Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Star Wars and this fanfic is only playing with the characters, anyway.
THE ONE WHERE REY WON'T BE A FAKE GIRLFRIEND, PART 2
by Maloreiy
Ben stared at the woman in the booth across from him.
She shoveled that burrito into her mouth at a rate that would have shocked lesser mortals, and somehow she managed to tell a hilarious story at the same time. Something about a mix-up when her IT class was assigned to the art department while the art students were doing nude sketches.
"And then Finn was like, 'I thought we were doing a class on groupware.' And Poe said," she paused here for another bite and a snicker, "he said, 'More like group without wear, if you know what I mean.'"
Ben's lips twitched. Not at the god-awful pun-filled story, but because when she laughed, he felt the corners of his mouth respond.
He didn't know what it was about her. They had one class together, and they sat on opposite sides of the room. She tended to be very active and involved towards the front of the class, while he brooded in the back, kept his head down, and did his work by himself.
But he'd noticed her on the very first day. The way those hazel eyes lit up when she learned something new. The way she was always eager to be the first one to give it a go. The way she invariably got her assignments functioning before anyone else was even halfway through comprehending the instructions.
The way freckles dotted her nose and cheekbones when she'd gotten too much sun.
He noticed too much. Too often.
They'd been assigned one project together, and he felt awkward and anxious being forced to interact with her. As always, he was rude and difficult, but to his surprise, she just danced around his mood. She ignored the roughness of his words, and paid attention to what his hands were doing as they built components. She fit herself seamlessly into his work style, and he'd found himself staring as she worked.
He was fit and function, but she was elegance and style.
Working with her was exhilarating.
When he'd hit on the ridiculous notion to have a fake girlfriend, it had only seemed possible if that girlfriend was one person: Rey Jakkson.
If he had to go to the stuffy parties that his mother had planned, and endure the probing appraisals from the board members of the company he was planning on running one day, he needed someone who could work with his moods, who was hard to offend, who could charm the hardest of hearts in five minutes or less.
Since he considered himself well in that category, and thoroughly charmed in much less time, he figured she qualified.
Once the idea stuck in his mind, it wouldn't go away. He tried telling himself no sane person would agree to it, but he still found himself approaching her after class. To his shock, she didn't turn him down immediately.
They'd made arrangements to meet at the little coffee shop right outside campus, and he'd fully expected that after a few hours to come to her senses, that she was going to completely stand him up, or come charging in to tell him off for being a creeper.
Instead, she'd agreed. Sort of.
She'd actually declined.
But she'd agreed to…a 'real' relationship? A real 'fake' relationship?
Ben was having a hard time wrapping his mind around how you could have a real relationship that you knew was only going to last for a few weeks.
In the last hour, though, his misgivings were fading away in the face of her good humor.
Once they'd decided on a course of action, and he asked her out to dinner, it was like all of her reservations melted.
She'd said she knew how to enjoy temporary things, and it was evident that she was enjoying herself—and her burrito—very much.
It was easy to pretend like they really were on a date. She laughed when he chimed in with wry observations. She beamed at him when he brought her an ungodly amount of condiments. She made him feel like they were…together.
It struck him, finally, that she was right. This would be much easier if they were just…together. Partners.
There was another word he could call her, but he wasn't sure they were ready for that yet.
"You want to go for a walk?" she asked, crumpling her wrapper into a ball and shooting it into the nearby trash can.
"Sure." He found himself agreeing just because she'd asked.
The night air was warm, but the breeze was cool.
The restaurants sat in a half-circle near one side of the lake, and Rey picked her way familiarly across one of the paved walking trails.
With the school year almost over, it was nearly tourist season, so the whole area was awash with bright lights, and they walked side-by-side, exchanging small stories about their final projects.
As they rounded a corner, they were met by a gigantic flashing ice cream cone on the roof of a small hut.
Rey's eyes slid towards it, and her steps faltered. She continued with the details of her latest story, as if nothing had happened, but Ben stopped.
He glanced at the tiny ice cream shop and then back at her. "You can't possibly be hungry for ice cream when we just ate dinner."
She widened her eyes in a comical fashion. "No, of course not. I'm a lady, with a perfectly ladylike appetite."
Ben put both of his hands on his hips as he regarded her. She'd said she didn't want to have to pretend to be someone she wasn't. That she didn't want to be fake. But now she seemed too embarrassed to tell him the truth.
He narrowed his eyes at her, and then walked up to the counter. "Two vanilla swirls, please," he ordered.
She hurried up alongside him. "No, Ben, it's fine. I'm really not hungry, I just ate."
"These are for me," he told her. Then he turned to the employee, who had just set down the first vanilla swirl. "And add whatever the lady wants."
He looked at her, and she stared back at him, while the employee's head bounced back and forth between the two.
He watched the hesitation flit across her face.
"But you already paid for dinner," she said, though they both knew that argument was a weak one. "This is too much already."
He felt a ridiculous desire to beat on his chest and declare himself a provider. Instead he said, "Rey, I'm 6'2" and I did not get here by having qualms about eating whenever I wanted to. I see no reason you should deny yourself, either. And if you're worried about money, I have enough money to buy you," he pretended to calculate in his head, "at least 100 ice cream cones. So if you want something, order it."
He refrained from mentioning that, actually, he could buy 100 of those little huts and give her an entire galactic empire of ice cream franchises. He instinctively seemed to know that she would not find that information reassuring.
A shy smile bloomed on her face, and she turned to the employee in a rush. "A choco brownie chip with a waffle cone, please, whipped cream and extra chocolate syrup. Oh, and two cherries."
"That's my girl," Ben said with a laugh.
Her eyes darted to his, and he suddenly realized how awkward the words sounded, in light of his current proposition, but she just averted her eyes to take the giant waffle cone.
"Uh, thanks." She said it to the employee, but her eyes were on his, and Ben once again ignored the urge to brag about his providing skills.
They walked along the pavement until it gave way to rougher trails, her scooping up bits of brownie pieces with her spoon, and him licking the melting cones he had in each hand.
When he was down to just one, and she was down to chewing on her waffle cone, she suddenly grabbed his hand and pulled him off the path, ducking under an overhanging branch.
"I want to show you something," she said.
The trees cleared to a little spot on the embankment. She paused near the edge and breathed in the air off the lake in a dramatic fashion, a smile on her face.
"I like to walk out here when I need a little space," she explained. "I grew up out in the desert where nighttime was the best time to do any walking, but the air was always so dry. It's much nicer here, and I love to look out at the water."
Still holding his hand, she guided him over to a bench positioned facing the pier that jutted out from the shore.
Rey's fingers were cold, from holding the ice cream, but having those little icicles twined with his made Ben feel very warm.
It was hard to see her in the darkness, but when she turned to face the lights from the buildings, they illuminated her smile. And that made him feel even warmer.
She let go of his hand to turn around and find a spot to sit on the bench.
Ben stood there, awkward, his hand tingling and empty, so he lumbered over to sit beside her.
She smiled up at him as she ate the last of her waffle cone. "It's pretty here."
"And quiet," Ben agreed. The laughter coming from the direction of the pier and the restaurants was muted and indistinct, making him feel like they were all alone.
He looked at her again, noting that she seemed to shiver in her light, short-sleeved shirt. If she was from the desert, she was probably used to it being much warmer.
"Are you cold?" he asked.
She shrugged. "From the ice cream, probably. I'm sure I'll warm up when I'm finished. It was totally worth it."
For several seconds, Ben debated with himself on how awkward it would be for him to put his arm around her. But it was undeniable that he was quite warm—and getting warmer every moment spent in her company, it seemed—and she was not.
He finally put his arm along the back of the bench, his hand resting lightly on her shoulders.
She froze with her spoon in her mouth. It was only a second, but Ben caught it, and immediately moved his hand, regretting his impulse.
"No, it's fine," she stopped him, setting her spoon down in the now-empty cup.
To his surprise, she scooted closer on the bench, her shoulder fitting perfectly into his side.
Then she looked up at him and asked, in a low voice, "Is this—is this okay?"
Her eyes glowed warmly in the dim light.
Ben's voice was husky when he answered her, "Yes, you're…you're fine there."
Her face was much closer this way, with her snuggled into his side, and he barely had time to think there was only a few inches separating their mouths, when he'd already closed the distance.
She tasted like chocolate and cherries. Sweet and sticky.
He felt the intake of air from her gasp, and he chased it with his tongue, his teeth grazing over her bottom lip.
Her mouth, cold from the ice cream, warmed up quickly as his lips moved over hers.
His hand on her neck nudged her head back, and she obliged by tilting her head to allow him better access. The slightest of sighs coincided with her hands coming up to rest on his chest, and he slipped a hand around her back.
She was perfect. She fit him perfectly. He hadn't bothered to imagine quite this far, but he couldn't possibly have guessed that it would feel like this. Perfect.
He nibbled the sugar off of her lips before finally pulling back, pleased to see the hazy look in her eyes when she opened them.
She was dazed for a moment, but then she grinned up at him. "That was—that was good. That was really nice."
He didn't trust himself with words. His fingers at her waist squeezed lightly, and he eyed her mouth once more.
"Thank you, Ben," she said, her voice and her face suddenly very serious.
Wait. What? It took him a moment to process why the words seemed strange.
His face must have showed his confusion because she looked away, embarrassed, and said, "Thanks for…you know, for listening when I said about my first kiss. About having a real moment. It was…it was really nice."
Distantly, as if the memory was surfacing up through water, he remembered her saying that they could either dictate no kissing for their fake-real relationship, or they could share a kiss beforehand.
Ben pulled back, awkward again, his arm dropping from her waist. "That wasn't because of—I mean, it wasn't—it was a real kiss."
She frowned. "Right, I know. It was real. That's the point. So…thanks."
"No." The abruptness of his harsh tone made her look at him, bewildered, and he quickly modulated his voice to something softer. "I mean, it was really real."
She nodded, still confused, and said, "Yeah, I know."
He had this irrational urge to drag her head back and fuse his mouth to hers once again until she could feel it, down in her soul, that thinking about how she'd wanted one real kiss before embarking on their real-fake relationship had been the furthest thing from his mind.
He'd wanted to taste her lips, to feel her sigh, to feel her body arch into his, and he'd kissed her because he could not conceive of doing anything else right in that moment.
But she thought he was humoring her, for that last condition for their relationship.
He didn't know what to say, or why her 'real' and his 'real' didn't seem to be the same thing.
He wasn't sure if it mattered, actually.
His hand shook slightly as he reached up and moved a lock of hair from her face.
"Rey," he whispered, "will you be my girlfriend?"
She grinned, and leaned up to place an exaggerated kiss on the tip of his nose. "Well, it'd be awful of me to go back on my word now. So, of course. Ben Solo, you got yourself a girlfriend. For a month, at least."
It turned out that he couldn't possibly do a fake relationship, either. Even this fake-real that they had somehow agreed on. He had a feeling it was going to be a huge mess, and he was the one who was going to get hurt. But as she looked up at him with those soft eyes, he felt himself drowning and didn't even care about what was coming in the future.
Fake, real, fake-real—he would take what he could get.
A/N: All I can say is I'm sorry there's not more. I just wanted to put this up, since it already exists.
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.