light touching; dark places
(with a special thanks to tumblr user ladylurksalot for holding my hand while I drug this fic out for three days.)
Rey has never thought of herself as particularly beautiful - she's never given much thought to her appearance at all, truth be told. Why would she? When had she the time? The desert had never spared her any leisure to think much beyond her own survival.
She doesn't envy the women she's seen in holo shows, not really. Perhaps she is not beautiful as they are, all soft lines and muted colors on their faces, but her body has served her well. Strong legs, good for running and climbing over hot, shifting sand. Arms that have learned to bear her weight from rusting metal pipes while she plucks things small and valuable from the piles of wreckage. Hands that are calloused and feet that are too and hair that she thinks she might like if she knew how to do anything with it other than tie it up away from her face.
On the Base, however, there's no use for scavenging - she knows exactly where her next meal is coming from, and the feeling is new enough that it's still a novelty. As Rey prepares for bed, her stomach pleasantly full with something warm and hearty, she smoothes her hands through hair she has now let down around her shoulders, and she notes there's less catch than there used to be. It's been a long time since she's had to pry wires loose from a junked ship. Her hands are softening, she thinks, even with all the Lightsaber practice she puts them through.
Or perhaps she is just imagining it, because as she looks at her reflection, splashing water on her face, she still sees the same smallish scavenger girl from Jakku. Cleaner, perhaps, the grit of sand missing against her skin under her bedtime robes, but still nothing worthy of note. Passable.
(Sometimes she thinks the Force got it all wrong, choosing her like it did - but Master Luke says the Force doesn't work like that.)
If Rey doesn't think of herself as particularly attractive, Ben has never harbored any doubt that he is downright ugly. There is a little voice in the back of his mind - barely more than a whisper now, not overpowering like it was when he was a child, and if he smacks the side of his head hard enough, he can almost pretend he doesn't hear it - that says he's far too ugly to ever be looked upon with love.
His face is strange, he knows, his features too large, too notable for him to ever escape attention, and sometimes he still catches himself reaching around for a mask he can pull over his head. Something he can hide behind. But the mask has been destroyed - and anyway, it had belonged to Kylo Ren, and now he is only Ben.
Weak Ben, who sometimes still doesn't recognize his own voice - it's so soft he thinks, but it only breaks when he tries to will it louder - who knocks into things because he's too tall and not proportioned well and there's something just off about him. He doesn't understand his body and he knows his ears are so prominent, it makes him want to break something because they're all going to laugh at him, everyone, and he can't even blame them -
and then Rey's hands are wrapped around his waist from behind and he doesn't remember smacking himself in the face but he must have because his cheek is smarting. The touch startles him enough that his thoughts stop swirling, and when he turns around to face her, he loses track of his limbs, his knee bumping into the cot, but she only laughs lightly in response to the way his ears go bright red.
Rey's hands are just slightly calloused and they're small like she is and he's dimly aware that they're holding his still now, where they itch to go into his hair and pull like he normally would to ground himself. Of course she'd known, and when she smiles at him like it doesn't matter, Ben wonders if she knows she's the most beautiful thing in the galaxy to him right now.
She's like looking into the sun, he thinks - her name is so fitting - though she scoffs when he says it. But what she doesn't know is that it's only in her presence, her light touching all his dark places and illuminating his features in such a way that he can almost look at them without flinching, that he does not hear the voice in his head at all.