Chapter Text
Like some drunken Elvis singing
I go singing out of tune
Saying how I always loved you darling
And I always will
“Christmas Lights” by Coldplay
**
Her husband is in a foul mood.
Ben’s hands are gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white and lips pressed together in a stern line. It’s the face he makes when he’s trying very, very hard not to swear in front of Hanna.
And Rey finds it endlessly amusing. She shifts a little in the passenger’s seat of their car, trying not to let on to her own gathering impatience with the way their drive is currently going. They’re moving at a snail’s pace, making the already irritating traffic they’re stuck in nearly unbearable to creep through.
Rey looks forlornly down at her phone. “Google Maps says we’re still forty minutes out.” She cuts her gaze over to her husband, not surprised to see Ben inhale deeply before exhaling slowly, clearly trying to keep calm.
It’s a sharp contrast to the happy humming coming from the back. Hanna sits in her car seat with Ben’s tablet resting in her lap, wide hazel eyes glued to The Little Mermaid. This is already her second viewing during this car ride alone. Rey had suggested that it might be fun to take Hanna to Callaway Gardens to see the Christmas lights, and Ben had agreed, albeit distractedly.
He’d been in his office, pouring over preliminary sketches for Knights of Ren when Rey had poked her head into the room and mentioned it. He’d said yes immediately, although in retrospect Rey suspects he would have said yes to just about anything to have an excuse to escape his work.
Neither of them had anticipated, however, just how busy Callaway Gardens would be three days before Christmas. Hanna hadn’t seemed to mind, though. She’d pointed and giggled and awed at all the lights despite the crowds, as if the lights weren’t just lights but tiny stars lit up all around her, creating scenes of magic that only come this time of year. Seeing her daughter’s face bright with wonder had brought Rey a happiness she hadn’t realized she could experience yet. And seeing the nearly dazed expression on Ben’s face as he took in both his daughter and his wife, his family, made her think he was feeling a similar sort of happiness.
But his tolerable mood has dissolved about an hour ago, when traffic had started backing up on I-285, turning their hour and a half drive to a two-and-a-half-hour drive.
And everyone is hungry.
It only takes ten minutes for Ben to finally snap. “You know what,” he growls. “Fuc—”
He cuts himself off.
“Fudging fudge this fudge.” He flips on his blinker and begins the arduous process of crossing six lanes of traffic in order to get off at the next exit. “We’re going to Waffle House.”
**
Waffle House is extremely busy. Rey can see a line of people waiting in line for seats as soon as they pull into the parking lot.
Ben sighs deeply as he pulls into an empty parking spot. “I’ll go grab us a table, if you want to get Hanna out of her seat.”
Rey nods, looking at her husband with watchful eyes as he cuts the engine and climbs out of the car, steps purposeful as he strides into the restaurant. She turns in her seat to look at her daughter. “Daddy’s being a Grinch right now, isn’t he?”
But Hanna has finally noticed the bright yellow Waffle House sign shining through her window. She gasps in delight, tiny hands losing grip on Ben’s tablet. It falls to the carpeted floor of the car with a plunk.
Hanna goes on about waffles for the next two minutes, for as long as it takes for Rey to climb out of her own seat and open the back door to reach her daughter. She’s helping the almost-four-year-old out of her restraining buckles when she pauses, thinking of a particular phone call to the doctor’s office that Hanna had accidentally overheard.
Rey taps Hanna gently on the shoulder, gathering her daughter’s attention. “Remember what we discussed last night, about Mommy’s big secret?”
Hanna’s hazel eyes widen. She nods quickly, her chocolate waves bouncing about her shoulders. “Daddy can’t know.” She straightens a little in her car seat, looking very serious. She takes a deep breath. “It’s-It’s his Christmas surprise.”
Rey smiles and presses her finger to the tip of her little girl’s nose. “That’s right. So we don’t want to ruin it by spilling the beans over dinner, do we?”
Hanna rapidly shakes her head, looking as if she feels Very Grown Up by being tasked with something so important.
Rey helps her out of the car and into the chilly air of the parking lot. “Good girl.”
Hanna takes her hand and suddenly a very Leia-like expression crosses over her face. “Mommy, can I have chocolate chips on my waffle ‘cause I’m good?”
Rey blinks, mind going over how late it already is and how much sugar is sure to be in a chocolate chip waffle. “Hanna—”
“And peanut butter?” Her daughter is gazing up at her with Rey’s very own eyes and it isn’t fair how easily they make her melt.
She sighs, unable to repress the way her mouth curves upward. “Sure.”
**
Ben is at a table with a cup of coffee in hand by the time Rey and Hanna make their way inside the restaurant. He gives them a small smile when they slide into the seat across from him and pushes his phone over to the side of the table.
“Work?” Rey raises a questioning eyebrow as she helps Hanna out of her jacket, the little girl humming ‘Part of Your World’ under her breath.
Ben nods, sipping from his mug before slowly setting it down. There are bags underneath his brown eyes; he’s exhausted, and Rey hates that he’s pushing himself so hard this close to Christmas.
“I just got an email from my editor and…” Ben frowns and shakes his head once, obviously not pleased with whatever his editor had to say. Ben has spent the past several months going over how he wants the next arc of the comic to go, wanting to tell a certain kind of story but also not wanting to alienate or disappoint any fans.
Rey reaches across the table and brushes her fingertips along his knuckles, giving him a small but reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about that right now. Let’s just get something to eat.”
As if on cue, their waitress, a perky blonde wearing a Santa hat with a nametag reading ‘Sunni’, appears by their table with a pen and notepad in hand.
Ben’s eyebrows disappear into his hair when Rey orders a chocolate chip and peanut butter waffle for their not-quite-four-year-old at nearly nine-o’clock at night, but he doesn’t protest. He proceeds to order two waffles with a side of hash browns, and then everyone turns and looks at Rey expectantly.
“I’ll do an All-Star,” she says, not needing to look at the menu. “Waffle dark, grits, eggs scrambled with cheese, raisin toast, and bacon. Can you make that a double order of bacon? Oh, and can you also put chocolate and peanut butter chips on my waffle as well?”
Sunni the waitress nods and smiles, repeating their order back to them to make sure it’s correct before turning toward the elf-hat-wearing line cook. “Cas, I need an All-Star special with…”
Ben is staring at his wife, eyes round with surprise. He wraps his large hand around his coffee mug and offers her a small smirk. “Hungry, huh?”
Hanna lets out a stream of giggles. “Mommy’s real hungry.”
Rey shrugs and surreptitiously nudges her daughter with her knee, already knowing that it will accomplish nothing. The little girl grins and happily entertains herself by trying to sneak a sip of Ben’s coffee.
When Ben finally lets her, she gags and proceeds to dramatically exclaim about how much she doesn’t like it. “That’s gross, daddy. Ewwww.”
“Then quit trying to steal it,” Ben admonishes, but his tone is soft and amused. His gaze swivels over and meets Rey’s and he tilts the corners of his mouth for her, taking his coffee back from his daughter and shooting Rey a wink from across the table.
Hanna’s squeal of delight moments later when her heavenly sugar bomb of a waffle is placed in front of her gentles the rest of Ben’s face. It fills Rey’s chest with an emotion that feels light but manages to take up the entirety of her chest.
They dig into their meal as a family.
**
Despite devouring the majority of her waffle, Hanna manages to fall asleep about ten minutes into the ride home. Rey nudges up the volume to the melancholic Christmas music that’s flowing through the car stereo, hoping to dull out the sound of the conversation she’s hoping she and Ben are about to have.
The streetlights illuminate her husband long enough to show him flicking glances in Rey’s direction every so often.
“What’s wrong?” she asks softly, turning her head and shifting her body so that she’s facing him as much as she can be.
Ben gives a brief jerk of his head and Rey has to resist the sharp urge to roll her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she repeats, this time her tone a little more forceful. “You’ve been…off these last few weeks. Don’t think Hanna and I haven’t noticed.”
He’s shaking his head again. “Honestly, Rey, please don’t worry about it. You have so much else going on right now, what with my freaking mother insisting on having our Christmas Eve gathering at our house this year, and doing all the shopping and gift planning for everyone because I’ve been so fucking consumed with…” Ben trails off, clearly frustrated and unable to quite spit out the words that are churning around so thunderously in his head.
So Rey does it for him. “Because you’ve been so consumed with your comic,” she says quietly.
Ben nods, presses his lips together in that way of his. “I want to end it.” His head whips toward her quickly, as if gauging if there’s shock on Rey’s face. “I want to end the comic. Well, no. I need to end it because it just feels—it just feels—”
Rey knows what he’s going to say next. She knows the same feeling he’s about to express. She gets it too, when she’s painting or sketching. It always comes to her in a rush. She’s able to step away from her work after putting in the last finishing touches, the straggling details, and view her work as a fully realized concept that her mind has birthed out into a physical entity. An idea she can finally share with others.
“—done. It feels done.”
Neither of them says anything for a moment. Which is alright, it gives Rey a few extra seconds to decide with confidence what she’s about to say next. She turns to Ben with a growing smile, but he must miss it in the low light because he plunges forward.
“And I know that I should keep going. I know there’s definitely other things to explore in the Knights of Ren universe, not to even mention how much it contributes to our income—”
“If it’s done then it’s done.” Rey happily interrupts her husband, basking a little in the shocked silence that descends between them afterward.
“What?”
“Ben, if your comic feels done to you, then it’s done. You’ve told the story you wanted to tell, and now it’s time to move on. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But—”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” They’re pulling into their neighborhood now, music softly playing in the background. Ben remains thoughtfully quiet as they turn onto their street and finally into their driveway.
Rey is unbuckling her seatbelt when another thought occurs to her. “Besides, this means you’ll have more time to concentrate on new beginnings.”
**
Ben removes Hanna from their car as surreptitiously as possible, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. Hanna stays passed out all the way into the house and into her bedroom, head lulling against Ben’s shoulder as he carries her to bed. Rey follows behind them, carefully pulling off Hanna’s shoes and jacket in a way that won’t disturb her.
She doesn’t wake up even when Rey delicately pulls her Moana nightgown over her shoulders.
“I’m amazed she can sleep like this,” Rey whispers, voice still loud enough to carry over to her husband. “She’s definitely your child.”
She expects some kind of reaction from Ben, a light laugh or even a huff, from where he’s placing the outfit Hanna wore all day into her laundry hamper. But when Rey turns to look at him, Ben’s mouth is back in that firm line. And she knows without having to ask that he’s mulling over the Knights of Ren again, anxious mind zeroing in on what’s causing him the most amount of stress.
It’s not how her husband should be spending Christmastime with his family. He should be excited. They would see all their friends in just two nights, would get to give Hanna the massive Lego Batman Cave that the little girl had seen at Target two months ago and had had a complete meltdown over. This is supposed to be a holiday about joy, both giving and receiving it.
And in his current state Ben Solo seems incapable of doing either.
Rey makes a snap decision. She has other gifts planned for Ben on Christmas morning; getting this one early shouldn’t put a damper on anything. In fact, Rey hopes that this will help improve his mood.
“Hanna wrote out her list for Santa this morning,” Rey mentions nonchalantly. She tucks the covers in around her daughter before standing up and tip toeing over to the child sized desk beside the closet. There are crayons and markers and bits of paper spread out all over the desk and surrounding floor. “We thought it might be something fun to do…” She trails off with a frown when Ben slowly walks out of Hanna’s room and across the hallway to his office, as if he hadn’t heard a word of what Rey had just said.
She follows him, softly closing the door to Hanna’s bedroom behind her. Ben is already sitting at his work desk when she walks into his office, already opening his laptop and pulling out one of his drawing tablets.
Rey props her hip against the doorframe. “Did you hear me?”
His head jerks up in surprise. “Hmm? Sorry, kid, I’m just—”
“Distracted?”
He flushes and nods, leaning back in his chair and running his fingers through his hair. He makes a grand attempt at giving her a strained smile, but fails. “What were you wanting to tell me?”
Rey holds up the yellow piece of construction paper. “Hanna made her list for Santa today.” She steps forward and insists on handing it to him. “You should read it.”
Ben blinks at her before making the decision to humor his wife. He takes it, looks down at the paper now clutched in his hand. “The glitter and Batman stickers are a nice touch.” He clears his throat. “Dear Santa, I want snacks.” At this he pauses.
“We hadn’t had lunch yet,” Rey explains.
His mouth is finally quirking. “Right. I want snacks, Legos, and…” He squints, clearly trying to decipher his daughter’s attempt at the English language scrawled across the page. Rey already knows what it says.
A brother in mommy’s tummy.
Her husband stares, mouth opening and closing in disbelief several times.
When Ben looks up at her, it’s the emotion in his eyes that makes Rey’s chest clench.
“You’re pregnant?” he asks, voice so small and so earnest and so hesitant, as if he desperately needs her confirmation before he can assume, before he can allow himself to be amazed.
Rey starts nodding vigorously, words not able to come out of her mouth fast enough. Shit, she’s already crying and—
Ben is up out of his office chair and crowding Rey’s space in the blink of an eye. He cups her face between his big palms, peppers kisses across her cheeks and her brows and her nose.
Rey wonders at how some of the happiest moments of her life have happened in such unassuming places. In a kitchen-office by an old stereo, outside of a gift shop in the rain, in a courthouse.
In a darkened hallway with maple syrup still sticky on her Christmas sweater.
She wraps her arms around Ben’s shoulders, grinning into his mouth as he kisses her hurriedly and sloppily, too excited to fully decide what he wants to do with her just yet. He settles with pressing his forehead against her own, peering down at Rey with—
And there it is, in his gaze. Joy. The joy he’s been missing all season, leaking out of his smile and his eyes and in the way he holds Rey with such tenderness. All consuming joy.
“I was going to tell you Christmas morning,” Rey whispers into the now sacred space between them, “but I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“I’m glad you couldn’t.” Ben’s grin is a lovely and precious thing, all for her. All for Rey and their little family. He pulls her closer into his embrace, if that’s even possible, mouth trailing along her jaw until it settles near her ear. “I love you.”
Rey hums, says I love you too right back. Her fingers are playing with the soft hair at the nape of Ben’s neck when he pauses in kissing at the skin below her ear. He pulls back, but only enough so that he can look her in the eye again. “Fuck, what if it is a boy?”
Rey shrugs one shoulder. “What if it’s twins? You know they skip generations.”
She does not miss the sheer panic that crosses Ben’s face. “That’s a myth.” He’s trying to sound lighthearted, but Rey can almost hear the wheels turning in his head. The what ifs.
Somehow, Rey thinks she’s just spoken something into existence.
**
Not twenty minutes later Rey is sprawled in bed next to Ben, chest heaving. She’s still wearing her syrup stained Christmas sweater. Ben had been too insistent on having her as quickly as possible that neither of them had bothered with stripping it off.
Ben rolls onto his side and slides a solid arm across her middle, pulling her close. He nuzzles into her hair. “I was thinking. If we do have twins, hypothetically, and they’re boys, hypothetically, Merry and Pippin would make great—”
“Absolutely not.”