"Do you have plans for the break?"

Rey glanced up from her chem homework. She had completely forgotten that the week after next was already fall study days. Ben slouched in his worn plaid armchair in the corner of his living room and didn't look up from his laptop as he spoke. After sunset, his apartment was dark inside and the lamp beside him did little to light the space. The days were getting noticeably shorter now and without an overhead fixture in the living room it seemed dim.

"No, do you?"

Ben shrugged with one shoulder.

"I thought it might be nice to get out of town, even if it's just for a couple days."

She saved her work in the assignment before putting her laptop beside her to fully consider what he was saying.

"Where?"

Ben finally looked up too and closed his own device part way.

"My family has a cabin a few hours away. My folks bought it when they were still together and we each have a key."

A slow smile tugged at her lips.

"Are you asking me to go away with you?"

"No!" Ben's answer came too quickly for her to believe him. "No, I just thought you might want to get out of here-"

"I'm not saying no," Rey interrupted him. "It seems romantic."

Ben scoffed. "You might change your mind when you see the place. It's… rustic."

Rey pictured it in her mind's eye: white clapboard siding, green shingles, a pile of golden maple leaves on the roof. A braided oval rug in front of a fireplace framed by a mantle made of smooth river rocks. There might be landscape art or-Rey's heart quickened- old family photos.

And privacy, blissful privacy. Her shared apartment was small to begin with and further reduced by Jess's new boyfriend who practically lived on their couch. When he wasn't on the couch, he was in their bathroom. Or in Jess's bedroom. Now that they were in college, her friend seemed determined to make up for lost time, as if they were in some sort of competition with each other over boys. Rey spent what time she could at Ben's, but she was beginning to feel like she lived at the library more than anywhere else.

"Okay," she agreed readily. "Let's do it."

"Really?" Ben's smile, rare as it was, lit up his entire face. He thumbed his glasses up his nose and she grinned to see how excited he seemed to be.

"Really," she confirmed.

The drive upstate the following Saturday felt like something from a movie. Puffy white clouds dotted the blue autumn sky above maples reflecting golden-orange light off their leaves. As long as Rey had been in the east, she had never gotten over how beautiful the trees were as they readied themselves for winter. It was completely different from how she remembered fall in New Mexico in the best way.

Ben drove with one hand braced against the steering wheel and his other lazily laced through her fingers. At first, Rey had stiffened against the prolonged contact, but she finally relaxed into his hand and let him stroke her knuckles with his thumb. They drove in a comfortable silence after stopping for lunch at a small diner where the locals kept personal coffee mugs on a rack beside the counter.

"This cabin was my dad's idea," he offered without her asking as he turned off the main highway down a county road. "But Melissa doesn't like it so they haven't really been up much since the twins came along. My mom's too busy with her ministry to come up most weekends, so I started using it to come up and write."

Rey hummed in understanding. She didn't think much about Han and Melissa's relationship until she began to see it through Ben's eyes. She had never gotten up the nerve to ask Ben if he knew about the picture of Leia in Han's toolbox.

By the time they reached the turnoff down a sandy, rutted driveway, the sky had become a flat grey expanse and there were darker clouds over the horizon to the west. Rey pressed her forehead against the cool glass and glanced up at the impending storm. The weather report had been favorable but it was beginning to look as though they might be inside more than they expected.

"Awww, for fuck's sake, you've gotta be shitting me!"

Ben's vulgar outburst caused her to turn back forwards. To her surprise, a beat-up Jeep Wrangler with mud splattered up to the windows and a Colorado license plate was parked at a jaunty angle in front of the cabin, its front wheels just up onto the grass ahead of the dirt area at the end of the drive. A faded bumper sticker with "peace" in five languages adorned the back window. Rey's eyes flicked up from the vehicle to the building behind it.

Well, he was right: it looked nothing like the cabin in her imagination. Painted a drab dark brown with gray shingles, the building was decidedly less than charming. It sat in a tiny patch of overgrown green lawn that looked to Rey like it housed every late-season mosquito in the county. The yard was indistinct from the forest surrounding it and small shoots of trees and brambles pushed up through the edges.

It looked more like a horror movie set than anything. She and Jess had scared themselves silly watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre at a sleepover.

"Whose car is that?" Rey asked rather than comment on the cabin.

Ben cut the engine and they rolled silently to a stop beside the Jeep. He let out a deep sigh and narrowed his eyes at the vehicle.

"It's-"

"Ben?!" A man's voice came from the porch. "Is that you?"

A middle-aged man sporting a wild looking beard held open the screen door. He squinted towards them and his mouth worked beneath his moustache. He wore loose-fitting pants with a drawstring waist that ended just above his ankles and a long, belted cardigan with a pattern that looked Native American. Something in the way he looked at them seemed very familiar though, and Rey knew suddenly who the other houseguest was.

"It's my Uncle Luke," Ben fairly growled. "God-fucking-damnit, I had no idea he was back east!"

"Ben!" The man exited the house and started down the porch stairs towards them. Rey saw now that he was barefoot as well.

Ben opened his door and called, "Hey, Luke."

Rey's stomach clenched as the older man pulled Ben into a stiff-looking hug. He was much shorter than Ben, probably only a half a head taller than Leia. A few large raindrops began to dot the windshield and hood of the car. She gathered her backpack and was just about to exit the passenger side when Luke leaned down to peer in at her.

"Well, hello there!" He waved at her vigorously as though she weren't two feet away from him. "Why are you here?! And who are you?"

"Hi," she raised her hand in greeting. "I'm Rey, I worked at Han's gara-"

"Rey goes to school with me at state now," Ben supplied. "She's, uh… we're… my, uh-"

Luke stood as abruptly as he had stooped and waved Ben off. "No need to put labels on things! Your mom mentioned it to me. Good for you kids. Come inside, it's looking like a storm-I'm making some chili."

He ambled up the stairs with the gait of a man who had once been very limber but whose joints time had stiffened considerably.

The screen door slapped closed behind Luke and they were frozen in an awkward silence. Ben tugged his hand through his hair before slamming the driver's door without bothering to take the keys out of the ignition and moving towards the rear of the car.

Rey's cheeks heated as she got out and slung her backpack over her shoulder. They had only recently begun referring to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend and she got the sense Ben was embarrassed by even that. Of course they both knew Leia knew; she had basically caught them redhanded when Rey had visited Ben at school last winter, but Rey was a touch surprised at her mentioning it to Luke.

"Sorry," Ben mumbled as they retrieved their other bags from the trunk. "I had no idea he was going to be here. We can go to a motel-"

"No," Rey shook her head firmly. "It's fine, he's your family."

Ben glowered. "He's crazy, is what he is."

She glanced up at him. Family was a topic neither of them broached easily, and where Rey always felt like an outsider peering in at her friends' families, she had the sense that Ben was a caged animal looking for any way out of his.

By the time they sat down in the breakfast nook that looked out through the screened back patio with their bowls of Luke's chili, Ben was in full pout and the storm in full swing. Thunder rumbled outside and the rain drenched the small cabin until it overflowed the drain spouts and spilled out over the gutter at the corners. The light reflected on Ben's lenses so that it shielded his expression from them while he hunkered over his bowl and ate in silence. He cradled the bowl towards his chest in one massive hand, almost as though he were afraid Luke or Rey might try to steal it from him.

Rey exhaled for five counts before delicately spooning some of the meal. Ben's posture was making her stomach tense.

Luke, on the other hand, seemed determined to fill the awkward silence by interrogating Rey. While Leia had projected a sage calm about her when faced with the two of them together, Luke's energy felt like that of an excited puppy; he interrupted almost every answer she gave to his questions with an exclamation and affirmation of her answer as it related to him.

"So Rey, I hear you grew up out West?"

Rey stirred her steaming chili before answering carefully. "In New Mexico. My parents and I lived there until I was 12-"

"New Mexico! I love the high desert- have you ever gone out to Los Alamos? I visited there once, would love to go back."

"My school took a trip to the lab when I was in 5th grade," Rey confirmed.

The lab was really cool, as she recalled. It was one of the reasons she wanted to study science.

Her parents forgetting her permission slip, then to pick her up until after dark when they arrived back at school, was not. She wondered if Luke would've gotten along with her parents. They always said they were free spirits and Luke struck Rey as very much a free spirit.

"What took you out to Colorado?" Rey finally managed to get a question in first. "That's a long way from here."

Luke hesitated for a moment with a faraway look in his eye. Ben shifted in his seat as though readying for a long answer and crossed his arms in self-defense.

"It wasn't what I planned on," Luke began. "I went out for a retreat from divinity school, and I just… It stuck, you know? There was something about Boulder back in the day. The energy of the place? I had been looking for so long for meaning, and I found it there."

Rey's heart sank. Yes, she knew exactly what he meant. It was the same rhetoric her parents had used to justify umpteen moves when she was a child. No sooner Rey would settle in wherever they were, make a friend at school, get a library card at the local library, than one of her parents would get crossways of the friend they were squatting with or their new boss at work, and they'd be off again. Chasing meaning. Seeking people who understood them.

"Right," Rey muttered. Even as a young child Rey had been skeptical of how many people seemed to misunderstand her parents.

Ben huffed and stood up from the table before Luke could continue.

"You're excused," Luke tried to joke, but Ben didn't respond.

He washed his bowl silently at the sink before turning back.

"I've got some reading to catch up on," he said. "Thanks for letting us have the bedroom."

"Of course!" Luke smiled brightly.

Rey read for awhile in the living room before retreating to the bedroom. Luke had gone off to the screened patio and when Rey passed the entrance, Luke was seated cross-legged on the floor. She paused for a moment, wondering whether to interrupt his meditation to say an early good night, but decided against it.

The bedroom was so small there was just enough room to edge around the queen bed that sat against one wall. It had no headboard and was topped with a comforter whose pattern looked at least thirty years old to Rey's eyes.

Ben lay on his back with his giant hand curled over the top edge of a textbook. His glasses lay on the windowsill above his head and he held the book at a strange angle quite close to his face. He'd told her he could see this way without his glasses, but it looked uncomfortable. His heels hung just over the end of the bed.

"Hey," she tried as she closed the door softly behind her. It felt very lightweight in her hand, as if she wouldn't be able to slam it if she'd wanted to. There was no heft to the wood at all and she suspected it was hollow, a cast-off piece from another building project that had ended up here.

"Hey," Ben breathed. "Sorry."

Rey didn't respond right away, turning instead to her backpack and retrieving her pajamas. The tiny room felt stuffy in the humidity but she didn't dare sleep naked, not with Luke in the cabin.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"No." His tone was gruff. "Sorry he ruined our weekend."

She glanced over her shoulder at him but didn't rise to his barb. He'd told her little about Luke, only that he'd spent an interminable summer with the man in Colorado when his parents were at their worst. She could picture it readily: pre-teen Ben, suddenly taller than everyone else at school and sporting with a mop of lank, wavy black hair, trailing after his uncle on endless sunny hikes when all he wanted to do was sulk in his room with a book.

"He gets his height from his grandpa," Han had remarked once. "It must've skipped a generation somehow 'cause it missed his mom and Luke for sure."

She knew Luke meant well enough, but she could see how Ben might feel otherwise.

Rey drew her sweater over her head and Ben's breathing hitched for a moment. It stilled entirely when she unhooked her bra and tossed it over her bag. The pajamas she'd chosen to bring were more… brief than she normally chose to wear at home. The shorts barely covered the curve of her behind, and the top's arm holes dipped well down the side of her rib cage. It had seemed like a good idea when she was packing, something fun and different.

"Fuck," Ben breathed and she heard the bed springs squeak as he shifted.

She lay gingerly beside him, trying to minimize the noise.

The bed groaned as though she weighed three hundred pounds.

"This bed is…" she stifled a giggle. "Not helping."

Ben extinguished the lamp and he pecked her quickly on her temple. They lay in excruciating silence for a few moments, just listening to the rain pelting the building. The staccato rhythm suggested hail, but Rey didn't think it was cold enough to freeze just yet.

"I am so fucking hard right now," Ben whispered. He sounded anguished.

Warmth flooded through Rey's lower midsection at this confession. She made no move to touch him, though, and the bed shifted again as Ben moved to press the heel of his hand against his groin.

They didn't dare, not when the whole cabin felt as though it were held together by scotch tape and spit, with Luke was sleeping on the pull-out couch out in the living room.

Rey rolled away from Ben and draped the edge of the scratchy comforter over her bare legs. She wasn't cold, not exactly, but it felt more secure to be wrapped in something.

Since she had started at school, their encounters had become considerably more frequent but less desperate. They lived close enough by one another that Rey spent the night at Ben's so often that he joked about charging her rent. She began to appreciate his strange ability to say things, often caustic, hurtful things, in a way that seemed humorous. People could hear harsh truths if it was wrapped in a joke.

Rey wished she had the nerve to say the same to Jess's boyfriend.

Their familiarity bred a laziness into their relationship that Rey had come to appreciate and even crave. A Saturday morning spent in bed studying, punctuated by breaks where he'd gently tear her materials away from her to give her a lesson of an altogether different kind was something she looked forward to all week.

Tonight though, Rey drifted to a fitful sleep after listening to Ben's frustrated sighs beside her. She woke often through the night and several times straight out of dreams, turning over restlessly but never able to get comfortable.

She woke from a dream that they were camping and she was trapped in a mummy sleeping bag whose zipper she could not find. The heat made her languid but she felt sluggish panic that she could not move, not get out of the bag that threatened to incinerate her.

The light in the room was a dark grey that signaled early morning but the rain still pounded the cabin. Rey slowly realized the sleeping bag was Ben, curled around her atop the covers like a living space heater. He had shed his t-shirt in the night and she could feel his cock poking at her even through the rumpled comforter between them.

She turned back to see if he was awake. His dark eyes searched her face and he blinked once in greeting.

"Hey," he mouthed. "How'd you sleep?"

Rey shrugged. "Shitty."

Ben's eyes crinkled slightly at her assessment but they quickly fluttered closed as she pressed back against him. He stiffened against her and his breathing stuttered.

"Can you be quiet?" She asked as a prickling heat suffused between her legs at even the thought of them trying not to get caught.

"You're the noisy one," he retorted as his hand snaked under her top to tweak her nipple. It already stood at attention, rubbing against the sheer material. A tiny squeak escaped her before she could help it. "Can you be quiet?"

Rey nodded and rolled onto her back.

"Promise," she whispered.

Ben moved slowly, ever so slowly, onto all fours over her and pushed his boxers off his hips. She made to remove her shorts but the bed gave her away and he captured her wrist, pinning it beside her head. A quick shake of his head told her he had other plans for her pajamas.

Ben shoved the material aside and the leg of her bottoms stretched tight around her hip. Her breath caught now that she understood. His fingers traced once in the slick and her eyes fell closed at the choked sound his breathing made. The heat of his body drew close a moment before he entered her in a steady, unrelenting thrust.

Rey's head lolled to the side at the sudden, overwhelming fullness and she had to bite her lip, diagram molecules, make a to-do list to keep from simply coming right then. He released her hand to settle onto his elbows and even the small motion caused her to clench down, trying to find the friction she ached for.

"Don't," Ben's whisper was desperate against the shell of her ear, and she knew he was fighting as hard as she not to make any noise.

She forced herself to look at him and let him capture her lips in a deep, sloppy kiss that went on forever, made her lightheaded with desire.

Rey felt as though she were still dreaming, still wrapped in the warm cocoon of dreamy sleep with the rain lulling her away from this world into another state of consciousness. Their breathing alternated- hers out, his in, his out, hers in- until Rey began to feel like they were one body, not two, a creature of an altogether different kind. She was too warm, but she didn't care. Nothing mattered outside this space, nothing existed beyond their bodies twined together. The ache throbbed in time with their shared heartbeats, pulsed in their bellies as they forgot everything outside this moment and each other.

She might've fallen asleep but for the tickle when Ben's lips brushed her ear once more.

"I'm going to ruin you when we get home."

Her eyes flew open when the meaning sank in and she saw nothing but the ceiling. Her heart was pounding and her breathing high up in her chest.

"You awake?"

Ben lay on his side facing away from her. His lamp was on but the sun was up enough he could've seen without it.

"Were we… did we just….?" Rey sat up, dismayed to find her pajamas still neatly on her person. Her face flamed as she looked at him.

Ben's smile was slow but wolfish.

"Sweet dreams?"

She merely shook her head and threw the comforter aside; somehow she'd ended up underneath it and she was drenched in sweat. She stood on wobbly legs and made her way to the door to relieve her aching bladder. Her arousal was draining pitifully away and she was left with an ache between her thighs that felt permanent.

"Ben," Rey paused with her hand on the door knob. She had to just say it, no matter how much it made her cringe. He wasn't like that with her, not normally, but now she felt insatiable even imagining it. It was just the kind of gross thing Jess's boyfriend would say to her as they were trying to watch TV. Just say it.

"When we get home, I want you t-to… to ruin me."

The bed squeaked and she glanced back over her shoulder at him. His lips worked in astonishment without producing a reply.

"Promise?" His deep voice was guttural, almost a whisper.

"Promise," Rey blew him a kiss and opened the door.