over the top of her cubicle, startled him, and made him spill his coffee again, that same day – this time, on his wrinkled blue Oxford shirt.
“I’m Rey.” Her smile was as bright as it had been in the elevator. She looked young – too young to work in this office.
“I’m the project manager.” Ben said, by way of replying. It wasn’t a completely illogical thing to say. To everyone else in the office, that’s who and what he was. He’d rather be the distant, professional project manager than Ben, the loner. Ben, the weirdo.
“Oh.” Rey flushed, then, as if she was the one who had misinterpreted the conversation. The truth was, she hadn’t. He had just purposefully diverted it. “I’m the new project engineer.”
“Oh.” Ben repeated after her. He looked at his desktop screen, biting his lip. The silence dragged on. The girl – no, human resources would have his head for referring to her as a girl in a professional setting– the engineer was still peering over the top of the cubicle, as if she was expecting something.
“My name is Rey.” She repeated, after a long moment.
Words bubbled up in Ben’s throat. He swallowed them down, gulping air like a fish out of water. He felt like a fish out of water. Making small talk had never been a personal strength.
Ben had a personal policy about his workplace. He didn’t associate with anyone from work outside of work, in a collegial, platonic, or romantic capacity. It was a self-preserving policy. He’d moved to Coruscant eight years ago, cooked up excuses for the suspicious gaps in his resume, and kept to himself ever since. He hunched over his desk – he was too tall for it – like a paperwork monk, politely refusing lunch invitations and avoiding the break room. He didn’t even make small talk in the copy room, when he was trapped there waiting for something to print and someone else happened to wander in.
As a result, he hardly knew how to talk to this girl. She was friendly, and he didn’t want to make friends. She was pretty, far too pretty to go unnoticed, and he shouldn’t have noticed that. He made it a policy not to.
“Your name isn’t project manager, is it?” Rey’s smile fluttered, anxiously. She looked like it almost pained her that he wasn’t receptive to her tentative advances.
Ben gave in. He cleared this throat, his voice cracking as if he was a teenager. “It’s Ben.”
Her smile wasn’t quite so nervous anymore, almost as if she realized, once his voice cracked, that it was him who was nervous. “It’s lovely to meet you, Ben.”
Rey disappeared over the top of her cubicle. Ben leaned back in his ergonomic chair. He doubted she meant that, but it was nice of her to say. She was… nice.
He’d forget about the twice-spilled coffee, and her annoying persistence and her annoying prettiness, and just leave it at that.
***
A week later, a latte was plunked down on the desk in his cubicle at five minutes past eight. His name was scrawled on it in a black sharpie, the kind baristas used.
People were slowly filtering into the office, unwinding their scarves They were greeting each other, slurping steaming hot macchiatos and other silly, overpriced drinks. Drinks like lattes. Ben didn’t drink lattes.
“It’s lucky you told me your name.” Rey told him. She was fingering the strap of her messenger bag, hovering at the edge of his cubicle. “Project manager wouldn’t fit so well on the cup.”
Ben knew he ought to thank her; but that might encourage her. He looked at the disposable cup, examining its stupid, smiling green logo, and tried to think of something to say that couldn’t possibly be construed as flirting – he could not flirt with her. “I drink my coffee black.”
He might have imagined it, but Rey flinched a little. She looked down at her feet, and his gut twisted. He didn’t know why he was being such an asshole. There had to be an easier way to keep her at an arm’s length. He had never made things easy on himself, though. That, and he couldn’t think when he was around her. He lashed out, nervously, like a child who couldn’t swim in deep water.
It wasn’t really fair to her to behave like this. She was nice. She was just trying to be nice. He could be nice to her, and it didn’t have to mean anything.
“Thank you.” Ben managed, finally, stiffly.
Rey’s smile blossomed back onto her face.
***
The next morning, another latte was placed, this time a little more decorously, on his papers. “All right, we’re even now.”
“What?” Ben rubbed the back of his neck, wondering whether it was burning. It certainly felt like it was.
“I spilled two coffees on you.” Rey explained.
Before he could think – not that he was thinking straight – Ben blurted out, “We’re really only even if I get to pour two coffees on you.”
Rey blinked at him, as if he’d started speaking in tongues. Such a complete sentence must have surprised her, after how taciturn he’d been. He’d been trying to be funny – the joke wasn’t funny – and maybe that effort surprised her, too.
Rey looked down at herself, her brows crinkling together. She was wearing dark pants, cropped at the ankle and skimming her hips just so, and a white shirt. It would be see-through if it was wet.
Ben imagined how that would look, before he could think better of it. His ears flamed, and suddenly his papers and pens were fascinating. He ruffled through them, scattering them across his desk and making a mess. “I mean – ”
“It’s black this time.” Rey interrupted him. She looked like she was trying not to laugh.
“Thank you.” Ben sagged into his chair, heavily.
***
The company Christmas party was predictably stressful. It was stressful every year. This year, especially so. Somehow, after only three weeks, Rey had endeared herself to everyone, even the grumpiest executive assistants and most fragile-ego architects.
Ben stood in the corner of the room, as far away from the open bar as he could get, half behind a big potted ficus plant. He clutched a bottle of water and crinkled it in his hands, long after it was empty, and watched her flirt and sip cocktails.
Rey had endeared herself to Ben as much as anybody. He could admit that to himself. He’d admitted it to his counselor. She’d said something about psychosocial growth and he’d told her, point-blank, that he had no interest in growing anything with anyone at his workplace. She’d asked him, archly, whether he spent any time anywhere else.
She had a point, there. He didn’t. He was at the office early, and at the office late. He didn’t take lunch. He ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at his desk, every day. He didn’t go to church, or ask his neighbors for eggs and sugar. He ate takeout and watched re-runs. He didn’t belong to a gym. He ran, alone, along the river, late at night or early in the morning.
It wasn’t out of a sense of obligation, or passion, that Ben worked such long hours. It was, like so many things he did, an adaption. He’d compartmentalized his life, and the compartment labelled work was the compartment in which he felt most normal, most safe. At his desk, he was just another pedestrian paper-pusher. For all anyone knew, he had a rescue dog and a steady girlfriend. No one asked.
“You’re rather too big to hide behind that little fern.” Rey’s voice snapped him out of his self-pitying reverie. Ben jerked around to face her, flushing.
“It’s a ficus.” He said, nervously. His hands were sweaty, all of the sudden. “Not a fern.”
Rey’s lips twitched. “How do you know that?”
“I planted this myself.” Ben joked, lamely. “In a few Christmases, it’ll be big enough to hide behind during parties.”
Rey laughed harder than the stupid joke merited. “You don’t like to mingle?”
“I hate to mingle.” Ben told her, honestly. He thrust his hands into his pockets to avoid fidgeting, and looked down at his shoes. The bass was very loud, all of the sudden, or maybe that was his heartbeat in his eardrums.
“Can I get you a drink?” Rey asked, after a long moment. “Promise I won’t spill it on your shoes.”
“No.” Ben thought about elaborating, but he knew if he did, questions would inevitably follow. He didn’t want to answer those questions.
“You don’t drink?” Rey asked, in that oblivious, unabashed way of hers.
Ben cleared his throat. “No.”
There was another awkward silence, this one painfully long. When she spoke, Rey sounded almost confused. “You don’t like me.”
She had the right to be confused, because how could anyone not like her? She was nice, very nice, and pretty. Very pretty. But because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, Ben said, stupidly, “No.”
“No, you don’t like me?” Rey asked, her voice very soft but somehow still audible over the music. “Or no, you don’t not like me?”
Ben rocked on his heels. He regretted backing himself into a corner, both physically and figuratively. He couldn’t resist correcting her ridiculous grammar. “I don’t… dislike you.”
“You like me.” Rey looked so proud of herself – whether for her deductive reasoning skills, or for winning him over – that Ben couldn’t help but smile.
“I didn’t say that.”
She wouldn’t be deterred. “Do you like me, or like like me?”
Ben just smiled at his feet. He’d said a few stupid things already. Better to not speak and avoid saying anything monumentally stupid.
Suddenly, Rey’s little feet came into his plane of vision. She was wearing silly high heels, the kind she never wore in the office. She was standing very close to him, the tip of her pointy toed shoe almost touching his brogues.
“I like you.” She told him, plaintively, when he looked up at her face. It was much closer to his than it usually was, on account of the high heels. He made note – in an academic sense, at least, that was what he told himself – of the bow of her lips and the way her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. “Will you take me home?”
Ben felt the flush that moved across his face. He swallowed hard, several times. A lump in his throat kept him from speaking for a moment. When he did speak, he stuttered. “How – how much have you had to drink?”
“I meant will you drive me home.” Rey had the grace to look embarrassed – he’d previously thought that beneath her. She seemed so shamelessly happy and carefree, most days. Scarlet-cheeked, she took a deep breath, and a fortifying swallow of her drink. “Since you’re sober. And I am… not.”
“Oh.” Ben winced. He’d jumped to conclusions, and said something monumentally stupid. “Yes.”
***
Rey’s apartment was in a far-flung part of town. As he drove her, Ben calculated that she’d need to transfer trains or buses twice to get to the office. They drove in silence, as the freezing rain drummed onto the room of his seven-year-old sedan.
“This is me.” Rey’s breath fogged up the cold air in the car. She fumbled at the door, and then looked at him, sharply, as he turned off the ignition. They sat in the silent car for a moment. Rey didn’t take her hand off of the door’s lock.
Unable to bear the silence anymore, and the strange tension that stretched in it, Ben clambered out of the car. He slammed the door behind him and stomped around the car in the slushy snow.
“This neighborhood is a bit dodgy.” Rey told him, sincerely, when they were huddled under her portico, and she’d found her key. “Thank you for taking me home. It was nice of you.”
“You’re nice.” Ben misspoke. He stopped himself, biting his tongue and flushing. He felt as if he only spoke in non sequiters around her. “I mean, you’re welcome – ”
Rey stood on her tip-toes and cut him off, kissing him quickly. It was a sloppy and ill-placed kiss, as if she’d had to do it quickly before she lost her nerve. Half of her mouth pressed against his, and half rubbed against the five o’clock shadow on his chin. She gripped the lapel of his jacket in one strong little hand. It was a nice kiss, nice like she was – warm, and uncomplicated.
Ben touched his mouth with two fingers, as if she’d left something behind for him to wipe off, after she sunk back onto the flats of her feet. Incredulous, he said, “You’re… drunk.”
For the first time since they’d met, anger flared on Rey’s face. It was a credit to her, really, that it took so long, considering what an ass he’d been. “Is that all you have to say?”
Ben could think of plenty of things to say that would make her understand. None of them were things that he wanted repeated around the office, in hushed whispers and exaggerated gossip. He’d been so careful, for so long. “What do you want me to say, Rey?”
“I like you.” Rey sounded much more sober, all of the sudden. “Surely you know that.”
“You said that.” Ben admitted.
“I like you.” Rey repeated herself, as if he wasn’t quite bright. “And you like me.”
“I’m your supervisor.” Ben didn’t bother to deny it. He took a step back. “It would be… I won’t take advantage of you.”
It was a lame excuse, and Rey knew it. She wasn’t that drunk. Her eyes narrowed. “Why did you bring me home, then?”
“You asked me to.”
“Why did you walk me to the door?” Rey challenged.
She had him, there. He could lie and say it was because he was gentleman, but that wasn’t quite true. She looked enticing in her red dress, and he’d noticed. Despite himself, he’d noticed. He’d wanted to look at her for a couple more minutes. “I – well, I want to take advantage of you. But I know better.”
Rey looked at him for a long moment, and Ben thought she might slap him. She didn’t. She started to laugh, shaking her head as if she couldn’t quite believe it. Finally, she said, smiling, “Goodnight, Ben.”
As she fumbled with her locked door, Ben turned and walked slowly back to his car. He heard her door creak open, but he didn’t hear it slam shut. He turned around. She was standing in the doorway, watching him walk away. It felt as if he was walking away from his chance, from his chance to have something good and uncomplicated and nice.
Ben turned around, and went back to the door. Rey waited for him, biting her lip. He took off his stocking cap and held it in his hands in front of himself. His ears were cold without his hat, but he was in the posture of remorse and penance. "I'm sorry. I'm an ass. Can I kiss you again?"
Rey stood back up on her tip-toes, and closed her hands over his ears as she kissed him. They were very warm and soft, even in the winter air.