She didn't actually have any classes in this building. There was no real reason for her to be curled up on this bench in the corner, novel in hand, overstuffed bag at her feet. Students shuffling to and from classes could tell she was out of place here, but despite their bizarre looks, she kept coming back.
The clock in the middle of the room chimed for the top of the hour, a lovely, melancholy sound, and students began to make their way out of classrooms, stretching arms and flexing fingers, squinting in the harsh, artificial light of the commons.
This was the art building, and Rey had a fierce love for the atmosphere here.
As budding artists flitted through the halls, anxious to make their next classes as quickly as possible, Rey sat up straight, putting her feet down on the floor so she could see clearly through the crowd.
A flash of dark hair and white, white skin, and Rey jumped to her feet, slinging her bag over her shoulder (she did have a class to get to), determined not to miss a single glimpse of him. His gait was uneven, almost threatening or even volatile, as if his very soul was a too-hot ember perpetually on the edge of bursting into a cloud of sparks. Thick tendrils of black hair snaked their way around the curves of his neck, the angles of his cheeks, falling onto his forehead like faithful worshippers at the altar of his soulful eyes. From this distance, Rey was sure they were black, but she yearned to see them up close.
His arms were full of art supplies, easels, tubes of paint, brushes of all shapes and sizes, and jars of linseed oil and turpentine. A thick sweater covered his torso and most of his arms, but a thin strip of skin around his wrists showed paint smears in varying tones and shades of yellows, blues, and reds. On a truly lucky day, Rey would glimpse a corresponding smear of one of those colors on his cheek. She could imagine him, deep in thought, reaching up to push hair out of his face with a messy hand and forgetting in his concentration that he'd used it to test a color mix not seconds before.
She longed to ask him what he was working on, why his brow was furrowed in anxious concentration as he stalked down the hall some days and serene and smooth on others. He never stopped, though, and he never once looked her way in all the weeks they'd been occupying this small space together.
This must have been her lucky day, though. Today his path took him directly in front of her bench, and she panicked as she realized he was walking too quickly—he was going to catch her stretched up onto her tiptoes to see him. She tried to turn around to look busy, but in her haste, her bag hit something and she heard a low voice cry out in terrible anguish. Not a lucky day, then.
Her heart dropped into her stomach as the noise was followed by a crash. Slowly, Rey turned around, hoping against hope that she was not about to see what she was expecting.
The only thought Rey had as she looked, for the first time, into the face of the man she'd been watching all these weeks was that infuriation looked lovely on him. His eyes, deep brown and not black, she noticed, smoldered with rage and his heavy features were pinched together in an expression of intense frustration. The rage on his face contrasted comically with the way he was awkwardly sprawled among all the things he'd dropped.
In front of her bench, the floor was covered in his paint supplies. A jar of turpentine, judging by the horrible smell, had broken open and was leaking onto the floor. But oh, the worst thing was the half-finished painting laying on the floor, the turpentine spilled across the middle of it.
Rey dropped to her knees to help him pick up the things spilled all over the floor. She'd barely gathered a few things before he was lashing out, snatching them from her hands.
"No! Don't touch anything. I think you've helped me enough for today, don't you think?" he said, his eyebrows pulled down tight over his eyes. His eyes lingered on hers for a moment before he jerked them away, reaching down to pick more things up.
"I'm really so sorry. I didn't mean to cause any problems!" Rey began, but he held up a finger and looked straight at her.
"You…..you're not even an art student, are you? What are you doing here?!" he growled.
She blushed and looked down and away from him. "I like to read here. That's all."
He scoffed at her before turning back to his things on the ground. As he noticed the ruined painting, he let out a strangled yell.
"What? No! That's my—Oh you've got to be kidding me." he picked up the painting, studied it for a moment, and then threw it. Luckily, the hall was less crowded now that the next classes had begun, and he didn't hit anyone.
Rey, unsure of what to do, but sure that speaking wouldn't be good, simply looked at him as he seethed.
His chest heaved as he stared down the hallway, eyebrows heavy over his eyes, the blacks of the pupils blown so wide that her initial diagnosis concerning his eye color seemed accurate. Thick strands of his dark hair tangled in his fingers as he rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes for a moment. Once or twice, he turned as if to say something to her, but jerked in the middle of the movement, clenched his hands into fists, and turned away again.
After a few minutes, he seemed to collect himself well enough to continue gathering his things.
"I don't know what I'm going to do. That was my final project. The woman in that painting lives very far away. She—she can't sit for me to do another one. There's….there's no time." his shoulders slumped and the things he'd gathered in his arms fell to the floor once more.
Rey dropped her bag onto the bench she'd been sitting on, opened it, and began pulling books out of it. Once it was empty, she knelt down next to the man, who was staring blankly at the floor next to the painting, and began to gather the supplies into it. The first gentle clink of paintbrushes broke his trance, and he turned to her, confused. For a moment, he just watched her, then he froze. His eyes were panicked.
"No—you'll—the turpentine! It'll ruin your bag!" he said, reaching out to take it from her. "It's all over everything!"
Rey held the bag up away from him and calmly continued to put his things into it.
"I'm so sorry that your painting is ruined. I wish there was something I could do to help, but I don't know any painting-repair methods." Rey looked up at his face for a moment, a small moment of bravery before she averted her eyes again.
"I know I—well, overreacted is maybe an understatement—but I'm sorry if I frightened you."
"Maybe you did. A little. But it's okay."
"You don't have to give me your bag."
"I think it might help."
Once all of his things were packed up, she slung the bag over his shoulder and turned to gather her books up. There had to be a way to carry 6 lit textbooks in her arms, right?
"Wait—you can't carry all those books yourself without a bag!" he looked confused, impressed, and strangely indignant.
"I used to think you couldn't carry an entire art classroom without a bag, but here you are." Rey said, picking up the third book and stacking it on top of the other two, using her chin to stabilize the pile as she bent down again.
"My hands are free." the man said, turning his palms up towards Rey. She must have looked puzzled, because he continued, "I mean, I'm already late to my next class. I could….I could help you. Carry your books."
Rey's right eyebrow quirked up and her hands slipped, sending the book on top of the stack sliding towards the floor. Thin, white fingers snatched it out of the air before it could hit the ground.
"Oh, fine." she said, and reached down to pick up another, smaller book, as he picked the other three up. He looked at her, noting the fact that she still seemed to be struggling, and plucked a book off the top of her stack. Then he turned and walked down the hall.
"Wait! You don't even know where I'm going!" Rey called, but he stopped, bent down, and picked the ruined painting up off the ground. The set of his shoulders tightened a little as he gazed at it for a moment, but they loosened as he turned to Rey and asked:
"Where are you going?"
"Well—I, actually—home. I'm already late to my last class, and…" she said. "It's a few blocks off campus. I understand if you can't spare the time, I can just…" but he shook his head.
"Lead the way." he said.
She did, and they weaved in and around the small crowds of people, through the art building and out onto the sidewalk.
"You know, I don't even know your name." she said. "What is it?"
"Kylo Ren." he said, lifting his arms to avoid hitting a small girl with the books and painting as she dashed by.
"I'm Rey." she said. "Wait, you're Kylo Ren?" she turned back towards the art building for a moment, searching mentally. "I saw your painting!"
He frowned and looked down at her before turning in the direction she seemed to be looking.
"You know, the one with the girl and the sun in her hand?"
He cringed. "That one—I don't do fantasy or anything like that. It was an assignment."
"Well, I thought it was fantastic." she said, "She looks so delicate and soft. And the sun? So beautiful. You really have a gift."
His shoulders hunched for a moment and he looked off in the opposite direction. "You really spend a lot of time in there, don't you?"
A soft blush stained her cheeks and she ducked her head. "Yeah."
"Why is that? Wouldn't you be more comfortable in the literature building? I mean, I'm assuming you're a lit major—all these lit textbooks…"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm English with an emphasis in writing but they still make you take all the dumb literature classes." Her eyebrows pulled up together and she continued, "I'm not really…I don't think the other students in my classes like me all that much. I used to study in that building but….all the whispering was distracting. The art building is so full! So many people. So bright."
He nodded thoughtfully. He understood the allure.
"And all of you are creators, in a very real, socially accepted sense. Everybody tells me it's stupid to major in writing because only a few writers ever actually make it in the business." She sighed. "I've never seen anyone bother anyone else in the art building. It's a comforting place to read…." she hesitated, blushing again, "and to watch people." she said.
"Watch….people?" Kylo asked, frowning. "Were you…..watching….me?" he looked over at her, the beginnings of a smirk on his face.
No longer a delicate pink, Rey's blush spread all the way across her face and down her neck. She couldn't look at him. She couldn't. Embarrassment flooded through her.
"It's okay if you were. I've been told I'm quite…comforting….to look at." Kylo bumped her shoulder with his, and she looked up at him, trying to hide as much of her red face as possible behind the books in her arms. The scoundrel was smirking wide now, and the expression suited him so well that it brought on a resurgence of her blush.
The two sidestepped around some girls standing in the middle of the sidewalk, talking loudly about some class they had together. Rey still couldn't look at Kylo, and her face still felt too warm.
The rest of the short walk was made in relative silence, with the exception of murmurs as Kylo guided her around groups of people.
Rey abruptly stopped in front of her building, and Kylo's arm brushed hers as he struggled to stop before he knocked all of the books out of her hands. The rough fabric of his sweater and the proximity of his skin burned her arm.
"This—This is me." she said, clearing her throat.
"You probably need help carrying your stuff up, right?" Kylo said. Rey nodded, rushing forward to open the door to the building. The rubber soles of his sneakers squeaked on the tiled floor as he walked towards the elevator, but Rey hissed quietly and jerked her head towards the ominous-looking door on the other side of the lobby.
Kylo frowned, clearly confused, but she shook her head and motioned for him to follow her. The heavy door groaned as she pushed it open, first with the flat of her hand, and then with her hips.
Around her, she watched him study the flights and flights of unforgiving concrete steps, narrow and steep. He slid past her through the doorway, holding the books up over her head to make room for both of their bodies in the small space. Her hip brushed the top of his warm thigh, and she closed her eyes, swallowing tightly before moving away and allowing the door to slide shut.
Kylo hesitated before walking up the stairs ahead of her, and they marched up three flights before Rey pulled reached in front of him to open another ominous-looking door and stepped into a hallway, lit by windows at either end and dim, yellow lights in between. Her door was the first one.
She fumbled with her keys for a moment before turning to him and raising one eyebrow.
"So….would you like to come in?" she said.