Chapter Text
She is eight, the day of the peanut butter cup- a perpetually skinny and scrappy eight, with scraped knees more often than not and a wary gaze- and the individually wrapped chocolate placed in her hands as rare as a comforting gesture. Rey eyes the package even as she salivates, already well aware that not every gift offered is free of strings- particularly not for her, tolerated for the money paid for her keep and nothing more. Not pretty, not sweet, not at all docile. A little beast, is the usual complaint. She’s heard it enough times that the words no longer make her flinch.
“If you’re not going to eat it, I will,” the daughter of the house says after her mother leaves the room, licking chocolate-daubed fingers clean with an avaricious gaze. “It’s a sin to waste food.”
Rey can’t remember the last time she had the luxury of wasting even a scrap of food. She doesn’t say a word as she rips open the packaging, doesn’t even meet Dulcie’s gaze. She keeps her eyes on the candy held carefully between her fingers instead, unaccountably fascinated by the tiny scalloped ridges along the outside. She usually bolts her food, but for once she wants to nibble away at the circle bit by bit, making the treat last.
Her fascination is a mistake. Dulcie leans in, quick as a snake, and licks a stripe over the closest edge. Her expression is triumphant when Rey jerks back in her chair, and she holds out a hand. “I licked it,” she says with cat facing a maimed canary smile. “It’s mine.”
Her shriek when Rey crams the chocolate whole into her own mouth (and it should taste wonderful, but instead all Rey can taste is the tang of copper and the salt of unshed tears) is piercing enough to wake the dead.
Predictably, Rey is the one who gets in trouble for ‘taunting’ the Plutts’ beloved daughter.
Less predictably, no one comes to haul her away to a new living situation.
She stays, ignored at best and the scapegoat at worst, and hates every second of it. One minute after the clock strikes midnight on her eighteenth birthday, she slips out the window of her bedroom with a backpack and all the money she has in the world, walks the five miles to the bus station, and buys a ticket to Chandrila.
In the bright fluorescent light of the waiting room- too anxious to keep her foot from tapping on the floor, her arms clenched around the backpack in her lap- she unwraps the one thing she stole from the Plutt home before leaving: a peanut butter cup, snitched from Dulcie’s stash. It is sickly sweet and claws its way to a stomach that wants to reject the invasion.
She keeps it down, but never eats a peanut butter cup again.
- - -
Within a week of stepping foot in her new city, Rey establishes the first and most important of her rules:
1. Rely on only yourself.
(Easy; she’s been left to her own devices for years.)
2. Never buy full price.
(Even buying strictly on sale her belly growls, but she can’t remember the last time she felt full anyway; the Plutts had frowned on second helpings.)
3. Never tell anyone the truth.
(No one needs to know. No one needs to know anything.)
She finds a job at an auto repair shop by the end of week two (despite the owner, a grizzled man with a habit of gruffly addressing her as “Kid,” looking openly skeptical that she actually is eighteen), and manages to rent a drafty, minuscule studio after a month of sleeping in a homeless shelter. She furnishes her new home with a cot, a folding chair, and a table, all purchased from a resale shop two blocks away, and though the lock is shoddy and the lights flicker she sleeps better in that small space than she has in years. Under the lip of the window frame she carves two letters: RN.
She is nineteen when she buys her first clunker of a car, twenty when she finally accedes to Han’s request that she join his family for dinner.
“Her Majesty will divorce me if I come home without you,” words grousing but tone indisputably affectionate. “Two hours of your time will save my marriage, Kid.”
Rey doesn’t believe him in the slightest- he is being polite to the cypher she presents herself as, who rarely speaks and never complains and works hard- but her fourth rule is now in play (never turn down free food, unless the situation is unsafe) and she’s down to only beans and rice until payday.
She is a month shy of twenty-one when she steps for the first time into the Organa-Solo home, a cheap bouquet of flowers in hand (cheap but not on sale, so much for rule two), and comes face to face with Ben Solo, tall and dark-eyed and plush-lipped, his sleeves rolled up to reveal muscled forearms.
For the second time in her life, Rey Niima feels the urge to nibble.
- - -
- - -
The scarf is next to the coffee maker when she arrives Monday morning, folded in a neat square that she knows Han is not responsible for. She hesitates, precious seconds that she could be using to pour a free cup of coffee slipping away as she considers neat corners.
“Hi.”
She recognizes the voice before she turns, even if her previous exposure had been over the span of only a few hours. Low, velvety, a little sheepish- and when she faces him, she sees hunched shoulders and large hands crammed into pockets, long lashes what she can only describe as fluttering. It’s obscene, the way parts of her body react to this man. The need he’s jump-started by only being in the same room as her cannot possibly be safe; he’s a threat to every rule she’s ever made.
So she scowls at him. Bristles as if he were everyone who has ever shunted her aside or slapped her down or treated her like an unfortunate stain on the carpet, and his eyes take on a soft, hurt cast. “Thanks.” It is no thanks of any kind, as snapped and rude as it is, but she hardly cares.
(Or cares too much. He has to leave before she weakens.)
“Uh, Dad will be in later.”
“He said he would be.”
“But I thought you might need your scarf-”
“While working on an engine?”
Ben blinks, and for some unknown reason he straightens, a lock of hair she wants to touch falling over his face. “I picked up some food? On my way in. And they accidentally gave me an extra breakfast sandwich-”
Never happens, in Rey’s experience. She regards him warily, her meager bowl of cereal barely keeping her stomach from grumbling.
“-and I thought you might like it.” He tilts his head toward the paper bag on the counter, right beside her scarf.
“I’m not hungry,” she says stiffly, stalking away from both his offer and her morning hit of caffeine.
The thud of the door closing after him a few minutes later is both the sweetest sound she has ever heard and also the cause of regret catching at her throat, sharp and fierce.
(She devours the sandwich without washing her hands, barely bothering to chew lest he walk back in and catch her with cheeks stuffed chipmunk full.)
- - -
- - -
“The young wolf, chastened by his would-be-mate’s rejection-”
“Shut up,” Rey hisses frantically, checking the door to make sure neither Ben nor his father linger near the breakroom. Chewie grins at her, a slab of lasagna on the plate in front of him.
“It’s cute.” He points his fork at the container of brownies that rests just a few inches from Rey’s lackluster pb&j. “You should try one of those. The boy knows how to bake.”
Ben Solo is the furthest thing from a boy Rey has ever seen. He looks like he could pin her against any surface with a single hand, and the idea is frighteningly attractive.
“He’s a good cub,” Chewie continues, digging into his meal. There is a container of the same in the fridge for Rey (“In case you change your mind”), and she wonders if she can possibly take it without comment at the end of the day. “Lot of Han in him- hence the eyes he’s making at you-”
“What?”
“Solo men love small, thorny women,” Chewie explains, as if that were at all a normal thing to say. “You better believe Han knew exactly what would happen when he invited you over for dinner.”
Rey can’t decide if she’s horrified or fascinated. “I’m nothing like his wife.”
“You might not have the polish, but you certainly have the snap and verve. Leia shoved Han into a trash can the first time they met and that was that; the man was a goner.”
Reluctantly she acknowledges that it might be time to find a new job. She’s gotten too comfortable here, too close to other people; if she stays she will inevitably break rule number one. There’s no future with this family, she knows. People like her are safest solitary, and she’s spent too many years licking her own wounds to offer herself up to the knife that would be Ben Solo.
“So you’re saying that if I want him to leave me alone I need to be nice?” she asks skeptically, squishing her sandwich flat between her fingers.
Chewie considers her for a long moment, and she averts her gaze the moment she catches a hint of sympathy in his eyes. “If he’s bothering you,” he says, tone more serious than moments before, “tell him. He’ll listen.”
And yet she doesn’t, the next time Ben arrives. At the sound of his voice she slides beneath the car she is working on for no other reason than avoidance, scowling up at the undercarriage at her own idiocy. She should just say the words, scream them, text them, something, but here she is with her hands empty and her tongue unwilling to move and her ears caught by a voice she wants to bask in like a cat basks in sunlight.
“Hi, Rey.”
Her “Hi” is closer to a grunt.
“There’s meatloaf in the fridge, if you’re interested.”
Her body doesn’t give a fuck about the rules. Her stomach wants to be filled and her skin wants to be stroked and her limbs want to curl around him like creeping vines, and only her mind is tethering her to some semblance of sanity. “Thanks.”
She makes no effort to move until he walks away, calling a general farewell as he goes.
When she does roll back into the open, it’s with an irrepressible blush and a hard get your act together pinch to her thigh.
- - -
- - -
- - -
Her body rebels against her in a myriad of ways- the prickle of her skin when she smells his cologne, the instinctual desire to sway closer whenever he’s near, the way the wanting she attempts to deny almost seems to ache- and she reacts in the exact same way she has for years: strict, unyielding, self-control. If she can’t lock down her emotions she can ruthlessly work herself to exhaustion; if she can’t stop her awareness of him she can portion out her meals like she’s rationing for some war effort.
It’s punishment, plain and simple. Rey knows that to her bones- knows, too, that one reason she had run was to stop treating her own body like the enemy- but the habit is ingrained and easy to slip back into. It’s comforting, in a terrible way.
She is blindsided when the push and pull of rebellion and punishment meld into betrayal: the gradual ache of her head, the fatigue, the chills that hit as she’s patching a tire. The bay is too warm to excuse the chattering of her teeth and the way her body shivers; she sets aside the tools she is using and tries her best to breathe through it.
Chewie notices before she can say a word, hauling her up from the ground with a hand clenched in her coverall like a mother cat gathering up a kitten. She’s dropped gently enough into a breakroom chair, looking up at his concerned, bearded face with feverish eyes. “Flu’s bad this year,” he says. “Anyone we can call?”
Rey laughs, the sound cracked and broken and brief, and he shakes his head. “You’re a real pineapple, Niima,” he says fondly, and shit. She’s crying. Hard. And he’s handing her a paper towel without fuss, pulling out his phone and tapping away at the screen in that one-fingered way he has that drives her mad. “Keep your ass in that chair until Ben gets here; he’ll drive you home.”
“He’s working.”
“Rey.” He looks to be forcing a smile. “It’s Saturday.”
“Oh.” She blows her nose on the paper towel, closing red-rimmed eyes- and then opens them what feels like immediately, but Chewie is gone and the clock has jumped ahead and Ben is kneeling between her sprawled legs. Rather than cry for a second time she admits, “Apples make my mouth itch.”
“No apples,” he says seriously, and his hands curving firmly around her knees bring to light that she is still shivering. “I’m glad I never made you a pie.”
“Would have eaten it anyway.” The only warmth she feels is what emanates from his hands. “Was sometimes sent to school with them. Apples.”
“Your parents forgot?”
“Weren’t my parents.” Rule three doesn’t seem to matter that much as he stands, bringing her with him. “It’s just an itch.”
“Rey.” He seems on the verge of saying something more, a furrow between his brow, but she never gives him a chance. Pressing one grease-stained finger to his lips- they are plush; her reluctant wonderings had been correct- she turns away, intent on finding her coat.
Being swept up into his arms is a dizzying surprise. The press of those same lips against her forehead is another.
Dropping her head to his shoulder, she decides she might as well enjoy the ride.
- - -
He doesn’t like her apartment, that much is obvious. Ben mutters words she can’t quite hear as he tucks her into bed- a mattress on the floor, but still quite the step up from her camping cot- as he gives her a dose of medicine to lower her fever, as he inspects the contents of her kitchen. She’d be affronted if she weren’t so damn tired.
“What the hell is he paying you?” Ben grumbles, kneeling beside her bed and draping another blanket over her. “I’m going to kick him.”
“Chandrila is expensive.” And every spare cent tucked away would be useful when her circumstances inevitably went awry.
She’s never seen Ben snarl, before. She’s tempted to unwind herself from her nest and trace the line of his jaw, if only to see if it feels as tense as it looks. “This is a glorified closet,” he says tightly.
“Hardly a closet.” If only she could stop shivering. “Why are you here?”
Ben gives her a fixed, intense look, draping his coat over her pile of blankets. “I assume you remember the car ride over.”
“Don’t be an ass.” She had aimed for a snap, but what comes out instead are words perilously on the verge of grumpy tears. “You could have dropped me off at the curb.”
He is still for a moment, and then shifts to sit on the floor, leaning in. “Hard to believe anyone could be kind, sweetheart?” Ben asks quietly, cupping her cheek in one large palm. His fingertips slip into her hair.
“What would you know about that?” she asks in the iciest tone she can muster.
“My family had its share of problems when I was a kid. We’re on better terms now, but…”
She can see it in his eyes, those shadows of old hurts- or perhaps her rising fever has her maudlin and vulnerable. All of the above, probably. “But,” he continues, drawing his hand away (and she hates the urge to chase after his touch, up to and including crawling into his lap), “we understand each other better now that I’m an adult.”
“Or you’ve learned to hide.”
One corner of his mouth twitches up with little humor, but somehow his gaze is… fond. “You know all about hiding, don’t you?”
She had finally learned to hide- to be quiet and wary, to hold her tongue and keep to the corners. Her childish need for attention had been excised bit by bit until she was (is) nothing more than a ghost. Rare moments of teenage defiance had been well-chosen and in defense of what few possessions she held dearest: her books, the little doll she had brought with her into fosterage. The books have broken spines and the doll is tattered, but they are all in her apartment.
He’s figured her out too well, this man beside her, and she can’t even come close to understanding why he bothers.
She’s just Rey. Friendless, graceless, thorny Rey, always hungry and always wanting. She’d never take a chance on herself, in his place.
“I’m going to buy some groceries,” he says as she thinks, mind a muddled whirl. Ben looks around, frowning. “I have a guest room.”
Her laugh is raspy and a little wild, and he looks amusedly resigned at her wordless rejection. “But you won’t be budged.” His fingertips sweep lightly over her cheek. “I’ll be back.”
Strangely, she actually believes he will return- and since he’s stolen her keys, she won’t even have to get up to let him in.
Shivering under her blankets (and his coat, he’d left his coat, and she pulls it up to nuzzle into a collar that smells like him), she waits, slipping into a troubled sleep.