Chapter Text
“Ben will go with you!”
On the other side of the kitchen counter, her face lighting up like she’d swallowed a star, Kaydel Solo beams at Rey.
She squeezes her brother’s bicep, which is busy trying to whisk a bowl of lemon loaf batter into shape, prompting a searing gaze down the line of his strong nose.
“Oh, won’t you, Benny?”
Kaydel squeezes him harder, Rey can see her friend’s delicate fingers flex around his muscle, and she —
She shouldn’t.
It’s wrong.
It’s her best friend’s brother.
But under the counter, Rey presses her thighs together with firm, aching pressure.
Just… Just watching someone else get to touch him… His arm is so wide, Kaydel’s fingers don’t quite meet around its circumference, under the cuff of his t-shirt sleeve.
Rey lets out a small, wobbly breath, luckily masked by Ben’s own low, hesitant groan.
It doesn’t help Rey’s case.
She can feel it. She’s already wet.
Just being near him, it’s enough to set her off.
Like this, in his apartment. In his space, so domestic. He’s baking a lemon loaf, for fuck’s sake. And Rey is dripping like the beads of batter down the spines of his whisk.
Pathetic.
Near him, she feels like a daisy of a girl. Doe-eyed, blooming, fawning and pathetic.
Kaydel prances around the counter, coming to stand behind Rey. Her slender arms wrap around Rey’s middle, Kaydel’s chin on the top of Rey’s head.
“Come on, Benny.”
Rey can hear Kaydel’s pout.
A hand pinches Rey’s cheeks, forcing her lips into a pout.
“Won’t you help my cool, athletic, stunning, coordinated, small and defenseless best friend?”
Rey’s heart is pounding too hard in her chest to register than Kaydel’s string of compliments and one playful jab.
Because Ben Solo’s eyes are assessing Rey in a slow, temple-to-navel scroll. As much of Rey as he can see, where she’s perched on a stool by his kitchen counter.
“Won’t you go running with her now that I’m leaving? Keep her safe in the woods from all those big, scary men?”
He is the blueprint, Rey thinks, of big, scary men.
Exactly the kind of man Rey would pass in the forest trails and be glad Kaydel was always with her. Grateful that they’d only run out there as a team, so they could listen to their music, zone out, just run and be free. Keep eyes on each other the whole time, not have to worry about being alone and vulnerable. Safer, with each others’ supervision and company.
But Kaydel is moving away. Leaving town for a big corporate job in the city. Leaving Rey without much of a social life. And, of course, without her running buddy.
Rey had been on Kaydel’s case about it for weeks.
“I’m gonna have to get a gym membership,” she whined, stuffing her mouth full of salty popcorn on their stained sofa. “Gonna have to run inside, on stupid, mechanical, smooth treadmill inclines.”
“Poor baby,” Kaydel sighed in mock sympathy, shoving her hand into the bowl. “What are you gonna do without me?”
In Ben’s kitchen, it occurs to Rey, quickly, that Kaydel had been laying plans of her own. Of course she would. And she was putting plan into action now, her arms wrapped tight around Rey’s waist from behind. Ben Solo’s gaze pinning Rey back against her friend’s chest.
“Ben, you have to promise me,” Kaydel sighs. “Promise me you’ll take Rey to run in the woods at least twice a week. That you’ll stay close and keep her safe from all those scary men out there, okay?”
Ben drops the batter bowl and his whisk. The metal clacks loud on the marble counter.
His kitchen is so nice.
His apartment is so nice.
Everything Ben Solo owns, so nice.
But Ben Solo is not nice.
Ever since Kaydel plucked Rey out of their three hundred student Intro to Psych class their freshman year, she’d dragged Rey along to bi-monthly hangouts at her older brother’s place.
“He’s not scary,” Kaydel warned a younger Rey. “He’s just… I don’t know. Intimidating.”
Just eighteen then, in a new city, Rey had no one. No one, but her new friend, Kaydel. And maybe, Kaydel’s brother, too. If things would go well.
Things did not go well.
They didn’t go terribly. But they certainly did not go well.
Ben Solo never really spoke to Rey.
Didn’t really look at her, either.
He didn’t flat-out ignore her. He wasn’t technically rude.
But he wasn’t friendly. Didn’t speak to her much. Kept it to little things.
No, I don’t find living alone lonely.
Yes, it has been unusually rainy.
Do you prefer chocolate chip or blueberry?
The only time he said her name was in return for Rey’s thanks. Thanks for the countless homemade brunches and desserts and dinners. For the containers of food he sent Kaydel and Rey home with, always packed almost too tightly, right to the lid. For the drive back to their dorms, in the earlier years. And their shared apartment, now, of the last few years.
You’re welcome, Rey.
You’re welcome, Rey.
Rey.
Rey.
Rey.
But now, all of this would change.
Kaydel was leaving.
So Rey wouldn’t see Ben Solo anymore. After all, she was Kaydel’s friend. Not Ben’s.
Rey was a plus one. Not the main event.
At least, that is what Rey has been bracing herself for, since the moment after the shock of Kaydel’s announcement that she was leaving town — leaving their apartment — leaving Rey.
It was only a moment later that it occurred to her.
Rey wasn’t only losing her friend.
She was also losing Ben.
And Rey had a terrible, tortuous secret.
She was in love with her best friend’s brother.
With the looming height and the dark hair and the darker eyes. With the constellation of ink splatters across his harsh, beautiful face. With the hands that fed her sweet, rich things. With the voice like velvet dipped in gravel. With the eyes that made her heartbeat stutter, her throat swell, her cunt ache.
Rey was in love with Ben.
And she wasn't just losing Kaydel.
And she was losing him.
That’s what she has been preparing herself for, for these last eight weeks. Since Kaydel’s acceptance of that job in the city, Rey had been trying to tamper it down.
To try to think about anyone, anything else. Late at night, alone in her room, in the dark, when she touched herself.
But after all these years of him — only him — occupying her darkest, wettest thoughts, Rey leaned quickly.
She couldn’t come without him.
Couldn’t help her mind, no matter how hard she tried, from drifting back to his big hands, his dark eyes, those wide thighs she so badly wanted to climb.
She’d have to bite her lips, screw shut her eyes. Swallow his name on her tongue as she’d hear it, in her mind. His voice calling her good or sweet or bad or small or, fuck, just imagining her name on his lips at all could make her come so quick.
“Rey?”
In Ben’s kitchen, Kaydel’s chin on the crown of her head, Rey gasps quietly as he says her name.
Just that.
Her name.
She wiggles her shoulders under Kaydel’s arms to make space. Feels too hot, prickly, her skin a series of shivers under the intensity of Ben’s dark eyes, two knives pinning her to her seat.
“Ben?” She breathes, as Kaydel releases her waist, slinks into the seat beside her.
From the periphery of her mind and her eyes, Rey knows that Kaydel is watching this transpire, chin in her fist, waggling eyebrows.
But Rey can’t really be bothered to assess her friend’s intentions.
Because Ben Solo, who’s never lent her more than a fleeting gaze —
Ben Solo, who’s fed her for the last six years, but can hardly say her name —
Ben Solo, the sole object of Rey’s every fantasy — romantic, sexual, intangible, embodied —
That same Ben Solo just called her by her name.
That same Ben Solo is looking at Rey like her small hands hold his entire fate.
“Is this what you want?”
“Hm?”
The back of Rey’s neck is too hot. Ben’s wide palms fall flat to the counter. His eyes are careful as they move between Rey and Kaydel, back to Rey again.
“Do you want me to go running with you? In Kay’s place?”
“Um,” Rey swallows. The bridge of her nose the apples of her cheeks feeling warm. “If that’s — well, if you want to.”
Ben doesn’t blink. He arches a brow.
“That’s not what I’m asking,” he says, pushing the batter bowl and whisk to the side. On the counter, he leans closer, down on his elbows. His fingers, long and thick, as they weave. And her mouth is wet when he asks it. “Do you want me to?”
Rey tells herself she’s only doing it because she loves her forest runs.
Because she loves to feel soft, springing earth bounce gently below her lionine feet.
Because she loves the wet wind, the rotten leaves, the yellowish moss as it moves across the trees.
Because there is nowhere on this earth, no time in her life, in which she feels as weightless and infinite and free as she does, running through the woods with her favorite music.
And the security of a running buddy.
She tells herself the truth…. She’d pretty certain.
So she tells him yes.
“I do,” she breathes.
For a moment, fast and fleeting and striking itself across the inside of Rey’s skin, two dark eyes hold hers in the strangest, softest squint.
And then Ben is nodding, once, pushing up to stand straight again.
He clears his throat, loud. Collect the batter bowl again.
Rey looks quickly over her shoulder to Kaydel, who is nodding and grinning, wide and pleased.
When Rey looks back at Ben, he’s whisking again. He doesn't look back at her for the rest of the afternoon.
Later, when he drives them home together, maybe for the final time, Rey gives Ben and Kaydel a moment to say their goodbyes. Kaydel’s flight out is early in the morning, and it will be a while before they see each other again.
“Rey.”
Ben doesn’t turn to speak to her. Instead, catches her eye in the rear view mirror, just before she slides out of the back seat.
“Saturday morning.”
Rey wants to scream. Or whimper, or sing.
But she settles for a swallow. A quick nod, even though he can only see her eyes.
“Saturday,” she breathes.
She closes the door to Ben’s slick, black car with a heavy click.
Enjoys the twelve steps of drizzling rain from the curb to her front door.
Kaydel is leaving.
But Rey won’t be left with nothing.
On Saturday, even if it’s only for an hour and change in the woods, two pairs of trainers on, two pairs of AirPods in, Rey will have Ben.
In the middle of the night, after a teary, two-hour long final round of her own goodbyes with Kaydel, Rey tiptoes out to the living room.
Cuts herself a slice of Ben’s lemon cake.
It’s spongy and dense and tart and sweet.
Topped with a thick drizzle of vanilla bean glaze.
Rey scoops some of the glistening white goop on the tip of her finger. It’s sticky, a tad more wet than it should be, when she rubs it softly between her fingertip and thumb.
And when she wipes the drizzle across her tongue, she sucks it clean from her finger.
Whimpers so, so softly.
She washes her hands, hurries back to bed.
Comes on her fingers in only a minute, imagining she’d been licking up his come.