Summary:
The date continues right where the last chapter left off. And another date.
A/N:If you're reading this, thank you for sticking around so long between updates. The state of the world lately has made it particularly difficult to do anything particularly creative.
I hope this makes up for the wait.
Thank you to skyeryder01 for reading.
The first pov break is a bit different, so if it's awkward and weird that's why. Trying something different, not sure if it worked. Let me know if you have thoughts!
Stay safe out there folx.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Pizza and Orgasms
"Get in," Ben orders. Rey looks at him, one eyebrow raised. "Please?" he amends.
"Only if you bring me the food," she says coyly.
"Deal." He trails his fingers down her back and watches her shiver before stepping into the steaming water. She hisses a bit at the heat but moans once she's settled down beneath the frothy layer of bubbles.
"Ben?"
"Hmm?" He asks lazily, watching her lean back, resting her head on the lip of the white enamel.
"Snacks." She makes shooing motions with her hands.
This woman and her food. He chuckles and retrieves the tray and returns to place it within reach on a small folding table that he places beside the tub.
"This thing is amazing, but why do you have it?" Rey has submerged herself up to her chin and blinks up at him lazily as he offers the glass of wine.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm rather large."
"Oh, I've noticed," she giggles.
Ben smirks at her.
" Anyway ," he continues, "I put it in when I bought the apartment. I needed a big tub for soaking after some of the more intense practices."
Her brow furrows.
"It's nice to see someone else enjoying it though," he grins down at her and quirks his eyebrows.
Rey flicks water and bubbles at him.
"Get in," she orders in a mockery of his earlier words.
"Yes ma'am. But first, more wine, milady?"
She pretends to consider for a moment.
"Indeed, milord." She nods eagerly and giggles, so he goes to the kitchen to retrieve another bottle.
When he returns, Rey is chomping happily and waves at him to get in. Ben looks down at her for a moment, enjoying the view, then goes to stick his foot in the water and nearly yelps at the heat. He flinches, but slides the rest of his body into the steaming water, leaning back to look at Rey, who is peering at him over the rim of her glass.
He quirks his eyebrow at her in silent question.
"Just enjoying the view." She smirks at him and raises her glass in a mock toast.
Ben rolls his eyes and takes his own glass, downing half of it in one go.
"So it is going to be a party," Rey purrs. She finishes her own drink and slides her foot up the length of his calf. She leans forward, and for once Ben doesn't resist the urge to look down at where her tits have emerged, glistening and covered with a light layer of bubbles. It looks like frosting and he wants to lick it off.
"I wouldn't," Rey says, reading his mind, "the bubbles are bitter."
"Did you eat the bubbles?"
"Well…no. But I dropped a piece of cheese into the water."
"And you ate it anyway?" He knows the answer.
She pretends to gape at him.
"Of course I did. It was just a little cleaner after I dropped it."
"Hmm," Ben hums. "C'mere." He uses his glass to gesture for her to come to his side of the tub.
Rey scoots over on her knees until she's a few inches away from him, between his spread knees. She sits back on her heels and reaches to fill their glasses, giving him his when she's done.
"Turn around," he says, and she cocks her head at him, but does as he asked. She turns around on her knees so her back is facing him, and he pulls her back into his chest. His free arm wraps around her waist as she nestles back into him.
He leans forward to rest his chin on her shoulder, enjoying the feel of their skin together in the steaming heat of the water. For a time they stay like that, with him occasionally feeding her bites of fruit and cheese until they've finished all the food and then the wine. A pleasant buzzing fills his head from the wine, and the rolling jets are keeping the water warm and bubbly. Almost lazily, Rey turns her face to press a kiss to his neck, and while he knows he probably should be sated, he just wants more .
More of her. Always.
Gently, Ben uses his hand to tip her head back, so her head rests on his shoulder, exposing her throat to him. Working his hands from her collarbones down her shoulders and arms, massaging small circles into her slick skin. She moans as his thumbs press into a sore spot at the base of her neck, her entire body flinching and relaxing against his with each press of his fingers. Her eyes are closed and Ben takes full advantage of it, staring down at her soft body curving against the hardness of his. Her tits peek through the bubbles, and Ben can't resist trailing his hands down to palm her tits and flick the rough pads of his thumbs over her peaked nipples. Her moan shoots straight to his cock, and Ben can feel himself hardening against her backside.
Rey can feel it too, because she slowly rolls her hips to press back against him.
Giving her a warning nip beneath her jaw, Ben returns his attention to her tits, tracing his knuckles over the soft skin underneath. He dips his hands beneath the soapy water, dragging bubbles up onto her skin and sliding his fingertips through the slickness there. Her impatience begins to take over; she starts squirming against him. So Ben clamps one arm over her hips to hold her in place while he drags his free hand slowly up and down the length of her body from her chin to her thighs. Her breath starts to hitch as he draws closer to her more sensitive areas, but he ignores them, feeling her body tense and sag in expectation of his touch and then his denial. He grins into her hair.
"Tell me what you want, Rey," he whispers into her ear. Her irritation is clear from the intensity with which she digs her nails into his skin, but the slight pain is worth it to watch her shiver beneath his touch.
"I think you know what I want," she growls. But her voice is breathless and her eyes are shuttered.
If he just keeps teasing her, she'll beg.
Ben dips the very tips of his calloused fingers into the crease of her hip and thigh, lower, skimming over her folds, and back up the other crease and over her stomach and the ladder of her ribs. Back to the soft underside of her breasts that have now started to heave slightly.
"Say it," he says, drawing a half-moon just beneath the dark pink of her nipple.
"Please," she gasps, trying to grind back against him.
"Please what, Rey ?" Her name in that tone seems to undo her.
"Please, Ben, please touch me. Please."
He likes that.
"Since you asked so nicely," he says and obliges her, moving both hands to pinch and roll her nipples between his fingers as he sucks a mark into the soft flesh where her neck and shoulder meet. Rey lets out a breath, and he moves his fingers lower, dipping into her slick folds to press into her clit. She moans and presses her ass into his fully-hard cock.
His middle finger slides inside her to stroke the spot that he knows will make her eyes roll and her toes curl.
And they do.
Ben loves watching her find her pleasure at his hands. He loves the sounds she makes, and he loves the way her body moves as he strokes and teases her.
He loves her.
Ben lets the realization wash over him, then he examines it and accepts it for what it is.
He loves her. It's simple.
"Rey, I-" he starts but doesn't know how to say it. "I need you."
She keens in affirmation, and he grips her hips to lift her onto his cock, pushing into her with one swift stroke.
Her softness and heat surround him and his eyes close in ecstasy as he stills to allow her body to adjust to him. And when she moves, rocking her hips upward, he pushes against her, finding a place deep within her, deeper than he's been so far. So they move together, and Ben finds the words closer and closer to escaping the closer he gets to climax.
And when they find their pleasure together, he whispers the words into her hair.
"I know," she says.
Finn, Poe, and Phasma are exceptionally bad at charades. Hux, surprisingly, is not. The tall ginger-haired man has a knack for reading the body language of his teammate and contorting his body to convey the more difficult prompts like "mermaid" and "chicken nugget".
Phasma and Poe started out as teammates against Hux and Finn, but she notes Finn and Poe's eyes tracking each other when they think the other isn't looking, so she rotates teammates after the first round. Normally, she likes to play against Armie, finding their antagonism to be a bit of a turn-on, but she sees that Finn needs a nudge in the right direction.
It's odd, she thinks, that gregarious, bubbly Finn is having such trouble around Poe, who is clearly as interested in Finn as Finn is in Poe.
Boys , she thinks, rolling her eyes skyward.
She also switches out the regular charades cards for the more adult ones with prompts like "fire crotch" and "booty call". She smirks, knowing that that will break the awkwardness between them. There's nothing like miming the movements for blue balls to get to know the person you want to date.
Finn is sweating bullets and trying to remain calm. He knows Phas switched teams on purpose, and he appreciates it, but Finn is currently regretting his decision to have a game-night sort-of double-date. Because Poe is just as friendly and excitable as he is, and Finn can't quite get a read on the situation. When Poe isn't looking, Phas makes small, unreadable hand gestures, but Finn has no clue what she means.
It's why they're currently losing spectacularly at charades.
"Another drink, Finn, Poe?" Hux unfolds his lanky self from the sofa across from the loveseat where Phas had shoved Finn and Poe and heads for the drink cart. Poe hops up too.
"What do you have?" Poe asks, following Hux to the cart.
Phas leans forward, making a face at Finn that's half scowl, half smirk.
"What are you doing ?" Finn hisses at her.
"I am trying to help ," she hisses back.
" How ?" Finn can feel himself gesticulating wildly.
"Because you are oblivious!" Phas rolls her eyes. "You both keep making googly eyes at each other but you both keep missing it! Just make a fucking move, Finn." She leans back into the couch cushions and crosses her ankles demurely.
Finn takes her advice to heart, with the help of the cocktail Hux hands him. It has a little cocktail napkin and a fancy garnish, but he doesn't take the time to savor it and tosses it back as quickly as he can. Shaking his head to clear the burn, he glares at Phas.
"Let's play a different game."
"Oh! Let's play Pucker Up!" Phas turns her ice blue eyes onto Finn and grins evilly. "Hux! Balls!"
Poe snickers, and Hux grins as he leaves to do her bidding.
Finn glances at Poe, who is staring at him and grinning. Finn's chugged cocktail hits a little too hard and fast, and he gets a hit of courage from it.
"Balls, huh?"
Poe giggles. He actually giggles . Finn is encouraged by it, but whatever he would have done is interrupted by Hux's return. The other man has six cans of tennis balls in hand, and Finn has no clue why.
"Umm. Phas?" Finn waves his arms at the balls.
"Right," she says, "Pucker Up." If her grin got anymore evil, she'd need a fluffy white cat to pet. "So the goal is to get your tennis balls from there," she points at where Hux is dumping balls into two bowls, "to there." She points at the empty cans on either end of the dining table. "You have to place a ball on top of the empty can there beside the ball bowls," the upside-down cans are on side tables, with the bowls full of tennis balls beside them, "and you have to hold hands with your partner and use your faces to move the ball into the other cans. No hands after putting the ball on the first can. Got it?"
Finn thinks he might actually be grateful for Phasma's meddling.
Until he is confronted with a very lovely pair of eyes a few shades lighter brown than his own, and fringed with thick, dark lashes. And a pair of hands that, while similar in size, are finer boned and more nimble than his own. The fuzzy yellow tennis ball is the only thing separating their mouths, and Finn finds himself with a sudden extreme aversion to the game of tennis. Poe's eyes crinkle, and Finn thinks he's grinning, but of course, the damn ball hides it.
They move together, crab-walking sideways toward the dining table and their empty cans. Out of the corner of his eye, Finn can see that Hux and Phas already have two balls in their can, with a third nearly there. But Finn can't bring himself to care as he takes in the dark curl that dips over Poe's brow and the faint shading of a few days' growth of scruff on his jaw. Finn finds himself wondering what it would feel like against his skin.
Poe and Finn fail horribly at the game, but they're too lost in each other to care. After the game is over, Poe leaves their hands together, and Finn wonders how polite it is to leave game night after an hour. He thanks whatever gods might still exist when Phas shoos them out the front door, and as soon as the front door closes, Poe pushes him back against the sleek silver of his car and their mouths burn as they slant together.
Rey knows her response is…concerning for Ben. But she also hates the knee-jerk reaction of saying 'I love you' for the first time in immediate response to the other person. Not that she's ever told anyone she's dated that she loves them. Because she hasn't. Loved anyone.
Except for Ben. She loves him; she's sure of it.
So she is determined to show him before she tells him.
After the slow, sweet sex in the bath and Ben's revelation, Rey is ravenous, and she says so. He grins at her and pulls on a robe before kissing the tip of her nose and heading out into the kitchen to finish the pizza. Rey wanders naked into his closet with the intention of borrowing a button-up for now and stealing a few other shirts for later when she sees his uniform hanging toward the back. Snickering a bit, she grabs the clothes off the hangers and saunters back into his bedroom. There, she tosses the white pants on the bed in the hope that she can get him to model them for her later. And she pulls the jersey on, only buttoning two buttons in the vicinity of her belly button.
Ben is actually tossing the pizza dough in the air when she comes out of the bedroom. And he's not dropping it or throwing it into a spinning ceiling fan. He seems good at it. Of course, he is.
"Now that is sexy," she says, only partially kidding, as she watches him concentrate on tossing the dough. He'd pulled on a pair of black shorts to cook, muttering something about "cooking naked" and "dangerous", and they contrast nicely with his skin.
Rey leans forward, lazily resting her elbows on the cold, dark marble of the counter, and very obviously stares at his muscles rippling as he tosses the dough in the air for a final time.
When he finally looks at her, his mouth drops open.
"I think that's got to be some sort of blasphemy against the baseball gods," he says, staring at the fabric gaping over her chest.
"I thought you'd like it," Rey pouts.
"I do, and now I'm going to think of you wearing it every time I put it on, which might be problematic for my teammates."
Smirking, Rey rounds the kitchen island and leans past him, opening a cabinet for a glass. Ben lets out a sound that is somewhere between a snort and a grunt, and Rey can feel his hand tracing the letters written across her back in bright red.
"I'd rather you wore my real name," he said, his voice tinged with a hint of sadness as he trails his hand down her back.
Not too much sadness, though, because when he reaches her ass, he swats her and ducks away before she can retaliate. After a moment, he returns to the dough and she perches in her usual spot beside him, absently stirring the sauce.
"I'd rather have your real name too," she says, hearing the implication of her words and wondering if he does too.
He blinks down at her from his absurdly tall height, and she dimples up at him before sticking her finger in the sauce and bringing it to her mouth to taste it.
"Have you talked to Holdo about changing it? Do your teammates know?"
"Just Finn, Poe, and Phas. And Hux, the announcer." Ben gently flattens the dough on the pizza stone and smoothes the edges.
"Oh, I've never met him. It'd be nice to meet another Brit. We can talk about crumpets and tea and the queen," she says sarcastically. "Do you think Holdo would let you change it?" She breaks a piece off the ball of artisanal mozzarella and pops it in her mouth.
"Probably," Ben says, "but do you think it's a good idea in the middle of the season?" Ben hands her another bite of the cheese before moving it to his other side so there will be some left for the pizza.
"Do you think anyone will care?" He cocks an eyebrow at her. "I don't mean it like that. Just. You've earned your place and you put up with all the shit from Snoke for so long. Do you really think anyone will begrudge you the right to your own name?"
"I don't know," he admits. "It's something I haven't thought about until recently." He finishes arranging the third and final circle of dough on the stone. "Ready to build these?"
"Yes! I've never done this before," she says sliding down front the counter. He drops an apron over her head, tying it at her waist. "What do I do?"
Together, they build their pizzas, and while they bake, Ben and Rey sit on his couch, flipping through his Netflix queue. It occurs to Rey that they haven't really done anything like this and she grins at him as she slides the remote from his hand, clicking through his recently watched videos.
"You can learn a lot about a person from their watching habits," Rey says mock-seriously.
Ben scoffs.
"Not from mine," he says, not looking at her. "I never really felt like I deserved to do things I enjoyed." He says it so matter-of-factly that Rey doesn't quite catch his meaning at first.
Rey looks up at him for a moment, incapable of believing that he'd been so broken that he felt that way.
"Well, that's stupid. What do you like? Comedy? Drama? Horror? Anime?"
"I don't know?" He says it like a question. "It's been a long time."
She takes that as a personal challenge.
"Good. We're going to watch everything ."
"Everything?" He sounds skeptical.
"Yes, everything."
"Sounds like it'll take a while." He sounds hopeful, if a little uncertain.
"Yep. Let's start with this one." She clicks over to the bright yellow icon of The Good Place. "Pure brilliance," she says. "Do you have popcorn?"
"We're making pizza," he says, chuckling.
"Oh right." She pauses before starting the show. "But do you have popcorn?"
"Nope."
Rey sighs long-sufferingly.
"Make a list. After pizza, we're going shopping again. This time, I'm taking the lead."
"Didn't you take the lead last time?"
"Yeah, but we didn't get snacks . It's different ."
It's late, but when they finish their pizza, they go to the supermarket and Rey drags Ben all over the store. Her method of wandering aimlessly until she figures out she wants something six aisles over is cute at first, until it gets annoying, but he patiently wanders back and forth with her as their cart grows ever heavier. He enjoys her enthusiasm at picking out junk food, even if she does wander around like a lost kid.
"Tomorrow, we're going to the park to feed this to the ducks." She pulls a bag of frozen corn and peas from the glass-doored freezer. "Do you wanna maybe grab the kids and take them? We don't have to, I just think they'd like to go. But not if you don't want to."
She doesn't look at him as she wanders further down the aisle, searching for something.
"Yeah, that sounds fun. What snacks do the kids like? We should get them stuff, too."
Rey ducks her head, spins on her heel, and marches back toward him, launching herself at him at the last second.
"I love you, too," she whispers in his ear while she squeezes the air out of his lungs.
He feels warmth surge through him at her words but…
"I mean it's nice to know, but why tell me now?" He's confused.
"It's just, you're so perfect anyway." Is she crying? He soothes his hand over her back. "But you wanna get snacks for the kids?" She's definitely sobbing into his shirt. "Food is our love language, mine and the kids', and it just… means a lot. That you care about them too." She sniffles.
He wraps his arms tighter around her and kisses her temple.
"I love you, Rey," he says into her hair. "And they're your family, so I love them too. Even Jaina. Especially Jaina."
Rey lets out a watery laugh.
"Ice cream?" he asks her.
"Only if it's Ben and Jerry's." She smiles up at him, wiping her eyes.
Somehow she manages to talk him into buying one of every pint of Ben and Jerry's, and he doesn't even care about the amount of sugar she's convincing him to eat because it's Rey and she loves him.
xxxxx
A/N:
I may or may not have said "I know" in response to my husband when he said "I love you" the first time and then waited a full 24 hours to say it back to him to avoid that knee-jerk reaction. (I'm terrible, I know.)
I can't guarantee that the next update will take any less time than this one, but I am *trying*.
Stan Ben & Jerry's.