strongerthanblood | [for ben]

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ben solo

[for ben]

She can't sleep.

For hours, she's tried but something is keeping her awake, some gnawing thing that she can't seem to identify. She gets up to make tea, padding silently through her too big apartment in a pajama set that felt had like a particularly decadent purchase, a soft pink silk tank with thin straps and matching shorts.

Boy shorts, the sales woman had called them. They don't look like anything she's ever seen a boy wear, but she didn't argue. She had thought the set was pretty, and she keeps telling herself that it's okay to get something just because it was pretty. And if a part of the reason she gets it is because maybe she'd like someone else to see it someday, well, she doesn't think on it too hard.

After drinking a cup of tea and doing a little reading, she tries again to go to sleep, but it's futile. She feels too warm, stretched out on one side of the bed with a sheet draped across her legs, and she closes her eyes again to avoid staring up at the ceiling.

She feels so restless, and she allows herself to wonder what Ben is doing, if he's tossing and turning like she is. She thinks of him so often, in a multitude of ways, but right now she thinks of him fondly, wondering what he might look like when he sleeps.

Rey is so busy wondering, in fact, that she doesn't even notice when the mattress subtly dips with added weight.

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Ben's breath hitched in unison with her own, the electric crackle of her touch startling him more than he usually allowed it to. It was the ghost of a touch, somehow both less and more than a physical encounter, more real and more elusive. It was something they shared with each other and no one else, a balance of the force that belonged to them equally, and to them alone.

Snoke, once, had tried to make them believe that the bond was something he had orchestrated, a trick to lure Rey to the dark side. Ben, even at his most uncertain, had known differently. Even before he'd had a name for it, he knew that they were something unique.

"This might be a bit awkward, otherwise," he said wryly, an unable to stifle it, a brief, hopeful smile flickered across his face.

Their bond, which she once thought of a hindrance, an unexpected obstacle, has now become something so precious to Rey. All her life, she had nothing but the brittle ache of loneliness. It had settled into the core of her, until she felt at times like the only person in the universe.

But now there is their bond, this miraculous thing that seems to have filled up all the places inside of her that were left aching and empty. She knows, with an intimate sort of clarity, that Ben feels the same.

Neither of them will ever be alone, not ever again.

Ben smiles and Rey responds with one of her own, also soft and hopefully as she shuffles a little closer to him. Her mind can't help but to remember how he held her that night in the Falcon, and she would be lying if she said she hasn't been craving more since the moment they parted ways.

"Will you hold me, Ben?" Asking makes her feel flayed open and vulnerable, and she reaches out to close the minuscule space between their bodies so she can curl her hand around the wide breadth of his shoulder.

Suddenly, he fought the urge to laugh. The moment felt enormous, impossible and inevitable, relief bubbling up in his chest with such urgency that he felt ready to burst.

Instead, he let out a strangled sound, lifting a hand to her face, her hair slipping through his fingers. He'd touched her with such tenderness only a handful of times, but the moment felt very much like the one they'd shared in Exegol, full of awe and of hope.

Abruptly, he dragged himself from her side, the bond snapping shut as he rolled upright in his bed, alone. With a ragged breath, Ben buried his face in his hands, letting out a rough, frustrated groan.

"Okay," he said to himself. "Okay."

He dressed hastily. It had become something of an absurd ritual, fumbling on his clothes and running through the streets of Darrow like a madman to get to her.

When Ben suddenly rolls away from her and disappears, Rey spends a brief moment in despair, wondering if she might have gone too far. Before she can feel even a flash of hurt, she realizes that she can still feel him, and he’s coming to her.

Rey smiles giddily and buries her face in her pillow for a long moment, trying to calm herself down for one long, futile moment. Eventually she swings herself off of the bed and heads for the front door, feeling her heart pound as he gets closer and closer.

Never, never. They’ll never be alone again.

Once it gets to the point where she can actually hear his feet pounding on the pavement outside, she pulls the door open and gasps at the shock of cold night air that makes her skin pebble. And then he’s there, right in front of her, with his chest heaving and his hair blown back away from his face.

“I take it that’s a yes,” she breathes out, grinning up at him.

He was sweating and out of breath, standing at her door and feeling ridiculous in a way that was completely new to him.

"I..." He glanced back the way he'd come. "I ran," he admitted uselessly, coughing out a laugh as he took a lurching step towards her.

The night was cool, and standing in the open doorway, he could see goosebumps scattered across her chest, her hair spilling loose around her face. Without giving himself the chance to doubt his actions— though he knew without question that this was the right path, he set a hand to her waist, stooping to rest his forehead against her own as he walked her backward into the apartment.

“You ran,” Rey repeats, feeling a warm flutter in her chest. It means so much to her than he ran to her simply because he wanted to be with her, and she feels the urge to put her hands on him.

Thankfully, Ben doesn’t give her the chance to hold back on that particular desire. She gasps as his big hand rests on her hip, reaching out to swing the door shut as he moves her back into the apartment. He’s suddenly there, everywhere, surrounding her with his warmth and pressing in close.

His forehead meets hers and it feels so easy to tilt her head up and press her mouth to his, curling one arm around his neck with a soft whimper. She keeps drawing him backward, up on her bare toes as she pulls him into the hall, back towards her bedroom.

She’s never wanted like this. She’s never been wanted like this, and the scope of it makes her tingle all the way down to her toes. Rey grins, and kisses him again.

Rey, he knew, had always been the braver of the two of them. Kylo Ren's strength came from fear, from cowardice, from anger and resentment, and a childish confusion that Palpatine had nurtured in him for as long as Ben could remember. Rey acted through hope, through love, through a need for balance and the promise of something good, which he knew to be a much more difficult path to walk.

So, it did not surprise him that she was the one, once again, to hiss him. Their mouths met, and each moment felt like the natural extension of the last. A path they were walking together.

His hand slipped beneath the hem of her top, the fabric smooth and cool as it slid over the backs of his knuckles, while the soft skin of her back seared through him, impossibly hot. Their kiss on Exegol had lingered, but was chaste, grateful... final. This kiss bled from one into the next, his lips parting for breath, opening up for something deeper.

They’ve kissed before, but to Rey it was only a memory. This is visceral and real, and something altogether different than that kiss on Exegol. It’s a completely new type of desperation, and she lets out a ragged breath against his plush mouth, feeling completely overcome as his hand presses to her skin.

Her legs meet the bed and she crawls back onto it, tugging on his sweater before letting herself fall back onto the mattress. Ben looms over her and she grins up at him, hair fanned our across the pillow as she reaches for him.

“Your shirt is inside out,” she tells him, feeling another flare of warmth in her belly. “Come here.”

"I was in a hurry," he explained, with a tinge of amusement. "And I got dressed in the dark."

He stepped out of his shoes, which he'd never bothered to tie, and crawled over her, breathing slowly, unsteadily through his nose as his bulk loomed over her. On a whim, he ducked his face to the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of her, for the first time. She was real, in a way she had perhaps never been. Breathing beneath him, stronger than it should've been possible for one person to be.

Two people, his mind supplied, but he was inclined to believe that their strength was mostly because of her.

Rey shivers as she finds himself tucked under his body. If this were anyone else, she would absolutely hate feeling pinned down like this, but Ben isn’t anyone. He’s everyone. He’s everything.

His face presses against her skin and she tips her head back, letting out a soft groan as she slides her hands up under his sweater. His skin is still cold from being outside and she pulls him closer to her warmth, letting her hands traverse over his soft skin, pulled tight over thick muscle.

“Ben.” She can’t help but to breath his name, and she draws her knees up to frame his hips. His weight presses her into the mattress and her breath hitches as their chests connect. His plush lips brush over her pulse and she shivers, digging her fingertips into the dip just under his shoulder blade. “Ben..”

His hips settled between the cradle of her thighs and his mind went blissfully, earth-shatteringly blank. He wanted, desperately, after resigning to a lifetime of depriving himself. A jedi renounces personal connections, and his descent into darkness left no room for pleasures. But while this was an instinctual meeting of bodies, it also went beyond the simple pleasure he might have allowed himself in his quarters, alone.

It was different, because it was something he wanted to give to her, instead of taking for himself.

Gripping the back of his shirt, he pulled it off, his hair ruffled, his expression a bit wild. He realized they were already moving against one another, rocking instinctively, her chest heaving with breath as she gripped at him desperately. His mouth found the top of her shoulder, tugging the thin strap of her top aside.

He wanted to crawl inside of her and stay there. Her mind was perhaps the only place he had ever found peace, and while he knew that it might be a vulgar thought, it stood to reason that her body would be the same.

As Ben’s hips rock against hers, Rey knows that this is exactly what she wanted when she asked him to hold her. This is what had been keeping her up. She feels him press between her legs and she knows, she knows.

Each press of his mouth is a revelation, and her skin sings at every brush of his against it. Suddenly his shirt is gone and it’s only that scrap of silk between them, the one she thought he might catch a glimpse of in some abstract future.

And now he’s here, mouthing at her skin, and she drags her arm up out of the strap so the material slips further down, making more room for him. She feels like she’s burning, and she arches up against him as heat flares between her legs.

It feels almost like fighting him had, but flipped on its head. Just as intense but now it’s pleasure and need in the clash of their bodies. She never wants it to end, and she wraps her legs around his thighs to keep him there, just where he’s meant to be.

Graceful with a saber, he was clawing and clumsy, now, afraid of not being gentle enough with her. Afraid of being too gentle. Fear was a dangerous thing, but this time, it felt like healthy fear. It felt too similar to the hope, the completion, the acceptance he'd felt in his last moments on Exegol, exhilarating and right.

His broad hand slid along the shape of her body, feeling along the curve of her side, the dip at her waist, the swell of her hip. Higher again, he felt the swell of her breast through the satin of her pajamas, his thumb brushing over the tightened point of her nipple.

He hadn't imagined this. Any of this. He hadn't allowed himself, even in the most abstract of ways. Her hand touching his had seemed an unfathomable revelation, and from that moment on, he had cared for nothing but his obsession with having her at his side. Only he'd been wrong about the how of it, or the why, fixated on the vision of the two of them ruling on a throne together, when that had never been their destiny.

Rey thought she knew everything about her body. She knew just how hard she could work it before exhaustion made her useless. She knew how to move in a fight, how to stretch out muscles sore from overuse.

She hadn’t known that her body could feel like this, lit up like a live wire under his questing hands. When his thumb finds the tight bud of her nipple, she lets out a gasp and buries her fingers in his thick hair, pulling him in for another kiss.

It’s a little clumsy, but she licks into his mouth, curling her tongue behind his teeth. The fabric of her top slips against his skin and she pulls her mouth away, pressing him back only long enough for her to wriggle out of it and toss it aside.

It doesn’t occur to her to feel nervous until she looks up to see him staring down at her with dark eyes and red, swollen lips. His hand is curled around her ribs and she takes a deep breath, chest heaving as she reaches up to touch her fingertips to his mouth.

She’s never done anything like this before, but she knows that she isn’t alone even in the newness of this. Whatever this is, however it works, they’ll figure it out together.

He'd never seen a woman naked.

It hadn't occurred to him until that moment to think that might be strange. She was lean muscle, pale skin, her nipples small and pink. Propped up with one arm braced against the mattress, he found himself staring, dumbstruck.

His eyes finally dragged themselves back up to meet hers, a broad hand resting against her cheek. However inevitable this was, he was shaken by the rawness of it. He couldn't remember a time when he'd felt so physically present. The only thing that had ever come close was being on the battlefield, with her.

"I don't—" He stumbled over his words, suddenly afraid of going too far. Afraid of allowing himself something he didn't deserve.

Edited 2020-03-15 06:22 (UTC)

Ben goes tense under her hands and Rey’s brow furrows slightly until he speaks, and she thinks she understands. They tumbled into this, running on instinct and base desire, and the reality of it is sinking in.

Taking a breath, she reaches up to sweep his hair back from his face, tucking some behind an endearingly large ear before cradling his cheek in her hand.

“It’s okay, Ben,” she assures him, feeling the muscles in her abdomen clench as she lifts her shoulders to press a soft kiss to his lips, drawing him back down with her. “It’s okay.”

Her arms go around his neck and she kisses him again, letting her mouth trail over his chin and along the sharp edge of his jaw until her lips brush against his ear. “I just want you here with me.”

She doesn’t care what they do, not as long as he’s in this bed with her, close enough for her to feel the heat of him. And then, maybe because she wants to say it as much as he needs to hear it, “I trust you.”

It struck him, landing like a physical blow and he let out a strangled huff, the sound forced from him by a surge of something he couldn’t put a name to. Shame like he’d never felt, but also relief. Acceptance. Love.

His vision blurred and he cleared his throat, his head bobbing in a tense nod. Thumbing away a tear threatening to roll down the bridge of his nose, he rolled over onto his back, this time taking her with him.

“You’re beautiful,” he stated, matter of fact, then he repeated the words, as if realizing what they truly meant. “You’re beautiful.”

He tucked an errant strand of her hair behind her ear, looking up at her with complete, naked vulnerability. She could kill him or kiss him and he would thank her for both.

Edited 2020-03-15 06:49 (UTC)

Rey can feel how the words affect him, and her own eyes well up when she sees the moisture in his. Her hand lifts to touch his cheek but suddenly they’re rolling over and she’s sitting astride his hips and looking down at him.

This position makes her feel a little more exposed and vulnerable, bare as she is, but the shock of his declaration immediately chases away any insecurity that she might have felt. Her breath hitches and a tear rolls down her cheek as she rests her hands against his chest.

“Thank you.” The words feel insubstantial, too small to possibly convey how she feels. But he knows, because he can feel it. They were made naked to each other long before they started removing their clothes.

His fingers glide along her cheek and she reaches up to grip his wrist. It’s so big that her fingers can’t quite close around it, and she turns her head to press a kiss to the delicate veins at the underside, where his skin is pale and soft.

“You’re beautiful too,” she tells him as she presses his palm to the center of her chest. She stares down at his face, his gorgeous eyes and pillowy mouth, and the long slope of his neck. She laughs softly, quiet and breathless, smiling as he takes his other hand and rests it on her thigh.

“I want you to touch me,” she assures him, looking down at the wide sprawl of his hand on her chest. “It’s okay.”

Ben choked out a watery laugh, a boyish grin making its way onto his face. This time, instead of being stifled quickly, his smile stayed there, hesitant but unwavering. "Thank you," he echoed back, his eyes bright, fingertips sliding curiously beneath the bottom hem of her shorts to tease the top of her thigh, her skin warm and impossibly soft beneath his hands.

He could feel the staccato tap of her heartbeat beneath his palm, and shifting to sit propped higher against the headboard, he let himself explore her, touching her because she'd asked him to. He felt the weight of her breast in his palm, her skin pebbled beneath his touch, his fingers curving along the line of her ribs. She was small and lean and deadly, smiling at him more brightly than he'd ever thought possible, and he surged up to kiss her again.

His smile changes the landscape of his face, and Rey can’t stop staring at him. She touches the crease in his cheek, following the line of it with her finger as his hands travel across her body. Such big hands, covering so much of her at once.

It’s a new sensation, being touched like this, but she already knows that she never wants it to stop.

The air in the room seems to grow warmer, and she watches as he covers one entire breast with his hand, making her gasp slightly as his palm drags over her nipple. She watches his face as he moves to sit up, bringing them closer together as she sits nestled in the cradle of his lap.

When their mouths meet again, Rey’s hands fly up to frame his face, sliding up into his hair as she parts her lips so that he can explore with his tongue, just as he is with his hands. Her chest presses to his as they kiss, and she slides her hands over the balls of his shoulders, and then down his flanks. Such raw, undeniable strength. This body has been used to do terrible things, has been used in general by ghosts who didn’t deserve to take up space in his mind.

But now this body is hers, and she’ll treat it well. It will never again know pain, never bear another scar, not if she can help it.

Edited 2020-03-15 18:01 (UTC)

His hand slid over her hip, palming the curve of it, then he settled an arm around the small of her back, holding her tight against him as they kissed, taking their time to learn each other's mouths. He cataloged all the ways she gasped when he touched her, the way her hips twitched as the rough pad of his thumb brushed over her nipple, the warmth of her where she sat astride his lap.

He was hard against her, and distantly, it unsettled him that he had so little control over his own body, but if someone else should take control of him, it seemed only natural that it be her.

Ben’s arm settles across her lower back to pull her in, and Rey’s breath hitches as she feels the hard length of him press up against the apex of her thighs. It’s a completely new sensation, one that makes her feel the slightest bit nervous even as she gives into the urge to rock against him, just to feel more of that exquisite pressure.

It’s only when her lungs start to burn that she breaks the kiss, breathing raggedly against his mouth and letting out a small whimper as heat builds between her legs. She pulls back to look at him, eyes bright as she studies his face.

“You’re beautiful,” she says again, breathlessly sincere, and she leans back in to kiss along his jaw, using her thumbs to gently tip his chin up so she can kiss along the long, pale column of his throat, lips pausing over the flutter of his pulse. She lays the flat of her tongue against it, feeling the thrum of it reverberate through her as one hand slides up into his hair.

Embarrassment wasn't a familiar feeling to Kylo Ren, or even to Ben Solo, whose arrogance and intensity left little room for self-consciousness. Unfamiliar emotions were often twisted to anger, and he recalled a time when he might have silenced her in whatever way he could— humiliation or pain or worse.

Instead, he drew in a shuddering breath, his eyes blinking open to look at the ceiling above them, feeling the weight of her and the warmth of her mouth against his throat. He reached out to her through his mind, through their bond, and in response, he noticed the spark of her nerves, the way she squirmed hesitantly in his lap, the stutter of her pulse, but the more urgent curiosity and need growing within her.

"It's all right," he promised her. I feel it, too.

Rey can feel him there, in her mind, and it’s a welcomed presence that soothes her anxieties and makes her feel reassured. Understood. She nods a little and lets herself relax against him, letting the length of him slot up between her legs, where the thin, silky fabric is warm and damp.

After pressing a kiss to the hollow of his throat, letting her tongue sneak out to taste the salt of his skin, she pulls back enough to look at him. This time, she’s the one who puts her hands on his chest, letting them sweep over the rise of his pecs before circling her finger curiously around one small, pebbled nipple. And then she lets her hands drift lower, feeling his abdomen tighten as her fingers skim over the ridges of muscle.

“Ben.” She feels overwhelmed by the enormity of her want, and she lets out a shuddering breath before letting herself fall back against the mattress, legs splayed open across his thighs as she reaches for him. “I don’t—“ She pauses, swallowing hard as her thighs tense under his hands, belly clenching with desire. “I don’t want there to be a single part of me that you haven’t touched.”

"There won't be," he promised, rolling with her without missing a single beat, the two of them moving as one, as they always had. In his mind, he moved with purposeful confidence, but uncharacteristically, he was unable to get his body to fully comply. Instead, his hands trembled as he moved down her body, mouth open against the swell of her breast as he hooked his fingers in the elastic of her shorts and eased them down.

He felt clumsy, boyish, something he'd hated as a child, but somehow, didn't seem so awful now.

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