Patterns govern Kylo's existence: he teaches five to six lessons a day, orders coffee from Holdo Cup on Mondays and Wednesdays, and practices the piano alone for two hours before bed. Soon he discovers that inviting Rey into his life means making space for her in his routines, or scrapping old routines for new ones. Morning coffee runs turn into afternoon coffee dates when Rey manages to sneak away from the auto shop. Practicing the piano before bed turns into playing alongside Rey, or kissing her on the couch, or working together on the Falcon.
The first time she takes a wrench to the Falcon, she pauses reverently before touching the bike. In that moment, she glows, spattered with grease and gasoline and a kind of pure delight that makes Kylo's heart ache. After checking everything from the coolant to the tire pressure, she cleans the chain with a gentle bristled brush that she filched from work. "Wouldn't hurt you to lube it more often," she chastises as he wipes a bit of grime from the tip of her nose. When she says, "I'll keep an eye on it over the next few months" in that offhand way of hers, his pulse stutters. Casually planning for a future together takes him by surprise, yet it warms him to his core.
The next week, she brings him a special lubricant from the auto shop and greases the Falcon's chain with the same care that Kylo puts into dusting his Silencer. Another week, she brings a replacement radiator cap scrounged from the junkyard. She loosens the throttle cables and repacks the muffler properly after his botched air filter replacement. Under her tutelage, Kylo learns how to better care for the bike. Because of Rey's care, the bike improves and so does Kylo's mood.
With Rey by his side, mundane errands become trips to savor. They stop for coffee from Holdo Cup, for new books from the library, for new sheet music from Music, First Order. No longer does Rey shy away from the Starfighter on display at First Order. Even Hux's most pointed scowls can't keep her from sitting at the bench and striking up a tune.
At the first notes she coaxes from the display model, Hux begins to meander in her direction, preparing to tell her off, no doubt. As she reaches a crescendo, however, he freezes in his tracks. His unpleasant sneer morphs into something vaguely resembling surprise, then respect. He does not come closer, does not back away, just stands rooted to the spot as Rey makes the Starfighter sing.
As the last notes fade, drawn out by the pedal and spun into vapor, a handful of patrons scattered around the store applaud. Closing the fallboard and rising from the bench, Rey mock-curtsies in gratitude, then winks at Kylo. His whole body vibrates in tune with hers, as if they were crafted from the same piano wire. Her mirth doesn't blind Kylo from Hux's scrutiny. The red-haired manager looks at them, a puzzle that he can't quite solve, until they exit the store, braced against the snow, Rey's hand wrapped around Kylo's.
Kylo doesn't do Christmas, not since the year that his father walked out on him and his mother, and didn't return until New Year's Eve. But when he notices Rey mooning over a Christmas tree lot, he wrangles home a noble fir and sets it up across from the couch. She doesn't see it at first, slamming the door and tearing off her shoes with a vicious declaration that she will never, ever work a shift next to Unkar Plutt again.
"What a barbarian," she mutters, flinging down her satchel. Then she straightens, and the lights from the tree wink at her, lights that Kylo painstakingly detangled and wove through each branch for what felt like hours. Her thankful kiss makes the whole ordeal worth it.
"We could decorate it," he offers. She flings herself at him, calls for scissors, and shows him how to fold his first snowflake. His snips are even, orderly—hers, a wild curvature leaving more holes than paper. They hang the snowflakes delicately from pine boughs and bask in the warmth of a tree all their own.
When Ben eavesdrops on Rey's piano practice after they finish decking the tree, he hears the soft hum of words sung too quietly to distinguish. They rise and fall, unintelligible but soft as the lights twinkling from their tree.
His lungs ache. His whole chest aches from the effort. His attempts to swallow the tickle in his throat fail. Kylo Ren is sick for the first time in years, just in time for Rey's lesson. She can't play through a line without pausing for his cough to pass. After he survives a particularly long bout, she closes the Silencer's lid. "But your lesson has barely begun," he splutters before she hands him a tissue.
"You need to rest," she declares. "I'm done for the night."
Protesting does not sway her. She marches him out of the music solar, down the hall, and into his bedroom, hesitating only briefly over the threshold before throwing on the light and tucking him into bed. The snap in her wrist as she tugs the sheets over his body and under the mattress comforts Kylo, reminds him of his mother whose unanswered calls keep trickling in.
Rey leaves him to doze, returning to wake him with a bowl of steaming chicken soup. He eats it sitting up in bed; she perches on the foot of the mattress, hawkishly tracking his progress, making sure he gulps down every last spoonful.
"Where did you get this?" he marvels, the broth soothing his raw throat.
A wave of her hand dismisses the question, but a faint flush creeping up her neck belies her pride. "I made it." Once he devours the last of the soup, Rey takes the bowl and makes for the door. Something about the warmth of the soup or the kindness of the gesture tugs a protest out of Kylo.
"Join me," Kylo croaks. She freezes a beat too long before turning to face him. "Please." Holding back a cough, he pulls back the quilts. "Just for a little." The pause lengthens. He fully expects her to decline—he's sick, she's tired, they've never done this before. Still, when she leaves the room, bowl in hand, he swallows a disappointed sigh before turning over to face the wall.
Then she returns, slipping softly under the covers and curving her body around his in a protective gesture so tender that Kylo resolves to get sick more often if this is the result.
"It's not much," he warns, leading her into the storage unit. But she gasps just the same.
"I have no place to put it," she protests. But she allows him to arrange for movers to lug it over the tintolive crack in the sidewalk outside her place and into her apartment.
"A piano," she murmurs after the movers depart and it's just the two of them staring at the battered upright that used to belong to Kylo's father.
"Your piano," he insists. Every ivory key is chipped along the edge, looking like the losers in a fight with a space slug. But he knows a good tuner, and Rey closes late at the auto shop that week to afford Chewie's services. When he stops by, a big hairy hulk of a man, he greets Kylo with the familiarity of an uncle. True to his word, though, Chewie says nothing of the past, just gets straight to work turning pins and dusting the insides of the piano he hasn't seen for the past twenty years.
"How do you know Kylo?" Rey asks Chewie as he screws back on the lid. He just smiles through that thick beard of his before refusing the cash she holds out in payment.
"Family and friends discount," he says, packing the last of his tools. "Anytime you want to learn more about tuning, I'd be happy to show you. B—er, Kylo's got my number."
Chewie's slip of tongue doesn't seem to register with Rey, whose face remains suffused with excitement. But Kylo glares at the tuner all the same. A close call, too close. Once Chewie leaves, Rey pulls out the bench and plays the song she played in the First Order shop, the one for which Kylo later wrote a harmony, two halves that now form a whole.
The stars have conquered the sky by the time Rey notices the clock and curses. "I have to be at work in six hours!" she yelps, throwing back the quilts and swinging her legs over the side of Kylo's bed.
"Stay," he says, half question, half command. "I'll wake you up on time."
They fall asleep in the same position they did weeks ago when he was sick. Hovering in that liminal space between wakefulness and sleep, Kylo can't commit to sleep, not when the body next to him thrashes and moans in some imagined battle with an invisible opponent. When a scream escapes her, primal and tortured, he shakes her awake until she calms enough to settle back into his arms.
Her night terrors burn away in the morning light. He hands her a new toothbrush once her shower is done. The next week, her toothbrush is joined by a change of clothes, then a tube of sunscreen and a citrus face scrub that Kylo samples one morning after she leaves just so he can smell like her. Watching Rey move in by a thousand installments thrills Kylo, and without prompting, he clears out a whole drawer in his bedroom for her.
They return to Zorii's bar late one Friday night as winter softens into a false spring. Kylo orders two cometdusters, one for each of them, just like his dad used to order for his mom, and lets Rey drive the Falcon home. She's steady and warm; Kylo clings to her the whole way home. She sleeps over most nights; tonight is no exception. He wonders if her roommates notice her absence. He wonders how a bed made for one so easily accommodates her curled up at his side.
He learns that she sleeps curled inward, defenses intact even when resting. She yelps when awakened—he learns this one morning as he shakes her awake in time for her shift at the auto shop. Ever the scavenger, she hoards the quilts and whimpers when he pries one from her grip. One pillow is not enough; two pillows, too much; his pillow, just right.
At the rate Rey eats up his composition paper, Kylo almost regrets teaching her how to write music. The depleted stack of blank sheets and an idea tickling the recesses of his memory drives Kylo to Music, First Order to replenish his stock. Hux is on duty, much to Kylo's chagrin. His polished boots squeak a path from the register to the aisle that Kylo browses. "Kylo Ren," he sighs. "Back again so soon."
Kylo won't give him the satisfaction of eye contact, so he keeps his nose buried in the shelf. "Shove off, Hux."
"Careful, Ren," he says, the syllables slippery on his tongue. "I wonder what that little… scavenger of yours might think to hear you talk like that."
Every nerve in Kylo's body prickles; his pulse screams danger and his breathing roughens. "I said, shove off."
"You know," the manager continues, willfully ignoring the curl of Kylo's fists, the flare of his nostrils. "A visitor stopped by again last week."
He startles, forgetting to mask his reactions under a veneer of annoyance. "Rey came in without me?"
"Not the scavenger. Han Solo."
"Haven't heard of him."
"The famous pianist? Surely you must have heard of him, what with you working as a music teacher." The way Hux says music teacher suggests a correlation between the profession and the foulest of sewers. "Although I don't know if we can qualify your dalliance with the girl as teaching, can we?"
Not even the promise of Rey's gratitude upon returning home with fresh composition pages is worth this abuse. Kylo drops the ream, pushing past the manager and stalking towards the exit. He swears on everything holy that he'll keep walking, won't look back to hear more—and then Hux calls out, stopping him in his tracks.
"He bought thirteen of your books. All the ones we had in stock."
"I don't have any books." His voice is flat, betraying none of the ice coursing through his veins. Hux knows. He knows, judging by the wicked glint to his stare.
Sure enough, Hux doesn't drop it. "Don't run from who you are."
Slamming his fist against the lid of Hux's beloved Starfighter display, Kylo bellows, "For your sake, shut your mouth." The piano rattles under his assault and concern creeps into Hux's smarmy grin.
As he beelines to check the damage inflicted by Kylo on his precious floor model, Hux fires a parting shot: "Does she know?"
Kylo slams the door to Music, First Order so hard the bell that jingles with every entrance and exit falls from the hinge. He can't go home, not like this when Rey will arrive soon from a long day at work. So he sends a text telling her to let herself in, and nurses a caf at Holdo Cup until Kaydel kicks him out at closing time.
Buckle up, y'all! Next week gets a little bumpy. (But don't worry. All will be made right eventually.)
