Chapter Text
“My son's room is always made up,” Han had said, hitting a light switch as Rey clung to a dirty backpack in the dark hallway, “he never comes home. Warm bed might as well get some use.”
Rey spared Han some of the dignity of his own longing assessment of the space that clearly hadn’t been looked at in a long time. An empty room in a quiet house. As gruff as he was, handing it off to some runaway nobody just because she was helping him rebuild a car was one of the kindest gestures she’d ever experienced, and had a hidden weight that she knew needed a respectful amount of privacy. Mysteries were often about unresolved sadness, and were usually only solved by the people who didn’t feel it.
So she didn’t ask about the missing son when Han handed her a ratty set of towels and sheets, the kind of thing a man living alone doesn’t think to replace even in the house he once shared with a family. It doesn’t suit a bachelor pad, even the dog, Chewie, rarely leaving the kitchen as if reserving his range for the most functional rooms to prevent bumping into ghosts in the ones deemed unnecessary.
It would be an inappropriate offer from anyone but Han, who had given her a job in his garage back when while he was reclaiming the lost, discontinued model of car from his youth, he found Rey sleeping in it in a dump two hours from his house.
“Do you know how it runs?” Han had wondered aloud, slightly impressed, because she had hot-wired the radio to work. This was a trick question; it only barely did in its prime, a factory-recall he had narrowly escaped many of attempts of reclamation from the manufacturer.
Rey had not successfully contained her glee.
“I lived in it for two months. I know everything about it.”
“Thank you,” Rey mumbled. Her face was more cautiously happy that it was when he offered her the job even with Chewie nudging her hip with his nose, dancing in a circle in the crisply empty room neither she nor Han had stepped into yet.
“Well, I kind of stole your home.”
Han shrugged, placing his hand casually on a shelf above the bed. It knocked against a trophy lined up on display, his hand withdrew and his face twisted up in a reaction that made Rey honestly fearful that she was staying in the room of a dead child.
“I don’t mind sleeping in the garage, that couch at least has less mileage than the Falcon.”
Han looked down at the pristine carpet, vacuum lines defined in perfect straight lanes.
"Wouldn't be so sure about that," he joked, but it lacked mirth.
Rey’s eye flickered around, but it was nondescript beyond it’s masculine style. Gray sheets. The lamp on the night table cast red light instead of the more clinical white overhead. Dressers and desk devoid of any telling knick-knacks, even embarrassing hobbies.
It wasn’t made up like the kid was taken and the parents didn’t have the heart to alter anything, like he’d make the rounds on some milk cartons and be carried home by the right good samaritan calling the cops while the kid was spotted at a Friendly’s with his captor. It was made up for someone alive, not even vaguely alive, who just wasn’t coming back but with the winsome nature of a parent not ready to turn it into a craft room or a home gym. Not that Han was the guy in need of either of those things. But the room longed for someone, to the point that Rey apologized to the universe before she slid into the spot obviously waiting to be filled by someone else.
His scent comforted to the point that seemingly impossible sleep claimed her.
“What was your son’s name?”
There had been no clues of this anywhere in the room. The crap Rey saw in movies, the set dressing, the things she assumed kids who had homes had parents to slap up on all the walls. Participation certificates, photographs, art projects made by squirming fingers.
Han nearly choked on his coffee, fiddling with the compressor. They had a running joke that the compressor was shy, was working some kind of secret transformation under the hood while they weren’t watching. And every morning it would still be useless, unchanged, struck with stage fright to make the magic happen. Time ran in an aimless cycle, the kind where days of the week stop mattering, like they often do in summer. It was when light mattered the most when determining what part of the day it was.
“Ben,” he said gravely. Chewie, from his spot on the couch, lifted his head and wagged at the name, as if someone was walking through the door. The gray on his muzzle looked eerily human. Tired.
Rey's ears flushed as she fiddled with a wire coupling.
"Is he dead?"
Han shook his head. "Just doesn't want to come home. Little over thirty."
Information from Han felt like cheating, so she didn't ask any more questions.
Rey did find a sketchbook in the room. In it were the dark lines one someone fond of inks; sketches of graceful hands she immediately recognized as Han’s, if a good deal younger. Boys with black eyes and girls who are a little too perfect in their fine lines. In the way that boys who do not yet know women think girls can be; virtuous saviors. Their tight breasts caressed by a lush mouth, big, rough hands on their little bodies. Something monstrous in their touch.
She could see the hands of the person who drew them, careful hands, sometimes too aggressive. Hands for eyes that saw nightmares, saw demons.
She had not pictured Han’s son as dark. Not when she slept in his bed, touched the soft fabrics of the clothing lurking in those drawers. A lot of sweaters, when she was alone in the room she caved one night over the always-blasting AC and shrugged on a gray one, so large on her she had to wrap it taut to keep it from drifting down her shoulders, sleeves blanketing over her hands. She felt contained inside it, not fitting but protected.
Her hands investigated so many objects without words, because an object without writing or context was just another mystery. The questions it prompted were better than the answers.
It devastated her, this window into this person. So much so she asked for the name.
Ben, if like his father, Ben Solo.
She tried out the name, trapped in a room that smelled like him, her own scent curdling sour if mixed in with the things that had not changed in many years. She didn’t fit, the mattress never caved under her spine like she was a nestling creature. Like the room was trying to shrug her off in favor of waiting another ten years.
Defiantly, she took the room back from the mystery of Ben Solo.
She thought of heavy lines and feathery black hair as she, in rebellion, squirmed a hand between her legs and dared Ben to reclaim the bed she christened with an orgasm. Her hips bounced as she rode her hand, feeling watched, hooked to this tension, attached to Ben in a way she never felt before. Ben was a challenge and a dare. She wanted Ben here, kicking her out of his bed, punishing her, joining her. This faceless mystery, recipient of her pity, object of her loathing. She felt a lot of things for him that he'd never know, sneaky, something she relished getting away with.
Because she wasn't sure, in the weeks she had spent as Han's assistant, which one of them belonged there more. Or if they didn't belong just that same amount.
Her climax was hard and impactful, drumming up more shame than anything else when her hard nipples dragged against the sheets when she was done, how hard her heart was beating, the smell of her teased across Ben’s bed. The muscles of her stomach jumped, her thighs shook, all of her seemed possessed because she didn't have a bed to do this in...maybe ever. She flopped into the pillow that smelled like someone else and breathed it in as she tried to keep quiet.
It still smelled like him when she woke in the morning. So much she could have sworn she felt a face watching her from the cool side of the pillow, sharing the bed.
Rey left little impact wherever she went. It was the habits of years spent homeless. She prayed that this would not change this time around. She didn’t want to walk into a ghost.
It was too late.
Han urged her to use to pool, and when she caught him waking up early on a Saturday, his only day off, to whisk away all the leaves and murky things in the water that had gone unclean for so long, she was obligated. She slipped into a pair of basketball shorts and a tee shirt and dipped her legs in, but the water was too tempting and Han seemed too sad to not oblige.
She took the cautious swim of someone who didn’t know how, never learned, bouncing on her tiptoes in the shallow end as Chewie raced laps around the edge and dove in beside her from all sides. Han cleaned off a rusty but impressive grill at the corner of the patio as she swam and then there were burgers leaking with red juice and corn and an impressively finagled clambake by sundown.
There was a somewhat empty pantry that seemed to fill instead of dwindle every day. This wasn't camping anymore if she was gaining an appropriate amount of weight, if she wandered into the kitchen knowing a meal was coming, if she didn't devour an entire box of Cheerios when left alone in the house like she did the first week she was there. Han wasn't a great cook, but there was a protein, a vegetable, and something fatty as an option three square meals a day.
There was a state-of-the-art rec room, where she wandered into and Han found her. She observed the wall of DVDs. Han carefully sipped from a beer and chuckled at any title she pointed to.
“Seen it?”
He’d ask, continually.
She’d shake her head.
He caved at Ghostbusters.
“You have to see that one,” he pulled it off the shelf, a dam broken, and she and Han and Chewie picked a movie a night; further illuminating a part of the house that had been long closed off.
She understood almost immediately why he made her the offer to move out of his garage and into the house; he was as suited to this suburban neighborhood and empty house as she was. This was both their effort to try and fill the absence.
She found a pamphlet for a rehab center in the center console of the Falcon. Proudly but tastefully advertising a visitor’s day. The green paper seemed to imply a hushed tone of personal shame.
Han rarely made himself scarce from the house but to buy groceries or auto parts, seeming to enjoy to companionship for errands so Chewie and Rey always had the unspoken invitation to tag along and always took it. They’d eat fast food and stick to visual observations out the windows of passerbyes like a judgmental version of eye spy. Or they would quote the movies they watched; not discuss but quote, summarize, relive. Han had a penchant for thinking everything Bill Murray ever said was funny. Rey found this to be a Dad Quality, one that she also agreed with. Mostly they were quiet, but it was comforting in the passenger seat. She felt trusted there, in the companionable silence. Like a copilot.
She slammed the console shut, somehow knowing that the Sunday he had peeled off from the shop early was to go there.
Homelessness made her no stranger to the plight of addiction, so what did hurt her was the shock of familiarity. That even off the streets, with a room and a house and a dad to clean the pool and grill and watch movies with, it wasn’t enough.
She took Ben’s place and she was glad for it to the point that some nights she lay awake and hated him for leaving this behind.
But she still fell asleep the same way, wondering about him, with her hand working between her legs.
Because Rey had always assumed it was everything, and in having it now was feeling like it was everything. But when it became the place you belonged, it could sometimes still not be enough, and that terrified her.
Rey had things now.
She had a new pair of jeans, leggings, sneakers, and a tee shirt for every day of the week. A sweater, a bathing suit, and a jacket. A dress she had yet to wear. Hair ties instead of rubber bands that ripped out strands when she pulled them loose. A cheap little purse and a wallet and socks, she never imagined how good a new pair of socks could feel.
Han somewhat sheepishly delivered the goods, with her merely nodding at things he pointed out in the aisles of Target, not asking but not refusing his offer for how about that?
He’d been paying her probably well below minimum wage and very much off the books, but he also gave her a place to stay. He didn’t seem to want to convert her to on-the-grid, which she appreciated. She would figure that out on her own; unforced.
Rey felt like her own doll with her new things; her little accessories, her assembly of personhood. She had enough to blend in and not feel like less in a normal setting. She smiled when she thought of going on a date with a boy her age, knowing for once she had a dress and a purse and a car she could borrow and a place to go home to where someone gave a shit if she came back at a reasonable hour. The kind of suburban completeness she had always dreamed about.
She spent the first week's pay on underwear, something she didn't subject Han to by sending him on a ghost chase for an auto part that had been out of commission since the seventies, and her hands were shaking around the bag of something she bought for herself when she walked back to the house. A cheap pack of a dozen black pairs, and three nice, colorful pairs. Because it was addictive, having things. She thought it would be enough, but while she hoarded over her treasures there was the unfolding of needing something else as well. Now that she had settled the issue of shoes that weren't falling apart, she was tired of pulling on ripped underwear when she got dressed. Now that she was fed, she needed a wallet for the money she was earning.
She also had a tool box, gifted during a grueling trip to Home Depot and Lowes and back again in search of an exact part that neither of the three locations had. Han presented her with the fully stocked toolbox when they got back to the car. She spent the night too scared to ever use them, only brushing her fingers along them with a fascinated, tentative smile.
Other than Ben's room, everything Han had given her was new, and when she sank into Ben's bed every night, she was reminded that she was there to replace something.
Ben’s large body blanketed her, her shoulders and legs, pressing her onto her stomach into the bed. She accepted the weight, caved under it, the rumbling “you’re in my bed” coaxed under her jaw. Teasing, Ben in her fantasies was always glad to find her there. Her limbs splayed out lazily; she was limp but she wasn’t going to move. At a territory war over this space. It was odd how she’d gone from unwillingly to leave a dent in it to making claw marks in her wake on the way out. She eroticized her terror of being removed. Lay in bed beside her fear. Gave it her pleasure.
A faceless presence of Ben laughed in her ear, lips then dragged against the base of her neck, his hands coming around her hips. Squeezing until her insides clenched.
“We can share.”
She woke up with a dry mouth and Chewie curled at her feet on the bed.
Rey couldn’t look Han in the eyes when he hand her the breakfast he’d made her that morning, neither of them able to talk about Ben.
Rey’s hardened heart made a friend; a student at the local university in need of help for a robotics project. His robot, affectionately named BB8, was left in his care when his lab partner took ill for the remainder of the semester, and that final was coming with Finn being deeply unprepared to do it on his own. He had wandered in with the address printed and a hopeless look on his face, asking for help. Rey was good with her hands, so she helped Finn along the way in the garage, Han rolling his eyes as they laughed over circuits.
Rey finally felt like she had a job, a routine, that filled her days. Working on the Falcon with Han and helping Finn with his project after his classes and watching movies at the house.
Han didn’t get a lot of customers, and most were old friends or vaguely threatening former acquaintances, so it wasn’t unusual for him to be scarce in the back when people arrived. She was wiping motor oil from her hands onto her coveralls when she almost collided with an impossibly tall man dressed in black.
“Sorry,” she sputtered, jumping back. He looked disdainfully down at her, his eyes cast back quickly to someone behind him, a pissy looking ginger.
“Is Solo here?”
The man in black exuded a defined presence, but there was something about the two men...the redhead had the power in this scenario, and he was left pacing around waiting for permission from him, or something. His friend's body blocking the door made it obvious that he was not permitted to leave the garage with the ginger’s approval.
“And...you are...?”
She’d had to pretend Han was dead last week to two guys who definitely had guns, so she was pretty well versed in this routine. This was probably why Han and her got along so well. She did things off the books too.
“Kylo Ren,” he replied crisply, his tone annoyed. The redhead smirked and nodded at Rey.
“We have a lunch meeting with him, some paperwork to fill out. Tell him Hux is here with Kylo.”
Rey did so, calling up at the base of the stairs to Han’s office. Han said he’d be down in a minute.
She returned to the table, her screwdriver poised over BB’s circuits. Kylo drew near, resting his arms on the table across from her. His neck was chorded with visible tension, it made her jump back. A scar knotted down the side of his face, and she felt it was rude to stare, so she looked down. His black henley had the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. She stared at his wrists. Graceful hands, if a little fidgety.
“You’re his new rescue, then?”
There was a sneer on his lips. Rey straightened and looked into dark eyes. They seemed impossibly broken, the kind of leveraging eyes of someone who got what they wanted and wasn’t satisfied.
As though she cared about satisfying him.
“Han offered me a job,” she answered evenly, “though I don’t see how that’s your business.”
There was a look in his eyes that implied something that made her skin crawled. A flush fanned up her chest. It wasn't like that, she couldn't even put to words how it never felt like that, Han was just lonely and missed his son and she had needed help and they felt kindred. That this was for the best for everybody. That they were all getting better.
Kylo was still smirking at her as Han thundered down the stairs, declaring that he could have come over the facility to sign this stuff.
“How else do we re-acclimate me?” Kylo had a princely tone about it that set Rey’s teeth on edge. Hux still hovered in the doorway a moment too long, emphasizing that it was with his allowance Kylo could leave, something that made that dark-haired man’s shoulders slump. Kylo's brow twitched as his face visibly darkened. Rey savored the subtle take-down.
Han glanced at her before soberly walking to his car.
“Keep the place from falling apart.”
That was the last Rey heard of any of it.
The house finally felt familiar when Han got the call. She heard the echo of the voice from the other side of the phone. She and Han had been drinking beers, tossing popcorn for Chewie to catch in his mouth. The caller ID made him go white and the voice on the other end even whiter. The greetings were muffled, abrupt.
“I swear to God Han, this is important.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t, and he will always have a place here-”
“Do you know how essential this transition period to him? If he comes home and finds his bed has been given up to some twenty-year-old stranger, so help me-”
“I at least have a place for him to stay. Is he going to campaign on the road with you, living out of hotel rooms in cities he’s never been to, getting babysat to the point he relapses out of spite because he resents it so much?”
Han turned on his heel as his voice rose, taking most of this call hunched over the sink. His eyes flashed guiltily when they landed on Rey.
Rey began packing her backpack that night. She couldn't take all of it, which was something she tried not to think about. She thought about trying to find somewhere else to sleep. This was bigger than solving her problem. This was the solution to her problem being the detriment to everyone else’s.
She tried to sneak out. There was the flare of sound from the rec room. She thought Han might have been asleep, though Chewie lulled, barking in the back of his throat. She panicked, trying to silence the dog. But Han was awake.
The tv flickered with the home videos he was watching, a few beers in, his breath sour and his head rocking to sleep.
“Could never understand it,” Han swallowed thickly.
Rey looked to the screen. He couldn’t have been twenty yet, but he dismounts a motorbike with a practiced ease in the driveway of this house, a younger Han clapping him on the back. Ben sheds his helmet. She’d already slept in his bed and memorized his smell, draped some of his clothes around her body in the middle of the night. But she never saw his face until that moment.
Except she had.
She held back the gasp when Kylo popped out from under that helmet, looking a little less angry and a little more hopeful. It was before the scar.
His smile is careful and cautious, his eyes intense and avoiding the camera’s lens. But it’s Ben. And it’s Kylo. He’s serious where Han was casual, sincere where his father was sarcastic. His gloved hands nervously drum the seat of the bike as a woman, holding the camera, asks him how he likes it, a birthday gift, clearly chosen by people who knew him, who loved him a lot.
"When he came by..."
Han shrugged. "Rehab center wants to give him monitored doses of freedom, so his release isn't overwhelming or something, so they brought him to sign his release stuff over lunch because I'm the relative that's supposed to keep him on the wagon. It's a fancy place, doesn't really want to treat people like they're junkies, my wife found it for him."
"You'd better get rid of those beers, then," Rey tried to keep judgment from her voice. It didn't work.
"That's what tonight is for," Han slurred, and Rey had to close her eyes to spare him having her know the details of his lowest point. She wanted to help Han. So she drank two beers, and they finished the six pack in silence until the tape ran out, an empty blue screen filling the room with cold light.
She thought about the last image on the screen.
Ben looks right into the camera when his mother barks out a laugh. His smile is shy. If Rey had never met Kylo, she'd be in love with that smile.
Rey couldn’t hate Ben. But she couldn’t look at this and feel anything but pain that everything she ever wanted still wasn’t enough.
Rey didn’t leave the room until the video was finished, until Han fell asleep, until she could climb back into Ben’s bed with her packed bag abandoned on the floor.
She was running from Kylo in her dream.
It was down the hill near the dump Han had found her, and he and Hux kept...collecting her body into their arms to carry her away, and she’d force herself free and tumble further into the snow. When she’d finally gotten enough of a head start, she flattened herself under the snow, letting it cover her, and waited for them to pass.
After a few serene moments surrounded by white, under the blanket of snow, she rolled on her side and found herself face-to-face with Kylo. Lying beside her in all the white, like he was under the sheets with her. His smile was tentative, but mixed with the knowing sharpness from the man in the shop the other day.
She woke up when the drawer closest to her head slammed shut.
Rey started under the covers, her tank top bunched up over her stomach, and wrestled her way out of the gray comforter.
And just like moments before, he sent her a cold assessing expression.
“Don’t get up. You’re my guest.”
Rey tried to take deep breaths, but it was hard after just waking up in her underwear in front of a stranger and with no bra on.
“Sorry,” she attempted to drag the blankets up over her breasts. Ben smirked. Kylo smirked. This was going to be confusing.
He knelt by the dresser beside the bed, eye level with her. This didn't make her feel any less intimidated.
“I’m just in shock that the excuse Solo fed my mother about you crashing in my room wasn’t a load of bullshit. Thought I'd really find you in bed with him,” Kylo, she now knew to call him Kylo, tossed a stack of shirts into a laundry basket at his side. He rummaged through more of the lower drawers for his clothing. “I assume he’s like the father you never had? Prepare to be disappointed.”
Rey’s throat closed, and she slid onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. He was in recovery, she couldn’t engage. This much Han had at least...implied. That he picked fights he thought he could win.
She was still slightly dazed by the dream when he crouched by her side. Her hips twisted away defensively. He had those cold eyes locked on her.
“I can’t imagine the last time someone came in that bed,” he told her honestly, the amusement in his eyes so cruel and cutting that she gasped a little bit.
His hand locked around her wrist, dragging her fingers under his nose. She shut her eyes tight as he inhaled her smell. His eyes fluttered shut. She yanked her hand away when his tongue flattened against her fingertip, a laugh pressed to the sensitive skin.
“Is that how you deal with it?” his tone is disgustingly ponderous, “the loneliness? Is it unbearable, lying awake at night...?”
Moments before she was secretly begging for Han to come break it up, but she had to keep him away from this. This was beyond humiliating, Kylo leering at her, her own inability to get her bearings and adjust the straps over her shoulders without her breasts spilling out in all directions.
Ben was home. Ben had returned to his room. This was something she had anticipated and dreaded for months.
"...At least this means you aren't fucking my dad-"
“And how did you fucking cope?” she finally snapped back. He reeled his weight onto his heels, falling back about six inches. “Was it drinking, or something heavier? How did you fuck up your life?”
The scarred side of his face turned away. Like a flinch.
Rey cut to the fucking bone, and even she knew it. The anger she tried to hide, tried to mask with smiles and sarcasm and keeping busy. It was what made her and Han kindred. Kylo blinked at her. As angry as she was, she was in his bedroom and he had just gotten out of rehab. Jesus. She felt like shit.
“You can have your room back,” she dragged the blanket up and around her shoulders. “Your father had it waiting for you for years.”
She withdrew everything from her one drawer and stormed out into the hallway, slamming the door behind her.
She couldn’t leave; she left the toolbox in Ben’s room. No matter what she would never leave this house without it.
Han’s tone was pissed when he found her out in the hallway with her stack of belongings.
“Did he kick you out of your room?”
Even she knew it was more complicated than that. She could practically feel Kylo wince on the other side of the door.
“It’s better this way,” she shrugged off his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll crash in the rec room. You're going through some family stuff. It’s not a big deal.”
Han had a bad back, or she knew he would have offered up his room. She had to stop him from even bringing it up. She shook her head when Han tried to argue. Kylo was already muttering to himself, clearly stripping the sheets from his bed.
Rey hoped her sweat from the night before had dried, the lingering smell of-
Okay it had always helped her fall asleep.
Han was silent as he helped her set up a bed on the pull-out couch in the rec room.
Despite the chaotic introduction, a stand-off was formed.
Dinner was mandatory. All three of them had to sit together and deal with it. Rey and Han begrudgingly talked shop, Han and Kylo begrudgingly tried to talk, period, Rey and Kylo didn’t talk at all.
Kylo cooked the vegetable for every meal, because he took one look at the canned green beans Han heated up the first night and recoiled.
"You've been boiling her vegetables and making her eat it with no seasoning? Do you hate her?"
"I'm sitting right here," she grit out, but the green beans did taste like mush the moment after.
Rey was annoyed by the outburst at first, but after some fried brussel sprouts with honey and Sriracha and fresh asparagus with brown butter, she was converted. Han surrendered the vegetable duties to Kylo, who didn't seem to want them once he got them, but did cook a damn good side dish every time.
"Where'd you learn to cook?" Han had asked gruffly, eating more of a vegetable than Rey had ever seen him.
Kylo shrugged, staring at his plate. "A lot happens in ten years. Also the food in rehab is shit, so you learn to miss the effort of cooking."
It was the first time the R word had been dropped in conversation. Rey stuffed a biscuit into her mouth to keep anyone from trying to turn the conversation to her.
Days were still the shop and errands and diners and calm. The father she never had. Kylo went to meetings with his sponsor, applied for jobs, went to museums and movies or the gym and reported little of his day. Han had informed her that any sign of Kylo relapsing meant he was out. Which put her in the awkward position that Han wanted his somewhat-adopted visitor to rat out his own son. No matter how used to using the remotes or comfortable she was sleeping there, she didn't think she felt that welcome. Rey did not question what Kylo did to end up in rehab, or estranged, or on such thin ice. But knowing how forgiving Han was with her: it had to be pretty bad.
"He's sick," Han once murmured, unprompted, while checking the still un-transformed compressor. "I know that he's sick and it's not his fault. But when you spend ten years trying to help and he doesn't let you...it's hard."
"Was he an addict for ten years?"
If Kylo was, he looked great. Maybe some dark circles, some chorded veins, but he hadn't reduced body mass or gotten wiry and mean like the people she avoided on the streets or in shelters.
Han shook his head. "I think this was the final breakdown of a lot of problems. He was always a troubled kid, but he left a decade ago and if he's still screwed up about a relatively normal childhood now, well, don't know what to say to that. I think it's who he took up with in those ten years. My ex made me bring him home from the city about a year ago at his lowest and he's been in and out of treatment. This is kind of the last lap, since the accident."
Rey had the sense to not ask about the accident, but the scar across Kylo's face seemed to tell her enough.
There was something about him though, that seemed to be too principled for the chemical desires of an addiction. Compulsion, or addictive behavior, she could totally see, medicating depression, absolutely. There were sharp edges to the guy, in the ways he muttered to himself or was very, very careful with his hands and body. Nobody was allowed in the kitchen if he was doing something, his temper flared in exemplary fashion when the stove was on or he was on a timer. Control had to be a huge issue for someone like him, Hux driving him out for one lunch to sign paperwork for his release with his father and no one allowing him a moment alone must have sent some pretty strong messages about if it was worth it or not to lose control again. The overhanging threat of returning to rehab kept him checking in on time, collecting his sobriety chips, following house rules.
Nights had dinner and then Rey and Han watched a movie. It meant having to remake up her bed on the sofa afterwards, but she didn’t mind.
Kylo joined in for the first time for Zombieland. Just hovering, after Han’s laughing at Bill Murray’s cameo startled him out of his room. Han had stopped breathing he was laughing so hard, at one point.
Kylo didn't sit down with them, even though Chewie perked up and lifted himself to clear a spot for him. But he stood for about thirty minutes of the movie, arms crossed, his face a mask but he nodded towards the screen whenever his father laughed.
One thing that did startle her was that Han smelled like beer, not Kylo. She knew there was a six pack in the garage that was locked up in the office. She just hadn't expected Han to go near it with Kylo in the house.
"Took Ben to see this for his birthday when it came out," Han informed her. He had yet to call him Kylo. Rey did observe that this infuriated him.
"Yeah..."
And Ben drifted his way back to his room.
The ghost was clearly back in the house.
Sleeping was harder. She didn't realize she missed the cool darkness and sharp angles of his room. She, with her collection of accessories, filled her space in the dollhouse. Now she rattled around in the wrong room, feeling out of place.
There was also the issue of her nightly sleep routine being a little too out in the open for comfort.
And she once heard Kylo taking advantage of his privacy. It had to have been the roommate situation at rehab affording him little opportunity. The wall dividing the rec room from his room reverberated with soft sounds of longing. They were kind of romantic, if she didn't have to brush past him to use the shower or pass him the salt at meals every day. With a frustrated sigh, her hand found its way between her legs, wishing she could be back in that bed if only for the Ben she had fantasized about.
He did walk in on her in the shower once, with her barely enough time to wrap herself in the shower curtain and yell at him.
"I'm still not used to there being another person in the house, fuck," he snapped, not even looking at the dripping wet skin in front of him. He was unimpressed with her outrage. They were so busy yelling it took a solid five minutes until he slammed the door so she could finish showering.
Rey was a glutton for the mystery now; for Ben in the absence from this scarred man in front of her. For where he was going and what he was feeling and for the pain that had ruptured this family that she was being used as an odd glue to try and hold it together.
When he was out at the gym one day, she went back into his room and stole a tee shirt of his. Super soft. She fell asleep with it pressed to her nose, trying to think of Ben, not this new one, this Kylo.
Rey was becoming a better swimmer, but still wasn't great. Han had grimly told her it was best she didn't go in the pool if she was by herself, but she stuck to the shallow end and stayed in the water for hours, like a little kid. Chewie was with her. Sometimes Finn came over and swam, along with his new robotics partner, a girl named Rose, who had been helping out around the shop. Rey liked them both and their molasses-slow steps towards romance. Encouraged them to go out without her, urging them into things that didn't seem like dates.
One afternoon in late summer, she was attempting laps in the most pitiful of doggy-paddles, and nearly sank to the bottom of the pool when she turned to see Kylo lowering himself to a chaise lounge, not lying on it, but perched at the end, watching her.
"You cannot be serious. Are you drowning?"
Rey snorted, rolling onto her back to float. She sank about six inches into the water and had to flail her way for her to emerge. She hopped on one foot, now safely supported.
"Relax, Ben."
His nostrils flared.
"My father instructed me not to let you swim unsupervised."
"You do everything your dad tells you now?"
Her shoulders came up and shrugged above the surface of the water. Kylo looked at her like she was a bug on his skin.
"Where is your dad?" She dodged, wiping her hair out of her face. She twisted it up in a half-ponytail to keep it out of her eyes. He watched, sort of fascinated.
"Dinner with my mom. He might not be home tonight."
She briefly wondered why Kylo didn't go, but remembered he was over thirty. And they were probably talking about him, so they'd risk leaving him alone to do it.
"Oh."
Han had not disclosed much information about his ex, but she had apparently done a number on him. But Han implied it in a way that made Rey respect her, in that regard.
"Not like that," even Kylo looked grossed out. "He thinks if he drinks when I don't see it, he's in the clear. So since my mom is going to chew his ass about letting a strange twenty something with no family she has no proof he's not fucking stay in our family home while his fuck up son is under this roof. He'll probably get tanked and crash at the garage after."
"Wow."
"I know. We're a messed up family."
"No. That's just the most you've ever talked to me."
Kylo cracked an ironic smile. "You seemed to prefer it that way."
She kicked herself backwards, her posture open underwater.
"Don't wake me up when I'm half-naked, and maybe I'll surprise you."
"But it's more fun that way," he mused dryly, and Rey felt her skin go hot. She dipped her chin into the water.
He rolled his eyes in response. "Don't...don't freak out. I'm sorry. It's...hormonal, you're like, all over my bed. I wake up smelling you. It's subconscious."
"You changed the sheets," she growled, water splashing her lips because she had all but ducked her head under.
"Didn't wash you out of them, trust me," he chuckled when she splashed at him.
He did offer her a real smile, and she took it, squirreled it away, so much like Ben's.
"I felt like I knew you, the first few months," Rey's tongue felt thick, furred. Awkward. Her words stall against her teeth, dropping like bricks. "The same way. It smelled like you. Like any minute you were going to come back."
"Surprised you stayed that long, then."
Rey looked away. He sighed.
"I have no issue with you being here now that I know what was really going on. I'm sorry I assumed you and my dad were screwing. There was a level to it..." Kylo shook his head. "Basically, when you don't have the best relationship with your father, even when it's your fault, it fucking hurts when he bends over backwards to be a good dad for someone else."
"I can imagine," Rey admitted, glancing back at him.
They shared a sad smile. Rey's tone lightened.
"But it means a lot to me, everything he did for me. He's a good guy."
Kylo shrugged. "I'm sure it beats sleeping in a car. Anything would."
Rey flinched, sinking lower in the water. Kylo licked his lips, like he was searching for the right thing to say next. "Look, a dad isn't going to solve all your problems inside. I mean, he was my dad, and I'm still pretty fucked up."
"You weren't home," Rey said icily, "And you had one to go back to, and I never did."
"Look, Han Solo was the one who was always traveling when I was a kid, he was never around, and now that everyone else in this family has moved on he's still here playing house and pretending things are the way it used to be."
Rey stared at the surface of the water, flicking a leaf out of the pool and onto the pavement. Kylo sighed. Chewie loped over to the edge and nudged Rey's shoulder. She scratched the mutt behind his ears, glaring at Kylo. There were tears that she wouldn't let come. But Kylo seemed to sense it. That she had filled a place that didn't exist for him anymore.
They still kept a relatively wide berth of each other. Though there was a night where he had wanted to watch something on the tv in the middle of the night, a soccer match airing after midnight, and Han was very annoyed with even the subject being brought up.
"Look, you have her sleeping in there because she doesn't want to kick you out of the bedroom, so you need to sacrifice this game."
Rey stared at her plate, licked clean of all signs of the roasted cauliflower Kylo had prepared. She cleared her throat.
"I don't mind. I'll just watch it with him, sleep in a little later the next morning."
"She can just crash in my bed," Kylo told his father stiffly.
"I don't mind," she snapped at both men. They looked at her, startled. "Kylo, I happen to like soccer. Who's playing?"
It wasn't quite settled because she was the one who did it, but she found herself parked on the couch with Kylo, yawning, the next night. She couldn't really picture him as into sports, but soccer was at least fast-paced and arranged somewhat like a battlefield. Maybe this was the only sport he could like.
Her hair was wet from the shower she took at midnight to try and pad out the evening, and the commentary was in very fast-paced French (Kylo did not explain why he needed to watch this specific commentator but from the way he was nodding, he might actually understand it) so sleep was much closer than she had anticipated.
Kylo's finger threaded into her hair, looping a wet strand around his fingers and tugging down.
"Here."
"What?" she snapped awake, trying to be polite. He sighed, examining the texture of her hair between his fingers. He guided her shoulders, resting her head on his leg so she could lie down on the couch.
He stroked her hair for most of the first half, and her mouth was dry as she felt him combing at her scalp.
She yawned during the set-up of a penalty.
"Sorry," he whispered as she stiffened. "You can get some sleep. I'll turn it off after this half is over."
But she knew it did matter. He was coiled like a spring, even she knew it was a good game, it was just hard for her to care at two in the morning or if she didn't give a shit about the teams.
"No, stay," she murmured, snuggling his thigh. This she was fine with. He could stay all night. Maybe it was because she was tired.
Kylo rested a hand on her shoulder. "You don't have to."
Rey shook her head, her eyes fluttering shut. "I want to."
"Rey," his tone was annoyed. "Go sleep in my bed."
"I-"
An orange-toned, trumpet heavy detergent commercial roared on the TV. Kylo took one look at it and pushed her up off of him.
"Go to bed, Rey," he ordered gently, leaning back into the couch with his legs open, taking over the cushions. He went back to ignoring her. She felt like she failed an essential test.
She hesitated, but sleep won out. She drifted down the hallway and curled up in his bed. It was made the exact same way it was when she had first arrived in it. Hospital corners, sheet she could bounce a quarter off of. And it smelled like him. Guiltily, she snuggled up and fell asleep to the white noise of French yelling and stadium cheers.
He took lifeguarding duty very seriously.
Han was out again with some old friends. No one wanted to breech the topic if he should be sober in solidarity to his son. No one saw him crack open a beer, it was never in the house, but Rey hadn't had anything to drink since Kylo came back.
So Rey tried to keep him in her sights when Han was gone, and to do that for sure, she swam so he would have to come outside. He usually read or sat in the sun with his eyes closed. He always seemed utterly bored with this chore. She never thought he was even paying the life-saving attention she may have needed, but he would glance up from the chaise occasionally, especially when her foot slipped or she dropped under the water past her ears.
Kylo rolled his eyes again when she flailed because a bug was in the water.
"Your form is terrible."
"I'm a new swimmer, fuck you."
She paddled weakly to the shallow end. Chewie had finally stopped running around the edges of the pool like she needed to be rescued when she was in the water. She didn't need someone else pretending she was going to drown at any second.
"Enough."
Kylo shook his head, reaching for the hem of his shirt. He made to lift it up over his chest. Rey dunked herself under the water, panicking when she heard a loud splash at her side. She stayed down in a cannonball position until her lungs nearly burst.
"Had to come up for air eventually."
He was much closer than she had anticipated, his lips hovering over her shoulder.
"Y-yeah," her teeth chattered. Kylo was in the water. Kylo's hair was dripping into his face. Kylo was standing next to her, soaked, in his underwear.
She looked at her hands.
"I just figured," he hooked one of her elbows in his hand, draping an arm of hers over his shoulder, "Just a lap. You obviously want to glide around a little. Let me do something nice for you."
"Why?"
Her arms banded across the base of his throat. He waded, with her draped over his back like a cape, into the deep end, pushing off with a swift glide.
"Because you gave up a room that was rightfully yours because I was being a brat. And did it again last night."
"Not rightfully mine, I was-"
"Not just because you marked your territory," he rumbled, and she whined and dropped her face in his shoulder. This topic was always casual to him, it hadn't exactly come up again but he had smelled her on her own fingers the first day he was back in the house, and even now his tone was as light as he was capable of.
"Don't act like you're my big brother one minute and taunt me for...for that the next."
"Confusing?" Kylo turned his head to look back at her as he swam a few more strokes. "It's that way for me too; my dad finally has the daughter he's always wanted and she's maybe the sexiest little thing I've ever seen."
Han warned her he was going to push her buttons, it was his nature to begin with and the addiction sharpened him when he was missing his fix.
"Knock it off."
"Why?"
She felt his shoulders flex with the strokes of his arms. He hit the shallow end, cupping her leg to ease the weight she had to hold onto him with less water to float in. "Because I work for your dad."
"Garage doesn't have the strongest HR department for 20-year-olds who don't have a social security number, Rey. And besides," he squeezed her calf, dipping back into the deep end so she did have to cling to him, "You touched yourself in his son's bed. So you're the one to blame for all this. You came in my bed, I assume a lot."
Breathless, she seemed to forget the edges of the pool were there for her to grab at any point. Her chin rested on his shoulder, hands tight on him.
"I need it to sleep."
He laughed at her pathetic tone. He gripped her arms so she couldn't squirm away.
"I assume that's been an issue now that you don't have your own room."
"Basically. Through no help from you."
"I think it was suggested that I helped, even when I didn't know I was," he laughed when her knee dug into his side.
Her bare thighs had to cling to his hips when he went a little faster with the next lap.
"What'd you think about?"
"You, uh," it was like she was drunk, or someone poured truth serum into her veins. She just wanted to tell him everything. "You coming home and finding me. Letting me share your bed."
"Fuck. I fucked that up."
"You did."
"You probably fell asleep thinking of that before I woke you up and ruined it."
"Uh huh," Rey did laugh, feeling more comfortable holding on to him. She was glad, in the least, he was letting her swim like she'd seen people swim before, better than she ever could. That and this is maybe the naughtiest she had ever felt, in a life of little luxury flirting with a man in a pool on a Sunday afternoon was almost decadent.
"Did you even know what I looked like?"
"Not for the first few months, but after you came in to the shop-"
He hesitated in the water, grabbing the edge of the diving board to swing them underneath without knocking her head. This drove them slightly deeper under the water, closer together.
"You didn't know it at the time."
"Your dad was watching some tapes of you when he got back. I realized it was you."
"You," he paused. "Oh. You did that when you knew what I looked like?"
Something about the question tells her that this is important to him.
"I mean," she groaned, burying her face in his neck again. This time he paused in the water where he could stand, stroking her arms reassuringly. She had to wrap her legs around his waist to not slide off of him, like a koala baby.
"Hey, hey, it's okay. Tell me."
"Yeah...?" she didn't lift her face, it was burning.
"Rey..." His tone was very serious. "I don't think you understand how hard it was, seeing this little sex-mussed goddess in my bed and not climbing in and helping myself."
"You were still a dick," Rey pointed out, but Kylo shook his head and cleared his throat.
"I didn't know-fuck-"
Her thighs tightened around his hips. "All you had to do was be nice to me."
Kylo let a sound out that was not unlike a roar, somehow handling her to the front of his body and trapping her against the wall of the pool. She held on for dear life.
"Fucking infuriating," He grabbed the hair at the nape of her neck and lifted her out of the water for a kiss, just hefted her up to reach his lips. She had a feeling the man was going to brilliant things with her somewhat weightlessness. "Want me to be nice? Fine, I can be fucking nice."
His lips took control of her mouth, tongue sliding inside as he gripped her jaw in one hand. The taste of chlorine burned her nose, but otherwise it was the greatest kiss of her life, his mouth warm and moving soft and rhythmically. It made her kiss back instead of taking it, melting her in his arms so he could take what he wanted so easy.
He opened her thighs with one of his, dragging her parted legs against the cock that was fully hard inside of his boxer briefs. Rey couldn't breathe when his lips lowered to her neck. "Feel how much this nice cock wants to fuck you, Rey."
She squirmed against the rough stimulation, so good and so fast and yet not enough. He laughed darkly when her nails sank into his skin.
"I think Han's contacting lawyers about adopting you," Kylo whispered in her ear, "You going to tell him about this?"
She knew he was making it up. Preying on her weakness. Trying to knock her off the place she'd earned in his father's heart.
"This is so fucked up," she growled at him, and he rolled his hips against her again, laughing at her as she arched out of the water. He laughed again, scooping her out of the water and helping her strip her one piece completely off from her seat at the edge of the pool. He pressed his lips to her breast, and she tried not the think of those sketches he had done. Who were the girls he had drawn, so perfect, so unclouded by their failure to be enough for him.
Chewie was in the house, asleep. Rey glanced over her shoulder, still clinging to Kylo's shoulders as he sucked her nipple, standing between her open legs. If she could just let herself have this, and not get caught, she would never think about Kylo or Ben again.
As though she had learned nothing about always wanting more during her time at this house.
The yard had a fence and high shrubberies. It would be fine.
He gave a dirty laugh against her nipple, lapping the drops of water that slithered down her chest from her knot of hair. Sitting naked at the edge of the pool was too conspicuous, but he was doing wicked things with his tongue that had her all hot and bothered. Naked, his torso pressed flush between her legs, letting her wetness drag in her search for friction to satisfy her.
"I hate you," she murmured, cradling him to her breast.
"No you don't, Rey, you put your fingers in your pussy and cum because you're so lonely for me."
She yanked his hair to pull his head back, hard, even as he laughed at her. He was such a fucking bastard. To bad it felt like she needed him to breathe at that moment.
That was her last coherent thought when his lips pressed to her cunt, tongue already snaking out in the naughtiest way. He moaned his appreciation, or maybe it was laughter, when her thighs tightened around his head. The concrete scratched her shoulders as she arched into his insistent licks into her wetness, but she didn't give a shit because it was like Ben did come home. That feeling she imagined. Lightness. Completion. He worked her into a heady, unbearable pleasure as she chewed on her knuckles to try and hide the loudest of sounds. Coming from how much his words had worked her up, at the lightest touch, was the icing on the cake. Better yet, how he didn't stop after just one. Her free hand dug into his hair, which was fanned across her belly. The angle he got with her out of the pool and him rested at the edge, still in it, made for such a good platform for him to spread her out and devour her. She pulled his hair, starting to choke on which name to say when she was lapsing one orgasm into another, until he lifted his head with wild eyes.
"I want you," she mumbled, her eyes glazed, and he grabbed her hips and pulled her back into the water. Her suit was somewhere abandoned on the concrete. Kylo held her over his cock with ease, but she relished the lightness she could maneuver her own body to sink down onto him. Once his head nudged her entrance, she gripped his shoulders and started to bear down. Water slapped at her bare breasts, something strangely sensual and from the way his eyes darkened, he loved the visual.
"Rey," he held her up by her thighs in the water. She whined, grinding against his cock insistently. Kylo held her steady. "Feel free to call my bluff at any fucking time."
"You want me," she rolled her hips against his. His lips went white. "You want control of everything. So fucking take it."
Nothing supported her but his arms when he impaled her on his cock. Pure weightlessness when he filled her so hard. The breath rushed out of her lungs. She nearly choked on the release of air, her spine melting to nothing, her body just limp and taking as he nudged his way in and out with a shallow thrust. She couldn't even make a sound, just gripped his shoulders until her knuckles were white.
"So fucking tight," he murmured, his face surprisingly serene as it dipped to her collarbone, sucking it with tender lips. Rey was trembling with pleasure, whimper as he lifted her up and down the length of his cock. "Is this how you pictured it?"
She shook her head, yanking his hair to gain some leverage to coax her own movements against him. He grunted. "Your bed. I'd be lying on my stomach and you'd press me into the mattress. Let me share, oh God-" her head fell back at his next thrust, knees bending to bounce her on his dick, "let me share."
"It always felt like my bed, didn't it? You knew."
Rey shivered as his thumb stroked over her clit.
"Does it terrify you, that we can both belong here? That we both deserve this?" she arched her back with a keening moan, smirking down at him as she hitched herself up by her legs. "For someone with control issues like yours, it must drive you fucking insane that you can't get rid of me."
Kylo slithered his tongue into her mouth until she opened completely, punishing her with a bite to her lower lip that had her yelp. But he kept her going up and down, water splashing around them, the hum of crickets in the distance.
"Maybe I'm learning to share, Rey," he crooned, and Rey was fucking gone because when she looked in his eyes, she saw Ben.
Rey woke up in his bed. Kylo had placed her under his blankets, but hadn't bothered to dress her, because he could never be a complete gentleman. His large hand stroked circles on her stomach. They both had stiff, chlorine-mussed hair drying in all directions. The sun clung to their skin, even the slightest brushes awakened that phantom heat from all it had absorbed into them.
Her lips were kiss-swollen, her body aching at the rough treatment he had given her in the pool. She vaguely remembered him carrying her upstairs. She wanted to see if she would get away with using sleep for privacy, but he clearly had her caught because he was watching her face when her eyes fluttered open.
"Han texted. He's crashing at Lando's."
There was discomfort in his voice. She didn't want to feel the pity that rose up. That he felt alone. That Han had let him down tonight, passing out without even noticing what may have even been, Rey was starting to realize, a cry for help.
Rey groaned, rolling closer to him on impulse. "We-"
"Shh," Kylo kissed her brow, somewhat fiercely as his hand still circled her skin. "Shut up."
"God, you sure know how to treat a girl, Solo."
"You're just going to ruin the first time I got laid while sober in, I don't know..." he shut his eyes. "I just want to smell your hair, tease you a little, and go to sleep."
"Yeah, you're a fucking Nicholas Sparks novel," Rey snuggled closer. "But I like this bed, so I'm going to let you keep me here."
"Generous of you," his hand curled around her bare hip. "Was I too rough?"
Entirely. Her cunt ached, every time she moved she thought of him. "No."
She meant it.
He smirked before he kissed her. Arrogant bastard. His hands came up to cradle her breasts, thumbs toying with her nipples until she moaned into his mouth.
Her heart raced. How the fuck did she let this happen?
"I can hear you thinking."
They separate at the panicked noise she makes.
"Han will always be your dad. I'm just the girl who took advantage of his generosity and fucked everything up."
"You didn't," he kissed her shoulder, so much more relaxed than the usual high-strung guy who kept the house on edge. "No, you didn't," he repeated when she groaned. "I fucked it up. Blame me. I can be the first to move out, if it gets to that point. But it doesn't have to."
"We can't-" Rey buried her face in his chest. This wasn't as simple as the house came with accessories; the dad, the dog, the boyfriend. Kylo stroked her bare spine patiently, waiting. "It's a bad idea. You're in a difficult time. Han won't be happy with me."
"So we don't tell Han."
Lying, as a former addict, being such an easy thing for him profoundly disturbed her.
"We...Kylo, that would really violate his trust."
Kylo's eyes flickered down to the sheets under them.
"It's up to you Rey. We can stop. Pretend this didn't happen. Or we keep going, because it feels good," he took her chin in his hand, pulling her eyes to his. "It felt really good, for me. I hope it feels good for you too. I want it to. I want it to help."
His voice always made her feel odd. It was like a rumble and a croak at the same time. Reassuring but unsettling.
She was a person who had things now. A place to stay and a job and people to eat dinner with. Clothes and shoes and friends and a toolbox. This was supposed to be the solution of all her problems.
"I finally get you in my bed, I don't want you to leave."
Rey moaned, pulling away before he seduced her for the second time in one evening.
"I liked it so much," she stared at the ceiling. Better than any fantasy she had. Dirtier, meaner, more raw. But it was better that way. Rey let out a hopeless sound, drawing the sheets up over her head. She rolled on her side, and when she looked to the pillow next to her, Kylo was right there. Like her dream.
"This can never happen again, if you want." He baited her, smirking at the unpleasant look on her face. "Or...we can sneak around."
Rey closed her eyes. "You've smelled my hair. You've teased me. Now go to sleep."
It wasn't a no.
Kylo's laugh was soft, so close to her lips. She felt the slightest brush of a kiss, mingling their breath, his naked body coiled taut next to hers.
The bed that smelled like him was a drug that took her under in minutes. The touch of his skin kept her there. Maybe she didn't belong in his room. Maybe she belonged in the room with him.