Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Star Wars and this fanfic is only playing with the characters, anyway.
A/N: This is not a real story. This is like a two-shot premise, or the beginning of a story that I have no plans to take further. It was just supposed to be a concept snippet that I'd posted in a Reylo Facebook group, and I posted it here so that others could save it if they wanted to reread it again.
I did try to give it a tiny bit more background context and characterization, but I'm afraid it's still just fluffy fun with no real point. Please don't read if you need closure and resolution.
Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern AU, Alternate Universe - College/University, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, Soft Ben Solo
THE ONE WHERE REY WON'T BE A FAKE GIRLFRIEND
by Maloreiy
He was there, where he'd said he would be, and that made the nerves in Rey's stomach dance.
She'd thought it through very carefully, and felt that she had the best possible answer, but that didn't mean it would be easy to say it out loud.
It helped that it was the very oddest of requests.
What kind of person approaches a woman they barely knew to ask them to be their fake girlfriend? The excuses Ben Solo gave about family commitments, expectations, and being too busy to find a real girlfriend, seemed rather flimsy at best, and downright creepy at worst.
Her first impulse had been to decline with a very firm 'hell, no.' But there was something about his eyes that had caught her. He'd seemed embarrassed, a little resigned, and even…yes, a bit vulnerable.
Rey knew how hard it was to be vulnerable with someone else. To ask for the help you needed.
They'd worked on one project together in class, and though he was a bit gruff and antisocial, he knew his stuff. That was enough for her, because she didn't need socializing to get the job done. Their project had been top of the class.
She supposed that meant they'd be able to work well together, and when he'd found himself in need of a girlfriend by Saturday, he must have thought she was a good choice.
So she hadn't said 'no.' Instead, she'd asked for a few details of the upcoming events, and arranged to meet up with him later to give him her decision.
Then she'd spent the intervening hours thinking about Ben Solo far more than she'd ever figured she would.
Not because he was unattractive, as he definitely was not. Some people would think that the tall, lean, casually physical, lumberjack sort of look was unattractive, but she wasn't one of them. She kind of liked the shaggy hair that fell in his face and curled over his ears.
No, the reason she'd never thought about him that way—the reason no one did, really—was that Solo was likely to bite your head off just for looking at him wrong. He didn't joke around, he wasn't friendly, his sarcasm cut straight to the bone, and he had absolutely no patience for anyone.
Certainly not what she'd call boyfriend material.
But she reflected on what he had been like as a partner, and had to admit that he had been perfectly reasonable. He had no patience with mistakes, but fortunately, Rey was exceptionally good and didn't make mistakes. She'd even managed to pull a few grudging compliments from him.
He'd been reliable and consistent. She could count on him to do his part, and to think of the project as a whole—which included her—and not just himself. And as long as they were on the same page, everything worked like magic.
That was what had decided her.
Rey took a deep breath and approached the little table in the coffee shop where Ben waited.
All of the tables in the coffee shop were little, as they were supposed to make for an intimate setting. For a man of Ben's size, though, it just meant that his limbs encompassed the table, his legs sticking way out, and his arms folded across half of the surface.
He looked up as she arrived, surprise flashing in his eyes, as if he'd thought she wouldn't show after all.
Ben straightened, leaning back, and removing his arms from the table. She recognized it as a way for him to try to make room for her, and she took it as a welcome, even though he said no words of greeting.
"Ben," she acknowledged him, pulling a chair out for herself.
"Rey," he copied her.
The sound of her name in his deep voice sent the slightest shiver down her spine. For the tiniest split second, she considered changing her mind, but she chalked that hesitancy up to the panicked nerves still swirling around in her belly.
She got right to the point. "I've come to a decision, but before I tell you my thoughts, I need you to agree to listen to the whole thing without interruption."
He raised an eyebrow at her, but gave a quick nod. "Go ahead."
Rey waited a moment, making sure to take at least two breaths. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. "I've decided I can't be your fake girlfriend."
She paused, waiting to see what his reaction would be, but as she'd requested, Ben didn't say anything. He just looked at her with his full attention, his eyes narrowed.
"I can't be anyone's fake girlfriend," she elaborated. "I don't do fake. I can't spend time wondering about what the cover story is, and if I'm acting properly for a fake girlfriend. It would be obvious from the very beginning that I wasn't being authentic, and that wouldn't serve the purpose you need."
She looked at him again. His lips were pursed, and his eyes were dark, the expression in them disappointed and resigned. One of his fingers tapped lightly on the tabletop, giving away some of his own nerves.
Knowing that this was just as awkward for him as it was for her, gave her extra courage. Another two breaths, and then she continued, dropping what she knew would be a bit of a bomb. "But I can do…real…girlfriend."
His eyes shot up to meet hers. The shock she saw reflected there almost made her burst out in nervous laughter, so she hurried on.
"What is a relationship, anyway, besides an agreement between two people? They establish an amount of commitment, and agree on their boundaries. And it ends when one or both of them decide that the relationship is no longer meeting their needs."
The expression of disbelief seemed frozen on his face.
Rey twisted her hands. "Look, people have arranged marriages, and they aren't in love or anything, but that doesn't make the marriage a fake one. So I'd be willing to have an arrangement for a real relationship. We can set out our boundaries and our expectations, and arrange it for ourselves." She finished with an open gesture, and then there was a moment of silence.
Ben raised his eyebrows as if wondering if it was his turn to speak yet. When she nodded at him, he just asked the one question, "How is that different than a fake relationship?"
She blew out a breath, irritated at her inability to explain properly. "Because it means I wouldn't be faking. I don't like fake, and playing nice, and hiding who I am. So this way, I wouldn't be pretending to be someone else as a girlfriend. I'd just be me. And you can just be you."
She worried he still wasn't getting it, so she decided to try some examples. "So if you ask me, 'Hey babe, can you get me a beer while you're in the kitchen,' then I can be like, 'Get it yourself, my hands are full.' I wouldn't be trying to think what a 'good girlfriend' would do. I wouldn't be trying to convince or impress anyone. And if people think our relationship is weird, well that's on them. What details we decide on our Real Relationship is on us. If we decide absolutely no physical contact, that's our thing, and no one's business. If we decide on awful cutesy nicknames like Benny Bear and Rey-Rey Baby, it's because we felt like it, and not because we thought it suited a plan."
He nodded slowly, considering. His dark eyes were intense as they focused on her. "And you'd be okay with a relationship like that, for just a month?"
There was a warning tingle down her spine again, but she ignored it. Those nerves seemed to be migrating. She shrugged. "Even if I know it's temporary, that doesn't mean I can't be authentically involved in my own relationship. I know how to appreciate…temporary…things. While we're together, we're together. I'd be considerate of you and your situation and your feelings, and expect you to be the same towards me. I'd be kind to your family, and have real conversations with them about real things. And if they asked us about our relationship, I only have to tell them what we've decided we feel comfortable sharing. And if we decide, together, that we want to keep it private that our relationship began sitting in a coffee shop and, I don't know, signing a contract on a napkin or something? Then it's no one else's business but ours."
He studied her for a moment, and she thought he seemed to be trying to decide if she meant what she said.
She knew it was odd. To be fair, it seemed appropriate for a very strange request to receive an even stranger answer.
As if sensing him on the verge of agreement, she felt compelled to add, "I would…have some conditions, though."
His lips twitched in a smirk, as if he knew there was a catch. "Go ahead."
"First, the relationship would be exclusive. I don't care if our relationship is temporary, we don't see other people. That includes flirting with other people, or trying to line up any prospects for a date expecting the relationship to end. If I'm your girlfriend, I'm your real girlfriend, and deserve the basic courtesy of being acknowledged as such."
"Fair," was all he said to that.
"Second, the relationship ends like it begins. With an agreement. Obviously relationships don't require both parties agreeing to end it, either party can terminate it. I just mean that it doesn't end because a certain date comes around, or a certain event happens. It doesn't end because we think we don't need it anymore. It ends with both of us being face to face and acknowledging that the relationship is over, so there's no guessing and no wondering what's going on."
He nodded, no argument against what seemed perfectly reasonable.
"Third." She paused, and she could feel the heat rising to her face. "Third." She swallowed and then started again, trying to be as clinical as possible. "I've never been kissed before. It's not for any particular reason, it's just… never happened. I've always been too busy for a boyfriend, or moving around too often. That presents some obvious challenges, since I don't have any practice, and it would look very awkward." She knew she was rambling and hurried on. "But that's not the point. My point is that I don't particularly want my first kiss to be a fake kiss, staged for other people to see."
"You said the relationship would be real, not fake," he countered.
"Right, well, that's the third thing. We can play this two ways. We either decide there is absolutely no kissing on the mouth, so that there's no chance of me suddenly being surprised with some kind of expectation that we are going to kiss. People might think it strange, but you could kiss me on the forehead or something, and I think people would just think that we didn't like having our affection on public display."
If she was in a real-real relationship, she wasn't sure she'd want her affection to be publicly displayed, anyway, so she thought it would be believable.
"Or?" he said, when it was clear she'd stopped talking.
"What?"
"You said two ways." He put both of his hands back on the table, making her feel again like he was taking up all of the space in her line of sight. "What's the other way?"
"Well, or, we…kiss…before we're ever in the company of others who see us as boyfriend and girlfriend. A kiss just for us." That sounded awkward. "Well, for me, really." That sounded worse. "I'm not terribly sentimental about it, I'd just like…a real moment. A real moment between two people. Bad or good or whatever. One kiss that's for me. And then I don't think it'll be that big of a deal if kissing is occasionally part of the agreement of our Real Relationship."
Inwardly, she cringed at the words coming out of her mouth. There was no way to make it sound like she wasn't bargaining for a kiss. She kept a firm hold of her imagination, as she'd had for several hours, deliberately refraining from thinking about what it would be like to kiss the surly man in front of her.
For several moments, Ben considered her with a straight face, and Rey struggled to maintain eye contact. He finally said, "All right."
She wasn't sure which choice he was making, though, and hesitated to ask.
"We'll do it your way," he confirmed, "a real relationship instead of a fake one, and decide on boundaries as a…couple."
She nodded, wondering absurdly if they were really going to sign a contract on a napkin from the coffee shop. "Did you—did you have any conditions?"
"One," he said. "Don't ever call me 'babe.'"
She smiled sweetly at him, and batted her eyelashes. "Okay, Benny-Bear."
He smiled at her, then, a chuckle escaping him. The hardness in his eyes softened just a little. It was a small thing, this moment between them, but she felt that it was real, and that soothed the last of her nerves.
She breathed in relief, and grinned back at him.
While she was still looking at him, he suddenly asked, "Would you go to dinner with me?"
"What?" she asked, out of reflex. She'd heard him, but felt like the question wasn't part of the script they'd been going with.
With both of his hands still bracketed on the table, he leaned in just a little. "I said, Real girl, who is really in one of my classes, and who I really met here at this coffee shop and had real conversations with—I like…your smile."
It was her turn for her eyebrows to fly up.
"Would you," he dragged out the words, "like to go have real dinner with…me?"
Oh. Oh.
She understood.
She understood that he understood.
She flashed him a brilliant smile, then. "I'd love to."
S&R: Constructive Reviews Welcome (CRW), which means all of your comments and opinions are welcome, including criticism, if you feel like offering any. Just be aware this story is basically un-beta'ed and I just cast it out into the world.