[ The tweaking of her nipples almost does it. She's so sensitive, so desperate, that it drags a sob out of her to get so close. Teasing movements, roaming hands, they all leave her body feeling like one thrumming raw nerve, anticipating his touch. His fingertips find the apex of her thighs, rub into her exposed clit, and she rattles apart like the Falcon trying to make the jump to hyperspace.
Her climax is a thing of keening and trembling. She loses their rhythm entirely, clinging desperately to the railing as though it were the only thing keeping her alive and rocking between his cock and his fingers seeking to both flee the suddenly overwhelming sensations and to drink down more, more, more.
She rides it out, feels heat spill inside as he crashes with her, and he twists her neck and she kisses him like she's trying to devour him. She hadn't needed to drag it from him this time with pain, she notes. It comes on the heels of her shouts of praise instead. That's when the stupid decision comes to surrender the grip of one hand on the bar and she grabs back for a fistful of his hair to hold him tight, strain to press their mouths together.
The spray from the shower gets between them. It's a sopping wet kiss, and she has to break it to let that water dribble down her chin onto her torso, but then she's back at it. In fact, now that he has come, she straightens up considerably, shoves away from the towel bar to pin him between her back and the opposite shower wall, trying to hold him in her as long as she can.
The bond expands, swells, and they melt together. She can feel him: drunk on that affection she'd heaped upon him, drunk on her. It's a feeling she recognizes. She's the same. But the request doesn't come to her as easily as it seems to have come to him. She doesn't know how to ask for it. Perhaps because for him, it'd been an order, delivered in the heat of the moment while he was bending her under his touch. She sates herself on the feeling, transferred between their connection. They don't need words. ]
[Again, he feels the adrenaline begin to bleed out of him almost immediately after his body has ceased to tremble with orgasm, but Rey smartly straightens and pins him back against the wall before he can slip free of her cunt. He's exhausted, his entire pale body is now red with heat and effort, and there is a mix of sweat that mixes with the water still trickling over them.
Blindly, he gropes for her, to hold her for the sake of it rather than to pleasure her. He clings like she is all he has, in spite of the ache he starts to feel as he begins to soften. Its hard not to wonder how they were going to go back to being anything but what they were right then. How he was expected to sleep in someone else's bed tonight, how she would wash the smell of him away (though she would be trapped with those bruises from his teeth for a few days).
He doesn't recognize what she needs from him, half exhausted and drunk on their coupling. He can barely stand, barely think, and were it not for his stubborn attitude, he'd no doubt be sleeping on the floor of the shower right then. Perhaps it was good that she hadn't had the opportunity to tug upon his hair for long, or to get creative in other ways.
Aside from...pinning him to the wall and trapping his dick inside of her, that is.]
[ His arms are solid around her, and though she aches to hug him back, she's not ready to lose their connection yet, to tug him out of her so she can turn around. So instead, she lets her hands rest securely on his forearms where they circle her middle, and she leans her head into him.
The bites on her shoulders are starting to ache, a dull thud. The sharp sting of them had felt like heaven when he'd put them there, but now she's realizing that they're bruising. For now, that dull ache only serves to facilitate the fuzzy numbness, a warm heat that drapes across her skin, lulling her into a relaxed haze with him.
Rey doesn't open her eyes until her breathing regulates, evening out from its fever pitch. She smacks her lips a little, working on huffing out the last heavy exhales. The water is miraculously still warm and the soap has been washed off of her front. Somewhere between all the fucking and leaning, probably. A light, awed huff escapes her, almost a laugh.
She feels like starlight and the sand when it's warm and the setting sun. Effulgent. She shifts once she's comfortable to look back up at him again. He's beautiful. She hadn't gotten to appreciate it this time, but he is. Red in the face and dripping wet and ragged at the edges and hers. The embrace says everything she'd wanted to hear, really. He feels the same way. ]
Alright. [ This she offers up after some time. He's practically slipping out by then despite all her best efforts by sheer virtue of a) gravity, b) shrinkage. ] If we're going to do that again, I'm going to have to eat first.
[The word again wakes him from his involuntary dozing. His eyelids flutter open, confused when he realizes that he's not actually tied to her anymore and that she's -- talking about going again, when they haven't even finished washing off everything from the first two times???
He goes to move, and his shoulders resist. They've locked up, bruised in the same manner as Rey's neck but also stiff from overuse. He mumbles a soft protest and tries to find -- some kind of grip on her before he speaks again.]
I don't -- think I can do that again.
[At least, not right now. He says it without thinking about it, until he starts thinking about it, and then he swallows down that fear of under-preforming in front of Rey. JK he's awake now.]
[ She turns around to properly face him, finds that she has to brace herself on the multipurpose railing because her thighs are stiff and yet somehow her legs still want to give out under her the minute she stops leaning some of her weight on him. Truly a new dimension to needing him. Truly.
A groan slips out of her as she raises her arms up above her head and stretches. Her back twinges with it, as do her shoulders where he's marked her, everything tugging in the opposite direction it had locked up while they were going at it. ]
Maybe you're right. [ She reaches down to touch herself, a little awed by how empty she feels and how stretched and sore she is. Her fingertips find her folds swollen and oversensitive and she winds up rubbing her heel into the thatch of hair just above as she flinches away from that contact. ] I still want to eat.
[ In part because on some level she's not sure she believes him because they didn't plan on doing it again when they came to this shower and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED but also because she's just starving after expending all that energy.
Only then does she step in closer again and wrap her arms around his middle as though they were going to cuddle right here, upright, and rest. She wants to eat and sleep and keep touching him the whole time because even if her body is worn out, every other part of her is still screaming for him. Instead she settles on humming quietly and savoring this contact as it's afforded to her. ]
[He might just collapse asleep where he is standing. But as soon as he says it, he feels hunger begin to creep in. Is it her’s or his own? Its impossible to tell right now when he can almost feel every vertebrae in Rey’s spine cracking as if it were his own. Just a moment ago, his stomach had been bothering him from how much effort he had expended (and he might be dehydrated — he couldn’t be sure, but that was what it felt like, and it seemed logical given how much fluid he has pushed out of his body today).
He doesn’t fight the grip on his torso, and lets his eyes drift shut. He is mumbling as the water begins to grow cold.]
We can’t stay here.
[He gropes for her arms with his eyes half closed and seeks to trade positions with her so that he isn’t blocking the water anymore.]
[ 'We can't say here,' that is. Though she only says it when she's back in the spray and reluctantly getting to washing her body. Somehow, this is more starkly intimate than the hungry way they'd just consumed one another.
It's pedestrian. Functional, the way Drakstaden had often been, and only her experience in Drakstaden prevents it from feeling out of place as she rubs water between her thighs to get rid of the mingled fluids there. She's sensitive — verging on painfully sensitive now, and the direct spray is unwelcome. She twitches from it.
But she rubs her fingers through her folds anyway to clean herself, marveling at how stretched and hollow and achey she feels now. Her hips almost feel like they're in a new position on her body, her legs sore like they'd be after a hard day's work on Jakku, but in different places. ]
But there's not a better place for us to go. We both have roommates.
[ At least in this cramped quarters, even as cold as the water is, they have privacy and one another. She grabs for the soap and tries to finish what he had started, making quick work of it — quicker for the chill. She passes the body wash off to him while she rinses it off. ]
For a facility designed for this, they're not especially accommodating.
[She points out the obvious, and he doesn't have an answer for her, so he goes quiet. The truth, though he could scarcely recognize it, was that he was anxious about remaining in one place like this for too long.
And he stays quiet the entire time he spends lathering soap on his body, less thorough than he often is due to the temperature of the water going cold as well as the odd feeling of being under the spotlight.]
Or perhaps we simply have not found the private areas yet.
[That is mumbled. He hadn't especially been looking for them, so very overwhelmed by the mess he had gotten himself into. It doesn't occur to him that the facility might want the public to see what they are doing.]
[ She can't put her finger on why, but her intuition tells her that this all adds up with the sandsharks in a way that she doesn't quite have the awareness to possess reasoning for. This is deliberate, she's sure. She just can't put her finger on what they get out of it being deliberate. She grapples for the shampoo and suds her hair up.
Looking at him, she can see him starting to withdraw a little. A nervous fear that runs like a current under his skin. That sensation has become her constant companion and constant opponent, these past months. It's what losing him feels like. ]
We can keep looking. [ It's a fair compromise. I'm sure there's somewhere we can linger without fearing interruption.
[ She combs her fingers through sudsy hair, drawing it barely over her shoulder. It draws attention to how long it has grown, skimming the top of her breasts. ]
For the next time.
[ There's a silent question there. She won't beg him for his approval, but her eyes are wide and shining and fearful and hoping that for all of this he will have judged her worthy. Something to be wanted, now that the haze has faded. He'd behaved that way to be sure, unrestrained as he was, but he hadn't — expressed. Not in the same way. Just a need to be needed, and she did. But that leaves her in a strange liminal space of wondering if that praise goes both ways. ]
["For the next time" draws his attention to her, as he imagines it is supposed to, though he doesn't quite piece out why. In this, they speak two different languages (the language of Kylo being "a repressed dude who doesn't know how to vocalize emotion"). So he nods awkwardly in response to what Rey has offered him, reaching for one of her hands once she lets it drop from her hair.]
They want us to be seen. It would be a waste of time.
[He can vocalize the conclusion they've both come to, though, as uncomfortable as it makes him. The energy would be better spent on figuring out how to handle that reality -- a reality where he doesn't murder someone for laying eyes on Rey, imagining themselves in his place.
[ Waste of time feels like a stab into the soft tissue of her abdomen. Striking down her idea without one to take it place frightens her, throws her, leaves her feeling abruptly discarded, but she knows that can't be true because his hand is still holding hers. No. It's just his pessimism chafing against her optimism again. Not a personal attack, but a different way of approaching the issue. ]
It'll be worth wasting if there's a chance.
[ To her, anyway. Feeling on the ropes as she does, she feels the need to qualify that with a justification of why, ] If it means not having to rush off right away.
[ She wants to linger in his embrace and enjoy the time to themselves. As long as he is tensely anticipating the arrival of someone else to crash that bliss, she's not going to get it. She'll find privacy, or barter for some, if it can get her that chance to bask for more than a handful of minutes.
More to the point, his opposition to anyone else seeing has her feeling like she's really just ... begging for there to be a next time at all, one where he isn't too frayed and fearful to allow her to touch him. ]
[That clicks into place almost audibly, and he nods again for her. Yes, that's easy enough to agree with. He isn't running away from her after all, just the idea that someone else might spot them both in a vulnerable moment. And then he would have to kill them and -- well, he's gotten the message that Rey doesn't really appreciate his methods of conflict resolution.
But no matter her faith in him, that would never change. The longer he could avoid it and keep it at bay, the longer he'd be able to hold onto her. That's the plan he's formed for himself.
So privacy works in their favor. If they could find it, it would be worth it. Maybe it wasn't a waste of time. Communal showers were hardly private, but they had come when it wasn't busy. That was almost like privacy.]
The cold of the shower spray finally hits her as she transitions, awkwardly, to rinsing the shampoo out of her hair. Shivering, she wrings it dry as best she can without particular grace or gentleness. The chill sinks into her bones, spreading through her, terrible even once she's out of the cold spray. The air clings to it, helps it seep in.
Because, of course, it's not just the shower. It's the way that he's separating from her while she still needs to feel connected to him. The way she folds her arms around herself to stave off the cold makes room, somehow, for a sudden and unwelcome fragility to settle around her like a cloak.
The ache in her body has woken up too, now. It feels like being torn and raw on the inside. ]
Come with me to get something to eat.
[ Pushed out rudely like this, it almost sounds like a command. But it's the only solution she finds that isn't begging him to say something decent about her and assure her that he's not eager to leave her, which she already knows. She's trying to balance her understanding of the fact that he expresses better through action with the fact that right now, his actions read quite easily like he can't be rid of her fast enough. That doesn't give him the credit he deserves, though. ]
[He frowns briefly -- no, she means after they've gotten themselves decent, surely. They just spent time agreeing that they need privacy. So the look doesn't stick. He isn't really hungry, but he recognizes a command when he hears one, and that's easy to acquiesce to.]
Alright.
[He gently reaches to move her aside, just enough to shower the rest of the suds off of him before he turns the water off. But as he reaches for a towel to wrap around her, he pauses with her swaddled in his arms.]
[ It's frustrating, in a way, to have to talk herself down like this. That so much doubt and uncertainty pervades their connection now, which grew more from other people's misunderstanding of Ben than any weakness in their own feelings for one another, She has become keenly aware of his inability to express things, and dances around her own interpretation instead of trusting in the Force.
But his intent is clear and straightforward in going for the towel, caging her in his arms, and that soothes her. It's not just the closeness, but the care and attention that she hadn't thought to ask for. That nurturing is what had first drawn her to him like this. She rests her hands on his chest. ]
Then we'll have to stay here. [ Despite his earlier complaint. ] Just for a while. It's that or sneak back to the rooms in our towels. I can send a message to Curtis to see if he's around, maybe ask him to make himself scarce if he is. [ Ben's the uncomfortable one here, really. The functional nakedness of a shower doesn't bother her much, removed from the intimacy of his eyes on her for the first time, or the anticipation of some direct engagement. So she thinks to posit: ] Which would you prefer?
[That answer is immediate, before she even asks what his preference is. He doesn't need a stranger suspicious about what they're intentions in the room are, let alone having to walk all the way back there with only a towel for coverage. He holds her a little tighter when he says it, to stave off the angry, defensive beast that threatens to surface when he again thinks of other people laying eyes upon them.]
We will stay here.
[Gooseflesh and potential company non-withstanding. It was safer. Better insurance.
Somewhere in between that, he rests his head on top of her's to try and find that peace she somehow settles into so easily. He's exceedingly bad at it.]
[ She murmurs this against his sternum as she enfolds herself in the circle of his arms, huddling up against him to chase off some of the chill that sinks in. His concerns nag at her, as if his feelings were her own. A chaotic jumble of doubts and neuroses. She turns those words to a kiss, soft and warm and soothing against his chest. ]
Don't worry about them. [ She tells him, as if it were so easy. ] Be with me.
[ For now, at least, the outside world need not exist. In part, she clings to this advice because she wants it to be responsible for his distance. For the way he can offer her only the physical overtures of affection and none of the soft affirmations that she has done well. That he is satisfied. That he will not leave her. Maybe if he focuses on her, she will get them.
It's a fool's errand, of course, and the larger part of her knows it.
She should at least, though, offer him something more concrete to distract his focus. He had solicited her following the first go-around to see if she agreed with his decision to delay this in Drakstaden, to slow them down. So she asks him now— ]
Do you wish we weren't here, so we could have waited longer?
[He opens his eyes when she says that. It picks at something, the nagging he felt before returning to Hathaway. The presence in his mind that no longer felt like a weight. Yes. He supposed he did think too loudly. It was not as if he could help it--
She interrupts his train of thought with another bit of advice. He knows what she means, but -- it isn't like he's resisting the idea of being with her. Its just hard not to focus on his own circling paranoia.
Fortunately, she picks up on the fact that he needs a distraction. The question feels loaded, but...he thinks about it, just as loudly.
He hadn't regretted that choice in Drakstaden until it became apparent that he was going to need to act on something while he was here in the facility. Then suddenly, not having that experience felt like it put him at a disadvantage, even though he had been certain it was the right call at the time.
And he couldn't be sure what sort of effects that rushing into it now would have on them, long term.]
...no.
[But the way she asks her question -- its an easier answer than he initially thinks. No. Of course he didn't want to wait longer, it was just. Smarter. Safer.]
[ The trouble with soliciting any sort of emotional response from Ben is that she might as well try to wring water from sand. He never offers reasoning or explanation for his answers. He just leaves them there, and expects the rest to fill in. But at least one thing is clear: he doesn't regret it. That's something.
It does nag at her a little. It stinks of not having a real choice, as she'd said the night before. He has to sleep with someone, it might as well be her. Rushing into it like this had been her way of trying to seize control of that. She'd planned, before seeing him, to take her time. To find someone who was kind, who she would enjoy herself with. Finn and Poe had made compelling cases. But she'd still hesitated, dallied.
Not until it was necessary. Not until the time came, or until it was closer at least.
With Ben, it was not so. It was immediate. Because she wanted him. Because she cared for him. Not because of this place and the contracts they'd signed in coming. ]
Good.
[ She rests her head against his chest then. ]
Me too, obviously. All those things I said, I meant it. [ Her cheeks feel warm against his cool, wet skin. ] It was ... [ She corrects herself, as she had before when he was inside of her — ] You were good.
[She might feel him swallow when she says it, his chin still resting on her head. Her praise feeds that starving creature within him. He almost feels the need to admit that he's...never really done this before. Any of this. But she knows that. She has to know that, and he doesn't want to have to vocalize it. So he sidesteps it.
Instead, he holds her a little closer, possessively, as if he's expecting someone to come and try to ruin what he's managed to find here. He can tell she is waiting for something, after giving him that praise -- but agreeing with her, he realizes, feels...lame. He doesn't have the language for "a cop out", but that's definitely what it feels like. Unpleasant. Disingenuous.
He is at least one of those two adjectives, but less so the other.]
I would not have come close to...any of that [That] without you.
[That's mumbled, because it admits that he'd come here without really thinking the consequences through. It means admitting that he probably would have perished, trying to open up to anyone else like that.
He wants to say something else, but again struggles to get there.]
[ A smile twitches at her mouth, and finally the tension in her chest finishes unraveling. It's not perfect, it's not clear and direct and sweepingly romantic, it's not the kind of cheesy professions that someone like Lucas would provide. It's better. Because it's real, and it's Ben. Trying.
This is what it is because she matters to him, enough to help him reach parts of himself that he had long since tried to kill off. She understands that about him. In the same way that he matters to her, offers her the companionship and understanding that she has so longed for. ]
I'm glad you let me.
[ She draws back a little to look up at him. It's what she's been trying to tell him since Hanabira, isn't it? I only wanted to be close to you. And she is, now. For better or worse. And he's willing to admit that they are close, to let it be real in the light of day. ]
I know this is hard for you. It's hard for me too. Before you, I'd never even felt this way about anyone.
[Kylo looks up at the same moment she does, feeling it through the Force, and meeting her eyes evenly. He looks every bit of exhausted as he feels, but he's present and there for her to lay all of that down in front of him.
And he can't help but reach up and pet over her hair. He doesn't quite smile, but there is a sense of mild amusement buried somewhere under all of that tired demeanor.]
This isn't hard for you.
[He knows that. Maybe she means it differently, but -- affection, that came easy to her. She'd be lying if she tried to deny it. He'd spent two years watching her invite other people in -- sure, it was never an excessive amount of people, but it was more than Kylo Ren could ever claim.
Compassion, nurturing, all of those things he refused to feel, they all came naturally to Rey. He just happened to be fortunate enough that she decided to share them with him, even after...everything.]
Maybe it was, once.
[Yes, he can see that, looking into her eyes then. He remembers what he had seen when he had first met her, how far off she was -- not unlike himself, and that had been what drew him in the first place. But where he withdrew further, she had reached out and found someone else waiting on the other side.
On the other side of him was only that horrible golden robe. But not anymore.]
[ It's the easiest affection has ever come for him, this statement. As though it's something he admires about her, plainly stated, and Rey is left wide-eyed and shy in the face of it. From his perspective, perhaps, it makes sense. The struggles she has are dissimilar in every way from his. Where he holds himself back, resists compassion, she seeks it out too violently.
She had so nearly driven him and Keith both away with it.
So he's right, perhaps. The difficult for Rey lies in the fact that her compassion comes too easily, her ache for approval too close to the surface to hide. She's not lonely anymore, but she's instead grappling with a constant fear of losing that and going back to the way things were. He, instead, tries to hold himself back so there's never anything to lose. The same rationale, presented differently. ]
That doesn't mean I'm not afraid. I still don't know what I'm doing.
[At least, when it came to him -- it was easier knowing that they were both clueless and trying to figure out this whole thing. He gets the idea that what is going on between himself and Rey wasn't something that was supposed to happen in this place, even if he could imagine no other way.
The facility wanted them to lack connection, to just get down to business with nothing encouraging them to do so except food poison.]
[ Whether other people think so or not. Whether this facility is designed or intended for that or not. She pulls back to look up at him, searching for understanding that she wants to find there.
It's been some time since she's done what she did in that hut on Ahch-to, laid it all out before him. They've been so hung up in the push and pull of how to open up to one another at all. But he's right — it comes more easily to her than to him. She finds the vocabulary easily now, in this moment. ]
I keep messing up. With you, with Keith, with Poe. It's easier to connect to people than it is to stay connected. [ There's something strangled in her voice, and she blinks quickly. Any actual watery quality in her eyes is blurred out, lost in the lingering damp from the shower. ] I don't want to be left again.
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Her climax is a thing of keening and trembling. She loses their rhythm entirely, clinging desperately to the railing as though it were the only thing keeping her alive and rocking between his cock and his fingers seeking to both flee the suddenly overwhelming sensations and to drink down more, more, more.
She rides it out, feels heat spill inside as he crashes with her, and he twists her neck and she kisses him like she's trying to devour him. She hadn't needed to drag it from him this time with pain, she notes. It comes on the heels of her shouts of praise instead. That's when the stupid decision comes to surrender the grip of one hand on the bar and she grabs back for a fistful of his hair to hold him tight, strain to press their mouths together.
The spray from the shower gets between them. It's a sopping wet kiss, and she has to break it to let that water dribble down her chin onto her torso, but then she's back at it. In fact, now that he has come, she straightens up considerably, shoves away from the towel bar to pin him between her back and the opposite shower wall, trying to hold him in her as long as she can.
The bond expands, swells, and they melt together. She can feel him: drunk on that affection she'd heaped upon him, drunk on her. It's a feeling she recognizes. She's the same. But the request doesn't come to her as easily as it seems to have come to him. She doesn't know how to ask for it. Perhaps because for him, it'd been an order, delivered in the heat of the moment while he was bending her under his touch. She sates herself on the feeling, transferred between their connection. They don't need words. ]
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Blindly, he gropes for her, to hold her for the sake of it rather than to pleasure her. He clings like she is all he has, in spite of the ache he starts to feel as he begins to soften. Its hard not to wonder how they were going to go back to being anything but what they were right then. How he was expected to sleep in someone else's bed tonight, how she would wash the smell of him away (though she would be trapped with those bruises from his teeth for a few days).
He doesn't recognize what she needs from him, half exhausted and drunk on their coupling. He can barely stand, barely think, and were it not for his stubborn attitude, he'd no doubt be sleeping on the floor of the shower right then. Perhaps it was good that she hadn't had the opportunity to tug upon his hair for long, or to get creative in other ways.
Aside from...pinning him to the wall and trapping his dick inside of her, that is.]
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The bites on her shoulders are starting to ache, a dull thud. The sharp sting of them had felt like heaven when he'd put them there, but now she's realizing that they're bruising. For now, that dull ache only serves to facilitate the fuzzy numbness, a warm heat that drapes across her skin, lulling her into a relaxed haze with him.
Rey doesn't open her eyes until her breathing regulates, evening out from its fever pitch. She smacks her lips a little, working on huffing out the last heavy exhales. The water is miraculously still warm and the soap has been washed off of her front. Somewhere between all the fucking and leaning, probably. A light, awed huff escapes her, almost a laugh.
She feels like starlight and the sand when it's warm and the setting sun. Effulgent. She shifts once she's comfortable to look back up at him again. He's beautiful. She hadn't gotten to appreciate it this time, but he is. Red in the face and dripping wet and ragged at the edges and hers. The embrace says everything she'd wanted to hear, really. He feels the same way. ]
Alright. [ This she offers up after some time. He's practically slipping out by then despite all her best efforts by sheer virtue of a) gravity, b) shrinkage. ] If we're going to do that again, I'm going to have to eat first.
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He goes to move, and his shoulders resist. They've locked up, bruised in the same manner as Rey's neck but also stiff from overuse. He mumbles a soft protest and tries to find -- some kind of grip on her before he speaks again.]
I don't -- think I can do that again.
[At least, not right now. He says it without thinking about it, until he starts thinking about it, and then he swallows down that fear of under-preforming in front of Rey. JK he's awake now.]
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A groan slips out of her as she raises her arms up above her head and stretches. Her back twinges with it, as do her shoulders where he's marked her, everything tugging in the opposite direction it had locked up while they were going at it. ]
Maybe you're right. [ She reaches down to touch herself, a little awed by how empty she feels and how stretched and sore she is. Her fingertips find her folds swollen and oversensitive and she winds up rubbing her heel into the thatch of hair just above as she flinches away from that contact. ] I still want to eat.
[ In part because on some level she's not sure she believes him because they didn't plan on doing it again when they came to this shower and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED but also because she's just starving after expending all that energy.
Only then does she step in closer again and wrap her arms around his middle as though they were going to cuddle right here, upright, and rest. She wants to eat and sleep and keep touching him the whole time because even if her body is worn out, every other part of her is still screaming for him. Instead she settles on humming quietly and savoring this contact as it's afforded to her. ]
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[He might just collapse asleep where he is standing. But as soon as he says it, he feels hunger begin to creep in. Is it her’s or his own? Its impossible to tell right now when he can almost feel every vertebrae in Rey’s spine cracking as if it were his own. Just a moment ago, his stomach had been bothering him from how much effort he had expended (and he might be dehydrated — he couldn’t be sure, but that was what it felt like, and it seemed logical given how much fluid he has pushed out of his body today).
He doesn’t fight the grip on his torso, and lets his eyes drift shut. He is mumbling as the water begins to grow cold.]
We can’t stay here.
[He gropes for her arms with his eyes half closed and seeks to trade positions with her so that he isn’t blocking the water anymore.]
Finish washing yourself.
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[ 'We can't say here,' that is. Though she only says it when she's back in the spray and reluctantly getting to washing her body. Somehow, this is more starkly intimate than the hungry way they'd just consumed one another.
It's pedestrian. Functional, the way Drakstaden had often been, and only her experience in Drakstaden prevents it from feeling out of place as she rubs water between her thighs to get rid of the mingled fluids there. She's sensitive — verging on painfully sensitive now, and the direct spray is unwelcome. She twitches from it.
But she rubs her fingers through her folds anyway to clean herself, marveling at how stretched and hollow and achey she feels now. Her hips almost feel like they're in a new position on her body, her legs sore like they'd be after a hard day's work on Jakku, but in different places. ]
But there's not a better place for us to go. We both have roommates.
[ At least in this cramped quarters, even as cold as the water is, they have privacy and one another. She grabs for the soap and tries to finish what he had started, making quick work of it — quicker for the chill. She passes the body wash off to him while she rinses it off. ]
For a facility designed for this, they're not especially accommodating.
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And he stays quiet the entire time he spends lathering soap on his body, less thorough than he often is due to the temperature of the water going cold as well as the odd feeling of being under the spotlight.]
Or perhaps we simply have not found the private areas yet.
[That is mumbled. He hadn't especially been looking for them, so very overwhelmed by the mess he had gotten himself into. It doesn't occur to him that the facility might want the public to see what they are doing.]
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[ She can't put her finger on why, but her intuition tells her that this all adds up with the sandsharks in a way that she doesn't quite have the awareness to possess reasoning for. This is deliberate, she's sure. She just can't put her finger on what they get out of it being deliberate. She grapples for the shampoo and suds her hair up.
Looking at him, she can see him starting to withdraw a little. A nervous fear that runs like a current under his skin. That sensation has become her constant companion and constant opponent, these past months. It's what losing him feels like. ]
We can keep looking. [ It's a fair compromise. I'm sure there's somewhere we can linger without fearing interruption.
[ She combs her fingers through sudsy hair, drawing it barely over her shoulder. It draws attention to how long it has grown, skimming the top of her breasts. ]
For the next time.
[ There's a silent question there. She won't beg him for his approval, but her eyes are wide and shining and fearful and hoping that for all of this he will have judged her worthy. Something to be wanted, now that the haze has faded. He'd behaved that way to be sure, unrestrained as he was, but he hadn't — expressed. Not in the same way. Just a need to be needed, and she did. But that leaves her in a strange liminal space of wondering if that praise goes both ways. ]
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They want us to be seen. It would be a waste of time.
[He can vocalize the conclusion they've both come to, though, as uncomfortable as it makes him. The energy would be better spent on figuring out how to handle that reality -- a reality where he doesn't murder someone for laying eyes on Rey, imagining themselves in his place.
Because why else would anyone watch?]
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It'll be worth wasting if there's a chance.
[ To her, anyway. Feeling on the ropes as she does, she feels the need to qualify that with a justification of why, ] If it means not having to rush off right away.
[ She wants to linger in his embrace and enjoy the time to themselves. As long as he is tensely anticipating the arrival of someone else to crash that bliss, she's not going to get it. She'll find privacy, or barter for some, if it can get her that chance to bask for more than a handful of minutes.
More to the point, his opposition to anyone else seeing has her feeling like she's really just ... begging for there to be a next time at all, one where he isn't too frayed and fearful to allow her to touch him. ]
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But no matter her faith in him, that would never change. The longer he could avoid it and keep it at bay, the longer he'd be able to hold onto her. That's the plan he's formed for himself.
So privacy works in their favor. If they could find it, it would be worth it. Maybe it wasn't a waste of time. Communal showers were hardly private, but they had come when it wasn't busy. That was almost like privacy.]
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The cold of the shower spray finally hits her as she transitions, awkwardly, to rinsing the shampoo out of her hair. Shivering, she wrings it dry as best she can without particular grace or gentleness. The chill sinks into her bones, spreading through her, terrible even once she's out of the cold spray. The air clings to it, helps it seep in.
Because, of course, it's not just the shower. It's the way that he's separating from her while she still needs to feel connected to him. The way she folds her arms around herself to stave off the cold makes room, somehow, for a sudden and unwelcome fragility to settle around her like a cloak.
The ache in her body has woken up too, now. It feels like being torn and raw on the inside. ]
Come with me to get something to eat.
[ Pushed out rudely like this, it almost sounds like a command. But it's the only solution she finds that isn't begging him to say something decent about her and assure her that he's not eager to leave her, which she already knows. She's trying to balance her understanding of the fact that he expresses better through action with the fact that right now, his actions read quite easily like he can't be rid of her fast enough. That doesn't give him the credit he deserves, though. ]
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Alright.
[He gently reaches to move her aside, just enough to shower the rest of the suds off of him before he turns the water off. But as he reaches for a towel to wrap around her, he pauses with her swaddled in his arms.]
...our clothes are not going to be dry.
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But his intent is clear and straightforward in going for the towel, caging her in his arms, and that soothes her. It's not just the closeness, but the care and attention that she hadn't thought to ask for. That nurturing is what had first drawn her to him like this. She rests her hands on his chest. ]
Then we'll have to stay here. [ Despite his earlier complaint. ] Just for a while. It's that or sneak back to the rooms in our towels. I can send a message to Curtis to see if he's around, maybe ask him to make himself scarce if he is. [ Ben's the uncomfortable one here, really. The functional nakedness of a shower doesn't bother her much, removed from the intimacy of his eyes on her for the first time, or the anticipation of some direct engagement. So she thinks to posit: ] Which would you prefer?
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[That answer is immediate, before she even asks what his preference is. He doesn't need a stranger suspicious about what they're intentions in the room are, let alone having to walk all the way back there with only a towel for coverage. He holds her a little tighter when he says it, to stave off the angry, defensive beast that threatens to surface when he again thinks of other people laying eyes upon them.]
We will stay here.
[Gooseflesh and potential company non-withstanding. It was safer. Better insurance.
Somewhere in between that, he rests his head on top of her's to try and find that peace she somehow settles into so easily. He's exceedingly bad at it.]
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[ She murmurs this against his sternum as she enfolds herself in the circle of his arms, huddling up against him to chase off some of the chill that sinks in. His concerns nag at her, as if his feelings were her own. A chaotic jumble of doubts and neuroses. She turns those words to a kiss, soft and warm and soothing against his chest. ]
Don't worry about them. [ She tells him, as if it were so easy. ] Be with me.
[ For now, at least, the outside world need not exist. In part, she clings to this advice because she wants it to be responsible for his distance. For the way he can offer her only the physical overtures of affection and none of the soft affirmations that she has done well. That he is satisfied. That he will not leave her. Maybe if he focuses on her, she will get them.
It's a fool's errand, of course, and the larger part of her knows it.
She should at least, though, offer him something more concrete to distract his focus. He had solicited her following the first go-around to see if she agreed with his decision to delay this in Drakstaden, to slow them down. So she asks him now— ]
Do you wish we weren't here, so we could have waited longer?
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She interrupts his train of thought with another bit of advice. He knows what she means, but -- it isn't like he's resisting the idea of being with her. Its just hard not to focus on his own circling paranoia.
Fortunately, she picks up on the fact that he needs a distraction. The question feels loaded, but...he thinks about it, just as loudly.
He hadn't regretted that choice in Drakstaden until it became apparent that he was going to need to act on something while he was here in the facility. Then suddenly, not having that experience felt like it put him at a disadvantage, even though he had been certain it was the right call at the time.
And he couldn't be sure what sort of effects that rushing into it now would have on them, long term.]
...no.
[But the way she asks her question -- its an easier answer than he initially thinks. No. Of course he didn't want to wait longer, it was just. Smarter. Safer.]
If I wanted to wait longer, than...I would have.
[Probably.]
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It does nag at her a little. It stinks of not having a real choice, as she'd said the night before. He has to sleep with someone, it might as well be her. Rushing into it like this had been her way of trying to seize control of that. She'd planned, before seeing him, to take her time. To find someone who was kind, who she would enjoy herself with. Finn and Poe had made compelling cases. But she'd still hesitated, dallied.
Not until it was necessary. Not until the time came, or until it was closer at least.
With Ben, it was not so. It was immediate. Because she wanted him. Because she cared for him. Not because of this place and the contracts they'd signed in coming. ]
Good.
[ She rests her head against his chest then. ]
Me too, obviously. All those things I said, I meant it. [ Her cheeks feel warm against his cool, wet skin. ] It was ... [ She corrects herself, as she had before when he was inside of her — ] You were good.
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Instead, he holds her a little closer, possessively, as if he's expecting someone to come and try to ruin what he's managed to find here. He can tell she is waiting for something, after giving him that praise -- but agreeing with her, he realizes, feels...lame. He doesn't have the language for "a cop out", but that's definitely what it feels like. Unpleasant. Disingenuous.
He is at least one of those two adjectives, but less so the other.]
I would not have come close to...any of that [That] without you.
[That's mumbled, because it admits that he'd come here without really thinking the consequences through. It means admitting that he probably would have perished, trying to open up to anyone else like that.
He wants to say something else, but again struggles to get there.]
You brought me there.
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This is what it is because she matters to him, enough to help him reach parts of himself that he had long since tried to kill off. She understands that about him. In the same way that he matters to her, offers her the companionship and understanding that she has so longed for. ]
I'm glad you let me.
[ She draws back a little to look up at him. It's what she's been trying to tell him since Hanabira, isn't it? I only wanted to be close to you. And she is, now. For better or worse. And he's willing to admit that they are close, to let it be real in the light of day. ]
I know this is hard for you. It's hard for me too. Before you, I'd never even felt this way about anyone.
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And he can't help but reach up and pet over her hair. He doesn't quite smile, but there is a sense of mild amusement buried somewhere under all of that tired demeanor.]
This isn't hard for you.
[He knows that. Maybe she means it differently, but -- affection, that came easy to her. She'd be lying if she tried to deny it. He'd spent two years watching her invite other people in -- sure, it was never an excessive amount of people, but it was more than Kylo Ren could ever claim.
Compassion, nurturing, all of those things he refused to feel, they all came naturally to Rey. He just happened to be fortunate enough that she decided to share them with him, even after...everything.]
Maybe it was, once.
[Yes, he can see that, looking into her eyes then. He remembers what he had seen when he had first met her, how far off she was -- not unlike himself, and that had been what drew him in the first place. But where he withdrew further, she had reached out and found someone else waiting on the other side.
On the other side of him was only that horrible golden robe. But not anymore.]
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She had so nearly driven him and Keith both away with it.
So he's right, perhaps. The difficult for Rey lies in the fact that her compassion comes too easily, her ache for approval too close to the surface to hide. She's not lonely anymore, but she's instead grappling with a constant fear of losing that and going back to the way things were. He, instead, tries to hold himself back so there's never anything to lose. The same rationale, presented differently. ]
That doesn't mean I'm not afraid. I still don't know what I'm doing.
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[At least, when it came to him -- it was easier knowing that they were both clueless and trying to figure out this whole thing. He gets the idea that what is going on between himself and Rey wasn't something that was supposed to happen in this place, even if he could imagine no other way.
The facility wanted them to lack connection, to just get down to business with nothing encouraging them to do so except food poison.]
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[ Whether other people think so or not. Whether this facility is designed or intended for that or not. She pulls back to look up at him, searching for understanding that she wants to find there.
It's been some time since she's done what she did in that hut on Ahch-to, laid it all out before him. They've been so hung up in the push and pull of how to open up to one another at all. But he's right — it comes more easily to her than to him. She finds the vocabulary easily now, in this moment. ]
I keep messing up. With you, with Keith, with Poe. It's easier to connect to people than it is to stay connected. [ There's something strangled in her voice, and she blinks quickly. Any actual watery quality in her eyes is blurred out, lost in the lingering damp from the shower. ] I don't want to be left again.
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wraps this? ??