Rey had left the soup and toast ready for him. Upstairs, strange noises filtered down – hammering, sawing, the sound of a string being plucked and once, the ring of a bell. Kylo was fairly certain there hadn't been a bell in the house before they arrived, but he decided to leave it until dinner to ask her. Possibly that was the clinking noise he'd heard in her bag the other day. She scurried outside once to raid the under-cabin storage, and seemed reluctant to show him what she brought back in. The whole afternoon was taken in whatever the exercises were, with an occasional grumble and once the sound of something heavy being thrown, followed by a yell of Sorry – I'll clean that up afterwards.

The meal was edible if not fantastic. While they were eating, he pulled out the thing he had found at the woodpile earlier. It was long and lithe, rustling and softer than you would expect from the scale marks over it. She ran it through her hands, marvelling at the diamond patterns the scales made down the back.

"Rattlesnake?"

"I assume so. See if you can tell what's odd about it." He should have been a teacher.

She ran the fragile shed skin through her fingers, tracing the large head and then down to the point of the tail. There, she stopped.

"There's no rattle." Checking the end, she smoothed out the point of the skin. "I know they gain a rattle each time they shed, so surely the end should be open to allow it to slide off. This one is closed."

"And that's something you need to be aware of." He took the skin back and held up the head end. "Rattle-less rattlesnakes are a thing, and this lot have evolved that way. Their venom is no less potent though."

"Why?"

"Because someone, years ago, must have gone all-out to kill every rattlesnake they heard, so the mutations that were silent survived through natural selection. And as such, they've passed it on to their offspring." He could still see his father in his mind's eye, standing over a freshly-decapitated rattler that writhed in the dirt. Don't touch it, Ben. The heads are programmed to bite even after they're dead. And then, quieter, Snakes. Why does it have to be snakes? It was the one thing Han had hated about the cabin, despite having grown up in the area.

She shuddered. "I can cope with leaving the snakes in peace. Is it all right with you if I don't go to the woodpile?"

"Probably a wise idea. But would you like to keep this?"

"Definitely." She ran her fingers over the head, where the skinshadow mouth was permanently gaped open. "Not that I need the reminder of what to avoid. But I've never had a snake skin."

"Ever seen one in the wild before?"

"There was a grass snake near Maz's place. She showed it to me – sliding over the grass like it was animated liquid. It would pretend it was dead to make you ignore it. She said it ate the frogs, but she didn't mind because there were so many." She paused, then looked up at Kylo with eyes glistening. "Thank you. You give me so much."

He looked away, unable to handle the intense emotions she was emitting. "It's just a snake skin."

"You don't understand."

"Maybe, but I think I need to."

She sighed deeply, the sound of a soul battered and bruised that is finally starting to learn how to feel properly again. "Poppy gave me so much, but they weren't things he felt about. He wouldn't give me a photo of my mother, even though I asked if he had one. He might buy me a bracelet, or give me that calculator money I told you about, but it was never anything from him. It could have been allocated by his Consigliere or delivered in a shoebox by Snoke. I still had to be grateful, still had to write him a thank-you note and make a fuss over it, but I never got the feeling he gave it with his heart. This is something you'd be happy to keep, I think, but you gave it to me." She squeezed his hand across the table.

Kylo didn't have the heart to ask her about the noises before Rey excused herself to go and listen to the lecture she had downloaded at the library on their last visit. He put the plates in the sink, then went out the back to refill the hearthside basket from the wood he'd brought down earlier that day. As he picked up the logs, one piece caught his eye, and he made sure to include it in the armful he brought in. He did the washing up, then went straight to the second drawer and took out the old carving knife. It had been his grandfather's; the hilt made out of the end of a Bantha horn, or so Kylo had been told. The blade was incredibly sharp, and kept inside a leather sheath that was soft and supple as snakeskin after all this time. Clearing a space on the hearth, he settled down with the log and the knife, the whittling calming his mind as a shape slowly emerged from the wood.

He heard the squeak from the staircase as Rey came down to clean her teeth before bed. She went to the bathroom through the kitchen, but came back through the lounge room to check if the washing from two days before was anywhere near dry yet.

"Nearly done – should be dry tomorrow." She took the sheets off, folded them and put them on the end of the sofa. "Wish you had a tumble dryer. I'd risk the elastic on my pyjamas for it."

"Doesn't your housekeeper do all your washing?"

"Miss Phasma? She taught me how. I mean, I knew the basics already – you don't go through the system without ending up in at least one home where they expect you to be the maid instead of part of the family." Rey turned some of the items so that they'd dry better. "She's been more of an older sister to me than a housekeeper. Not a mum. She doesn't nag enough."

She came back over to the fire. "I feel like I should recognise that." Rey ran her fingers around the shape, a disk apart from two protrusions at one end. "You're not carving a giant tick, are you?"

"It's a spaceship from a film I watched, years ago."

"So not like the rockets upstairs."

"No. This one hasn't been built for real yet." He brushed the waste fragments into the fire, where the seasoned wood caught almost immediately. The flare was bright, like a warm globe suddenly being switched on, but died down in a moment.

"I'm off to bed. G'night, Kylo."

She must have bent to kiss the top of his head goodnight, because he looked up to say Goodnight Rey, and instead her lips landed on his. This time his hand reached up to gently cup her cheek as the touch of her mouth left him breathless. They held the position for a few seconds, a moment, an eternity, then she pulled away gently and headed out of the room.

It took until he heard her going up the stairs before he could breathe again.

Kylo sat for several minutes, the feel of her lips still tingling. Finally he swept the remainder of the wood shavings into the coals, put another large log on top and made sure the fire screen was locked in position. Anything that decided to roll out of the fireplace and managed to vault the bricks at the front would not reach to anything flammable. Carefully slipping the knife back into its scabbard, he put his emerging work well to the side and went to brush his teeth.

He expected to be sleepy after the woodhauling and shovelling he had done, but he lay in bed for a while, watching the stars pass across the skylight. He was still too keyed up, so after another ten minutes or so, he gave into temptations he knew the confessional would never hear. Making sure a box of tissues was nearby, he slipped his underpants down and wrapped his hand around his cock.

He liked to drag his pleasure out, to edge for a while before tightening up and driving to the end. Usually he had an image in his mind – his favourite actress, or the girl he'd had a crush on in high school. This time, though, just as he was heading for his climax, it became a soft pair of lips on his and a gentle voice with a London accent murmuring Kylo. His eyes flew open in shock and he tried like crazy to pull back to the vision of his schoolyard dreams, but it was too late. His body, usually so compliant, was traitorous to the extreme and he could barely muffle the groan as the bliss took over. For a moment he lay there, trembling at the exertion and intensity, then he sat bolt upright and scrabbled for the tissues and the sheet as there was a gentle knock at the door.

"Kylo?"

"What?"

"Are you all right? I mean, I heard …"

"Sorry." He madly thought over the options, then grabbed one that seemed plausible. "I overdid it today. My back …"

As a deterrent, it failed miserably. His door opened, and Rey came in, wearing a fluffy pink onesie that would have looked juvenile on a ten year old. "Can I get you anything? I've got some heat rub."

His voice hitched, and he couldn't answer her immediately, so by the time he was trying to say "No, it's all right, I just need a good night's rest!", she had dived back to her room and returned with a red-and-yellow tube of ointment.

"Roll on your stomach, and tell me where it hurts."

Kylo thought quickly. If he told her anywhere south of the waistline, he might as well make a booking to the lava pits himself. "My shoulders."

"Take your shirt off then." She sat on the side of the bed as he hauled the old tshirt off, then lay face down on the pillow. Suddenly she was straddling his hips, and her hands were cold on his back. But only for a moment. As soon as she moved them, the heat of the ointment came through and he realised that yes, his shoulders and upper back were a bit sore still.

"I thought the quiet afternoon would get all the stiffness out."

"Obviously not." Her hands started at the tops of his shoulders and then around the clavicles, gently yet firmly delivering the treatment around all the muscles. The smell of the ointment burned his nostrils slightly. Part of him was relaxing into it, but one double-crossing section was regaining a stiffness he did not need. He groaned again, then tried to stifle it, but it was too late.

"That spot?" Rey was concentrating right between his shoulderblades, and on the groan, she let up the pressure.

"No … Actually, yes. Please." It was a safe location. Far too high up his back to engender any treacherous feelings in other parts. He winced as she found a point that held a lot of tension, her deft fingers easing away the aches.

"Good. You've done so much while I was hiding out in my room. I'm glad to help."

For a while she worked in silence, but he realised her voice was as relaxing as anything she was doing to his back. "Could you talk?"

"Talk?"

"I like to hear you talking."

"What about?"

"Anything. Your lessons. What you were doing in there today. Your life. Your trip from London to Naboo."

"My lessons? They're so boring." She started on another knot, this one under one of his shoulder blades. "You do not want an in-depth recitation of the six steps to perfect skin." Her fingers turned the knot to a soft nodule, then reduced it to plain muscle. "No, I'll tell you what I was like as a child. And tomorrow you can tell me."

"Yes." He knew he was too relaxed, that her ministrations were opening him to suggestion. Wherever she learned this, they obviously employed a strange type of magic.

"So I remember my parents. We were travelling through Britain – two weeks at one hotel, then four at a holiday camp near Nottingham, then another six weeks in a beach cottage in Cornwall. I thought it was magic. There was a Robin Hood playground at the camp, and I was able to climb to the very top of the climbing frame. It's one of the few memories I have of my mother – she was coaxing me down and my father had climbed up beside me, although adults weren't allowed on there, but I'd climbed so high I didn't know how. And when I got down, she held me so tight."

She paused, then put another dollop of ointment at the top of his spine, spreading it to one side and the other.

"Or when I went paddling with my father in the water at Cornwall. The beach was grey sand and gravel, and it hurt my feet, so my father carried me down to the waves." She shifted to working on his upper arm, her hands tracing the muscles as she rubbed the cream in. "My mother was Poppy's daughter. She had black hair that brushed her shoulders and skin that never burned. She would lie on her blanket on the beach while Dada huddled under the umbrella. They made me wear a hat, but I have my mother's skin. I don't burn." She worked on the other arm, then across the back of his neck. "And Dada had light hair, not really blond but getting there."

She stopped, and moved herself to sit at the side of the bed while she put the lid back on the tube.

"Better?"

"Much, thank you." Kylo stretched his arms out, then rolled, careful to keep the quilt up over his midsection. She wouldn't look at him, her whole body hunched over as if in pain. "Hey, are you all right?"

"I hadn't remembered that scene for so long." She put the tube on his bedside table, then went to put her hands over her face. Catching them, Kylo gently pulled them down to her lap.

"You don't want to do that."

"Why not?"

"That ointment stings in the eyes."

"Oh. Yes, you're right. How do you know?"

"Athletics training accident."

"Ow."

"I'm sorry those memories hurt so much." He was sitting up now, and she let go of his hands and suddenly wrapped her arms around him and started crying quietly.

For a while, she just shook, and he carefully put his bare arms around her and pulled her close. Her tears ran down his chest, a cold track on the warmth of his skin. Her voice, when she spoke again, was shaky.

"I try so hard not to miss them. I loved them. I thought they loved me. But they left me. They took me to a playground, and Dada went to get me icecream, and then he was gone so long, and Mama wanted me to come, but I was playing with some other kids, so she asked their mum to keep an eye on me, and she wouldn't be long, but …"

The tears started up again, her whole body wracked by sobs that went on for ages. Kylo managed to discreetly push the used tissues under the sheet and out the other side of the bed, then pull over the tissue box. Her sobs slowly tapered off, the shudders receding as she took a tissue and wiped her eyes, then another to blow her nose. He took the opportunity to pull on his old tshirt again, but her sorrow bit hard into him, and he wrapped his arms around her once more. It was meant to be a goodnight hug, but she instead leaned into it, and toppled slowly onto the pillow. The only light in the room was coming in at last through the skylight from the waning gibbous moon. Too relaxed and tired to complain, Kylo gave into the inevitable and fell asleep beside her.