strongerthanblood | (no subject)

Someone handed Rey a flyer for the party on the street, as casual as anything, and she very nearly threw it away. Something stopped her, even though she knew she wouldn't go. A fancy party to celebrate love? What place did she have there?

She tries to put it out of her mind, but it gnaws on her the entire day. Curiosity ends up getting the better of her and after dark she makes her way to the mansion. She leans against a wall across the street, watching people dressed in beautiful, elegant clothing make their way inside. The women all have their faces painted and their hair expertly coiffed, and it's foolish, but Rey looks down at the hooded sweatshirt and black leggings she's wearing and feels inferior.

Her value is not in the way she looks, or the clothes that she wears. She knows that. Still, it does remind her of all that she's missed out on. She's never worn a dress, never had her face painted up, and she knows it's silly but she can't help but to imagine what she might look like, if even for a night.

And that isn't saying anything of the romance. There are hearts and flowers everywhere, and she watches couples holding hands and swapping kisses as they go into the party. That's another thing she's never experienced and she feels a surge of longing for something that she can't quite put a name to.

At least she knows that she's ridiculous, standing out in the cold and staring at a party she doesn't belong at, but she can't quite seem to make herself go back to her empty apartment.

She's just so lonely, even in this place full of so much life, and she lets out a shuddering breath as she waits for it to pass.

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This time, she isn’t even surprised when she feels the bond open up. There’s that same crackle of energy up her spine, but this time it feels more like a hand sliding up her back— reassuring.

She hears his voice, and realizes all at once what she was trying so hard not to think about.

He steps up next to her and she’s a little embarrassed to have been caught like this, looking longingly at a silly party. There are so much more important things in the world, and this feels small and insignificant. But she missed out on so many small things, hasn’t she?

“I’m alright,” she assures him, wrapping her arms loosely around herself as she looks over at him. “There’s a big party. I was curious about it.”

"You think you shouldn't go," he observed, perhaps more bluntly than the moment required. "That you don't deserve to."

His frown deepened.

"If you're curious, you should see it for yourself. More likely than not, it's not worth the fuss."

The words sting, making her flinch slightly. That wasn’t exactly what she was thinking, or maybe it was and she was too ashamed to acknowledge it. Either way, it makes her feel about a hundred times smaller.

“I am seeing it for myself,” she replies, frustrated at the way her voice shakes as she stares forward with her arms crossed over her chest. “If that is your idea of reassurance, feel free to go back to whatever you were doing.”

"You're seeing the outside of it," he said pedantically, "And if you wanted reassurance, I doubt you'd look to me."

Her voice trembled and something in him softened, despite his will to keep such things at bay.

"You're wrong. You belong anywhere you want to be."

“And yet I did, didn’t I?” She snaps immediately, because she had opened the bond, unconsciously reaching for him. Perhaps she should learn better control over her thoughts.

She goes still at his next words and then sniffles slightly, looking over at him for a moment before turning her gaze back to the party. Music tumbles out of the entrance, carrying on a breeze across the street, and her hair flutters as she pulls her sleeves over her hands. It’s always so cold here.

“I don’t feel as if I belong anywhere, Ben,” she admits, proud of the way her voice has steadied. “But I’ll be fine. I won’t break just because I’ve never danced, never—“

She stops herself. If he hasn’t learned what this holiday is about, she isn’t going to be the one to tell him. “I was just looking.”

"Never?" He prodded, looking upon her with the same unwavering curiosity he'd worn in the lost Jedi temple, the moment before their hands touched.

"You could get a closer look, if you wanted to."

There was a bit of a challenge in his tone, because they were nothing if not good at goading one another into action.

“There wasn’t much opportunity,” she says dryly, swallowing hard when she looks over to meet his steady gaze. Suddenly, she thinks of fighting with him, and the way they seemed to move so perfectly in sync with one another, twisting and turning, an intimate back and forth that let them learn how the other’s body worked. The image of it is so clear in her mind, clear enough for him to see. It was almost like dancing, she thinks. “Perhaps not never.”

The challenge in his tone makes her let an amused huff. “You could leave your apartment sometimes, if you wanted to.”

"I leave my apartment," he insisted casually, as if it hadn't occurred to him how insular his life had become.

He caught a brief flash of her thoughts, of that day in Snoke's throne room, and the way they'd moved together so effortlessly. One corner of his mouth twitched into a faint smile.

"I could be anywhere right now."

“Yes, you could be,” Rey says, turning to look at him and reaching up to tuck the stray hair framing her face behind her ears, keeping it away from the breeze. Ben’s hair is still, curled away from his face, and Rey’s gaze drops to the bit of clavicle revealed by the dropping collar of a sweater slightly too big for him. And then she drops her gaze his feet. They’re bare, and for some reason it surprises her to see his bare feet, and the vulnerable curl of his toes.

“But you’re in your apartment,” she says simply, moving to take a step toward him to reach out and grab his book, but a couple she hadn’t seen steps right in front of her and she stumbles. They give her an odd look and Rey shoos them along, frowning slightly before reaching out to take the book from him. There’s a spark to the bond as the book transfers hands, and she turns it to read the cover. “Anything interesting in here?”

The corner of his mouth twitched, which would be her only confirmation that he was, in fact, still in his apartment. Following her gaze down to his feet, he stretched his toes, wiggling them on the carpet of his living room.

"Some," he admitted, "It's a collection of folklore— the basis of cult ritual practices and worship from an ancient society on Earth. They read pulp adventure stories."

Someday, Rey thinks, she will make him actually smile. She adds it to her mental to-do list, which includes things like fixing that leaky coolant pipe in the Falcon, and learning how to rebuild a motor engine. Something for her to work on, when she has time.

His description of the book interests her enough that she steps closer and turns to lean against the cement wall at his side, crossing one ankle over the other as she opens the book and lets it fall open to a random page.

"Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life," Rey reads aloud, knitting her brow slightly as she skims the page. Books were always kind of a rarity for her, at least books that were not instruction manuals, and soon she finds her attention pulled from the party nearly entirely.

"Life itself, personified." She lets out an amused hum and then seems to remember where they are, and her cheeks flush slightly as she closes the book and holds it back out to him. "Can I read it when you're done?"