Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ben almost didn’t notice at first.

The arduous walk from the office back to his apartment may as well have been worn into the sidewalk for how often he made the trek.  Feet slapping against the pavement, drowned out by the bustle of the city with his attention fixed in a scowl as he dragged his thumb through the thousands of emails that seemed to have manifested since he left a mere twenty minutes ago.  Stepping blindly through a plethora of other suits as they lived their separate lives, innocuous and forgettable.

He almost didn’t notice the involuntary twitch of his fingers as the dormant mark on his arm suddenly flamed to life.  Almost didn’t notice the sharp gasp over his shoulder, or the way his skin prickled with anticipation, like his body was reacting to something his mind hadn’t registered.

He almost didn’t notice.

And then he did.

In the middle of the crowded crosswalk, Ben felt the slightest tug at his heart.  A whisper in his ear, softer still than the bare breeze that rustled the median trees planted in a valiant attempt to add greenery to the concrete jungle of Coruscant.  The urgent email on his phone from Phasma was suddenly second to the caress of destiny against his neck.  His next step stuttered, foot slamming against the ground in a half-achieved footfall as a pleasant burn bloomed like a desert flower across the interior of his forearm.

He turned.

Staring back at him was the wide-eyed forest outside of his grandmother’s summerhome on Naboo.  The speckled treetops as morning dawned, glistening with overnight dew and washing him in a cocoon of warmth.  It was a dotting of freckles like constellations, each one a new galaxy of emotion of which he already found himself undeserving.  It was a mess of chestnut hair falling in cascading waterfalls in a faraway forest, loose tendrils curling down to frame delicate apple cheekbones flushed pink.

It was surprise framed in thick, dark lashes and a pair of perfect rose petal lips slack in shock.

Oh.

Breath was something too far outside of the realm of his perception, but the ache in his chest had nothing to do with a lack of air.  Everything he’d ever imagined for the future of his life fell away all at once, feet suddenly suspended in nothing but an idea found on the outline of her face.  Afraid to blink, Ben could only stare as he absorbed every centimeter of her visage, fearful the illusion might shatter were he to look anywhere but the lovely countenance that made his entire being burn.

The mark on his arm howled, and he took an involuntary step toward her.

“I–”

I think we belong to one another.

For the briefest moment, the lock of her gaze abandoned his, too quickly to constitute the forlorn ache that seared through his chest.  All at once, the surprise on her face was quirked in determination, her small form flying toward him faster than he could comprehend.

Her hands met his chest, shoving him with almost inhuman strength, and Ben’s shock had him stumbling backward as the awareness of sound rushed back, absent as it was in his revelation of realized dreams.

Traffic rushing by.  People chattering and shouting.  The blaring of a horn, the screeching of rubber against concrete.

As his body struck the pavement, eyes still locked on hers, he saw a mere millisecond of relief overtake her features before a blur of green aluminum ripped her away.

Chapter Text

Screaming.

Whether his own, someone else’s, or a raw mix of the two Ben couldn’t ascertain.  Whatever dry, scraped bellowing might be working its way out of his throat was drowned out by the ringing in his ears and the disbelief on his tongue.

No, no, no.

Surging to unsteady legs, the minor scrapes from his own fall faded to nothing as he stumbled around the stalled green sedan, its owner in a state of petrification behind the wheel.  There was a crowd of people surrounding a small, torn figure plastered with red.

He elbowed his way through the mob, entire body shaking like a brittle leaf clinging to the branch of its origin with the last of its strength.  Ben didn’t even realize he’d fallen again until his knees reverberated sharply against the pavement, bones bowing under his own weight.

Nothing made sense as he looked upon her prone form sprawled on the ground.  Distantly, he registered that people were shouting questions at him, that someone had a firm hand on his shoulder, that sirens were blaring in the distance.  Minutes ticked by like hours, and Ben couldn’t even bring himself to touch her.  That wasn’t a privilege he’d earned.  Though his hands had only just received the memo, poised above her like her mottled black and blue skin was silently screaming for his comfort.  Whether the comfort would belong to him or her had yet to be discovered.

And then other people were touching her before he had the chance.  Blue gloves roughly yanked and tugged, pressing fingers deep into her neck, her chest, her shoulders.  Ben wanted to scream at them to be gentle, but his voice was caught somewhere in the depths of his chest, trapped beneath years of rubbled regret.  It didn’t even register in his mind that he was being bodily pulled to his feet, shoved into the back of the ambulance beside a gurney that was full of his broken soulmate.

But when they wrapped the brace around her neck, she gave a feisty hiss of pain, an awareness of her suffering rushing back like a resounding white noise of relief.

If she was suffering, then she was alive.

“Who are you?” one of the EMTs shouted over the blaring of the siren, glancing at Ben as she worked bandages around the girl through muscle memory.  An acknowledgment for him to understand that the question was his to answer.  Reality was so skewed that the possibility of using his vocal chords to form any amount of coherency was lost, and Ben could only shove his sleeve up, showing the EMT that which he had yet to confirm himself.

The tattoo that had been etched into his skin by divine fate.  The one he’d memorized decades ago, tracing the delicate pattern woven into the barest recesses of his personality and imagining the being on the other end of this permanent tether.  A butterfly perched atop a sunflower.

The EMT glanced at his arm, turned the girl’s left forearm outward, and nodded to her partner across the gurney.

“What’s her name?” the EMT then shouted, hands still flying furiously over the girl’s battered body.  Ben only watched the way her brow furrowed in pain when they prodded her ribs, only able to hear her soft grunt of pain when they rolled  gauze around her skull.

“He’s in shock!” the partner shouted as he tossed a broken shoulder bag onto the gurney.  “I’ve got it!”

As if on cue, the siren died down, the ambulance jostling as they pulled into the waiting emergency medical bay.  Once more, Ben was caught in a whirlwind as they wheeled her from the lot into the hospital, the emergency doctor talking in a rushed tone about possible fractures and potential trauma-induced internal bleeding, Ben following in a jog.  Through the cloud of chaos, she was the only thing truly visible.  A beacon amidst the fog of uncertainty.  It wasn’t until a firm pair of hands wrapped around his forearms that the panic was interrupted, forcing Ben to focus on something that wasn’t the girl.

“Are you family, sir?” a nurse asked.

“I–” Ben faltered, looking at her again as they transferred her from the gurney to a metal screening table.  Looking so tiny after they’d wrapped her in layers of gauze, the brace around her neck still firmly in place and her soft, anguished cries discernible even from this distance.  When her own eyes opened, they looked around wildly, confused and searching.

Searching for him, he somehow knew.

I don’t even know her name.

“Yes, I am,” he finally managed, and the nurse nodded.

“Husband?”

“M-Mated,” he corrected, brain whirring incessantly with too many thoughts to properly align, his mind a maelstrom of possibilities and predeterminations.  “Is she–?”

“Doctor Kalonia is assessing the damage now,” the nurse supplied, gently walking Ben backwards until his knees hit a soft cushion.  “She’s our best E.R. surgeon; Ms. Niima is in good hands.”

Niima.  Ms. Niima.

“Surgery?” Ben asked once the rest of the nurse’s sentence had settled in his awareness, though it didn’t feel like his place to pry.  The nurse smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes as she set a haltingly reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“We’re not sure yet,” she informed him, the attempted warmth in her tone outweighed by her clinical demeanor.  “We suspect that she may have some bruised ribs, but we won’t know if there are any fractures until Doctor Kalonia takes her up for an x-ray.  There’s reason to believe that Ms. Niima hit her head, as well, and upon impact, it seems the car bumper may have–”

The nurse broke off as Ben felt his blood draining from his face, sitting bodily down on the bench she’d led him to.  The sudden whiplash from the altered trajectory of his life seemed to curl against the wind of new fantasies, opening a chasm of despair in his chest.  Guilt ransacked his entire body, making him want to curl into himself and fade away, to rewind time and change the course of their abrupt, harrowingly near-sighted future.

The nurse squeezed his shoulder.  “Doctor Kalonia will be out shortly to discuss our options, okay?  Just sit tight.”

As though he had any other option.

Pacing the length of the hallway outside Ms. Niima’s closed room, Ben tracked the count of his steps to avoid the running of his mind.  Time stood still, submerged in the storm of his emotions as hospital employees rushed around him like waves of a distant sea.  Caught in the middle as he was, Ben couldn’t feel the tug and pull of the ocean, suspended in a state of uninformed disbelief as the hands of the clock ticked mockingly in his ears.

Finally, the door opened, and Ben watched as they wheeled the girl out.  He stepped toward them, only to be halted by a white coat with intelligent brown eyes and a set determination in her face.

“I’m Doctor Kalonia,” she introduced herself as Ben peered desperately over her shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of skin beneath all that white medical tape.  “Are you Ms. Niima’s next of kin?”

“Ben Solo,” he introduced himself rather than giving a direct answer.  “Is she okay?”

“We think so,” Dr. Kalonia smiled.  “We’re taking her up for some x-rays and a surgical evaluation.  There’s a very obvious break in her femur from the bumper impact, but we won’t know the extent of the damage without images.  I also want to confirm that her ribs are merely bruised rather than fractured.”

Ben pursed his lips as Dr. Kalonia led him back to the bench he’d made home on the last… fuck, had it really only been fifteen minutes since they’d taken her into that room?  The ache that had burrowed into his chest like an insect composed of precariousness made it seem like years had been spent in this hospital, not mere minutes.

The doctor sat with him, smiling again, and Ben saw a genuine care in her features that put him momentarily at ease as they carted his soul’s mate away.

“Ben,” the doctor started, “can you tell me what happened?”

Wringing his hands in his lap, Ben carefully assessed the timeline of events, wondering how much they truly needed to know.  Were he to tell them that their discovery of one another had happened just moments before the series of events that led to their arrival here, would they kick him out?  Was he keeping a family from learning the truth, their indifference toward calling her emergency contact due to the nature of his presence?

Doctor Kalonia’s gentle fingertips prodded his arm, and Ben blinked down at her before realizing her goal and turning his forearm toward her.

“What an intricate design,” she murmured, her dark eyes glittering in the fluorescent lights of the hallway.  “I don’t know that I’ve seen one quite so detailed.  You two must have something truly special to elicit such a beautiful rendering.”

Doctor Kalonia blurred before him, her form becoming a watery mess of color and it took Ben blinking several times to realize that his eyes had filled with tears.  Chest shuddering on his next breath, Ben laid a hand over his soul mark, digging his fingertips into his sketched flesh and gritting his teeth.

“It’s because of me,” he finally managed, answering Dr. Kalonia’s question.  “She pushed me out of the way and–”

–and she doesn’t even know me.

A firm hand pressed into his shoulder.

“She’ll be alright,” Dr. Kalonia assured him.  “That girl is a fighter.  You should’ve seen the fire in her eyes while we were assessing her.”  The doctor stood up, still smiling.  “I’m going to prepare for her eval.  Once they finish up with her imaging, we’ll know more about what’s necessary regarding surgery.  Why don’t you come with me to the nurse’s station, and we’ll find out where Ms. Niima is going to go once we know more.”

Half an hour later, they were situating Ben in the waiting room of the trauma center to await Ms. Niima’s arrival.  The orderly informed him that Doctor Kalonia was going to have to set the girl’s leg with pins and screws to keep the femoral bone intact as it healed, the impact having fractured both her right femur and her right tibia.

“No cracked ribs, which is good!” the orderly exclaimed, hanging up the black and white images on an adjacent lightboard as though Ben was enthusiastic about seeing his soulmate’s accident-induced injuries.  “Once the surgery is complete, she’ll have about a four-to-six month recovery period, but only six weeks in the brace, another six in the cast.  Dr. Kalonia is inputting two pins and two screws, here, and here, as well as…”

Though the orderly continued talking, noise faded away as his thoughts fell to the girl once more.  Information was discussed about intramelludary nailing and stitches to the anterior skin of her skull and a sprained elbow, likely from impact against the concrete, but all Ben could hear was the extent at which he’d already managed to fuck up this girl’s life.  A six month recovery because he’d been too distracted by the simplicity of her existence to register a moving car as it sped toward him.

The orderly left him in the waiting area once he’d realized Ben’s inability to respond, a heavy hand on his shoulder in what was likely meant to be a reassuring gesture.  So many people had touched him today, giving him an undeserved comfort simply because the mark on his arm had decided to react to a girl on the street after thirty-two years of silence.  The ache in his chest had yet to dissipate, leaving a yawning chasm around his heart that eroded further with every passing minute.

Stress crept through his body like slow-dissolving acid.  It ate away at his insides, removing the muscle and bone beneath his flesh and replacing it with a menagerie of tension.  His only distraction came in the form of a nurse’s approach, gently gaining his attention with patient understanding.

“Mr. Solo?” she asked, snapping Ben from his self-deprecating reverie.  “We ran Ms. Niima’s insurance policy and it says she’s no longer an active member.  Is she, perhaps, on yours?”

She wasn’t.  Of course she wasn’t.

“I’ll pay out of pocket,” he said immediately.  She smiled again.

“Would you mind joining me at the counter for your billing information?”

He followed her mindlessly, grateful for any semblance of distraction, but then realized his own error.

“Mind if I use your phone?”  The nurse nodded, giving him unfettered access to the push-button panel and instructing him to dial a one before the number.

He called his assistant.

“Hello?”   The voice terse, a two-syllable command rather than a greeting.

“Phas,” he said, clearing his throat.  “It’s me.”

“Jesus fuck.  Ben?  What the fuck is going on?”

“I’ll explain later,” he said.  “Look–”

“You’ll explain now,” Phasma interrupted decisively.  “You don’t respond to an email from F.O., nor any of my texts, and then as I’m leaving the office a good two hours late – which you are paying me for, by the way – some samaritan runs up with your briefcase and phone and drops it with me, saying he didn’t know anything except there had been an accident?  I called the goddamn hospital and there are no Solos in their register, but obviously you’re not okay because I have all your fucking shit, and–”

“I’m at Coruscant General,” he finally answered, his knees threatening to give out as relief fell through his body.  He wouldn’t have to replace any of his checks, his identification, his laptop, his passport that he kept in his briefcase.  Though all of that was second to the black piece of stainless steel he needed at this moment. “A… a lot is going on.  Would you mind bringing those things up to me?”

He thought about it for a moment.

“And the spare change of clothes I have in the office, please.”

Gwen paused.  “You better have a fucking glorious explanation for me when I get there, Solo.”

Ben couldn’t help the dry, humorless chuckle that bubbled up from his throat.  It left an aftertaste on his tongue like bile and sun-baked green aluminum.  “I think I do.”

Another half hour later, with Ms. Niima still in surgery, Gwen Phasma marched through the doors of the waiting area as though they’d been gifted this hospital to use as their private runway.  Striking blue eyes locked onto Ben’s huddled form like a laser scope, nostrils flaring as their heels clacked angrily against the linoleum.

“What the fuck, Ben?” they whispered angrily, and Ben felt the exhaustion in his smile as he gifted it to Gwen.  He stood on numb legs, taking the paper bag stuffed with his clothes, briefcase, and phone, then held up a solitary finger at his assistant as he stumbled over to the nurse’s station.

“I’ll be just outside and down the hall,” he told the attendant, who nodded politely.  “Please come get me if there’s any word.”

“Of course.”

With that, he walked Gwen into the hallway, marching them down the corridor until together they reached a small, quiet nook.

Opening his mouth to speak, however, took more strength than it seemed he had left, and Gwen raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow as the silence stretched between them.

“I had dinner plans with Sloane tonight, you know,” they scoffed, rolling their eyes.  “And instead, I’m worrying myself dizzy with what could’ve possibly happened to you, you fucking nitwit, so if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on in three goddamn seconds–”

“I found her,” Ben interrupted, the words heavy as they heaved their way out of his throat in a solemn uniform.  Gwen faltered, arms crossing in front of their chest as Ben searched for the correct string of phrases to put into words what he’d been too cowardly to verbalize.  “M-My…”  He gestured vaguely to his arm.

Gwen glanced at his arm incredulously, then back to his face, that same perfectly popped eyebrow willing him for further explanation.  Then, as they looked at his arm again, they finally seemed to see the tattoo that lay intricately against his skin, ignored for as long as Gwen had been working for him.

“Oh,” Gwen breathed, their eyes lighting up at the prospect of Ben’s long-lost bond.  But after a moment, they finally seemed to register their surroundings.  “Oh, God, Ben, what…?”

“She, ah–  W-We were in the crosswalk, when it happened, and…”  Throat closing, Ben looked up at the ceiling, focusing for a long moment on the buzzing of the fluorescent lights to center himself.  This is my reality, he told himself, nails biting painfully into his palms as he fisted his hands at his sides.  Own up to it.   “I was too– absorbed, too infatuated with her existence to hear, to–to see the car.  But…”

“But she did,” Gwen filled in, and Ben collapsed against the wall, scrubbing his hands down his face like it might alleviate the pressure building behind his eyes.  As though the torrential storm churning in his chest could dissipate if only he found the off-switch along his skin.  “She pushed you out of the way.”

A statement, not a question.  Gwen knew him well enough to know that he’d not be falling apart like this had the universe elected to explore any other possible outcome.  It had to be this timeline, where he was whole and unharmed and Ms. Niima was on an operating table somewhere.  Were it not for his own predilection for self-destruction, perhaps his folly as an unpresent human being might not have ruined this poor girl’s life.

I don’t even have her yet, but I’m so terrified to lose her.

“I can feel her, Phas,” Ben gasped, planting a firm fist over his chest.  “Ever since I saw her, and then watched that car…  I’ve never felt emptiness like this.  Like I was full for the first time in my life, and two seconds later it was–”

“I understand,” Gwen said carefully, laying a gentle hand on his arm.  Their slender fingers wrapped around his mark, resolutely tucking the appendage against his stomach.  “Trust me, I know how hard it is to be separated from your bonded.  But she’ll be alright.”  Gwen smiled, showing off a set of perfectly straight white teeth.  “I can almost guarantee that she’s not willing to let you go so easily, either.  You’ve been waiting for her, right?”  Ben nodded.  “Remember that she’s been waiting for you, as well.”

Their reminder that Ben’s investment wasn’t one-sided settled some of the turmoil still roiling through his blood.  He took a deep, slow breath, looking up at his assistant with an immeasurable gratefulness.

“That’s very helpful,” he said kindly.  “Thank you, Phas.”

“Well,” they shrugged, flipping their short blonde hair over one shoulder, “I am all-knowing.  Really, I’m surprised you didn’t call me sooner.”

The witty comeback was on the tip of his tongue when the doors down the hall opened, revealing the nurse from the station he’d come to know well.  “Mr. Solo?” she called, and Ben’s heart started to race, his mind thrumming with possibilities.

“Go on, then,” Gwen smiled, warmth in their gaze as they flicked their head toward the waiting nurse.  “I’ve got to get home to Sloane anyway.  I’m sure she’s readying a bowl of popcorn to find out how I ripped you apart limb from limb as we speak.”

“Thank you again,” Ben said, bowing his head toward the paper bag of his belongings he’d dropped to the floor as they talked.  He picked it up, taking another deep breath.  Casting Gwen one last grateful smile, he hurried back down the hallway, meeting the nurse who was still holding the door open for him.

“They just wrapped up surgery on Ms. Niima’s leg,” she informed him, leading Ben down a short hallway toward an ajar door.  “No complications.  She’s asleep now, sedated, but I imagine she’ll be up in the next couple hours.  She’s on morphine, so she might be a little out of it.”

“Thank you,” he managed, eyes darting to the door every few seconds as though it would magically open, Ms. Niima standing perfectly healthy on the other side.  “Oh, my billing information?”

“We can handle that later,” she said with a shrug.  “Just stop by before Ms. Niima is discharged.”

“Thank you,” he said again, and with that, the nurse departed, leaving Ben standing outside a recovery room he wasn’t quite prepared to enter.  But he shut his insecurities away deep in a chest he buried within the graveyard of his mind, steeling his shoulders before marching resolutely through the doorway.

She looked so small.

Hooked up to a variety of machines to monitor her vitals and inject medicine directly into her veins, Ms. Niima looked absolutely tiny in that hospital bed.  Her head was wrapped in gauze, though the neck brace had been removed; a sight Ben didn’t know he’d be thankful for until it was reality.  She had a bandage under her chin, and another peeking out from beneath the hospital gown on her shoulder.  One arm was wrapped in a sling, and Ben vaguely remembered the term sprained elbow from the orderly’s earlier one-sided discussion.  Her leg was raised above the bed in a harness, casted up to the knee and obstructing her thigh, while the other was tucked beneath the blanket.

Ben drew closer, holding his breath as he walked the length of the room to absorb her.  Despite the miles of bandages and fiberglass encasing her body, she looked peaceful.  Relaxed, almost, her mind too far away to register the pain she’d endured.  Long lashes rested against her cheeks, still and dreamless in her sedative-induced slumber.

He finally reached her side, fingers twitching in a desperate will to take her hand in his.  To finally feel the skin he’d never known he was craving against his own.  The ache in his chest hadn’t alleviated with her presence; rather, the emptiness that had prior been so overwhelming, so consuming, seemed to almost fill with an unidentifiable weight.  Some toxic mix of guilt, apprehension, fear, and the tiniest sliver of hope.  Eclipsed as it was by every other inescapable negative, but there all the same.  The shining outline of a possibility.

Sitting beside the bed, Ben watched her for a few minutes, examining the steady rise and fall of her chest like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.  She didn’t move, hands laid at her sides, saturated in gauze and bandages and tape.

But alive.   Whole.   And as surreal as this entire situation felt, the emotion she’d rendered from him in this short, chaotic period of time was more than he’d felt in months.  Years, perhaps.

His hand was on the bed before he’d consciously recognized his own movement, fingers creeping toward her skin with a single-minded determination.  Like he’d never before touched another living being and couldn’t imagine the sensation of heated, warm skin.  Like her flesh released a silent siren’s call that only his genetic makeup could hear, drowning out the methodical beeping of her machinery.

Holding his breath, Ben very gently slid his pinky finger beneath hers.

It was like the vice grip that had been constricting his chest since the day he was born finally dispersed.  Like a breath he’d been holding since he took his first, days and years and decades ago, exhaled from his lungs in a violence that left him completely depleted.  Not empty, but deflated, no room for anything that wasn’t the jellied composition that once composed his blood and bones and skin.

With his next inhale, Ben tasted new life.

His fears of finding a stranger wrapped in pink-stained bandages suddenly felt laughable.  Of course he knows her – he always has.

He always will.

And the way her fingertips twitched ever so slightly, a barely-there puff of breath gasping it’s way from the depths of her esophagus.  As though, even in her slumber, she was saying, I know you, too.

Despite knowing that time-sensitive material awaited his attention, his newly-attained phone sitting unused and likely bombarded with texts and calls from Phas and a variety of other people, Ben couldn’t find it in himself to care.  The only thing in the entire universe that mattered was the small, heroic girl sleeping off her medication in an overly large hospital bed and the way her pinky unconsciously curled around his, anchoring him to her side like he could possibly find somewhere more important to be.

Ignored was the entire rest of his life.

All that mattered was her.

Chapter Text

Sometime later, the slightest shift against his hand pulled him from the dredges of his slumber.  A terrible crick in his neck immediately made itself apparent as he shifted, his awkward hunch against the poorly-cushioned chair forcing a groan from his throat as he straightened.

The lightest breath beside him, and Ben opened his eyes.

Her own eyes were already on him, the forested green muted in the dim lighting awarded from the room’s singular lit bulb.  But they were alert, if still a little clouded with medication.  Her lips were parted in obvious surprise, brow knitted together as though trying to ascertain his existence beside her.  Like he was a mirage, in danger of disappearing.

Ben swallowed heavily, all too aware of the silence as it stretched heavily around the room.  A well of discussion settled in the space between them, awaiting one of them to reach in and pluck a topic.  His own breath was far too loud in his ears, drowning out the sound of electronic monitors.

A quick glance, and he realized their hands were still interlocked by the pinky.  Which meant, if she’d registered his desperation to touch her, she hadn’t elected to move.

That non verbalized idea finally gave him the courage to speak.

“You’re awake,” he croaked, voice still heavy with interrupted sleep.  She blinked a couple of times, pursing her lips.

“You’re here,” she responded, her own voice hoarse.  Barely a whisper, it eked from her throat in a long exhale, like she’d finally taken a breath after days and years of disuse.  Ben could barely nod.

“I couldn’t…  I didn’t want to leave.”  Didn’t want to leave you, he wanted to say, but it was too soon, too quick, their connection still vibrating with the same fragility as a crystal rose.  “I…”

“Can I see?” she asked, voice just barely stronger.  Instinctively, he knew what she so quietly sought, and he leaned over the frame of the bed, extending his arm across her lap.

Baring his mark to her.  Baring the mark they shared, even if he had yet to see her own.

Her eyes shined brighter in the dim light, wet with unshed tears as she moved the hand not restrained by a sling to touch his tattoo.  Her fingertips were shaking against his skin, barely ghosting against his flesh as she traced the red-threaded proof of their belonging.  The mark that had been etched into his very soul as it beat in time with hers.

“It is you,” she whispered, looking up at him again.  “I thought it was a dream.”

Ben shook his head, unable to help the wet chuckle that startled its way out of his chest.  “I’d like to think you wouldn’t dream of getting hit by a car.”

Her own laughter was soft and dry, and Ben retroactively remembered the mug of ice water a hospital staff member had dropped off just before he’d fallen asleep.  He grabbed it now, carefully holding it up to her lips, allowing her to take deep, slow pulls from the straw.

“Oh, that tastes good,” she sighed, making Ben’s jaw twitch as he fought to suppress more emotion than his body could contain.  A thousand questions danced along his larynx, threatening to spill from his throat in a parade of unintelligible gibberish.  “Thank you.”

“Ms. Niima, I–”

“Rey,” she interrupted, leaning back against the bed.  “My name is Rey.  With an ‘e’.”

“Rey,” he repeated, allowing her name to drip across his tongue.  It tasted like his favorite coffee on a Sunday morning, watching the sunrise on a mountainside balcony as trees the same color as her eyes stretched on for miles beneath them.  It tasted like new snow, prickling against his tastebuds in waves of cold before it melted to quench his thirst.  It tasted like a prophecy that had been whispered directly into his mind, a memory made before the moment became reality.  “I’m Ben.  Ben Solo.”

She grinned at that, showing off a toothy smile that seemed to light up her entire face.  Like the stars themselves, she was luminescent all on her own.  “Ben Solo,” she murmured.  “I like that.  Simple and intense.  It suits you.”  She laid her palm against his mark, exhaling sharply through her nose as her eyes inched closed.  Like she could feel it beneath her hand, pulsing and thrumming in time with her own heartbeat.

“Are you in pain?” he asked softly, allowing himself to reach up and place his other hand atop hers.  She shook her head, sighing softly and her hand twitched beneath his.  “Do you want more water?”

“No,” she chuckled without opening her eyes.  Then, after a long moment of silence, she said, “I’m a senior art student at Coruscant U.”  Her brow furrowed, likely matching Ben’s as he leaned closer, latching on to every word she awarded him without understanding the prompt of her conversation.  “I was going to go for engineering, because I’m good at making things work and understanding machinery, and it would have been the safest option.  But my art teacher, Ms. Kanata, told me that safe and practical didn’t equate to passion, and that I’d waste away if I entered into a field purely for functionality rather than heart.”

Something about that statement resonated deeply in Ben’s chest, but he was far too absorbed in her monologue to dissect it.

“I was raised in foster care in Jakku, and entered fourteen different art competitions my senior year of high school.  I got three scholarships, and used what little money I had saved up to move here with nothing to my name except a secondhand duffel bag tied to a few scraps of hope.”  She smiled softly, a reserved expression that made his heart stutter in his chest.  Like she was reading one of her favorite passages from the album of her memory.  “I met Finn while I was working at the campus cafe, and he was my very first friend.  Another foster kid, but much more put together than me.  We lived together for two years, until he met his bonded and they got a place.”  Her expression turned resigned, just a little.  Just enough for Ben to know that she was still hurting.  It seemed as though she thought herself dramatizing the situation, and she switched gears.

As she spoke, her fingers slowly spread through his like rivulets of water as they ran down a hillside, becoming one in the creek of his embrace.  She laced their fingers together, her knuckles to his palm, and the gesture had both of their shoulders sagging in relaxation.

“I am not a picky eater, but I don’t like coconut.  The texture makes me cringe.”  She shrugged, face contorting in discomfort, but continued talking before Ben could say anything.  “My favorite book is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, which is funny because I’m not really a fan of mystery novels in general.  I’m also really into supernatural horror movies and have been slowly working my way through the Conjuring cinematic universe in my spare time.”

She took a slow, deep breath, giving him the softest smile he’d ever been bestowed.  His heart clenched in his chest, fingers tightening around hers where he still carefully cradled her hand.  An automatic returning squeeze had him melting, desperate to climb onto the bed beside her if only to feel the weight of her body pressed against his, to know if their dips and crevices aligned as well as their hands seemed to.

“Thank you,” he said before the silence could stretch, “but, starlight, why are you telling me all these things?”  The affectionate name slipped seamlessly from his tongue, dripping silently into that well of unexplored concepts between them, but she almost seemed to radiate and shimmer when she reached in to pluck it out for herself.  And Ben wanted to see her illuminated in such a way for the rest of his days.

She laughed at his question, nose wrinkling with mirth.  “I pushed you out of the way of a moving car.  We skipped, like, thirty-three crucial soulmate steps to get to that.  I’m no expert, but I think we still have to cover all those skipped levels at some point.  Figured I’d start filling you in on everything you missed.”

Her tone brokered no argument, and something new burgeoned in his chest with the same inevitability as the dawning sun.  Pink and purple hues of possibility streaked across a cloudless sky of unrealized fantasies.  All this information, all at once, and it wasn’t enough for him.  He could listen to her detail every small, insignificant happening in her life since the day she was born and it wouldn’t be enough for him.  The lilting, softly accented cadence of her voice was enough to keep him suspended in this constant state of amazement.

She’s real.  She’s real.  She’s real.

She’s the strongest person I know.

Another squeeze of his fingers prompted his own unrehearsed speech.  “I was born in Chandrila,” he began.  “My mother worked in politics and just recently retired, and my father owned a car repair shop for about twenty years before he sold it.  I went to school for finance, and I’m now an executive director for one of the top marketing companies in the country.”

Rey whistled lowly, eyes wide with a shocked surprise, and Ben couldn’t help the derisively humorless laugh that barked from his throat in a puff of ashen smoke.  “I don’t mean to inflate my own ego like this, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Rey said, the warmth in her eyes bleeding into her voice as she spoke.  “You should be proud of your accomplishments, Ben.  You’ve done amazing things for being so young.”

“I had an in,” he said honestly, even as adoration swelled in his chest.  “While I did work hard, my mother is close friends with the former CEO, so I started pretty high up on the totem pole for a recent college graduate and former intern.  But Amilyn did that – she gave people chances constantly, even when they didn’t always deserve them.”

“I like her.  She seems like a lady that knows her stuff.”

Rey’s eyes slipped closed, and Ben gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.  “You must be exhausted, starlight.  You should sleep.”  

“Keep talking,” she said, even as she nodded.  “Please.  Tell me everything.”

Ben hummed thoughtfully.  “While I’m not a huge fan of sweets, I do have an impartial taste to mint chocolate chip ice cream.  And I don’t really care for horror movies.”  A playful smile stretched across her lips, like she anticipated his next sentence.  “But I’d watch them with you.  If you’d like.”

“I’d like.  Very much.”

…

They monitored Rey for two days before releasing her, giving her – and Ben, by association –  a very long list of care instructions.  She’d showered with the help of a nurse, who then taught Ben how to wrap her leg in plastic bags to keep it out of the water, “For when she bathes back at home,” the nurse had stated.  Ben couldn’t contain his blush, and Rey had smiled.

There were exercises for her elbow, exercises for her crutches, exercises for her torso, but the doctor was adamant that Rey rest as much as possible until the sling on her arm came off in a couple weeks.  She had a checkup in three days, another a week after that.  Rey seemed to withdraw on herself the more they discussed her necessary return to inspect her recovery, as though the weight of what had happened was settling on her shoulders, more and more heavily with every passing statement.

As Rey was filling out the release paperwork, Ben called for a car, still halfway terrified to broach what he knew was a very important topic.  But surely she had to assume; he’d only left once to go home, shower, and change, after all.  It was only after the nurse had left to file her information and bring a wheelchair that he found the courage to speak.

“I would like to stay with you,” he rushed, making Rey blink at him in surprise.  “If– If you’re comfortable with that, of course.  To aid you.”

“Oh, Ben, no, it’s okay, I can call Finn–”

“Please,” he managed, taking her hand in both of his.  “I’m aware of how new and strange all of this is and I just want to be able to take care of you.”  He smiled beseechingly.  “And I think I’ll go at least somewhat crazy if I don’t know how you’re doing every second of the day.”

The smile she awarded him was guarded with unspoken thoughts, but she acquiesced with a nod.  Once more giving him a gift she’d never comprehend.

He slipped away as an orderly helped Rey dress in a pair of throwaway scrubs – cursing himself for not having enough foresight to have Gwen pick her up some clothes.  He made his way to the nurse’s station, running an anxious hand through his hair as he pulled out his wallet.

“I’m here to give my out-of-pocket billing information for Ms. Niima’s records,” he stated, a sense of dread creeping across his skin.  As though he was doing something wrong without consulting Rey first.  They’d gotten to know each other well these two days, despite her being in and out of coherency with pain medication, and he had gathered enough to realize that she’d be furious if she knew he was paying her exorbitant medical bills.

The nurse nodded, typing quickly on his detached keyboard.  “Ah.  It looks like we got your insurance policy added to Ms. Niima’s records this morning, actually.”  He gave a curt smile as Ben started.  His insurance policy?

“That can’t be right.”  Ben’s mind was far too tired for this.  “Rey isn’t on my policy, she–”

“Oh, I took that call this morning, actually,” another nurse said, peering over the shoulder of the first with a grimace.  “The woman on the phone was incredibly terse, but she said, ‘if this information doesn’t work, call me and I’ll destroy big pharma with my own hands.’   She had a few other, err, choice words sprinkled in, but everything seemed to be in order when I ran the policy through our internal system.”

Phas.  Ben pursed his lips to contain his smirk, reminding himself to text them later and thank them.  He had no idea how they’d managed to get Rey’s information, nor how they convinced his insurance carrier to add her to his policy, but nonetheless, he was grateful.  He’d have to buy them and Sloane dinner.

The male nurse helping him gave Ben a resigned shrug.  “Ms. Niima should be all squared away,” he said with finality as he turned back to the task Ben had interrupted.  Giving a stilted, unacknowledged nod, Ben retreated, hurrying into Rey’s room.  His phone chirped as he walked through the doorway, his car service letting him know that they’d arrived.  The orderly was helping Rey into a wheelchair, and the expression on her face was priceless in her chagrin.

“This is entirely unnecessary,” she stated, rolling her eyes when they handed Ben her bag of belongings and the plastic-wrapped crutches they’d measured her for earlier in the day.  “I’m perfectly capable of getting myself into an elevator.”

“Hospital policy,” the orderly stated, as Ben was sure he had a thousand times in the past.  “You’d be carted out of here if you’d had an appendectomy.  Also, no offense, Miss Rey, but you nearly toppled while standing just a moment ago.  I’d personally prefer you not break your other femur simply because you were too stubborn to sit in the chair.”

Disguising his laugh poorly with a cough, Ben turned his back, pretending to busy himself by adjusting Rey’s things just as she cast an angry glare in his direction.  The orderly didn’t try and contain his smile as they herded out of the room, Rey grumbling under her breath about betrayal and undermining.

As they walked, though, Rey reached out, taking his hand in hers as though she’d done it a thousand times.  Ben’s heart skipped a beat in his chest, his shoulders stiffening before he could attain the natural nonchalance of two soulmates who had known each other for years rather than days.  Still, he held on tight as the orderly ushered them through the hospital, pausing just inside the main entrance for Ben’s departure plan.

“That’s our car there,” Ben said, gesturing to the idled black Silencer sedan awaiting them.  “Our driver is aware of Ms. Niima’s inhibitions and has made the necessary accommodations.”

The orderly nodded, pushing Rey through the automatic doors as Rey gawked at the modern-day carriage sitting curbside for her.  As they approached, his driver, Mitaka, hopped out, rushing around the vehicle and opening the back passenger door.  Ben had instructed Mitaka to pull the passenger seat forward as far as possible, the seat leaning against its base and tucked nearly against the windshield to provide ample room for Rey’s plastic and fiberglass leg.  Ben loaded her bag and crutches into the trunk before helping her to her foot, carefully turning her until she could sit in the plush seat.  He curled an arm under her legs, crouching as he helped her pull them into the car without jostling her injuries too much.

The orderly handed him Rey’s prescriptions, rattling off her dosages and how often she could have the pain medication before wheeling the chair back through the doors.  Ben hurried around, clambering into the seat beside Rey before Mitaka carefully eased out of the hospital entrance and into traffic.

“This is wicked,” she stated, large eyes roving around the interior of the car.  “Is this your personal car service?”

Ben nodded.  “I don’t use it often.  I live within walking distance of my office, but I pay Mitaka to be at the ready for me in the event that I need to take accident victims home after an extended hospital stay.”

She nudged his arm, bashful as she once more took his hand in hers.  They drove in silence for a few minutes before Rey cleared her throat.

“Thank you,” she finally said.  “I– I don’t like to be burdensome, and it would have been hard for me to call Finn and ask for help.  And I know I’ll probably be weird while I get adjusted to having you in my space, but I’m really happy you offered to stay.”

Ben squeezed her fingers between his, trying to keep his voice steady and sincere.  “If you hadn’t said yes, I would have hired an in-home nurse for you.”

The affronted look that passed over her face was enough to send Ben into a fit of laughter, and he couldn’t remember the last time he laughed so much.  After a moment, she joined in, and conversation came so easily after that it was almost painful.

Almost.

But it was beautiful all the same.

…

“How did you intend on getting to your apartment?”

She lived on the third floor of a four-story walkup.  Her building was – to be polite – extremely dated, an out-of-service elevator taking up a portion of one wall with caution tape wrapped around it.  Rey said it hadn’t worked the entire year she’d lived here, and judging from the frayed tape and deteriorating door, long before that.

“I would’ve figured it out,” she argued, though her voice belied a soft disbelief at her own statement.  Eyeing the stairs incredulously, likely remembering how much difficulty she’d had climbing the six stairs outside with her arm wrapped tightly around Ben’s midsection, she sighed.  “The railing would’ve been helpful if it hadn’t fallen off last week.”

If he wasn’t so intent on keeping her comfortable, he would’ve insisted she heal at his apartment.  But as it was, he knew her recovery would go much better were she surrounded by her own things.

With a huff of disbelieving amusement, Ben handed Rey the crutches and pulled her bag over his shoulder.  Confusion crossed her features as he crouched beside her, just before a sharp inhale of surprise as he bundled her into his arms.

“Ben!” she yelped, clinging tightly to his shoulders.  “What are you–?”

“If you can believe it,” he stated, beginning the weighted trek up the first flight of stairs, “I was recently saved by a very brave young woman from a broken femur, fractured tibia, and sprained elbow.”  He kept his pace steady, careful not to jostle her too much as he ascended the second of six total flights.  “Therefore, I’m a far more capable candidate for climbing some stairs than the aforementioned young woman.”

“Oh my god, put me down, you’re going to kill yourself!”

“You barely weigh anything,” he grinned down at her, though her weight in his arms was becoming apparent as he walked the third landing toward the fourth set of stairs.  She disagreed, demanding he put her down for the remainder of their ascent, until he reached the top of the stairs and gently carried her to her room, trying to minimize his panting as he carefully set her back to her feet.

“You are ridiculous,” she huffed, leaning against his side as she dug through her broken purse for her keys.  “Absolutely the most ridiculous man–”

Her sentence was interrupted when her door flung open from the inside, a frantic young man’s eyes washing over her.

“Holy fuck, Rey!  What happened to you?” he exclaimed, hands surging toward her shoulders.  Ben moved to intercept before the man caught himself, eyes widening as they registered her arm in its sling, the brace around her thigh and the cast over her leg.  “I’ve been trying to find you for two days, I didn’t know who to call because your fucking phone is here, or if you were–”

He finally seemed to realize that Ben was standing there, his and Rey’s arms wrapped around one another’s waists.  The man’s eyes widened even further.

“Who the fuck are you?” he barked, taking a protective step toward Rey.  As though he could rip her from his grasp.  Ben bristled, eyes narrowing on the young man.

“I–”

“Ben,” Rey interrupted loudly, sensing the tension as it filled the air around them.  “Finn, this is Ben.  He’s my–” she broke off, looking up at him.  The hint of desperation in her eyes turned to a calm resolve.  “He’s mine,” she said simply.

Finn’s eyes darted back and forth between them, brow still furrowed, until Rey lifted the arm slung against her chest.  It took a moment, but then comprehension washed across his features, taking an unconscious step back.

“He’s your…?”  Finn gestured to his own soulmark on his neck, the simple geometric pattern that ran in three concentric, interconnected lines from his ear to his shoulder.  Rey nodded, grinning widely, eyes still on Ben.  “Oh.  Oh shit.  Holy shit.”

…

They settled into the apartment as Rey told Finn what she was now referring to as their meet-cute story, making Ben roll his eyes.  Her phone was indeed plugged in on her counter, an ancient dinosaur of a smartphone somehow losing ten percent charge from the kitchen to the couch where she’d been regaling Finn with details about the accident.  Ben made himself scarce as his mate caught her friend up, busying himself in the kitchen with making tea for her and cringing every time he opened a new, nearly barren cupboard.

He put in a pickup grocery order as he waited for the water to boil.

“Are you sure you trust this guy?” Finn asked at one point, his voice an obnoxiously loud whisper.  Expecting Ben’s quiet eavesdropping.  Ben’s shoulders tended minutely as he scrolled absently through a list of produce, only relaxing when Rey barked out a chortle of disbelief.

“Asks the man who moved in with his mate literally a week after knowing him,” she countered, and he could practically hear her rolling her eyes, the smile in her voice as apparent as the sunshine streaming through her curtains.  “Don’t worry.  He’s…  He’s a lovely person, Finn.  Genuine and kind and so unabashedly caring.  I can’t wait for you to get to know him.”

Once the tea kettle began screaming, Finn reluctantly took his leave, but not before making Rey promise to check in at least three times an hour while he was at work.  She sarcastically agreed, and Finn gave her a careful hug as he left, Ben standing in the doorway to the kitchen with Rey’s mug of tea.  Finn threw Ben one last untrusting glare before he exited the apartment.

“Thank you,” she grinned as Ben handed Rey the mug.  “Sorry about all that.  Finn is…  He can be a bit overprotective.”

“It’s okay,” Ben said, setting a careful hand on her shoulder.  “He cares about you.  That’s– important to me.”  The words were said in a rush, uncaring of the rapid rollercoaster their relationship had become as he blurted more than he thought she might be ready to hear.  But she only smiled, taking a sip from her tea as delight crossed her features.

“Two teaspoons of honey?” she asked.  Ben blinked, nodding, not realizing he’d prepared her tea without asking her preferences.  “Wow.  You know how I take my tea.  You really are my soulmate.”

Ben laughed, and his shadowed insecurities that things might be different once outside the stuffy walls of the hospital were washed away in the light of her smile.  Finn had helped her prop her foot up on the coffee table beneath a few throw pillows, so Ben grabbed the blanket on the back of the secondhand armchair he’d been leaning against, draping it over her lap.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked.  “The doctor said you’ll be ready for another painkiller anytime.”

She hummed, inhaling the wisps of steam as they spilled from her tea.  “I’m not in much pain now, but I know that’s probably just because I didn’t have to climb six flights of stairs.”  Eyeing him mischievously over the rim of her mug.  “But I’ll fall asleep if I take one.”

“Good,” he joked, “then I’ll have time to rifle through all your stuff.”  He stepped over to her hospital things as she chuckled behind him, digging through the bottles of prescription medication to find one of the ridiculously sized pills she was supposed to take three times a day.  He retrieved it and a glass of water for her.  They talked quietly as she sipped her tea, until her eyes began drooping and Ben helped her adjust so she was lying on the couch, keeping her leg propped up and covering her more fully with the throw.

“So nice,” she sighed.  “Thought it’d be weird to have you here, y’know.”

“You mentioned that,” he smiled as she snuggled into the cushions.

Rey smiled in turn, eyes closing fully.  “S’not, though.  It’s nice.  Like you fit in with all my stuff.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”  She yawned.  “My things.  My place.  My Ben.”

And she drifted off to sleep.

…

The trip was only supposed to take an hour, maybe an hour and a half at most.  He’d called Mitaka back to Rey’s apartment, leaving a quick note that he’d be back soon on the coffee table as he slipped out.  His intention was to return before she had time to wake up and realize he was gone.  Run to the store, have his groceries loaded into the car, go home and grab clothes, his personal laptop, his spare charger, and a few other things he’d need to work remotely, then go back to Rey.

Life would never be so simple for them, it seemed.

The construction between Rey’s apartment and the grocery store caused the roads to back up for nearly a half hour, making Ben twitch and groan as the stalled minutes ticked by.  Then, once they finally pulled into the lot, some odd error with his order meant the store hadn’t collected more than half of what had been on his bill, and he’d had to rush through the aisles and pick up the supplies he’d been neglected.  Even with the profuse apologies from the manager, his anger hadn’t eased, though taking it out on the man was for naught and he’d simply nodded with every desperate word spoken.  Ben had barreled through the store like a man possessed, making every other person cower under his intensity.

He had to return to Rey, and none of these people could comprehend that.

Even the drive to his apartment had taken longer than he’d accounted for, his ever-growing anxiety making an already nervous Mitaka downright fearful as he tore through the city streets to get Ben home.  Once there, he ripped a tornado through his own space to gather a duffel bag full of clothes, shoes, toiletries and office equipment.

Mitaka practically screamed when Ben threw open the back door a mere ten minutes later, instructing the timid man to drive.

Arms laden with thirteen bags of groceries and his own duffel bag, he marched angrily up the stairs, muttering curses under his breath as he fished for Rey’s borrowed keys and threw the door open.

Alert, excited forest eyes fell on him as he banged his way through the door, and in an instant, the armor of anger he’d constructed around himself in a valiant attempt to return to her melted away, dropping in heaps around his ankles that he stepped over to get to her.

“You’re back,” she breathed as he rushed to set the groceries in the kitchen.  He threw his duffel bag against the back of the armchair and blew back into the room.

“Are you okay?” he asked, taking her hand in his.  “I’m sorry I took so long.”

“I’m okay,” she sang, tilting her face up toward his.  Radiating the same beauty and warmth of the stars.  Then, her demeanor turned demure.  “I see you brought food.  Sorry I didn’t have much.”

“I thought I’d make stir-fry for dinner,” he informed her in lieu of commenting on the boxes of macaroni and cheese and canned tuna on which she seemed to subsist.  “No coconut.”

Rey only beamed at him, squeezing his hand where he still held it.

“That sounds amazing.”

Chapter Text

He worked as she slept, streaming quiet piano music on her television to keep her lulled as he typed away.  Taking phone calls in her dingy hallway so as not to rouse her, making sure she ate with each of her medications.

Three days later, he was taking her back to the hospital for a check up, delighted to find out that her healing was right on track.

It took a stuttered conversation and licking flames of embarrassment for them to find ground when it came to her showers.  Eventually, she relented, giving him free reign to wash her hair when she couldn’t lift her arm, careful to avoid the stitches still tenderly helping her skin heal on the back of her head.  It was easy to remain clinical as he washed away the grime on her skin when faced with the yellowing bruises that still splotched her body like a Jackson Pollock painting.

A week after that, the next checkup allowed her to remove the sling around her arm, her sprained elbow still sore but mostly functional.  She proudly walked out on her own, somewhat unstable on her crutches, and only had Ben help her into the car.  Though the exhaustion set in during their drive, and he still carried her up the six flights of stairs to her apartment.

Afterward, when they both accepted that she’d be able to wash herself, Ben remained in the bathroom only to assure that the brace and cast on her leg didn’t get wet.  At least, that’s what they told themselves when he wrapped her in a towel afterward, helped her blow her hair dry, and carefully led her back to the couch so she could rest.

He carried her to her room every night, cradling her in a sea of pillows and blankets he’d ordered on Amazon, desperate to make sure she was continually surrounded by soft things.  She protested every time, insisting that she was perfectly fine on the small couch he’d claimed as a bed during his stay.  But he just smiled, brushing her hair back and laying a chaste kiss on her forehead as the protestations gave way to sleep.

It wasn’t until her sling was removed that she grabbed the hem of his sweater before he could slink away, eyes boring up at him in the darkness of her bedroom.

“Stay with me,” she pleaded, and the lump in his throat was excruciating in its suddenness.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he responded, and Rey shook her head, eyes alight with a fiery stubbornness.

“You won’t,” she stated firmly.  You can’t, she seemed to say.

Thoughts whirled as he walked himself through his nighttime routine, returning to her room to the sight of her tired eyes and a smile stretching her cheeks.  He climbed in beside her from the foot of the bed, laying on his side and facing her as she scooted slightly closer to him.  The cool wall was at his back as they burrowed beneath her blankets together.

He didn’t return to the couch again.

Weaning herself off the painkillers was easy enough – she simply stopped taking them, insisting that the pain was significantly more bearable.  She was doing more around the apartment, as well; helping him fold laundry, going to the bathroom on her own, doing the dishes after he cooked.

She cried, just a little, when her manager insisted that she quit her job and reapply at a later time so they could hire someone to fill her position while she recovered.  Ben held her all the while, murmuring into her hair all of the options she had regarding unemployment and short-term disability.

He bought her new art supplies to replace the ones she’d left at school.  Her professors allowed her to attend class online, since she was mostly immobile, and he helped her deliver her projects as she completed them.  Joking the entire time that he was going to get her one of those single-leg scooters so she could roll around, which led to grumbled insults beneath her breath about running him over.

Soft, tender moments of intimacy became their constant the same way springtime unfolded from winter’s gloom.  He set up a desk in her small living room, working as she painted or drew beside the sunlit bay window.  He cooked in her tiny kitchen as she watched from the two-seater table next to the counter, negging his “bougie” cuisine choices but always eating every last bite.  They usually watched a movie afterward, sharing a spoon over a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream with her small body tucked beneath his arm.

He watched the entire Conjuring cinematic universe with her, and she grinned cheekily when he quietly admitted to enjoying it.

At night, Rey propped herself onto her side, facing him with a thick pillow between her legs to keep her cast elevated.  They whispered quiet secrets to one another until they succumbed to sleep.  And in the mornings, Ben always made sure to wake before her, taking in her angelic features like he might sculpt her from clay relying on his memory alone.

“Why did you do it?”

Conversation had lulled in the quiet, but he could tell from her breathing that she hadn’t fallen asleep yet.  The question burned as it tumbled from his throat, the searing need to know outweighed by the logic that reliving the accident might not be the best option for her.  It had been overturned in his mind so many times, always given way to any other avenue of conversation, but every dismissal had it rearing back louder and angrier, neglected and alone as it tore through his mind day after day.

Why did you save me?

In that way they always seemed to understand one another, even without context, she sighed a weighted breath as she searched the darkness for an answer to his inquiry.  The outline of her eyelashes quivered beneath his gaze, her own eyes roving across his skin like she could discern him from the darkness.  Like she, too, had memorized where his features lay across his face.

“I’ve lost so much in my life,” she whispered.  “Most of which I never really had to begin with.  My family, my home, my belonging.  I couldn’t lose you, too.  Not before I had the chance to have you.”

“You weren’t afraid, though.”  He remembered the flames that had decorated her eyes as that car came for him, watched them narrow in remembered determination every night as he slipped into his dreams.

Her shoulder lifted and dropped, and he swore he could feel her smile in the air.  “I knew I’d be okay.  But you were frozen.  I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t shatter like glass.”

A thousand responses gurgled up from his throat, and he swallowed them all back.  Instead, he slid ever so slightly closer to her, laying a gentle hand on her cheek and listening to the way her lungs stuttered in the darkness.  Jaw tilting just barely beneath his hand, Ben took the gesture for what it was.

An invitation.

Carefully, like caressing the petals of a crystalline rose, he pressed his lips to hers.  Tenderness unraveled in his chest, the origami swan of his emotion for her he’d kept tucked away in his heart unfolding and stretching until it took up every available inch of his body.  Until her kiss could wet his paper mache, spilling between their shared breaths as it cast around their bodies and created a space meant only for the two of them.

A first kiss had never tasted so sweet.  Like inside jokes and new dreams and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

So bared to her that he may as well have been naked beneath a spotlight for her eyes alone, Ben had to make a conscious effort to pull away from the fledgling beginnings of her lips.  From the memories of blooming wildflowers that now decorated the former desert of his existence.  Because he’d never found himself fulfilled before her.  Never bothered to water the dead gardens of his person – he didn’t even know they needed tending.

It was criminal, how a person might not realize what pieces of themselves they were missing until the other half of their soul came along and reconfigured the puzzle of their life.

She kissed him again, and this time, he could taste her smile.

“Goodnight, Ben.”

He laid awake long after her breathing had evened out, memorizing the quiet sounds of her slumber as though the universe had created a bedtime playlist specifically for him.  Finally, as his eyes grew heavy, he pressed careful lips to her forehead, basking in the quiet sigh she gave him in turn.

“Sweet dreams, my starlight.”

Recovery was a difficult journey for Rey.

She broke down crying on more than one occasion, the fortified castle of her strength crumbling to sand every now and again at the most peculiar things.

Receiving her first short-term disability check.  After Finn would leave during their Friday night get-togethers, lamenting that she was the reason he couldn’t go out and dance like they used to.  When Ben ran home to his apartment after he’d run out of body wash and they’d gotten into their first fight about how he’d given up his entire life just to sit next to her and do nothing.

Ben had countered that he’d rather sit beside her than sit alone because she’d nearly given up her breath for him.  And Rey had sobbed in his arms on the couch, angry with herself for being angry at him.  And Ben had held her, angry with himself for not anticipating her vices as an independent woman who needed to ask for so much help for the first time in her life.

After six weeks, the brace around her femur had come off, Doctor Kalonia congratulating Rey on her recovery process so far.  The brace’s removal made Rey significantly more mobile, and she was able to make it up all six flights of stairs outside of her apartment with careful steps and a wide grin on her face.

Ben, all at once, had felt like a useless leech on her life.  Sucking away at her time and taking up space in her small apartment like a broken bookshelf she was too sentimental to toss to the curb.  Over a few days, he withdrew on himself, practically submerging himself in work and chores in an effort to leave her to her own devices.

She noticed.  Because Rey always noticed.

Starlight shines the brightest at night, after all.

“You’re upset,” she stated firmly as he stood over a pot of pasta, whisking the homemade alfredo with a single-minded determination so the parmesan didn’t melt with a grainy texture.

Ben scoffed, woefully indignant in being faced with the reality of his own purposelessness.

“What on Earth would I have to be upset about?”

Rey eyed him speculatively, leaning against one of her crutches with her head resting against the frame of the entryway.

“I asked the hospital staff if they had the correct address on file when we went in for my check-up.”  Ben’s hand sputtered minutely above the sauce, and he prayed she didn’t notice.  “Because in six weeks, I haven’t received a bill.  And I know nothing really moves quickly in medicine, but they always come for money, you know.”

“Right,” Ben said, trying desperately to keep an air of nonchalance.

She hobbled into the kitchen, leaning over the counter, and he couldn’t help looking at her.  In her road to healing, she’d mostly elected to wear her hair in a messy bun, keeping it out of her face as she focused on her exercises and her painting.  But today, it fell in soft waves around her shoulders, brunette overlaid with nearly-red highlights in the fading sunlight.

Taking his breath away with her beauty.  As she always did.

“They told me I’d been on your insurance policy this whole time,” she said, the blunt tip of her statement poised above his heart.  Ready to rip into his skin and sink into his secrets.  The ones he’d been too afraid to acknowledge, Phasma pulling the few thousand Rey owed the hospital from his credit account and paying it the same day the bill was received.  “Who did that, I wonder?”

“Gwen,” Ben immediately replied, cursing himself internally for using his assistant as a scapegoat.  Rey had met Phasma when they’d stopped by with some paperwork, sticking around only long enough to imprint their heeled shoe on Rey’s psyche, his little soulmate marveling over their existence for days afterward.

Rey smiled, like she expected as much.  The synchronicity of their hearts making all of his answers to her inquiries seem like knowledge acquired at the beginning of time.  Ben couldn’t handle her kindness, could hardly handle the idea that he alone was the one to kiss her goodnight or lay beside her and watch her sleep.

He turned back to the sauce.

Rey sighed in his peripheral, using her crutches to move further into the kitchen.  He thought she would go around him, toward the fridge, and perhaps let this conversation lie.  Perhaps they could discuss it later, when their bellies were full of pasta and his sour mood had lifted at the prospect of waking up with her in his arms, her casted leg digging painfully into his calf, as it did every morning.

But of course, such was not the way of his mate.  Her forehead pressed against his back, arms wrapping awkwardly around his midsection as she balanced on the hollow metal beams that kept her aloft.  Ben stiffened, unconsciously turning down the flame of her stove to bask in this moment a while longer.  To bask in her light a while longer.

“You’ve taken care of everything,” she said, voice muffled against his shirt and skin and lungs and heart.  “You’ve been…  Ben, you’ve been the best thing that could have possibly happened to me.”

“I’m the reason you’re in this mess to begin with.”  But his hand came up, holding hers against the underside of his chest where it rested.  Keeping her tethered to him.  The anchor in his storm.

“I don’t care,” she stated, her voice ringing with finality.  “I don’t care about the how, I just care that we’re here.  And that you…  That you want me so much that you’d sacrifice so many aspects of your life just to make sure I’m okay.”

“It wasn’t a sacrifice,” he countered, and Rey shook her head between his shoulder blades.

“It was,” she argued.  “You’ve gone home twice in six weeks.  To what I’m sure is a much more luxurious apartment than this dump.  And you’ve only gone to your office once.  You’ve cooked and cleaned and washed my dirty clothes and watched movies with me that I know you don’t like and…”  Her voice trailed off, a slightest hitch of breath as her hands fisted in his shirt.  “And you’re constantly awed by my art, and you tell me all the time how strong you think I am, how smart and beautiful and brave.   And I wouldn’t believe it, I wouldn’t believe a word of it from anyone that wasn’t you.  But it is you, it’s always been you.”

She was crying earnestly into his back, and Ben released her hand only long enough to set the sauce on a different burner and turn until she was in his arms properly.  He cupped her jaw in his hands, pressing their foreheads together as the dam of his own emotions crumbled to dust.  The deluge of his insecurities fell in torrents from his own eyes, streaking emotion like canyons down his cheeks.  Part of him wasn’t sure why he was crying, but it all became apparent when he looked once more at her fiery spirit as it lit lanterns of defiance behind her eyes.

She saw beneath whatever cracks she’d carved into his mask.  The pieces of himself he’d never be able to hide away, not from her.  And she still wanted him.

“Starlight–”

“You’re not a burden!” she interrupted, voice breaking.  “Please, please don’t hide from me, Ben.  I-I need you here, I need you with me.  So just be with me.”

“I’m with you,” he vowed, his voice cracking as the emotion tumbled from his throat in a maw of indistinguishable catalysts.  It fell to the floor around their feet, and she was the only thing able to keep him from floating away, from allowing it to swallow him whole.

Be with me.

“I’m always with you,” he swore, a verse read from an ancient tome that would summon wrath and despair if not upheld.  A promise sworn with the heated match of their marks, pulsing against his arm like a drumbeat of her heart against his ribs.  The heart he’d unknowingly been gifted, as he’d given her his own in the same instance.

Six weeks of quiet domesticity and genuine feeling, but this singular raw and tearing instance was the impetus of solidification.  Like a leaf floating gently to the ground, this was the pelting rain that would bombard it into the grass, sticking it to the forest floor and burying it beneath the debris.

This was how he fell in love with her.  A slow, gentle caress of wind before the storm of their connection could drag him to his belonging.

To their belonging.

A kiss that tasted like home, had in a kitchen over a cooling pot of pasta alfredo.  Dinner forgotten, Ben lifted her, careful of her casted and healing leg as he spread her across her own sheets.  As he unwrapped her skin, his lips chased the flush as it spread from her cheeks to her chest.  Familiarizing himself with the taste of her neck, her collar, her breasts.

She unraveled him in turn.  Clothes, yes, but skin and sinew and muscle and bone, tearing him apart until nothing but atoms remained, each one imprinted with her name like she’d laid claim on him when he was nothing more than stardust.

Divinity had never felt so perfect.  Her body wrapped around his like they were two halves finally finding a whole.  They moved in slow unison, hips rolling and thrusting like they were riding the same wave of ecstasy.  All the while, he whispered everything he adored about her in her ear like they were passages etched into stone.  And she sang the psalm of his name in turn, voice breathless and rising in pitch as their wave crashed into the shore together.  Throwing them into the sand of oblivion, the same starlight of her existence exploded behind his eyes and called out her name in a voice that sounded peculiarly like his own.

Stuck together with sweat and want and an undeniable, buzzing connection, her chest pressed into his like they’d never left this room in all their lives.

“Stay with me,” she pleaded softly, her lips moving against the skin of his chest like she could tattoo their mark on every inch of his flesh.

Ben only nodded, pressing his lips to her temple as he brushed her hair aside.  Rey still felt the need to clarify.

“Not just today,” she insisted.  “Not just until my cast comes off.  But…”

“Forever?” Ben supplied, lips caressing the line of her jaw like he could swallow all the secrets of their hidden future there.

“Forever,” Rey agreed, as though it had been his idea.  Not a decision forged between the two of them and the mark of their inner arms.  “And maybe after that, as well.”

Ben chuckled.  Held her tighter.  Wrapped her up in arms and legs and love and eternity.

“I will always be with you.”

The tattoo on their arms pulsed as one, warming beneath quiet lungfuls of air that pressed oxygen and carbon dioxide and some other chemical into their lungs, something undiscovered and beautiful.  Something that looked almost like a butterfly perched atop a sunflower, basking in the light of the stars.

“I love you.”