Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction using characters and elements from the Star Wars universe, created and trademarked by George Lucas and currently owned by Disney. I do not claim ownership over any Star Wars characters or elements from the Star Wars Universe. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and is not claiming to be any part of the Star Wars canon. Thank you to Disney for letting me play with the characters and not suing me for writing them into a new situation.
NOCTURNE IN THE KEY OF B SOLO
by MALOREIY
~ Chapter 8 ~
By the time Ben was finished with the mandatory greetings that Snoke had arranged for him and accepting the accolades of the Very Important People, the girl in the yellow dress was gone.
It was probably silly of him to think she would have waited for him. They didn't have any plans, any arrangement—she possibly didn't even know that he was the same neighbor that had invited her.
He shook his head clear even as he shook another enthusiastic hand, and said to a faceless patron, "Thank you for coming."
The next one got, "Nice to meet you."
And of course, there was, "So glad you enjoyed the show."
As the parade of people went past him, and he pasted on a smile for them, he thought that it was probably for the best that Rey didn't stick around.
He wasn't good at real conversations and the best he would have done was probably the same things he was saying to everyone else.
Of course, he would have actually meant them if he'd said them to her.
He was glad she seemed to enjoy the show. He did feel thankful that she had come. And…he did think it would have been awfully nice to have finally met her.
It niggled at his mind for the rest of his evening, that missed opportunity.
It didn't seem to matter that he was being considered a raging success. Or that he was being introduced to wealthy and influential benefactors left and right. He kept looking for that yellow dress.
It irritated him—both the fact that he didn't get to say anything to the girl, to Rey, and the fact that he really wanted to.
He wanted to know her opinion of his performance. He wanted to hear her describe them in those word pictures that she used.
He particularly wanted—needed—to hear what she thought about his finished original work—if the image she got in her mind from that third movement was anything like the image he'd gotten in his.
He sighed in frustration, turning over in the bed he'd finally crawled into well after midnight. His body was exhausted after the hype and the energy of the performance, but his mind couldn't seem to rest.
She was taking up too much space in his head for a girl he hadn't even met yet. She'd been doing so even before he'd seen her, but now that he had…
She was beautiful. When he'd just thought she was a young guest, he'd thought so, too.
But when he'd seen her there in the seat he'd picked for her, the look on her face with the tear tracks running down it, and that big, beaming smile as she clapped…it undid him.
It flipped everything inside him, and for a second it was like the world had come to a screeching halt, and then started spinning again faster than ever before.
His heart beat faster in his chest, and he finally threw the covers back. He couldn't possibly sleep like this. There were far too many emotions roiling within him and he wasn't used to it.
There was relief and triumph, of course. The tiniest bit of anxiety, wondering what he was going to do next, now that he'd reached his concert performance goal. There was excitement, anticipation, and nervousness about this new chapter of his career.
But there was more. There was…something strong and real moving through him, the stirring of yearning every time he thought of her.
It was overwhelming and unfamiliar.
Ben found himself seated at his piano, his safest place, and it occurred to him that maybe he should try writing again. The last time he'd had this many feelings slamming around inside of him, he'd finished his sonata.
But this time, though he sat poised with his fingers above the keyboard in the darkness, nothing came to him. There was no muse directing his thoughts and channeling all those troublesome feelings.
He ran his hands down his tired face, trying to think of what he was doing there.
But after a hesitant moment, his hands started to play. It was something he hadn't played since he was a boy—when he was young, impressionable, naive.
Für Elise.
The universally appealing, the ubiquitous Für Elise.
Then he played Moonlight Sonata. And for the very first time since he'd ever played it, he felt a twinge of recognition—something inside of him that recognized the melancholy longing.
When he was done, he didn't even pause, he launched straight into the second movement of Pathetique.
Then Canon in D.
And Clair de Lune.
He played them all. All the pieces she'd requested, every single one, even the pop songs.
He didn't need to open the cookie jar to look at them, he knew the words on the messages by heart—just like these famous compositions, all of which he'd learned and never forgotten.
When he finished the last of them, he found he still wasn't tired. On the contrary, he was filled with something bright and warm as he launched into her very last request—when she'd asked him to play his original piece.
Never mind that she'd heard it already once that night, he played it again. And this time he gave himself the freedom—with no one present—to think about all the things that seemed to be building inside of him, to let those uncertainties and tight, tense hopes spiral out of him without any direction.
He made more mistakes on this rendition. It wasn't polished and careful, it was raw and real and it was somehow more powerful than it had ever been. If anything, the sense of yearning—the sheer grandness of it all—was actually stronger. The imperfections gave it depth.
He felt it tugging on his heart, and it was a strangely comforting thing, as it reminded him that despite all evidence to the contrary, and despite the perceptions of others, he still had one. He didn't use it often, but it was beating hard in his chest, racing faster than even his fingers could play.
He finished and sat panting, knowing there was nothing else to play, nothing to follow those notes, and still somehow the universe was waiting—he was waiting—for something.
As his breath finally calmed, and his heartbeat evened out so it wasn't so loud his ear, he heard the tiniest of nosies.
It was a soft, scrabbling sound, almost like a mouse, and it confused him. He looked around disoriented, but it came again, and so he followed it to his front door where he stood staring.
The next time it came, it was accompanied by a tiny whimper.
Feeling dazed, Ben opened the door silently. It swung open and only the very faintest of light from the open window spilled over into the hallway.
With his eyes still accustomed to the darkness, he could just make out a fat corgi sitting in the hall.
It looked up at him, jumping to its feet, looking overjoyed to see him. One paw rose up into the air, batting at nothing, as if wanting to shake.
Ben stared down at the dog, stupefied for a moment. Then he took a single step into the hall and looked up and down each direction.
There was no one in sight. It was the middle of the night, after all.
When he knelt down to examine the dog more closely, the fluffy body launched itself at him, trying to jump up to lick Ben's face. Fortunately for him, the Corgi was used to someone much smaller because he didn't quite reach, and Ben narrowly avoided doggie tongue all over his nose.
The tag that dangled just barely in sight, gleamed silver in the moonlight.
BB8, Apt C5.
As he'd guessed.
But what was BB8 doing out here by himself?
Reaching over, Ben picked up the small pup who immediately started squirming in his arms, trying to reach around to find a better angle to lick his new friend.
Ben carried him firmly in his arms and made his way down the hall to C5, right next door.
As he approached the door, the light from his own doorway got much fainter and he couldn't see anything in the pitchblack corridor.
His heart suddenly thumped hard in his chest as he wondered what to make of this moment when he finally got to meet the woman who had been leaving him all those messages.
He had to take a second to get his nerves under control. When he did, he heard a sound.
Sniffling.
Someone was crying. And it sounded like the apartment door was wide open, which must be how BB8 had gotten out.
Abruptly and irrationally concerned, he stepped towards the doorway and called out into the darkness beyond it, "Hello? Are you okay?"
Something fumbled in the dark apartment, and a small light snapped on, causing him to step back and blink rapidly as his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden brightness.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" he heard as footsteps scrambled up to him.
Then she was standing in front of him, and he was looking into the shocked face of the girl in the yellow dress.
The buns were gone, and her hair was loose around her shoulders. In place of the dress were cotton pajamas, brown and tan, with a pattern of paw prints and doggie bones.
And there were tear tracks running down her face again.
He thought how bizarre it was that she was still beautiful, even up close, and even when she'd clearly been crying.
Her face lit up when she recognized him, and for some reason that made him feel like there was something new and alive in his chest.
Of course, there was something alive against his chest, and BB8's wriggling reminded him of that. So Ben set him down so that he could run to his mistress.
"I'm so sorry," she said again, and the British accent that fell from her lips was totally captivating. "I didn't realize he'd gotten out. He usually won't go past the threshold without me."
She smiled at him, clearly a bit flustered, but otherwise not disturbed by the fact that they were strangers meeting for the first time in their pajamas in the middle of the night.
Except that they weren't strangers. Not really. They'd been communicating for months. He knew things about what she liked, the way she thought, the way she looked at life. And she knew things about him—visceral things—things about who he was, about how he felt. He rather thought she could see into him, into all the pieces no one else ever even noticed.
So he said something to her that he'd been wanting to tell her almost from the very first note that she'd left him. He hadn't planned on them being his first words, but they were right on the tip of his tongue as if he'd put them there on purpose.
"You have the taste of a peasant."
The beautiful neighbor blinked at him, as if she hadn't heard right. "I beg your pardon?"
"Your musical tastes," he clarified. "You have the taste of a peasant."
Her mouth opened and closed, as she looked for words to respond with.
Finally, after a tense moment of silence, her mouth shaped into a quirky grin, and she said, "Well, considering you're my favorite musician, I suppose you could very well be right. You'd certainly know better than I would."
The easy way she said it, and the fact that she'd called him her favorite, made him unable to stop the edges of his lips from curving upwards into an answering smile.
"And a 'song' has words," he added. "I play musical compositions, not songs."
"Noted," she said, with some humor. When she smiled at him, he felt flush from head to toe, and had to turn his gaze aside.
Looking over at the tiny booklight, he saw it sat beside a couch with a large, fuzzy blanket bunched up across it.
He turned to look at the front door, realizing now why it was wide open.
"Were you…were you listening to me play? Just now?"
She bit her lip, apparently thinking hard about her answer.
When she looked up at him, she seemed shy, and he found himself having an insatiable curiosity to know just what she was thinking.
"Weren't you playing for me?" she asked softly.
Had he been playing for her?
He supposed so. He'd been playing her requests, after all. But he rather thought he'd been playing for himself. He liked the feeling it gave him to know that she might be listening, that she might be enjoying the pieces that he was playing—that they might be connected for those moments.
But that was embarrassing to say, so he didn't answer her. Instead he observed, "I thought you usually ate ice cream when you did that."
She laughed at his response, and the musical sound of it reminded Ben of bells. Inwardly, he cringed at the fanciful thought. It was just a regular laugh, like anyone else might laugh…except that it danced over his ears and made him feel light-headed.
She wiped at her cheeks, at the remaining wetness from her tears, and said, "Actually, I was just going to get some ice cream now."
"Oh." He nodded, not knowing what else he could say to that, and feeling oddly like he'd pressured her into eating it to prove herself.
She looked at him, her expression unsure, and then looked towards the kitchen. Then she looked back at him still standing in her doorway, and her dog who was on the floor at his feet, his head and one floppy ear resting on Ben's pedal-foot.
She seemed to make her mind up about something and smiled hugely at him, causing all the thoughts to scatter from his brain. "Would you care to join me?"
He couldn't resist that smile. It was open and real and there was something about it that called to him.
"I suppose."
She smiled again, moving off in the darkness towards the kitchen. "What kind of ice cream do you like?" she asked, turning back.
"What kind do you have?" he returned.
Her face lit up again, clearly excited about the subject. "Well, all of them, really!" Her arms waved to indicate he could have his choice.
Her face was very expressive, more so than Ben's could ever be. He could watch the emotions flit across her face all day.
She continued looking at him expectantly, and he recalled that she'd asked him a question.
He thought about his cookie jar, empty but for her notes ever since he'd given up sugar. He thought about how he hadn't had ice cream in years, had never even craved it in his quest for physical discipline.
"Anything that's not mint," was what he told her, instead.
"Okay, no mint!" she said, closing the distance to the kitchen. She paused with her hand on the kitchen light, having noticed he was still standing in the doorway. "You can come in, you know," she said quietly.
He froze, staring at her. Positioned where she was in front of the window, the bright light from outside illuminated the lines of her face.
And he felt it again, that yearning—the one that inspired him into a creative frenzy.
He had a clamoring need to know what that face looked like sleeping quietly and limned with moonlight. He needed to know what her hand felt like resting quietly on his chest. He needed to feel her breath drifting softly across his face as she sighed at her dreams.
Images battered his brain, a thousand of them, one right after the other, so fast he couldn't even begin to process them all and didn't even try. The need rose in him sharp and aching, stealing his breath away.
There was something here—something that could be incredible, something that could be amazing. Something he couldn't possibly have recognized until he admitted that he wanted something incredible and amazing like this in his life.
She didn't seem to notice the revelation that was breaking across him. She gestured at the door and said, "Just make sure to close the door so BB8 doesn't get back out again.
He blinked, trying to process her instructions while the whirlwind of thoughts gently faded to the back of his mind, leaving only a strange and new lightness behind.
Turning, he shut the door, and then he and BB8 followed the paw print pajamas into the kitchen for ice cream.
"I'm Ben," he said, rather anticlimactically.
She smiled shyly and said, "I know. I'm Rey."
"I know," he echoed back.
He thought it was telling that neither asked how the other knew their name. Like maybe it just felt natural to think they'd always known. Like they'd always been just Ben and Rey.
"Why do you go by Kylo Ren when you play?" she asked, scooping out ice cream into soup bowls.
"Oh," he said, a tiny bit embarrassed at his pseudonym. "That's kind of a long story."
She paused mid-scoop and looked up, thinking. "So should I scoop twice as much ice cream, then?"
He looked at the rapidly filling bowls and calculated how long it would take them to eat it all. He thought about going back to his empty apartment where he'd left the door open.
"Maybe even more than that, actually," he casually suggested. "It could take...quite a while."
She seemed pleased at that answer and went to the freezer for a second container of ice cream. "Well, there's plenty!"
He saw it was packed with a variety of colorful containers in dozens of flavors.
"How many stories are you expecting me to tell?" he joked.
She laughed and said, "Why, do you take requests?"
She probably thought he'd laugh at this reference to their history together, but instead he just stared at her, his eyes intense and dark. When he was sure she was listening, he answered her, very seriously, "From you...I do."
A/N: And we're here at the ending! Thank you all so much for joining me on this little trip, my first foray into the Reylo world. I love this story a lot, but every time I reread it, I hit a point where I'm like, "What the hell was I thinking? This reads like a 13-year-old girl wrote it." But by the end of it, I love it again. And it's been such a relief to get all of your reviews and know that other people are enjoying it, too. If you've never read any of my other stories, you probably don't know, but this story is a bit out of my usual writing style. I like to write things that are stark and minimal, so that the very gentle and subtle emotions can have the chance to shine through. A lot of the times the meaning (and the romance) is in the words that don't get said, not in the words that are on the page. But this story is probably the most starkly told story of all the ones I've written, so much so it occasionally makes me cringe. But since you've bore with me all this time, hopefully you see what I was trying to do, and enjoy this little tale of beginnings and possibilities.
There is still a SMALL Epilogue coming up. And I'll put that out tomorrow, so that you don't have to wait so long.
Again, thank you so much for all of your comments and support, it's been so fun! And if any of you are Harry Potter Draco/Hermione shippers, and you like the gentle not-quite-romance of this story, I suggest you read my story 'Napster,' as 'Napster' and 'Nocturne' are kindred spirits in their storytelling.
S&R: CONSTRUCTIVE REVIEWS WELCOME (CRW), as always, because I'm happy to hear all your thoughts, opinions, and criticisms