Chapter Text
“Ben…”
I paused, foot halfway in my boot and took a deep breath. Sweetness like cinnamon and sugar, mixed with a floral scent I couldn’t quite put my finger on—close and yet not close enough. With a jerk I pushed my heel in and tightened the laces, allowing myself a brief glance.
She was fresh faced, cheeks a little ruddy from the scorching showers she liked to take—hot enough that steam billowed from beneath her bedroom door in the morning. I didn’t let myself linger on the threadbare bathrobe or her bare feet. Instead, I gave a small grunt and picked up my other shoe.
“Could I possibly use the treadmill at some point this week?”
My heart gave a lurch in my chest while I double knotted the laces and grabbed my jacket. “This is your apartment too, Rey.”
They were five words I found myself saying on repeat even after eight months of her living here. We’d been acquaintances for six years—she’d gone to college with my best friend Poe’s husband, Fin. Though, until eight months ago I’d seen her only at the occasional dinner, birthday, or holiday gathering.
And that was the way I preferred it.
It was the only way I could survive.
She mumbled something under her breath I couldn’t quite make out before padding into the kitchen. I didn’t watch the way her hips shifted beneath the worn robe and I didn’t wonder if she was wearing anything underneath it. I also definitely didn’t breathe in the last of her scent like a man about to drown.
Before I could do something stupid, I snatched up my helmet from the bench, patted my pocket for my phone, and stomped out of the apartment. It was rare that I was grateful for the wealth I’d inherited from my parents or for the years working as a mindless slave at First Order Industries. But when I was grateful, it was usually when I was in the private elevator that connected me from my penthouse apartment to my private garage where my Ducati Panigale V4 sat gleaming in the morning light.
Yeah, don’t worry, I want to punch me too.
Everything has been handed to you on a silver spoon and you’ve done nothing to deserve it.
I slipped on my helmet before flipping up the visor and pulling out my phone to place it on the custom mount I’d had installed. A bit of the tension bunching my shoulders melted away. Here, I wasn’t Ben Solo, failure to a dynasty and the personification of a natural disaster. When I turned the key in the ignition and the bike roared to life between my knees, an electric shock zinged through my bones, jolting me out from beneath the wool I pulled over my eyes merely to live through each fucking day.
With a swipe, I unlocked my phone, silenced the incoming call that came like clockwork each morning, and opened the camera, tilting the mount until I was in frame and hit record. I’d joined HoloNet almost three years ago when I’d still been working for First Order, using the endless stream of videos as an escape from the reality of the self-imposed hell I lived. Back then I’d never once thought of posting, going so far as to roll my eyes at the guys on the app creating thirst traps on their bikes.
One random video—filmed by a disgruntled Finn who’d wanted evidence they’d heard me coming “a mile away”—and everything had changed. I’d posted it one night under the influence of too much whiskey, chuckling to myself at the commentary Finn had kept up as I’d approached wondering what exactly it was I was making up for.
I’d gone to sleep not thinking anything of it and in the morning? Well…in the morning I’d woken up to thousands of likes and followers. But it was the comments that surprised me the most.
acactusinapeartree: Look at those shoulders.
JoJookapiiiii: I’d look great as a backpack.
_twosunshinenov3l: I just know he’d talk me through it.
As an adolescent I’d been the subject of ridicule at my boarding school until. Often, I was asked if I flew to class courtesy of my giant ears or was studying to be a hound dog with that nose. I’d learned how to fight back—thought it was with broken noses and bloodied knuckles. But those words had left their own scars, lying in wait beneath my skin at a moment’s notice to bleed out. The helmet hid that weakness, rooting out the past until sometimes I was sure it had died altogether.
Though I wasn’t that naïve. My past never died, it haunted me like a specter hovering in the corner of my eye.
So I’d posted another video. And another. Over the last two years I’d gone from never posting in my life to having upwards of six hundred thousand followers and a comment section so explicit it would make my grandmother roll in her grave. I’d gotten bolder as time went on, posting the occasional compilation of me tugging on my motorcycle jacket, or throwing a leg over the bike in just a t-shirt. And the comments kept rolling in:
itsadis@sterism: Those. Hands.
JoJookapiiiii: Now there’s a necklace that’s just my size.
acactusinapeartree:I’m on season three of this video.
I’d gone from living in my office working eighty-hour weeks to sneaking out of work to ride and customizing my bike to accommodate a fairly legal phone mount. The following and the opportunities it afforded gave me the shake I needed. I’d woken up one morning—with my head on the desk of my office at the First Order—with the CEO, Snoke, screaming in my face and I’d just…left.
The engine revved louder as I twisted the throttle, leaning towards the camera and tilting my head to the side before flicking up my visor for just a moment. I’d cut it before they could see more than a flash of my eyes and a wink, but it was usually enough to drive them straight to the site where I made most of my living now.
The man in the helmet wasn’t me, it was Kylo.Ren, my alter ego. Kylo Ren had charm, he was everything I kept locked up tight for fear of what I might destroy if I let him out. Some commenters had even started calling me their Supreme Leader. The words were hollow, meaningless, and yet they gave me that tiny spark of hope.
I peeled out of the parking garage, a rare grin tugging at my cheeks as the cool morning air whipped around my neck and shoulders—temperate when standing still but near freezing at highway speeds. When I stopped at a red light I sat back, resting one gloved hand on my hip and fighting the urge to scour the bus stop for Rey.
But I found her anyway, chestnut hair tied up in a messy bun with a few strands falling around her face, nose deep in her planner no doubt reading her agenda for the sixth time this morning. Soft golden light caressed her cheekbones, gilding her long lashes and smoothing across her cupid’s bow. She looked more like an angel than a woman waiting for public transportation.
A horn blared behind me and I jumped, gunning it through the intersection before she looked up and realized I’d been there. I tried not to think about Rey as I tore through the near-empty city streets. How in the last eight months my world had turned upside down. The quiet, tomb like apartment was suddenly filled with her scent, her voice, her laugh. Like the nights she spoke with her foster mother, Maz, on the phone, and the quiet sobs that always followed when they hung up.
More than once on those nights I’d sat outside her bedroom like a sentinel, fingers clasping at empty air as I warred with myself to open the goddamn door. But I never did. Because Rey Niima wasn’t mine—she belonged to someone else.
The thought of them together churned my stomach the way it always did and I shook my head to rid myself of the image.
Even if she wasn’t with someone, I couldn’t see a world in which I would ever deserve for her to be mine. Rey was the warmth of the morning light, the sweetness in that softened the bitterness of my coffee, the fresh breeze that chased away the sour scent of despair. I was too dark, too acrid, too sullen and my tastes were too harsh for someone like her.
You destroy everything you touch, Ben. Look at the wreckage around you.
As I finally parked my bike back in the apartment garage and stopped the recording, I tried for the millionth time not to think about what it would be like if she was mine. To imagine it was to torture myself, especially with her living with me, the images of life with Rey so tangible and clear it drove me to near insanity. I tried not to think about how right she would feel against me, how one of my hands could cover her entire thigh, her throat—how I thought perhaps I would finally know a decent night’s sleep with her in my arms.
And, just like always, I failed.