Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He knows he shouldn’t be here. Somehow, it will get back to Luke. Everyone talks in this shitty small minded town.

But he’s tired of pretending he still cares about “the mission,” “the will of God” or even his own soul. Tired of pretending he wants to follow in his uncle’s gaudy leather shoes.

He keeps his shaggy head bent, mumbles his order of PBR to the waitress without looking beyond the swish of butter yellow fabric as she approaches the booth.

“Make it a bucket,” he tacks on impulsively.

If he’s going to rebel, toeing the line just seems silly. Might as well smash right though.

“Ben? What are you doing here?” A tremulous voice asks.

The same one that’s stranded him in a sea of shame for weeks.

His wide shoulders hunch protectively toward his ears to block their blushing from her view. Yet he can’t defend against the expression of shock that bursts in his brown eyes.

“Rey,” he finally croaks. “What are YOU doing here? 17 year olds can’t serve alcohol!”

“Well, um, no…” She twists the hem of her dress around her finger, revealing a tan line that makes him wish he’d ordered liquor.

He came here to erase her and damn it if the little Jezebel still won.

“I’m, um, I’m not really 17…” she confesses in a breathless tone that stirs feelings he’ll definitely need forgiveness for.

“What?!” He demands, unfortunately loud enough to alert a few busybodies at the bar.

When he sees them staring, he rockets up and toward the door, dragging Rey behind him.

“Hey! Let go!” She yelps, tugging to free her wrist where his long fingers have it cuffed.

“Not until you explain!” His scalp prickles with guilt for scaring her, but he doesn’t stop walking until they’re outside, his boots grinding impatiently on the gravel lot.

When he turns, his anger melts into remorse like a snowball in hell - instantly, and leaving behind a puddle to clean. Except the puddle is on Rey’s cherubic freckled cheeks, and before he realizes, he’s grazing her tears, fighting the bizarre urge to taste his fingertip like salt on a shooter rim.

“What did you mean, you’re not really 17?” he rumbles gently as she stills from his tender touch.

Her damp lashes lay over her guilty eyes, but it only makes them look irresistibly sultry. Ben’s gut screws unfairly tight with yearning.

“I lied to fit the age requirement,” she whispers. From inside the bar, strands of steel guitar filter into the air, coloring the moment surreal. “I’m 20, 21 next month.”

In a blink, her hazel irises go from half lidded to round and pleading. “Please don’t kick me out of Youth Group! I just…I really like coming, ok?”

Ben’s brows convene like storm clouds above his quaking facial planes. This entire time, he thought his faith was being tested and it turns out his attraction to her - while definitely not going to earn him Youth Pastor of the Year - was at least not sending him to hell. Or a jail cell.

With a ferocity Solomon would sing about he yanks her closer, big hands spreading over her spine. She tenses but a moment before soft submission pulls a groan from his chest.

His chin dips and hovers diagonal to hers, their lips a whisper apart.“If you don’t want me to kiss you, tell me right now.”

The longest five seconds of his life crawls by and then everything inside him is blooming to spring, despite the crisp October air.

Her lips are tender, ripe under his and sweet with vanilla chapstick. She sags against him, his little liar, and he chases her tongue until both are short of breath.

“Wow,” she croons, awestruck, when he reluctantly retreats. “I didn’t think you liked me.”

The passion of seizing his moment has faded, leaving him with full body chills and a stomach churning in disbelief at his own boldness.

He shakes his head ruefully as he spits the words. “What I don’t like is losing my damn sanity every time you sit in the front pew and look at me like I’m some kind of savior. I’m not.”

The pure faith he sees shining back up at him nearly makes his knees fold. Bathed in a halo of purple streetlight, she’s all the proof of divinity he needs.

“You’re wrong,” she insists with silken certainty. “Coming to Youth Group, listening to you - it saves me every single week.”

He cups her face like a chalice, drinking in the bittersweet offering of hope she’s holding. Hope that maybe his soul’s gnarled branches can bear more fruit than just a bushel of mistakes. Hope that someone can connect, can see how much he tries.

“I better get back inside before my boss sees I’m gone,” she sighs, craning her neck to look at the bar entry way.

“Yeah. Guess you should,” he concedes, submerging his hands into his pockets. “But Rey? I’ll see you next Wednesday night?”

Her smile could convert Lucifer himself. “I’ll be there”

Ben watches her disappear back into the bar, too mesmerized by her bouncy steps to look away. He doesn’t feel so guilty anymore though.

He tosses a sheepish grin at the smoke blue sky and a non- repentant shrug. “It can’t really be a sin to lust after someone if they’re your future wife, can it?”

Chapter Text

It was meant as a punishment.

“You can look but NOT touch,” Rey grumbled. “I’m still mad at you.”

When he inevitably found a loophole, it became a race.

Competitive even here, her greedy fingers dove to deny his being the first to finish, leave him aching with want, as he rightfully deserved.

Unfortunately, he knew of nothing in the world quite so sexy as her wrath.

Chapter Text

“Not today, little Omega,” her ardent pursuer rumbles, bestial and low.

As her head snaps back in a flashbulb of frisson, his girthy thumb nudges apart the pink seam of her slit. Lips kiss grass, slick mingling with morning dew.

She wasn’t fast enough it seems. But getting caught is half the fun.

Chapter Text

Free. The word meant next to nothing to Rey.

After all, what had been free in the span of her 14 years toiling under the Jakku sun? Not food, not shelter, certainly not peace. All that carried the exacting price of baked leathery skin, blisters the size of tuanulberry and sweat so profuse it was a tragedy to waste the water.

To Kylo, too, it was nothing but an empty promise. He had carved up parts of himself like choice offerings to the darkness, hoping to gain this elusive liberation. First his trust, then his morals, his family name and finally his family itself. All of it an illusion. The chains that shackled him now were thicker than even at the start, locked to the insatiable need for more. More power, more destruction, more territory. Releasing himself from the tyranny of Snoke had been just another dead end, giving way to that of responsibility so crushing he could swear his bones snapped under the weight of it.

Thus, when the force visions of a planet with cool blue waters first unfurled themselves in their bonded minds, they were dismissed in equal turn.

She, rationalizing to just another manifestation of old coping skills resurfacing like rusted metal under shifting sand. He, a weakness, an escapist fantasy of a child too feckless to rule as his destiny demanded.

But that word, “freedom,” kept echoing through the bond, bouncing between them until its shape had grown too large to ignore.

“Meet me there,” he entreated, in a way he promised himself he never would again.

“I can’t.” She said simply, her nimble fingers deconstructing and reconstructing her saber just to have something to focus on that wasn’t his pleading ochre eyes.

“You can.” A rebuttal that had been too long practiced to be denied. “Don’t you want to feel it, just once?”

It was far more tempting an offer than ultimate rule had been.

So when the hatch hissed open and she stepped onto the soft lavender grass below, she could still blame curiosity.

But later, lying naked under him on that same patch of pastel vegetation covered only by his thick black cloak, she couldn’t lie to herself any longer.

Her body understood it before her mind: Fate was clutching them both in its far reaching hand, firm and unyielding.

True freedom, then, could only come from surrender; from accepting the ordainment of belonging not wholly to themselves, but to each other, and the will of the force that would always rebound them together no matter how far they ran in opposite directions.

Chapter Text

Rose’s pearly pink lips bent in an uncharacteristic frown. “Are you doubting my intel? You know I’m never wrong about office gossip.”

Rey’s eyes briefly flitted away from the spreadsheet she was locked in battle with, trying not to let her work bestie’s latest briefing burrow itself too deeply in her brain. That would only lead to hope, and who could afford hope when disappointment was always on a two-for-one special at the karmic superstore?

“I’m not doubting you , Rosie. I doubt your source. Hux is nothing but a troll in a three piece suit.” She countered, while trying to format her pivot table to keep her mind from wandering to Ben Solo’s stupidly perfect mouth. The mouth that always scrunched like it was sucking on a lemon whenever she was around.

Rey really wasn’t trying to diminish her. Rose had a true talent for digging up dirt and feeding it back into the office ecosystem like an —admittedly adorable—earthworm.

She somehow always knew when petty power squabbles were about to erupt, the inevitable quakes in an ever-shifting ground of white collar work politics. This had saved Rey more than once from committing the faux pas so common among first generation professionals. She’d had no template growing up for decoding the cryptic jargon and subtle alchemy of office rapport, so when Rose took her under her wing her first year at Galactic, it was like being granted a fairy godmother of social norms.

But last week she started spouting some nonsense about Ben Solo, Operations Manager, AKA the most enraging vessel of raw masculine sex appeal Rey had ever had the pleasurable misfortune of meeting. Nonsense was the only way to interpret the ridiculous heresay that he fancied her. The only crushing he was doing where Rey was involved was crushing her spirit, she was absolutely sure of it.

But Rose maintained that she was on her way to give a status update to Armitage Hux - the one person Ben bothered to spare more than a tight lipped “Morning” for as he passed them in the hall - when she overheard Ben telling Hux that Rey had a cute smile.

She knew this was absolute rubbish, because the word “cute” was surely not even in Ben Solo’s vocabulary, and she never smiled in his presence if she could help it. Sometimes she smiled after he left, if he was having his semi annual bad hair day, or if she had managed to land a particularly witty comeback by some miracle of the caffeine gods.

But directly at him? She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking she felt anything but prickles when he was around - even when sometimes those prickles settled themselves solidly in places that were NSFW. So clearly, Rose had misunderstood.

Rose, undeterred by her skepticism, continued fishing the scummy pond of Hux’s mind until he took the bait. He supposedly revealed that Ben spoke quite highly of Rey when it was just the two of them. Just a red herring, if you asked Rey. Probably a private joke at her expense.

Rose fiddled with the gold pendant that was a fixture around her neck. “He’s not a troll,” she protested in a tone too rushed. “And he’s the only person who Ben talks to around here. If anyone would know what goes on in that pretentious skull of his, it would be Army.”

Rey finally gave her friend her full attention. “Army?” She questioned archly.

“Armitage,” she amended, fingering her necklace again.

Rey snorted. “Maybe you should focus on your own love life, girl. If you’re on a nickname basis with the guy who put a Venmo QR code on his bottle of coffee creamer so we could pay him back for using it, you’re harder up for a date than I thought.”

Before Rose had time to scowl, the undefeated all-time-scowling-champion of Galaxy Technologies appeared as if to mock Rey’s attempts to block him from her thoughts.

“How did he always know?” she silently sulked as Ben somehow both glided and stomped down the maze of cubicles to stop in front of her little corner of capitalist hell.

A fitting description now that he was dominating the space, since he was probably best mates with the Devil himself - between his sinfully decadent voice and his unwavering dedication to finding new ways to punish her for existing.

“Ms. Niima,” he intoned, looking down his regal nose at her. (This, she could admit, was probably not strictly intentional - at 6’3, looking down at others was not just a factor of his silver-spoon upbringing but also simply a fact of life.)

She sucked in a breath that had her post-lunchtime food baby retreating to the safety of her ribcage.

He would insist on eye contact - “ It’s about respect, Ms. Niima.” She would, as usual, rebel in any manner possible that gave her plausible deniability.

“Yes, what can I do for you?” Rey asked in what she hoped was a level tone. She could practically feel Rose straining to eavesdrop for evidence to analyze later like a chronically online true crime enthusiast.

He tapped the toe of his designer shoe against the faux hardwoods of her department floor. When she still didn’t look at him directly, his almost comically oversized hand darted out to swivel her chair until they faced one another, making her yelp indignantly.

“What’s your problem, Sir ?” Rey threw up her arms, frustrated that he could so easily get a reaction from her. Even more frustrated that he looked so good doing it.

He smirked as though she had said the last part out loud, infuriatingly luxuriating in his own superiority.

“My problem is you told me that spreadsheet would be in my inbox by 1:30pm. It is now—“ he tilted his wrist to glance at his watch that she was sure cost more than her busted up car even when she bought it twelve years ago.

“1:34pm.” He finished, and she could hear the accusation rumbling under his tongue.

Rey sighed, long suffering. He wasn’t even technically her boss - only a dotted line separated them on the org chart, but it may as well have been chiseled in stone for all the grief he gave her.

“I’m just finishing up now. You’ll have it by two at the latest.” She crossed her arms, putting an unspoken period at the end.

Ben slid his fingers through his onyx hair and she tamped down the urge to inhale deeper, to sniff at the traces of his spicy shampoo released by the tousling.

“I think it’s long past due that we had a one-on-one to discuss how you can properly satisfy my objectives, Ms. Niima. I’ll send you a calendar invite. Don’t try and pretend you didn’t receive it this time, either. I have read receipts on.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, just strode back toward the elevators, buzzing with big dick energy.

Meaning, like the undeniably massive dick that he was.

Of course she had never wondered if he was anatomically proportional in a way that would make an atheist believe in intelligent design. That would be…“unprofessional.” A cardinal sin in the gospel according to Ben Solo.

Rose, who had taken cover on the other side of the cube wall when Rey was receiving her tongue lashing - argh, seriously, cut it out with the double entendres already ! - popped her fashionably cut chin length bob above the dividing line once more.

“Bet you twenty bucks that one-on-one is secretly a date.” She teases with a grin.

“You read too many romance novels,” Rey mutters, returning to her spreadsheet in lieu of pelting her friend with her arsenal of fidget toys.

Ten minutes later, as she’s composing the email to Solo with the offending project in question, relieved to be done with yet another of his entitled demands, she sees the Outlook notification appear.

“Monday, February 23rd at 1:00pm. One-on-one to discuss expectations and business relations.”

What’s in the location box makes her hazel eyes halt their beleaguered crawl across the screen.

It’s the address for the Thai restaurant down the street that serves her favorite pad see ew - the one she only goes to every other payday for her monthly restaurant splurge. He’s written a note in the comments box - “To be expensed.”

Rey supposes if she has to spend time listening to Ben lecture her about Galaxy Tech core values in his summer thunderstorm of a voice, while trying not to stare at the roguish muscle that twitches in his jaw just below his artfully placed beauty mark, she may as well get in a free helping of spring rolls while doing it.

Now to find a way to keep it from getting back to Rose…

Chapter Text

The harsh glare of florescent lights assaulted her eyes as she struggled not to squirm. The backs of her knees stuck to the stiff vinyl, clammy and itchy.

He would be here soon.

A flash of white at her side and the thrumming of her heart in her ears announced his arrival.

“Good morning, Rey.”

“Good morning, Dr. Solo,” she mumbled thickly, soothed slightly by the scent of fresh mint wafting from his body.

“Now, we’re going to put in two fillings today. Is your mouth feeling good and numb?” His tone was all kindly kindergarten teacher. It was…nice. Calming and solid, like him.

“Uh-huh.”

“Great. Just relax and open wide for me. There’s a good girl.”

A clenching in her core she hoped he couldn’t detect.

His big hands made the dental instruments look like game pieces from Operation. Carefully he inserted them into the cave of her mouth and began his work with delicate precision.

All during, she attuned only to the man beside her. Imagined his hands in her mouth for other reasons, to slurp and swirl and taste. Imagined lying prone this way but beneath him, that soothing praise purring in her ear. “You feel incredible, pretty girl. So good for me.”

Chapter Text

“Let me get this straight,” Ben intoned flatly, stuffing down his anger and shame. “You’re breaking up with me because I’m too LOUD. In bed.”

“Well, yeah,” Bazine rolled her eyes, not understanding the disconnect. “It’s embarrassing. Unmanly. A real ladyboner killer.”

That was six months ago. For every woman he’s been with since - not many, but bad sex still counts as sex - he’s kept his mouth shut. Little more than a sigh or a grunt when he cums, though it’s not easy. Perhaps easier when the sex is so forgettable, but even when he jerks it, he stays quiet.

But now, the most gorgeous brunette he’s ever seen, with the peachiest, most perfectly shaped ass is riding his cock like a bouncy castle, moaning his name almost involuntarily in its primal urgency.

He loses it. Cums inside her in six hot spurts, each one accompanied by its own aural punctuation.

First, a loudly exclaimed, “ OH FUCK !” The next two are feral snarls, the third a grunt that transitions to a whimper. By the final eruption, it’s a prolonged moan of satisfaction. A veritable concert of ecstasy, and none of it is played for effect. He feels every full vibration of his throat as searing pleasure shaking right down to his toes.

When the adrenaline finally falls, he takes a guilty peek at her, realizing he’s shattered his guard and probably about to drive away the hottest woman he’s ever been with. Shit, his ego can’t take this. Not again, not with her. He should make an excuse, he should apologize, he should—

Rey stops his spiral with a swirl of her warm tongue against his full, flushed mouth and a teasing wiggle where they’re still intimately joined at the hips. “Damn, I don’t know what I did to make you make those sounds but I hope I get the chance to do it again.”

Wait. Did she — is she being sarcastic? The smirk on her face seems more self satisfied than mocking. “You…don’t care that I’m loud?”

Rey’s shapely dark brows contort to confusion. “Care? Ben, I almost came again just from listening to you. Your voice is that sexy.”

Fuck, this woman is perfect.

“So when do you want that second chance?” His smile grows slightly bolder as he relishes her hungry eyes.

“Right this minute, if you’re still up for the task.” Rey throws him a sultry wink.

“I am now,” he grunts out freely, thrusting his hips to plunge even deeper, until they’re crying a duet of wanton surrender.

He hopes the neighbors complain.

Chapter Text

Slurp.

She couldn’t take it anymore.

Lick.

She was losing her goddamn mind.

A long, slow French kiss followed by the smack of wet lips.

Her throat was raw from screaming.

“ Ben!” She begged as the unrelenting waves dragged her into their overwhelming grasp once again. There was death below, a collision of want and surrender more intense than any Rey had ever known. Even including the three which had come before it.

When her cries finally subsided, with lips glistening and eyes pleasure glazed, he granted her mercy.

Tendrils of night-dark hair twisted over his forehead like a male Medusa; so expertly had he made her muscles rigid with ecstasy using only his slithering tongue. Disheveled as he was, he was devastatingly beautiful - nearly impossible to look at without turning again to molten stone.

“I know that was a lot, sweetheart, but you took it so well. I just can’t get enough of this delicious cunt.”

Her only response was a breathless groan, pulling him up for a tangy kiss. When they parted, he rolled to his side and tipped back the last of the jammy red from its fluted vessel.

“I can’t decide if your pussy pairs better with Pinot noir or Malbec,” he mused aloud, before sliding back down between her slick soaked thighs. “I guess I’ll just have to keep refilling my glass until we figure it out.”

Chapter Text

Like a whisper in the velvet night, he comes to her. Dreams are the bridge beneath their feet, stars ferrying messages from the in-between. Ben is a word only she now knows the shape of. Her desperate lips form it in the dark, like a hand reaching for a talisman to ward off evil.

Rey clutches herself tightly in her bunk, as if pieces of herself may go whirling into space if she lets go. First, her arms would detach, driven by the reckless need to be reunited with his. Then, her legs, racing to catch up: “Wait, wait, don’t leave me behind!” And finally her head, liberated from her heavy shoulders, streaking past galaxies and black holes, only able to rest once her eyes again meet his.

All that would remain is a bloodless torso, an empty heart and breathless lungs.

Without him, she is fragmented. Without him, she is as lost as he.