They stood expectantly on the wooden front porch after Ben knocked on the door. Artoo settled next to her feet, panting hot breath near her ankle.
"Do we need to knock…?" Rey was a bit confused.
Ben shook his head with a grimace. "It can't hurt to be polite," he said quietly. "I didn't leave things on the best of terms."
The man who opened the door to the house was everything, and nothing, like what Rey expected Ben's father to look like.
"Ben…?!" he exclaimed, opening the screen door with a slap, barreling out of the house and grabbing him into a tight hug. "Thank the Maker, you made it back!"
Han was slightly shorter than Ben, and his once-dark hair was shot through with grey, but Rey immediately saw their resemblance when Han held his son at arm's length and grinned at him. He cupped the back of Ben's head and pulled their foreheads together, and Rey could see the tears welling in his eyes.
"Hey, Dad," Ben breathed, and Rey could hear he was overcome. "You look good."
Han's smile broadened at this. "Tell your mother that, she's on my case again about it. Wants me to try some new diet, I don't know what that has to do with anything, but you know her - it's always a cause."
"I do know," Ben said softly. "Dad, I want you to meet my wife, Reynata."
Rey stepped forwards and started to extend her hand, but Han cut her off at the pass.
"Reynata, huh?" Han looked her up and down quickly before grabbing her into a bear hug as well. "Shit, you kids are married? I take a nap one afternoon and everyone comes home with delusions of grandeur. Welcome to the nuthouse!"
She caught Ben's eyeroll over Han's shoulder as she awkwardly held the embrace, but her husband could not repress his smile. She finally pulled away and said shyly, "Please, call me Rey, but what should I call you, sir?"
Han looked surprised, then grinned again. "You can call me anything you like, sweetheart, but Han will do. No need to be formal for this old scoundrel."
Ben cleared his throat and chuckled, "Is Mother here?"
Han's smile dropped at this. He shoved his hands in his back pockets, much as Luke had done, and Rey could feel a perceptible shift in the energy between them. "She's in her study, and I think Lando might be over."
"Oh," Ben said simply. "That's still going on?"
Han shrugged. "I'm as surprised as you are, son. Why don't you bring your things in and freshen up. We thought Rey could sleep up in your office. Your room's still the same, but the bed's too small for two to sleep… Assuming you've reached the stage of wanting to just sleep," he added mischievously.
Rey giggled hesitantly at Han's insinuation, and to her surprise, a deep flush crept over Ben's cheeks at this. "Alright, that'll do," Ben grumbled. "Don't let the dogs in the house," he cautioned as they sidled around Artoo through the door. "Threepio is like a tornado when he gets in."
The small attic room was outfitted with a wooden desk covered with piles of paper around a typewriter and stacks of books with scraps of paper stuck in their pages, and a single bed with what looked like fresh sheets turned down for her. Rey placed her suitcase on the luggage rack and noticed the small skylight in the peaked roof overhead.
She bounced on the edge of the bed, testing the mattress, before proceeding to the desk to look at his papers.
The typewriter held a page still in the reel, a bevy of slashes through the words and phrases already typed on it and corrections in pencil in the margins. The final, unfinished sentence began, "It is arguable that the dichotomy is less drastic than envisioned by Schickling -"
Rey stared at this page, noting how many words on it she'd never seen before. She carefully thumbed open the pages of the topmost book in a stack to the marked page. Ben's slanted handwriting was immediately recognizable on the bookmark, a terse-looking arrow pointing towards a paragraph with a scribble she made out to read, "Disagree. Contrast with Schaeffer's argument."
She placed the book back on its stack when she heard his step on the stair, turning from the desk to see Ben slip inside the door and close it quietly behind him.
"Are you finding everything?" he asked. He straightened up when he saw the desk. "You found that mess already, I see."
"What is… all this?" Rey gestured vaguely at the typewriter.
Ben crossed the small room and peered at the half-finished page. "It's... my work," he said simply. He leaned on the desk with both hands and reread what he had written, scowling at the page.
"Your work?" Rey repeated, amused. Writing didn't seem like anything she had ever associated with work before. It seemed like a pastime one might do if they weren't exhausted from their job.
Ben cocked his head at her. "I was writing my doctoral thesis… before."
Rey crossed her arms and then one ankle over the other. "So… you would be a doctor?" She felt a flicker of unease in her stomach. She was curious why he had never mentioned this before now.
"Not a medical doctor," Ben replied gently, and his eyes crinkled in amusement. "A doctorate to be a professor."
"I see," Rey said, but she knew she didn't. She had never considered how people became professors. Things had to be written? "How long does that take?"
"Too long," he chuckled. "It depends on your field, but I spent most of my twenties on it already. It doesn't seem too important now, given…. things in the world."
She was silent at this. He opened the drawer briefly, and she saw a stack of envelopes in the drawer before he closed it quickly. What caught her eye, though, was the decidedly feminine script on them that read simply, B-. She caught the flicker of recognition in his expression before he turned to her, saying, "Shall we go see if my mother's free yet?"
"What are those?" She knew she should leave it, but she was too curious.
"Aaaah, I don't know," he said, and she immediately felt he wasn't being completely honest. "They weren't there when I left. I'll have to ask my folks why they put them in there."
He turned away to go downstairs and she interrupted with another question. "And…. who's Lando?"
He stopped in the doorway, then turned and placed his hands high up on the doorjamb. The question caused him to draw his breath in and hold it. He closed the door behind him again and leaned heavily against it.
"Lando is…" Ben looked everywhere but at her. "He is my mother's lover."
Rey stared at him, thinking he was joking. "But, what about your father? Han?"
Ben shook his head and heaved a deep sigh. "It's complicated, but… it's what works for them. They have an arrangement about things. I think it's crazy, but it's been going on at least half my life now. They aren't going to understand what we have, I'm pretty sure of it."
Rey hitched her arms tighter against her body and crossed over to stand directly in front of him. "Does your father have…. lovers, too?" She felt awkward even saying the word out loud. It seemed like a term too romantic for their time, and certainly not one that applied to someone's parents.
Ben studied her carefully. "It bothers you, doesn't it."
Rey shrugged. "I can tell it bothers you," she replied. "I'm sure it was… confusing."
"Like I said, I think it's strange," Ben said evenly. "But, it's better than it was? They love each other so much, it's almost scary. But like a destructive storm, you know? A force of nature. They're both the kind of people who can't be contained in one thing, or place, for forever. Does that make any sense?"
"I think so," Rey replied. She sensed that her idea of relationships and personal commitment was actually more fluid than his, but wasn't sure how to feel him out about it. She had long recognized that the bonds of family were tenuous and sometimes, the connections she had forged to others were stronger than those made by blood. "Shall we go meet your mother?"
Ben nodded and leaned forward to plant a kiss her forehead before opening the door with his hand behind him. "C'mon, let's go see."
To her surprise, an older colored gentleman with a neatly trimmed mustache opened the door to the study a crack when Ben rapped gently on the wood. He looked from Ben to her, his eyes traveling up and down her figure, appraising her quickly before he offered his hand in greeting.
"I know this young man, but you might you be?" His eyes twinkled with amusement as Rey let him grasp her fingers and she smiled shyly as he drew her hand to his lips to peck it. His moustache tickled her knuckles and she replied, "Reynata, and you are?"
"Dr. Lando Calrissian," he purred, releasing her hand to shake Ben's in turn. "Welcome home, Ben. It's good to see you in one piece."
"Doctor," Ben replied politely, but Rey noted the formality in his tone and sensed there was no love lost between these men. She shifted expectantly, catching her elbow behind her back with her other hand.
Just then, the door opened fully and Ben's mother held the edge of it with her other hand authoritatively at her hip. She looked between them several times, and Rey knew she was being sized up. She lifted her chin proudly and tried to keep her face as open as possible, but her first instinct was to frown and look at the floor.
The woman pursed her lips a couple of times, looking like she was on the verge of speaking, before she finally pronounced: "You changed your hair."
"Mother," Ben said gruffly with a nod. "You look well."
Rey dropped her elbow and stood at what felt like attention, arms at her sides. She suddenly wished she had picked a different dress, or better shoes, or anything that would've felt like armor against the relentless inspection she was now enduring from Ben's mother. The woman was petite, her figure looking to have thickened with age, but Rey could see she had once been a fearsome beauty and that her husband had inherited her chestnut eyes. She wore a plain tunic with a rounded collar that draped loosely over her frame, and her legs were clad in loose-fitting pants of the same color and material. It reminded Rey of one of Maz's ambiguous get-ups.
"Well?" she said expectantly, raising her eyebrow at Ben. "Have you forgotten all your manners, or do they not have those in the Army?"
"The Air Force," he corrected her, "And no - Rey, this is my mother, Dr. Leia Organa."
"It's a pleasure," Rey offered her hand once more, and she was slightly surprised when Leia took it firmly with both hands wrapped around hers. "Thank you for having us."
Leia nodded briskly and asked, "Would you rather I call you Reynata, or Rey?"
"Either is fine," she started politely, but Leia cut her off.
"Being vague when I ask you a question will not endear you to me," Leia said with some force. "Surely you have a preference?"
Rey was taken aback by this directness from a woman, especially one she had just met. "You can call me Rey, ma'am."
"Good," Leia said curtly. "Now if you don't mind, I'd like to have a word with my son." No one moved until she clarified, "Alone."
Dr. Calrissian lifted a greying eyebrow at Rey and said, "Shall we see if there's some tea in the ice box, Miss Rey?"
"Of course," she demurred, backing away so that he could slip out the door beside Ben. She glanced back down the hallway over her shoulder as she trailed him, and caught Ben's eye before he retreated into the study after his mother.
I love you, he mouthed at her and winked, a small smile quirking his lips, then she heard the door click closed behind him.
They found Han on a screened-in back porch, dozing on a couch with a magazine over his face and one foot propped up against the arm of the sofa. Artoo was licking his fingers where they hung down to the floor. He started when Rey accidentally banged the door behind her.
"Sorry," she said quickly, but Han sat up and blinked a few sleepy times.
"Hey, Lando," Han grinned and stuck out his hand. "How's things?"
"Things are things," Dr. Calrissian said affably. He settled onto the couch next to Han.
Rey could see the two men had a comfortable rapport with one another, and she eased into a wicker armchair with a palm-print cushion, sipping delicately at her sweating glass of tea.
Han rubbed his hands over his face and grinned over the tops of his fingers at her. "How's the General?"
"Awwww, shit," Lando murmured, chuckling at what seemed to be a private joke. "Pardon my French, Rey."
"The General…?" Rey repeated, curious now. "Do you mean Dr. Organa?"
"Yeah, Leia hates it when I call her the General," Han said with a sly smile. "That's why I do it. Keeps things lively."
"I see," Rey demurred, staring into her glass for a moment. She instantly liked Han, and she could see how his rakish charm was both different from, and an influencer of, her husband's.
"Miss Rey," Lando began, "Tell us about yourself. And - welcome to the family."
"Thank you," she said softly. "But, there's really not much to tell, I'm afraid- what did you want to know?"
The two men looked at each other and said in unison, "Anything."
Rey wasn't sure where to begin, and she was pretty sure she was babbling, but she told them everything she imagined they wanted to hear: only child, the Depression, westward migration, parents gone, wartime employment, meeting Ben, marrying Ben, pining for Ben, and their eventual reunion. These last bits she rendered in only the sparsest of detail.
"And now we're here," she finished. "Oh, and I can fix just about anything, so let me know if you want me to work on things."
"Isn't that something," Lando nodded, his finger curled over his chin and playing at his mustache. "Such a game of chance that brought us all together here."
"You know what I always say," Han began.
"Women always find out the truth?" Lando supplied.
"No- well, I do say that too, because it's true. No, I meant - I always say, never tell me the odds," Han finished with a flourish, hands raised.
Rey grinned at them. They made quite a pair.
Just then she heard Ben's step in the hallway, and her husband peeked out through the door.
"Well, this looks like trouble," he pronounced with a smile. "Lando, did you want to stay for dinner, or….?"
Lando smoothed his hands on his thighs and stood. "I should get going, you all have a lot of catching up to do. Han -" he extended his hand to the man still seated. "Until next time."
"Alright, you pirate," Han shook his hand. "Ben, do you want to fetch Luke?"
"Of course," he replied. "Rey, can you help set the table?"
The three of them sat for a long time on Luke's porch after dinner had ended, mostly in a comfortable silence, just watching Threepio and Artoo chase one another in circles, occasionally snapping unlucky lightening bugs from the air.
Finally Rey stood, stretching her arms overhead and bending slightly backwards. She caught Ben's glance as it raked over the length of her frame. "I'm going to head to bed," she excused herself. "It's been a long day."
"Goodnight, Rey," Luke said softly. "And…. welcome home."
She felt her chest tighten at the unexpected familiarity in his voice, and how readily Luke seemed to accept her presence. "Thank you," she replied.
Ben got up and walked several strides away from the house with her before he lightly grasped her wrist between his thumb and forefingers, until she could just feel her pulse beating against the pressure. He leaned over to peck her cheek and as he straightened, he said so only she would hear, "I'll come up to you in a bit - I won't be too much longer."
Rey blushed and nodded her agreement.
Ben's office was very warm and still as she lay drowsily atop the covers in her slip, staring out at the stars through the skylight. It reminded her of hot summer nights at home in Bakersfield, when she'd escape the sweaty, close misery of her shared bedroom to lay outside, hidden in the bed of their truck to look at the heavens and letting the night breeze from the mountains cool her sweaty skin. Occasionally she had shown mercy to her youngest cousin, Ruby, letting the child curl against her to point out the constellations until she drifted off to sleep. Mostly though, she had selfishly guarded that stolen time to take care of her own desires and needs with only the sky as her witness.
She did not have a watch to track him, but it seemed like it was ages before she heard the squeak at the topmost stair that belied his presence. She wondered how he could've walked so softly up when he slipped around the partially-closed door.
Rey shifted to her side and raised up on one elbow.
"Maker save us, it's hot as hell up here," he chuckled. "Hold on, this window opens." He stood on his desk chair and found a lever she had not seen and he cracked the window open. She immediately felt a rush of cooler air begin to circulate over her.
"That took longer than I intended," Ben apologized. "We had a lot of things to catch up on."
She merely blinked her ascent, and waited as he stripped down to his underwear. He seemed too big for this small room, having to stoop slightly to keep from bumping his head on the peaked roof.
"Did you ever sleep up here?" she asked finally.
Ben smiled. "I spent years in this room, you have no idea."
She observed him languidly as he folded his clothes over the back of his chair and glanced once more at the clutter on the desk. "Shall I leave the lamp on?" he asked, and she noted the huskiness that shaded his tone.
"Yes," she said simply, stretching her hand out, palm up in supplication. "I want to see you."
A trace of lust flashed across his face as he made his way to her, but what struck Rey most was how relaxed he finally looked. There was a tightness gone from around his eyes that she hadn't even detected until she noticed its absence. It was perhaps the most relaxed she'd ever seen him.
She knelt on the bed in front of him, and shivered despite the warmth as he grasped the hem of her slip delicately and his fingers brushed her ticklish sides when he drew the garment up and over her head. His thumb traced along the ridge of her collarbone, and she felt weak as he gently grasped her upper arms and pulled her upright towards him into a kiss. A dark, heavy wave of desire washed over her lower body as their tongues met and he licked into her mouth, and she could not help but whimper softly.
"I think the Maker was just showing off when he made you," Ben breathed, "You know that, right?"
She shook her head in modest disagreement, but reached instead for the waistband of his shorts, hooking her fingers into them and carefully dispersing him of any remaining clothing.
He stood at ease for her attentions, lightly cupping the back of her head and ghosting his fingers over her face as she pecked kisses on his torso, trailing her fingers over his chest, tweaking his flat nipples until he huffed, rubbing her thumbs up his inner thighs and down his low stomach until he bucked forwards eagerly and his hard length brushed her chest.
"I need you," she whispered, her desire having stolen her voice.
Without hesitation, he guided her onto her back and she closed her eyes as she felt the bed shift under his weight. A moment later, he hovered just over her and she arched impatiently to force contact between their bellies.
"Ben," she said, winding her hands around his neck and ruffling his hair at the base of skull. "Hold my leg in your arm?"
"Are you ready?" he seemed to doubt her.
She nodded. "I've been waiting for you."
A private smile quirked his lips momentarily as he wound one elbow behind her leg as she asked, kissing her inner knee. She shuddered to feel his teeth scrape the delicate spot, and he hitched her leg against him as he bent closer over her.
She widened her legs for him and closed her eyes once more as she felt him slip inside her body. He arched into her and slid almost to his hilt in one go, her slippery sex eagerly accepting his manhood.
When he had last taken her this way, before the war, Rey had found it more awkward than erotic. She had felt nervous, too exposed with her legs splayed open in this undignified way. She had found it hard to focus on him in someone else's bed like this, wondering if somehow they would know when they returned. Instead, she had readily taken to other positions she knew some women might consider too humiliating in their anonymity to avoid the unrelenting intimacy of this one. He had never questioned her, and she knew these other expressions of her desire spoke to his basest, masculine carnality.
Now though, here in the quiet stillness of his boyhood home with a few late-season cicadas droning in the night, she found her vulnerability to him intoxicating, and she relaxed into a submission she could never allow herself with him before. She braced the heel of her hand against his shoulder and pushed against him in the mildest play of resistance, and he rewarded her with a steady, deep pressure from his hips that drew a gasp from her. His arm supporting her leg unlocked a tension in her low back so pervasive she was barely conscious of it, and she found that opening her hips released a hidden stress there as well that caused her to throb with desire in its absence.
The corporeal recognition of this welled up and she came well before she meant to. Ben bit his lip and observed her as the hot, pulsing pleasure suffused her body, murmuring encouragement and soothing comfort in the shell of her ear even as he pressed deeper into her. Her peak had come over her so unexpectedly, but its gentle totality outweighed the sharper, more explosive pleasure she often felt had to chase to achieve.
She looked him in the eyes and could not form coherent words or make a sound aside from repeatedly mouthing, Oh….
A dark lust hooded his eyes as he dropped his face to her breast and began to tease her nipple with his clever lips and teeth. Rey turned her face to the wall and stared numbly as his attentions stirred a complicated feeling in her core that was at once comforting and arousing, exciting and soothing, erotic and...maternal. She pulled in a sharp breath at the recognition of it and felt over her head with her hand, grasping at the lathed spindles of the headboard, her ring making a dull clicking sound against it as she slid her hand up one of them, pulling herself slightly up and away from him.
"C'mere," he breathed, "I'm not through with you just yet." He pried her fingers from the wood and captured her wrist, pinning her arm down above her head. She forced her eyes open and had the strangest sensation of watching them from outside her body, even as she felt the undeniable pricks of a new wave of pleasure mounting in her core. What would an observer have read from this scene, if they could see?
He released her leg to regain the full use of both his arms, and while it changed the sensation that had overwhelmed her a few minutes before, it placed a new, urgent pressure on her groin that drew a low moan from her lips. Ben banded one arm beneath her back and it tipped her hips forwards to him in a way that made his lower stomach brush her with every gentle stroke of his own. He wasn't so much thrusting as rocking against her, and the unending fullness she felt was punctuated by mounting crests that were quickly bringing her again to the edge of the cliff she'd already just tumbled over.
Once more she set her hands at his shoulders, working just enough against his rhythm that he opened his eyes and looked down at her. She met his gaze steadily as she squeezed her low belly and he stilled suddenly as her body contracted around his manhood. She held him still a m
oment, no more, and she relaxed her arms to signal that he might move, and he resumed working against her until she caught him off guard again.
"Rey," his voice held a note of warning, "That feels... a little too good."
"Does it?" she asked, coy.
Ben closed his eyes and they rolled back. "Mmmmmmpf," he murmured.
Rey knew exactly what she was doing. They had played this game before he'd left, and it was readily apparent from his reaction that he was a willing participant. She might have been on her back, but she knew she held a definite power over him with this push-and-pull.
"Come for me, Ben," she commanded. "Show me how good it feels."
Her husband shook his head gently against the idea of it, but she could tell he was too far gone. She squeezed his hard length once more and he broke instantly, leaning hard against her and grabbing at the headboard now himself, twisting his body as though to seek out a secret, deeper place in her that he had never found before. This sudden, rough motion of his hips after the taut stillness pushed her straight over her edge, and she broke then too, gazing possessively up at him, at how the corded muscles in his arm stood out above her as he braced against her, at how his chest flexed slightly with the effort under his tattoo, the black points of its rondelle pointing right towards his heart.
Her second peak layered itself over the remnants of the first with a sharper, more insistent twinge that arched her back and dug her heels into the mattress, making her both wish it could both go on forever and squirm as though to escape the ecstasy so pointed she found it close to pain. She panted and her head lolled from side to side, working her lips as though to say something but no words could ever adequately summarize how much she needed, wanted, desired and every other greedy word that flew through her mind as the fingers of pleasure shot down her legs, convulsed her low belly and practically closed her throat as she fought for breath against the insatiable lust she felt.
The intensity of this connection to him, to anyone frightened her, and she knew she would not be able to live without him if the Maker saw fit to take him from her.
