Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Poe!” Rey laughs. “You’re such a skeeze. God.”

It’s an everyday type of day. No different than any other Tuesday, or Thursday, or Saturday. Just a regular teenage-type afternoon, with cheap-type slurpees clutched in their hands and poser-type knockoffs of designer clothes on their backs. 

Rey and her crew, they’ve never been much for the nice version of anything. Even if they can someday afford it, they’ll never change.

That’s what they’re always saying, anyway, to make the empty pockets sting less.

“No, I mean it!” Poe says, eyes wide and so honest it’d make you sneeze. That’s how you know he’s lying. “When we hit forty—no, thirty! If you’re still single, then the day you turn thirty, Rey, you’ll see me at your doorstep with wedding bells pinned to my bumper. I’ll take us to the courthouse and make you the happiest woman on earth.”

Rey giggles, dipping back against the grimy wall. Her voice echoes through the stairwell so loud she almost can’t hear Rose’s response. 

“People don’t put actual wedding bells on their bumper, you dickhead!” she says, half-laughing herself. “That’s tin cans you’re thinking of.”

“Soda cans,” Finn chimes in. He takes a long, noisy slurp from his drink and eyeballs Rey, waggling his brows. It just makes her laugh harder.

“They had tin cans in this old-ass movie my dad made me watch,” Rose says, indignant. 

“Poe,” Rey finally cuts in. “I thank you ever-so-graciously for your marriage offer, but I’m going to have to decline.”

He tries to get himself standing, but ends up falling back on his ass. “What?! Rey, my love, my darling—”

“Shut it!” yells Rose, and she looks actually mad this time. 

Not so subtle, Rose, Rey thinks. She needs to chill out the situation. “Hey, hey!” she says, scowling at Poe. “Have you no faith in me? You don’t think I’ll be hitched by thirty? Come on, man. I’m not that ugly.”

Poe splays his legs out along the steps, setting his drink down beside him where he’s sure to knock it over. He motions at her sloppily. “How’s anyone supposed to get past your icy exterior? Huh? They’ll all be too intimidated. Not me, though.”

Now it’s Finn roaring with laughter, and it’s no wonder why. Rey’s about as icy as hell itself. 

Biggest flirt in school, is what Rose always says. 

It’s not Rey’s fault that she’s nice. She wants to make friends with everybody. So what?

“Fuck off,” Rey says. She pulls out her phone and pretends to check her messages, of which there are, of course, none. The only people who text her are lounging around in this old abandoned stairwell with her. 

Well, and her mom. But she only texts Rey when she wants something. And since Rey knows for a fact that she’s currently passed out in the closet back at their rundown shitty outhouse of a place, there’s no way Rey’ll be receiving any texts from her.

Poe spreads his arms in a faux hug. “Why don’t you just accept the inevitable, baby? I’m your one and only.” 

Clearly he was telling a big one earlier when they’d first met up for the afternoon and he’d sworn up and down he hadn’t had anything to drink yet, not one sip, that college kid gave him the vodka bottle already a quarter empty, damn him! 

Yeah, right. Rey’d almost asked him why, then, could she smell it on his breath strong as a hospital ward. 

But there was still enough left to share between the four of them, so no one had bothered picking a fight about it. Rey hadn’t put as much in her slurpee as she usually would—only maybe a shot’s worth or so. She’s still a little hungover from yesterday and while she isn’t exactly going for straight A’s, there’s a limit to how much school she’s willing to miss. 

You can still get into college with middling grades. Her mom managed it—several times—but Rey’s not going to drop out like she did. 

Rey tosses her empty slurpee cup at Poe. It bounces off his head with a comical koing and into his lap, spilling red dye poison mixed with vodka dregs all over his jeans. 

“There’s your precious one and only,” she says, already giggling again.

Poe surveys the damage and his mouth gapes open, snaggle bottom teeth jutting out in a way that just makes Rey laugh even harder. 

“That’s—” his breath hitches in that way when you’re drunk and your throat tries to swallow mid-sentence. He aims his eyes at Rey and points. “Okay, that’s it. You’re done.”

Then he’s trying to pry himself up off the stairs, and failing again, because wow is the guy drunk. 

Finn and Rose immediately block the downgoing stairs, so Rey takes the chance and darts for the ones going up, edging along the railing furthest from Poe. She springs past his flailing arms, hardly missing a step, then keeps running. 

The walls echo back his frustrated grumbling, and Rey lets out another laugh. 

The best of days, she thinks. 

Reaching the first landing up she glances back. She’d figured Poe would’ve given up, or possibly collapsed into a drunken stupor, but instead he’s hammering up the stairs after her. 

“Shit!” she shrieks, and sets off running again. On each landing Rey finds a door, but they’re all locked, so she keeps following the stairs higher and higher. 

The final door, the one with sunlight streaming through, it’s not locked. Rey slams through and dashes out into the open roof.

Sunlight immediately burns against her skin, and Rey soaks it up. It’s a whole lot less stuffy out here, that’s for sure, and she feels like she can finally breathe again. There’s no A/C going inside, what with the place being abandoned, so the musty air’s just been sitting and rotting for who knows how long. 

A breeze ruffles her hair, sliding beneath that sun to kiss her cheeks and forehead. Rey raises her face to the sky and smiles.

The door slams open behind her.

Still running, Rey glances back. Poe is stumbling around, blinking furiously and swearing. 

“Give up yet?” she calls. 

Poe cups his hands around his face to block out the sun. “You’re a sit—sitting duck, Niima! You’re not getting away with this!” He’s grinning like he’s just won the lottery.

He’s such an idiot. 

She comes to a stop and waits for him to catch up, raising her fists briefly in warning. She might be able to kick his ass—that ‘might’ being heavily dependent upon each of their levels of intoxication, how much she’s had to eat that day, and how pissed off he is.

Poe is still calculating whether he wants to grab at her. He gives her the squinty stink eye. Guy’s about as subtle as bricks. 

“Hey,” she says, in an attempt to distract him. “Isn’t it nice out here? We should tell everyone to come up.”

“‘S bright,” he shrugs. Maybe that’s why he’s squinting so bad. 

“I know, but the breeze is so—”

“Hey-hey-hey.” Poe points a wobbly finger at her nose. “Don’t you even start. I know what you’re doing. You—!” He lunges forward, trying to snag her arm, but Rey skips back a couple steps. “You can’t distract me.”

He gets like this sometimes. He doesn’t mean anything by it, really, but he just gets so intent on winning whatever game he’s dreamt up in his head. Doesn’t like to leave anything alone until he knows he’s come out on top. 

“Poe,” Rey whines, “Enough for today. It’s too hot to be—”

He crouches slightly and bullrushes her, but just a step. Rey bounces back another foot, teetering on the uneven flooring. The roof’s been warped good, probably by water damage gone unchecked for the years of abandonment this building’s seen. It’s got hills and dips all over that fill with rainwater every time it storms. 

Poe stumbles himself, and they both laugh. The door pushes open, the rest of their friends crowding through.

Even from here, Rey can read the scowl on Rose’s face. She can just barely hear the what-the-fuck-is-he-doing-running-after-her voice growling in Rose’s head. 

Poor girl. Rey tells her to be more forward, but she just won’t listen. 

Poe holds out both his hands in claw shapes. “I’m comin’,” he says, nose tilting down so he’s all forehead and shining, sunburnt scalp. “Going to tickle you until you admit defeat.”

“You’re such a putz,” Rey says, not smiling so much anymore. Rose is getting more pissed by the second.

She’s about to use her grown-up voice to tell him off, make him cut it out for real now, when he lunges again.

Tired—sloppy and tired, inattentive, too concerned about what’s going on ahead of her than what lies behind—Rey scampers back, his fingertips just barely snagging at the frayed ends of her hair. 

Rey’s butt hits the cement edge of the roof. Her arms go akimbo but her momentum’s too much to get a handle on. 

Too far.

Oops.

Her feet slide forward, shoes scraping against dirt and loose rocks and cigarette butts from delinquents just like herself. As her weight is pulled back, she loses all purchase and her legs fly up.

Poe’s still right there. She watches his face, dumb and sweaty and a smile still bending his cheeks the wrong way because his shock hasn’t reached the upper half of him yet. He’s reaching, but not to tickle her anymore. 

His hands, now coming to the rescue, are too slow. Too clumsy.

As Rey meets that point of no return, back arching as she topples over the side, Rose screams. 

Then it’s just Rey and the air. 

More specifically the sky, because that’s what she sees the most of. Rey’s hands look for something to grab hold of, anything at all, but she finds herself pulling away from the building as she falls.

The five story tall building. 

Rey thinks of her mother, dead to the world with a needle rolling out of loose fingers. Maybe if she were conscious, she’d get an inkling of that famed Mother’s Instinct burning in her gut the way it always happens in movies. Maybe she’d sit up in a jolt, suddenly aware that her daughter’s final moments are at hand. 

The wind from the fall blows her hair up and past her face, whipping into her eyes. 

Even though she’s on the verge of death, the thought comes to Rey’s mind of how annoying that is. How she was going to get a haircut for the summer, but there was never the cash around to do it.

And then she thinks, what a fucking stupid last thought I’m having.

Her body feels as light as the air itself but she still falls. All her organs, she left them back up on the roof with the rest of what’s important to her. 

Rey opens her mouth, thinking she might scream. Her lips have gone numb. Lips and tongue both, they’re numb, like that factory-cherry numb taste you get with teething gel, the kind that makes you know that pretty soon, the canker sore you were worrying about is going to feel a whole lot better. 

Her body relaxes. 

And then, deep in her belly, comes the sensation of pulling. Just pulling, that’s all it is at first. 

Then it expands sharply and Rey’s intestines are being shredded inside her body. Far from getting better it spreads up her torso and down into her thighs, climbing like ivy. Digs its thorns inside of her and rips.

Rey screams for real this time, but nothing comes out of her mouth. 

The ripping follows her body all the way to the tip-top of her head, her fingers, her toes. Take a thousand sprained ankles, a million muscle cramps, and that’s what she’s feeling. 

Her belly slides out of it first—yes, slides. It comes loose from the sensation, hoisting out of that agony, and the rest of her follows, sloughing off the pain like a snake with its dead skin. 

No more hair in her eyes. The sky is blissfully bright and a blue she’d never forget. She smiles in the greatest relief of her life. 

Then she realizes she isn’t falling any longer. The cracked edge of the roof is looming closer in her vision—isn’t it? 

Huh?

Rey hones in on the building and watches the line of it very carefully. Definitely not drifting away anymore like it was. 

Somehow, she’s stopped falling.

With a sudden jerk coming from a place deep within her belly, Rey is pulled upward in a motion so quick that the world around her becomes a blur. 

She finds herself standing on the roof again. Feet flat and safe.

Rey whips around. She’s a good ways away from the edge now, but just to be safe, she scuttles further inward. 

Holy shit, she thinks. Holy shit, holy shit!

She presses her hands to her cheeks. Her breathing is the loudest thing out here, taking up all the room in her ears. 

“I’m okay!” she says, flipping around and searching for Poe and them. They must be terrified—traumatized, even. “I’m okay, I’m alright, I’m—”

Alone. She’s alone. There’s no one else on the roof. 

Rey’s hands drop to her sides. For one chaotic moment she wonders if they all fell, too, but realizes that couldn’t have happened. Not all three of them.

She turns in a slow circle, eyes hunting for people who’ve gone missing in the most impossible way. Nearly as impossible as her own narrow escape. 

Did I just have a near-death experience? she thinks. 

“Not near,” comes a deep voice from behind her.

Rey whips around. She’s not alone after all. But it’s not her friends she finds waiting for her.

It’s a man she’s never seen before—and yet, Rey gets this odd feeling that she has seen him somewhere. It’s not that he has one of those faces that could be anybody. He doesn’t; his face is long and pale with a nose you only get from taking a straight-on punch. A unique face, one you wouldn’t easily get confused. 

But Rey could swear she’s met him before. 

His long, dark hair falls around his shoulders. He’s wearing clothes that don’t match the weather. Thick black ones, a coat and pants and all that. Autumn-type gloomy shit. It must be stifling in this heat.

Though, now that Rey thinks of it, she doesn’t feel the sun warming her skin anymore. Doesn’t catch one whiff of breeze on her cheek. 

“Hi,” Rey mumbles to the man, and then because she doesn’t know what else to say, she asks, “Have you seen my friends?”

The man smiles and tucks his hands in his pockets. “Luckily for them, no. No, I have not.”

She nods warily. “Okay. Well, I really need to get a hold of them, so—”

She blinks, and the man’s about ten feet closer than he was. He looks even taller from up close. 

“It’s okay,” the man says. He gives her a smile that echoes back millions of years. “It’s alright. You’re okay now.”

Rey shakes her head. 

Why can’t she feel the sun? Why are her friends gone? Why, instead of the ever-present revving of engines and screeching of old breaks from the cars down below, does Rey hear nothing but her own breathing?

Why is she not dead? 

She glances up at this man, this big dude in all black crowding her over. No cloak, no hood. She doesn’t see a scythe. 

She shakes her head again at him, this time more purposeful. 

“You know,” he says, nodding back. “I can see it. You know.” Then, quieter, he murmurs, “It’s alright.”

And Rey just bursts into tears.

Chapter Text

The man lets her cry for ages. She keeps waiting for him to step in and suck her soul away or something, but he doesn’t. 

Rey would give anything to have one of her friends with her right now. Even a fucking stuffed animal would be better than just standing here, arms wrapped around her own body, shuddering with sobs so violent they threaten to break her more than she already has.

She tries not to watch the man while she cries. Once, from the corner of her eye, she thinks she catches him opening his mouth like he might have something to say. 

Whatever it is, he doesn’t say it. 

Rey makes a fist and presses it into the hollow under her ribs. She shoves at the jagged pain as if to stifle it. 

After a time, she composes herself enough to get some questions out. It’s all she has to distract herself, and Rey’s starting to get worried that if she doesn’t calm down, she never will.

She wipes her cheeks off—pointless, but she does it anyway—and turns back to the man. “Am I really…?” 

He pauses, then nods. “Yes. You’re really dead.”

“But I don’t—I don’t remember hitting the ground,” she says.

The man leads her to the edge of the roof. Rey notices that beneath his tailored coat he’s got chains making an ‘X’ across his chest. 

Apparently all that grim reaper shit, with the cloak and skull and whatever, was just a big ‘ole myth. 

He brings her right up to the ledge and gestures to something below them. “See?” he says. 

Before she can think about what horrible sight might await her, Rey leans over, keeping a careful grip on the worn and sandy cement ledge. 

Is that really her? Could it be her? 

Poised in the air halfway between the roof and the road is a girl, frozen in time like the most picture-perfect contest-winning photo of the century. She’s tilted partway to the side, one shoulder dipping, but both arms still reach up as if to grasp for the help that’s definitely not coming. 

Her face. That’s Rey’s face, twisted and terrified and spiderwebbed with hair gone crazy from the wind, yet the eyes are shut tight and smooth like she was sleeping. 

“How can I be dead already?” The words come out of her like a script being read. No tone to it at all. “I haven’t landed yet.”

The man peers over the edge, his face flat as Rey’s voice. “Pulled you a couple seconds early. I’m technically not supposed to, but in cases like this I prefer to spare you the heartache.” He shakes his head. “Sucks seeing your body all…broken.”

Rey pictures herself bleeding and wrecked down there on the cracked pavement and backs up a step, new tears rolling down her face. 

She glances at the man, and before she knows it she’s hurling herself at him, wrapping her arms as far around his big body as she can reach. 

At least he’s warm. At least he’s someone.

When she makes contact he flinches like she’s hurting him. The thought of Death himself as a movable, hurtable being strikes Rey as hilarious, and she would totally laugh about it except—

She’s dead. She’s dead, it’s all over, it’s done. One stupid mistake and she’s lost everything worth having and then some.

The man doesn’t hug her back but he doesn’t push her away, either, so Rey just keeps on squeezing him until she feels like a person again.

Rey tilts her face up and looks him in the eye without shame, even knowing what a wreck she is. He stares back somewhat impassively, though the way his eyes roam over her make her feel scrutinized. Being judged by Death is the least of her problems, though, so Rey shoves the embarrassment into a corner.

“Why did it hurt?” she asks. “I remember it hurting before I—before this. But I didn’t hit the ground yet, so how…?”

“That was just your soul leaving. It’s not a pretty feeling, I know.”

“How do you know what it’s like?”

“Where do you think I came from? I used to be like you. Alive, human, all of that.” 

“So you weren’t always Death?”

He smiles slightly. “Death is a multitude. I’m just one of many who took up the job. Used to be that there were few enough humans that one being could handle easing them all into that cold abyss, but thanks to humanity breeding like bunnies, outsourcing became vital to getting the job done. So here I am.”

“What do you do, then? Just—” Rey interrupts herself with a hiccup and wipes her cheek. “Send me to heaven or whatever? Give me my wings?” 

It helps to joke about it. The smile she gives him is mostly real. 

“I help you accept that your life is done, and then show you how to let go.”

“Let go?”

“Of life.”

Rey bites her lip and hugs him harder. “I don’t want to let go.”

“Most don’t, but everyone has to eventually.”

Rey pulls her arms away, but doesn’t step back. She traces her fingers along the chains and feels the fabric of his coat. 

The man clears his throat. “You’re awful touchy-feely, aren’t you,” he mumbles. 

She glances up again, and he immediately clenches his jaw and looks away. 

Rey wonders if Death can be shy.

“You said you’re here to help me accept my fate,” she says matter-of-factly, “so that means I get to hug you if I want. It’s all part of my grieving process. Is that not normal?”

“Most folks who meet me try to stay as physically far from me as they can, even once they’ve grown comfortable with their fate. That’s usually how I prefer it. It’s important to keep your distance in my line of work.”

She scowls. “You’re telling me that when a little kid dies, you just leave them to cry on the ground? Alone?”

He flinches. “I don’t deal with kids. I don’t have the right demeanor.” 

Rey pouts her lip. “Who told you that? I think you’re pretty nice.”

He coughs out a laugh. “Thanks.”

But there’s only so much joking she can do before the reality of her situation comes rushing in to fill the cracks. 

Rey sighs and tries not to start crying again. “My friends are probably so upset. Poe especially. He’s going to think it’s his fault.” She presses her cheek to the man’s chest again, and feels his breathing hitch. “I wish I could tell him it wasn’t. Is that possible? Can I pass on a message or something?”

“No.”

Rey’s throat goes thick. “Isn’t there anything that I can do here? I’m only seventeen. I’ve barely even lived. I was supposed to go to college. Show my mom that I’m better than she is.”

“I know, honey.” And then, finally, he pats her back. 

It’s enough to bring new tears to her eyes. “Please,” she whispers. “Please don’t make me be dead yet.”

He doesn’t say anything, but the silence is thick enough to give her hope. 

She sniffs, then arranges her expression just so and turns to look up at him, cheek still sort of pressed to his chest. She gives him her biggest, most pathetic puppy dog eyes. “Please?” she asks again. “I need to live. I’m not done yet. I’ll do anything to go back—anything, really! Even if it’s just for a day.”

The man’s eyes burn. His enormous hand rubs her back and she can tell he’s thinking about it…

…which means there is something he can do after all.

Rey lets out one adorable tear. “Please help me,” she mumbles. 

He closes his eyes, then opens them again, now hard and cold. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll let you go back. Just this once, I’ll let you go.”

She chokes out a half-laugh, half-sob and grips the front of his coat, smiling her face off. “Thank you! Oh my god, thank you for giving me my life back, thank you, thank—!”

“I’m not giving you anything, honey,” he says. “Not for free.”

He pulls her away from him, putting enough space between them so he can cup her jaw. Rey hangs on to his wrist.

“What do you mean?” she asks, still grinning. She’s going back! She’s been saved! “If it’s cash you want, I’m afraid—”

“It’s not,” he says. “I’ll just ask you to loan me your body for an hour or so. Not such a bad trade, right?”

“Loan you my…? What?”

Suddenly he flips her around, yanking her hands behind her back. He wraps an arm around her front and grips her neck, holding her from jaw to collarbone. Even though he’s not cutting off her air, Rey finds herself launching into panic mode. 

“Wait—! Wait, hold on!”

“You asked for this,” he murmurs somewhere near her temple. 

“Listen, D-Death, I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding here.”

“The only one misunderstanding is you,” he says. “And don’t call me ‘Death’. That’s boring and weird.”

Rey jerks under his hands, but he’s got her good. He’s about as strong as he looks and then some. “What do I call you, then? Mr. Grim Reaper?”

He hums, and Rey gets this odd sensation in her head, as though her thoughts were being thumbed through like a file full of scrambled pages, post-it notes fluttering. She whimpers and holds very still, suddenly terrified. 

It’s him, she thinks.

“Yes,” the man responds. “It’s me.”

He sifts through her memories. Rey catches glimpses of them as he ruffles around the edges, going in no particular order. 

Then a cold fingertip presses to one specific image, the face of a cruel boy from her kindergarten days. That spaghetti-stained asshole who would trash everything Rey colored in class and tease her constantly about her secondhand clothes and her mommy that smelled bad. 

“Call me Ben,” the man says. 

Why he’d name himself after her childhood bully, Rey couldn’t say, but she doesn’t get the chance to ask because he’s pushing her forward, forcing her to walk across the empty rooftop—

Not empty anymore. There, a few feet away, is a wooden dining table. The heavy kind that people pass down for generations. The kind where you have to use placemats ‘cause the wood’s so precious. 

The man—Ben now—shuffles her over to the table until her hips press into the edge. He bends her over the surface, gives her wrists an extra squeeze, and then releases her. 

Rey attempts to jerk her arms away—being bent over like this makes her feel absolutely helpless in a way she’s never known before—but her wrists won’t come apart. It’s like they’ve been joined at the bone. 

Giving up on that, she tries to stand, and is slightly less surprised that she’s been all but welded to the table. She can’t get up. 

She’s stuck.

Meanwhile, Ben crouches down behind her and forces her legs apart, pinning each ankle to a table leg with the same power he used on her wrists and body. “There we are,” he says. “Ready for action.”

“Let me go!” Rey says. “Please—not this, I don’t want this!”

Ben smooths his hand up over her ass, then traces a line down her crack. There’s still two layers of cloth between them but Rey yelps in panic. She writhes, but all she succeeds in doing is wiggling her butt around. 

“I think,” he says, “that I’m not in the mood for your whining at the moment.” 

He drifts within her line of sight and taps her lips once. 

Rey opens her mouth and tries to tell him to fuck off, but this time, nothing comes out. 

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ll still be able to beg for more or make as many pretty little moans as you want. But you may as well give up on anything else. I’m not interested in you swearing at me while I do this.”

Rey tries to tell him to fuck yourself, asshole. She grits her teeth, then tries to spit out the words let me go right now or else.

But there’s nothing. Not a sound.

She groans, then finds the words he’s looking for. “P-please?” she finally manages.

“That’s the spirit,” he says, giving her a quick smack on the ass that has Rey yelping. 

He roams back behind her and lifts her skirt in one swoop, tucking the hem into her waistband so it stays up. He traces the line of her underwear, and when he gets between her legs, Rey shudders. 

“Such a sweet thing,” he murmurs. He flicks a fingertip down the center of her underwear and Rey jerks, whimpering. “And so responsive. I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with you. Before I take these off, let’s see just how wet I can get you.”

He traces shapes across the crotch of her underwear, tickling at the edges. Occasionally he gives her clit a quick tap or two, and Rey can’t help the sounds that come out of her when he does it. 

She doesn’t like it. She’s terrified and ashamed to be spread open and held down like this. Doesn’t matter if there’s no one else to see it; just Ben is enough. 

Death, she thinks. That’s his real name. But it just keeps on defaulting to Ben in her head. 

Probably his doing. He’s invading her thoughts just like he is the rest of her. 

Ben, meanwhile, pays her ruminations no mind. With just his fingertip he taps circles around her clit, never actually hitting the center anymore. He goes slower, then faster, then slower again. 

“How’s that?” he asks, then laughs. 

Rey’s thighs tremble as he continues his assault. He takes a break to tickle along her upper thighs, the meat of her ass, the place where her underwear meets her skin. He nudges a knuckle against her cunt, and Rey squirms at the pressure of it. He seems to enjoy that.

Then he goes right back to circling her clit. 

She hates that he’s teasing her—and hates worse that it’s working. 

“You’re getting excited,” he murmurs. “I can tell.”

Rey shakes her head, giving him the only denial she’s capable of anymore. 

Ben grips the back of her underwear and tugs it up, pulling them into something of a wedgie and pressing the fabric hard against her pussy. The pressure is a shock, and Rey huffs from it—though how much of that is surprise and how much is from the spike of arousal that hits her belly, she couldn’t say. 

He tugs rhythmically, stimulating her whole pussy at once, though the pressure is so dissipated that it only serves to rile her up further rather than bringing her closer to orgasm. 

Still holding her underwear tight, he begins flicking her clit repeatedly, taking brief breaks to press into her outer labia before going right back to it. Even with the layer of fabric, the sensations are incredibly strong. 

Rey wills her body not to become aroused. It doesn’t work. 

“Let’s see, now,” Ben says. With that as a warning, he tucks her underwear down in one go. There’s the sound of tearing, and he tosses the ruined fabric away.

He presses his thumbs to her labia and slowly pulls her apart to get a good look at her. 

“Wow,” he says, his voice husky. “Better results than I’d expected. Who knew you’d be so into being raped, huh?”

Rey groans at the feel of open air on her pussy. The knowledge that he can see everything sends her spiraling into shame.

He blows a stream of air along her slit and laughs when she flinches. 

“I think I’ll play with your ass first,” he says, standing up from his crouch. “Let you stew in it while I fuck you, since you’ve been such a brat. Did you forget that you begged me for this, honey?”

I didn’t know what I was signing up for! she yells wordlessly. 

There’s the rustling of fabric behind her, and then the smooth, rhythmic sound of skin on skin for several long minutes. She doesn’t figure out what he’s doing until the blunt head of his cock presses directly to her asshole and hot fluid rushes out, coating her hole and dripping down to her pussy. 

“There we are,” he says, slightly out of breath. “Just needed something to lube you up. You’re lucky Death doesn’t have to deal with refractory periods.” 

He catches some of the come that’d dripped over her pussy and thighs. When his fingers brush her clit, Rey jumps. Ben just chuckles and slicks himself up.

His cock abruptly pushes against her asshole and Rey lets out a whine. She can’t get the leverage to jerk away, and once the head pushes into her hole, she stops fighting entirely, because every movement hurts. 

“Easy does it,” he says. “Oh, how tight you are. Let me in, honey.”

Rey doesn’t know how to let him in. She just lays there, miserable, her pussy still throbbing from its lack of attention.

He keeps pushing until the rough fabric of his pants brushes her ass. He pauses, then pulls out an inch and spreads her cheeks as far as they’ll go. 

“Look at that,” he says, voice husky from arousal. “Look how perfectly you take me.” 

Then he starts to thrust, keeping her ass spread so he can watch himself fuck her. The pain goes away slowly, and soon all Rey can focus on is the immense pressure inside of her as he fills her up again and again. 

As he picks up the pace, something begins smacking her lightly on the pussy with every thrust inside. She realizes it’s probably his balls, and feels humiliated all over again.

But what’s even worse is how much it ramps up her excitement. Her pussy is so sensitive at this point that any kind of stimulation is sending her gasping, despite how she tries to tamp it down. 

Ben stops, then pulls out until only his head is inside of her. He begins thrusting again with just the head, teasing at her entrance. 

“Clench around me, honey,” he murmurs. 

Rey just groans. The pressure is too much, and it’s in the wrong spot, but she’s not even close to being ready for begging yet.

That yet sticks in her brain. 

“Come on,” he says, then dips his hand between them to flick her clit once.

Her reaction is automatic: she clenches tight around him. He does it again, and again, chuckling as she clenches him tighter with each flick. 

She can’t help it. Her pussy is begging for anything.

Ben pinches her clit and Rey spasms, her ass clenching waves around his cock. He grunts and immediately sets back to fucking her like his life depends on it. Or hers. 

Then he’s coming again, filling her ass, and all Rey can do is take it. 

He pulls out with a wet sound, then takes a moment to catch his breath, hands caressing her ass absentmindedly. 

Rey just lays there, pussy throbbing. 

Finally he bends down to get a look at her again. “You are just dripping, aren’t you?” he says with awe. 

He spreads her wide. Every time he does that, it’s worse than the last. She’s more sensitive than she thought was possible, and even having his fingers at her outer labia makes her squirm.

“Look at how you wiggle for me,” he comments.

“Please!” she squeaks out. “Please let—!”

And then she stops. Because she wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this. She wasn’t supposed to want it. 

Still spreading her wide, Ben massages her cunt. Rey feels fluid drip out of her and down her leg. 

“Let you what, honey?” He releases her and finds the spot just above her clit, then begins tracing circles into it. “What is it you want? Hm?”

Rey bites her lip. No, she thinks. I can’t. I won’t beg.

He’s so close to where she wants him to be. That short distance is the difference between sanity and insanity, and Rey begins to truly lose control over herself. 

“Want to see what else I can do?” Ben asks. There’s a darkness to his tone that sends a shiver over her skin. 

Still circling teasingly, he taps her once on her abused asshole.

Rey yelps. It’s vibrating. Her ass is vibrating in waves and stops and rolling hills of sensation that trail down to tickle her pussy in the very best way. 

Ben chuckles. “It’s really something, right?” 

He taps at her clit again, and the words just tumble out of her mouth like they were waiting for this moment.

“Please! Oh, god, please let me c-come! I can’t—oh!”

But Ben just keeps on teasing. “So adorable,” he says. Even his hot breath near her pussy is too much for her. “You part for me like Moses and the sea. It’s not every day I get to make a deal like this.”

He continues teasing her, and Rey pleads for more, but all it seems to do is spur on the torture. 

The higher she’s edged, the rougher Ben’s voice gets. She can feel his fingers trembling where he touches her.

“Fuck,” he groans after she yet again lets out a long stream of pleas for more. “If I go for any longer I might have to keep you for good. God, but you’re sweet. Sweet little thing.”

He taps her ass again, and the vibrations cease. Rey doesn’t have time to groan with disappointment before he’s pressing one long finger down her slit, holding it there motionlessly. 

Ben stands and leans over her wilted form. His lips find her ear. 

“What a gift you’ve given me,” he murmurs. 

Rey is crying again, but now it’s for release, for the orgasm that’s just been building and building but it won’t quite topple. 

His finger lifts, and very softly he says, “I’ll see you when it’s your time.”

A jolt comes from just behind Rey’s belly button, but this time it’s not painful. She’s reminded of that unique swooping sensation she gets whenever she and her friends scrounge up enough money to go to the theme park. Finn always convinces her to go on the craziest coasters, and every time the rusty metal car she’s strapped into crosses that point of no return, tilting her over the precipice—when she sees the track waiting for her, her stomach goes flip-flop just like this. 

Rey doesn’t feel the table anymore. She doesn’t feel Ben. For a second she doesn’t even feel her own body. 

Then—as if that were all a dream—she’s staring up at the striking blue sky. 

Hands grasping. 

Feet flailing. Shoes loose.

Rey turns in mid-air and catches the crooked city horizon. The road open and filled with cars going bumper-to-bumper. 

That’s all she has time to see before her body slams to the ground. Rey’s eyes squeeze shut and all the breath rushes out of her body. The shock of the impact sends her reeling. 

That’s the first thing she processes. The shock. It rolls through her body like thunder so she can’t feel anything but electricity right down to the center of her bones. 

I’m dead, she thinks. I’m dead. I’m done.

Then she becomes aware of something else beyond the shock still wracking her body.

It’s the smell. She smells sweetness gone rotten. It rips into her nose, this sticky, overdone scent, like in the fall when every leaf on every tree begins to decay.

Rey opens her eyes. 

She’s not in the middle of the road. In fact, she can’t see the road at all, or the city. 

Rey sees flowers shrouded in shadow. Hundreds of them in one great pile, reds and purples and wedding-day whites. Flowers and stems and leaves, and past that it’s nothing but dark walls smeared with rust. That’s the scene she’s landed in. 

Her body doesn’t want to move—it refuses to move, she’s been so wrecked by the fall. It’s as though she wears her body like a glove: she still can’t feel much except for maybe a dull pressure coming from the side she landed on. Vaguely, beneath all of that, this wild throb is picking up deep within her muscles, but she’s too focused on her surroundings to really process it.  

Rey manages to turn her head an inch or two and finds a neat square of blue above her, the edge of a building just barely visible near the corner. 

Over that grey corner, a tiny head pokes out. Even from this distance, Rey knows it’s Poe. 

She tries to cry out to him, tell him she’s alright, but her voice is missing. Her mouth is frozen open and the taste of flower stench wilts on her tongue. 

There’s petals everywhere, ones shaken loose from their stem, and Rey knows that somewhere in here there must be the bald yellow heads of flowers gone naked. 

That smell hits her again and it’s more solid than anything else she can feel, so Rey hones in on it. Beneath the delicate floral fragrance of weddings and get-well-soons, there’s a deep and putrid ripeness, a smell that brings to mind that sandwich you left in the fridge for just a little too long. 

Rey thinks of the McDonald’s she worked at for a few spare months before she got booted for no-shows. She remembers heaving bags of uneaten chicken nuggets and spoiled green-adjacent salad out back to the dumpster, where you could catalogue a smear of slime from each day’s trash haul going back all the way to the birth of fast food. She would heft the bag over the edge of that dumpster and try her best not to let too much of that evil stench into her body.

It’s like that in here. Like if Rey were taking a nap in the dumpster, and then someone’s sick relative got better in a hurry, so they quick-tossed all their flowers away as if that were a jinx to their wellness.

She glances around at the flowers that cushioned her fall, and from beneath them notices the telltale red plastic bunny ear knot of a used garbage bag. 

So that’s how he did it, Rey thinks. He dropped me in a fucking garbage truck. How convenient.

A low rumble comes up through the floor and the flower-topped pile of garbage jerks into motion as traffic begins to move. Rey jerks with it.

She screams for real this time. With the sudden motion, an agonizingly sharp pain spikes through the arm she’d landed on. Rey has time to picture a knife embedded and twisting deep inside her elbow before promptly passing out.

Chapter Text

They kept her in the hospital for three days. 

Her right arm, the one she landed on, was broken in four places. Rey doesn’t remember where; a doctor or nurse, she’s sure, must’ve mentioned it to her somewhere down the line, but everything was all so smudgy and bright at the hospital. So many drugs, they gave her. Most of them for pain or infection.

One was for anxiety. Something about how she kept asking for a guy named Ben. Later, Rey’s mom tells her how the doctors said she was in shock.

Rey doesn’t remember being in shock. 

And anyway, it doesn’t matter how many places her arm’s broken, because now it’s cased up in plaster from broken shoulder to wrist all the same.

She’s got two cracked ribs but it may as well have been all of them on her right side for how bad they hurt. Sprained her ankle and knee. Oh, and she didn’t stop throwing up for a week, but that might’ve been just from stress.

At least her hip came out of this okay, if “okay” means “covered from thigh to waist with a black-and-blue sunset bruise”. 

It was a lot, seeing every injury lit up bright and circled with red on x-ray after x-ray. Getting her bones set, having surgery to get pins put into her wrist, peeing in a fucking bedpan, it all sucked.

But nothing sucked worse than when they yanked her out of that truck. 

In floristry, every customer wants their bouquet to be just so. If it’s not Instagram-perfect, then what’s even the point of shelling out for real flowers? 

They want nature, but not the natural way. They don’t want a vaguely-ball-shaped bouquet of crooked-stemmed flowers with gaps so big you can see where the inside-leaves were peeled off. 

They want nature, but the way God intended. Pretty. Perfect. Sensual in the way humans love—crafted, a performance—but something you can throw out when it gets old.

So that’s why florists have this thing called floral wire. They use it to make flowers stand up nice and tall, or with just the right amount of curve to create that big firework shape. It holds ribbons in place, gives the bouquet support, and it can even stand in as filler. 

All this, Rey learns later. Back at home, with her right side out of commission, Rey’s plunking away at her phone screen with her shaky left hand, learning about how to build a sensible bouquet. Staring at wire. 

Thinking about that sharp end.

When Rey landed in that heap of flower-coated garbage, her body stopped her from feeling pretty much anything at first. Then the light turned green, traffic began to move, and Rey screamed bloody murder for about three seconds before the pain of it made her black out.

She’d come back to consciousness by the time the truck operators had pulled over and opened the back hatch, gripping the doorway for dear life.

At least one of them was thinking, who’d throw away a sweet little thing like her?

The police were called and an ambulance was notified. The men asked Rey if she was hurt, and she said, “Just my arm,” because she didn’t know about all the other stuff yet. Her body was still mostly offline. 

“It hurts,” she’d told them. “I’m on top of it, and it hurts.”

So one of the men, the burlier one, he gently slid his arms beneath her and scooped her up. And that’s when Rey really started screaming. 

Everyone at the hospital, they told her she was lucky as hell to land so neatly in the truck like that. No way she could’ve survived otherwise. Not even a prayer. They told her, “When you get out of here, start buying lottery tickets.”

So maybe she was lucky. But then, was it luck that when she fell into the garbage truck, she’d landed in just the right spot to drive a long piece of floral wire deep into her elbow joint?

Rey doesn’t know what she’d call that. But it sure wouldn’t be ‘luck’.

It takes her nearly two weeks before she can sit up without crying. Three weeks before she can go to the bathroom on her own. A month before she gets the hang of eating with her left hand, and by then half her shirts are stained with food spills.

Everything hurts. Her arm is a useless, itchy log. 

But Rey just cannot stop smiling. 

She’s alive. She was a goner for sure, falling from a height like that, but she lived all the same. 

And the great part is, everyone was too worked up about her surviving to care that she and Poe and the rest were ditching school slurping alcohol. Not one of them got in trouble.

She doesn’t get to go out with her friends for two months—doctor’s orders—but they come to her, keeping quiet so her mom doesn’t wake up out of her drug stupor to kick them out.

Even with a nearly-dead daughter, her mom’s still going ham with the substances. Oh, well.

But it doesn’t matter. Rey doesn’t care that most of the time, she’s stuck in her bed with just herself and a pile of quick snacks and soda for company. 

She’s alive! 

Once she was fully lucid again, Rey stopped mentioning Ben. No one else would believe her—not even her friends, she’s sure—but she knows what happened. She didn’t dream all that up. There’s no way.

It was real. She met Death, and he let her go.

Amongst other things.

At first, thinking back on what they did together, Rey’s inclined to pretend that little detail was just her imagination. A sex dream gone haywire, her brain throwing her for a loop at the last possible moment. Crossed signals. Something like that.

But she knows it wasn’t her imagination. She had sex with Death. 

And she liked it. 

It was scary at first, sure, because let’s face it, he was basically forcing her. Rey’s never been tied down before, so of course she was going to freak out. She was trapped. Helpless. Completely at his mercy. 

Now, though, when she remembers how he shoved her down and touched her, instead of feeling freaked, she finds her good hand slithering down past her waistband. Touching herself like he did. Finding that release he denied her.

After all, she’s only human.

The porn she watches gets darker. She discovers written smut, then devours everything she can find. She looks for male leads with long, dark hair and strong bodies. Men with crooked noses. 

None of the boys her age are like that. Hell, none of the men she knows are like that. 

Rey is out of bed and back at school in a month and a half. It would’ve been sooner, but her mom couldn’t be bothered to track her down a secondhand wheelchair. The cast comes off after three months, and her arm is weak as a dead snake by that point. 

Once half a year’s passed, the only thing Rey has to remember the accident are the scars on her wrist and elbow, and a brand new fear of heights.

Well, that, and a major crush. 

Rey doesn’t think about boys anymore. She’s tossed out all her celebrity posters. She stops saying ‘yes’ to first dates just to be nice.

She misses him. Ben. 

Imagines his hands on her body, thick fingers probing her pussy.

Thinks of him taking her in her bedroom, in an empty classroom. At the park. Anywhere. 

Rey writes him letters, hoping he’s floating over her shoulder on his lunch break between carting souls off to the afterlife, reading her love notes. She even starts talking to him—just whispers when she’s sure no one’s listening. But maybe he hears. 

Maybe.

She’s infatuated. In love. Whatever goofy word you want to ascribe to it, that’s what she is. She can’t stop thinking about him.

He let her go once. He’d do it again, wouldn’t he?

The big day, Rey doesn’t do anything suspicious. She eats the same breakfast she always does—cereal with slightly-past-due milk—packs up her bag for school, and heads out.

She doesn’t catch the bus, though. She walks straight past the stop. The other students waiting there, they snag her backpack and tease her about how she’s never going to graduate with this many absences on her record. 

Rey just laughs back at them and keeps walking.

First stop is the drug store. She’s never stolen from here, not even once—it’s so close to her house, after all. She wouldn’t want to get banned from the place. But she’s been by plenty of times, so she knows where the blind spots are. 

Three slim boxes of pills don’t take up too much space, but they sure rattle a lot in their individual casings. Shoving them down her pants and calling it good would be a rookie move. The con would be up as soon as they heard her shaka-shakin’ up to the register with just a bottle of Sobe and a smile. 

Instead, before stopping by the medicine racks, Rey snags a box of Nerds and holds them so that with every step, they rattle. 

Then to roam up the pharmacy aisles, slipping pill boxes down her pants halfway through Cold & Flu. She reaches the indigestion section and grins all innocent at an older woman with hair like one of those clouds that’re too wispy to bring rain, then snags a packet of antacid. Wouldn’t you know it, but her belly’s cooking up a storm with that sour milk. 

She checks out. Slaps her last ten dollar bill on the counter and makes chit-chat with the attendant. No one’s the wiser.

Rey wonders if Ben is watching her now. She imagines him waiting for her, just past where she can see. 

Then she heads out again, feet pounding against the sidewalk as some urgency works its way into her body. She’s not in a hurry—or, she shouldn’t be, but the thought of seeing him again is making the metal in her wrist ache. It’s making her right knee feel like she’s on Day Seven of the squat challenge.

It’s making her hungry. 

Rey winds down city blocks. She’s got the entire route mapped out in her head, and she forces herself to enjoy it just like she’s enjoyed the last six months of her life. 

No point in wasting it. 

The church sits behind a drab office building with some new-aged swoopy white logo pasted on the front. Sometime in the last twenty years, the property lines got redone and whoops, now this church building is in some startup’s backyard. But by then, the church must’ve been long since abandoned, and there was nobody left to care. 

Rey cuts across the grass, not bothering to sneak, and hops a fence. There sits the church. The graffiti peppering the bent-toothed paneling looks like a photography student’s dream come true. A metaphor come to life, or something. The windows stretch tall and thin, at least two of them with the glass smashed to shit, but they all still have the barebones framing intact, like a cross without the Jesus. 

The real cross, if there was one, would’ve sat up at the top of the boxy steeple. But all Rey can make out up there is dry rot.

She runs a circuit ‘round the sides until she finds one window banged through so bad that Rey can easily fit. Careful of any lingering glass, she heaves herself and her backpack into the gaping maw where there used to be a window and finds herself in a chapel so dusty that she can taste it. 

With some carefully-placed sunbeams and a good Instagram filter, Rey’s sure this place could look photogenic. Magical, even. But to her it just looks dead.

She wanders around for a bit. She can practically smell the sweat of so many sinners come to pay their dues, the ghosts of them still waiting for forgiveness. One rafter had lost its footing and fell, squashing an unlucky pew and leaving the ceiling to buckle in a far corner.

“Ben?” Rey says. She wouldn’t be able to tell you why she says it.

She lets the backpack drop from her shoulder to her hand and shuffles up to the pulpit, setting her bag on the floor nearby. 

She pulls out the boxes, four of them. Yanks the packaging off, and then real careful, like she’s counting tithing, she starts popping those pills out onto the dusty surface of the podium. They rattle around, pinging against carved lovers’ initials and call 4 free sex and the hand-grease of whatever preacher would slap this thing to prove his godly point. 

It takes forever, but she has time. The pills make a dusty little pile.

Once all the packages are empty she grabs her drink, pops the lid, gathers a handful of those pills, and swallows them down. They taste sweeter than the drink does. 

Then another handful.

Then she’s picking pills off the surface and getting annoyed because she’s running out of Sobe to wash it all down. 

Eventually she gives up on the stragglers and slides to her butt, letting her back rest against the pulpit. It’s not comfortable, and the nausea comes on pretty quick, but Rey holds everything down by sheer will. 

Ben, she thinks. I’m here, Ben. Take me. Just one more time.

It takes longer than she thought it would. She closes her eyes, maybe trying to urge her body on already, and when her head begins to fill with water, Rey feels her heart pounding hard. Whether that’s from excitement or her body flipping out from the pills, she couldn’t say.

Rey doesn’t realize it when she goes unconscious. Nobody ever does.

But she’s very aware of waking up, because it starts with that horrendous ripping that originates in her belly and shreds her in a great wave all the way to her extremities. 

She hadn’t exactly forgotten about that little detail of her previous death. But it certainly wasn’t something she lingered on. 

When she makes it out of the pain, she’s still sitting on the church floor. Standing up, Rey turns and is immediately confronted by her body. 

She doesn’t look asleep, laying there. Her lips are blue and her skin could be made of plastic for how fake she seems. Maybe it’s because this time, her body’s actually dead and not imminently-dead. 

“Rey.”

It comes from behind her, or maybe around her. Rey closes her eyes and turns, and when she opens them, he’s there. 

She grins. “Hi.”

His eyes flicker over her, then down to her body. “Why are you here?” he asks. 

“I know, I know,” she says. “I’m so dumb. I just…I like you. Can’t stop thinking about you. Can you blame me for coming back?” 

You’d think having someone’s cock in your ass would make you immune to any future feelings of embarrassment, but it turns out that’s absolutely not the case. At least, it isn’t for Rey. 

“I needed to see you again,” she says, a little softer now. 

He rubs the back of his neck. “Are you always this forward with your love interests?” he asks.

This isn’t really the reaction she was hoping for, and it’s kind of pissing her off. “What else was I supposed to do? Shoot you a friend request? Hang around the morgue and hope I match with you on Tindr?”

“You’re a bit young for Tindr.”

“Oh my god.” Rey holds her face in her hands. “I’m such an idiot.”

The next thing she feels is Ben’s arms wrapping around her, and Rey just melts. 

“Maybe a little,” he murmurs, his lips grazing the top of her head. 

“Why did you have to be Death of all people?” she grumbles into his shirt. “Why couldn’t I have met you when you were alive?”

“Oh, I bet your mom would’ve loved that,” he says. “A man in his thirties shacking up with her high school aged daughter. What a treat.”

“Aren’t you immortal? I don’t think you get to be ‘in your thirties’ forever.”

He chuckles. “I’d think being immortal would make it worse, not better.”

They stay like that for a time. Hugging. Rey covertly tries to sniff his coat, but he catches on immediately. 

“Why are you smelling me?”

“It was the one thing I couldn’t remember about you.”

“I don’t have a smell,” he says. Before she can even raise one eyebrow in disbelief, he continues, “No, I really don’t. So cut it out, you little creep.”

“Does being the grim reaper give you mind reading powers.”

“Yes.”

“What about not-being-an-asshole powers?”

Ben pauses. “Did you hork down all those pills just to give me shit?”

She pulls back and looks him in the eye. “No. I thought we could have a nice, sexy evening together before I go back.”

“With your body as an audience? How romantic.”

She scowls. “We don’t have to do it in here, obviously.”

“And what was that part about going back?”

“You know. Back to life, like last time.”

He shakes his head. “There’s no going back.”

Rey pulls further away, holding him at arm’s length. “What are you talking about? Just make me throw up or something. It’s fine.”

“Every human gets one chance,” he says, voice low and soft. “You used yours.”

She blanches. “Wha—?”

He’s lying. That’s what she wants to believe, but his face has gone hard in all the wrong places, and she knows he’s not fooling this time. 

“I told you,” he murmurs. “‘Just this once’, I’d said. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, but—but—” 

Rey turns and looks down at her body again, then shudders. She doesn’t like how inhuman it looks. How not-her. 

“I’m sorry, Rey. I didn’t exactly expect you to do all this, or I would’ve warned you better.”

She turns back to him, and she can feel her face making a completely different expression now. Her hands tremble on his chest. “Isn’t there…? I mean, can you, like, reincarnate me?”

“No. I’ve just got the one job. I don’t have any other power here.”

Her hands turn to fists. “I won’t let go. I won’t. You can sweet-talk me all you like. I’m not accepting this.”

“I’m used to it.” He sounds resigned. 

“No!” Rey yells. It’s disconcerting how her voice doesn’t echo. “No. No, Ben. I’m not doing this.”

“I can’t send you back, Rey. I just can’t.”

“Then take me with you!”

The words hang between them, another ghost in this chapel. Ben looks shocked. 

“Take me with you,” she says, and this time the words aren’t just something to scream. “Let me be like you. Before you did this, you were human like me, right?” He doesn’t answer, so she pulls herself closer, clinging to him. “Right?”

“Right.”

“Well…” Her voice trails away as if she’s considering it, but the second she’d accepted that she couldn’t go back to being alive, there was only one other option for her. “Any job openings?”

His eyes flicker past her to that dead thing that used to be her body. She knows he’s thinking about what she’s lost, the futures she could’ve had, but Rey can’t think about that. 

It’s already gone. No un-popping those pills. 

“Ben,” she says, a little more forcefully. “Can’t I…don’t you like me? You like me, right?”

He closes his eyes. “Yes.”

“Take me with you,” she says, going whisper-soft. She wraps her arms around his neck, though they barely reach. “I’ll do a good job.”

“This isn’t the life you want, honey.” He opens his eyes and stares down at her with such an intensity she nearly loses her footing. 

“At least it’s a life. At least it’s with you.”

Suddenly Ben leans down and kisses her. He threads his fingers into her hair and presses her as close to his body as she can get. His lips are warm and sweet. 

“Hold on tight, Rey,” he murmurs against her lips. 

She does. As far as she’s concerned, she’s never going to let go.