She stumbles right into his chest as he's about to leave. He'd been planning on exiting early anyways — the only reason he's at his mother's birthday party is that he was practically guilted into it by Poe, anyways. It's only been an hour and a half but he's already run into plenty of her lifelong friends, who've looked at him with their noses turned up and with disgust in their eyes. Look, there's the prodigal son returning. Have you heard where he's been? Yes, he's running First Order Holdings — I know, you'd think Leia would have something to say about it.

His Aunt Amilyn, Uncle Lando — all people he'd grown up with, who he'd gone on vacations with as a teenager — they see him for the first time in fifteen years and they're obvious about how they think about him now. He's a corporate sellout in their eyes. He has been since he slammed the door on his mother when he was eighteen and never looked back. They don't want him here and he doesn't want to be here. He's a grown adult, thirty-three and the world's at his feet, but they make him feel like nothing.

So, well, he's trying to smoothly exit the house through the back door to avoid getting stared at more when some creature barrels herself into his chest. She would have knocked anyone else over, but he's broad enough to absorb the motion and move backwards a bit. Then he puts out a hand on her shoulder to steady her, planning on checking to see if she's alright before leaving —

Oh. Damn it.

It's a girl, standing in front of him in a classy almost metallic red dress, her hair pooling around her shoulders and her hands clutching her feet. He starts to open his mouth and ask if she's alright when he looks at her face and sees tear tracts. "What—"

Her feet are in gigantic death traps, black heels that look utterly terrifying. And her ankle, which she's grasping with her right hand, is twisted in a slightly odd way. He's not usually one to randomly help others but the girl's shocked expression softens him. She looks like she's trying to hold in her tears, and her ankle seems to be swelling. "Are you okay?"

His hand is still on her shoulder, and she shakes it off. He knows he shouldn't be surprised — he's a strange man who's touching her — but some part of him wishes she hadn't. Then she sinks, sitting on one of the steps she'd just walked up. "Oh my god, this is so embarrassing," she puts her head in her hands. It's not the sentiment he was expecting.

"Uh, did you—"

He's stuttering. God, keep it together Ben. He runs into one cute girl by accident and his awkward teenage self rushes in to take over his mind. Great.

"Did I sprain my ankle? Maybe break it? What do you think?"

She's looking at him now, her gaze not exactly mean, or rude at all, but it's hard. Then it abruptly softens. "Shit. I'm so sorry. I'm not trying to be rude. You're trying to be nice. I'm just . . ." She takes a deep breath. "Great, um, I'm sorry to be a bother, but would you mind helping me inside? I probably need to take care of this."

She has a British accent. He can hear it now.

With a glance at the air around him and the freedom he's about to give up to help a random stranger, he reaches down for her to put an arm around her shoulders. It's a strangely intimate position, and he finds it slightly odd that she's asking him for help, but then he figures that she must believe that the fact that he's at the party in the first place makes him slightly trustworthy.

She adjusts herself around him, sliding off her shoes as she gets up and placing them in her other hand. "So," she says, "I'm Rey. Nice to meet you, I guess."

He goes through a split second of panic about which name to use. He could say that he's Kylo Ren, but she'd probably end up hating him without much thought. Everyone hates Kylo Ren. Even he hates Kylo Ren. He could just say Ben Solo, but he hates that name too. Especially here, in his childhood home, it reminds him of regrets.

Oh, fuck it.

"I'm Ben," he replies as they move into the hallway adjacent to the back door. "I'm going to take you to — to the library. I'm pretty sure there's medical equipment in there."

She snorts. "In the library? What kind of reading is Leia doing?"

Not much. All the medical equipment is in the library because it was his safe space growing up. He'd constantly been in fights through middle and high school, and he'd often avoided telling his parents about his bruised and sprained bones unless the conversation was unavoidable. He'd snuck in a full kit when he was fifteen. Neither of his parents entered the room; his mother kept all her readings in her office, and he still isn't sure if Han can read. Although, after a point, he had noticed how she'd shifted the painkillers into the storage closet next door. Rey doesn't need to know any of that, though, so he just gives her a tight smile and walks her in.

The library encompasses two stories of the large house, and it's accumulated its fair share of dust over the past decade and a half. It's covered, wall to wall, in books he knows all too well. He'd managed his anger by reshelving them constantly, by size, color, and the Dewey decimal system. The large and slightly menacing chair that he'd spent hours in remains where it used to be, and he sets her down on it, moving to collect gauze from the back of one of the shelves.

"So, Ben, how do you know Leia?"

"I . . . I knew her when I was a kid."

"Oh. You seem to know this place really well. Did you come here a lot as a kid? Your face seems kinda familiar. Maybe I've seen it in pictures or something."

"Yeah, I guess you could say that. How's your ankle?" This house is devoid of any reminders of him.

"Better. I've sprained it before, though, so I know how this works. Can I have the—"

He hands her the roll and settles back, leaning against the shelf that houses his dear-loved copies of Atlas Shrugged and Candide. She's able to reach down to her leg, nimble fingers wrapping it up. Her fingers are calloused, her hands are rough. Not like most people at the party.

"How do you know Leia?" he blurts out.

It takes her a few seconds to respond as she's finishing up the wrapping. "I work for Han, actually. I spend time with the both of them pretty often."

That's perfect.

He wants to hit the universe on the head. And throw a desk at it. Of course the pretty girl at his mother's party works for Han Solo.

"Car mechanic?"

"Yeah!" she smiles. "Just part-time, though. I go to Chandrila U, too. Mechanical engineering. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to run my own business someday!"

And she's a university student, which makes her definitely his junior. And she wants to run a garage, and she looks up to his father. He groans.

"Um, I'm sorry? Do you have a problem with that?"

He's startled. "Wha — no! It's great that you're working on that degree."

Her eyes narrow. "What do you do, Mr. Oh-Look-A-College-Student?"

"I — I work in management."

Technically, he does. He manages First Order, which maintains stocks in a plethora of other companies his mother and most of the people at this party don't support. Hopefully she doesn't follow up.

"Where do you—oh, shit," she gasps. "Uh, do you know if Leia has Tylenol or something lying around?"

With an imperceptible nod, he slides out of the room and heads over to the closet next door. Luckily, it seems like his mother, or one of her aides, has been refilling the painkillers, so he grabs the bottle and a water bottle off the floor and wanders back into the room.

"You should probably take two," he says as he turns back to her and—

She's looking at him intensely, tracing his features with her sharp eyes. "Rey? Everything good?"

Suddenly, her face drops and her mouth opens. "I have seen your face before. You're their son, aren't you?"

He doesn't really know what to say to that, so he just nods. He's ready for the explosion of anger, the kind he's been dealing with for years; you're evil, I read about him in the newspaper, offshore accounts, oil drilling, and after everything his mother worked towards . . .

He isn't ready for her to give him a quizzical look, and one of deep-seating understanding. "Han talks about you a lot, you know. He misses you. Maybe you should come visit him sometimes. You clearly get along with your mother now."

He drops the bottles into her hands and returns back to his unassuming corner of the room. "Yeah, well, I'm trying with her. Han — I don't want to talk about him."

She tips the pills into her mouth and settles back. "I've heard a lot about you. Leia doesn't really talk about it much, but people whisper about her son and how he ended up making bad decisions and following in his grandfather's footsteps. I've never heard your name before, though. You're a bit of an enigma."

"I don't know about bad decisions. I chose to pursue a career that wasn't in politics, and I built up First Order around the Empire — my grandfather's company. My mother wasn't able to separate me from my company for a long time."

"What changed?"

"I turned a few things around. And I think she ended up realizing that family matters more than anything. It's something most of the people here don't understand."

"You were leaving, weren't you?"

"Yes," he says, point-blank. "I came here for my mother, and I did my due diligence. My presence was probably detracting from her big day, anyways."

She squints. "You know, you shouldn't let those people get to you anyways. I can't claim to understand what exactly you did, or what your company does, but I'm pretty sure you and Leia are doing the right thing. Family matters more than anything."

"Are you close with your parents?" he asks, and the minute he does he knows it's the wrong thing to say. Her face tightens.

"I don't have any."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's alright. I'm working on finding my own," she smiles softly. "I don't know what Han did, but he has, really, been amazing to me. Both your parents. I think that they've grown."

It does hurt, a little bit, to look into her earnest eyes and realize that Rey is probably what his parents wanted from him. She's the kind of gorgeous his mom would love working with, and she has an aura of graceful confidence he'd never been able to project. And Han probably gets along with her easily, as far as their temperaments seem to align. He takes in a deep breath. "Maybe. Maybe I'll work on it."

They're silent for a minute before she gives him a perky smile again. "So then, this is your library?"

He lets the line of his mouth relax. "Yeah, I spent a lot of time here when I was younger. This is the first time I've been back in years."

"I can see that," she giggles, "it's kind of dusty."

With that, the air's broken. They spend the next thirty minutes discussing his stack of Shakespeare — Rey thinks he's ridiculous, and Ben finds himself defending the plays — until the painkillers seem to finally start working and Rey can put light pressure on her ankle again.

"I should probably go home," she says. "Can you help me out? I'll get one of my friends to pick me up."

Or I can drop you off. Is that weird? She knows his parents and with all his awkwardness, he thinks it's clear he isn't looking for a one-night stand. He takes in her face again, the lipstick mostly bitten off and her eyes intently concentrating on the screen.

"If you're okay with it, I can drive you. I was planning on leaving and my car's out front. And . . . " he takes in a deep breath, "if you want to, we can get something to eat too. I would hate for you to miss out on dinner."

"Okay, thanks, that would be great," she laughs as she closes her phone and grabs her shoes. "Maybe just drive-thru fast food, though. I don't think I should be up for very long."

"Of course," he breaks out into a grin and helps her back up.

They're both uninterrupted as they slide out of the back door this time, Ben helping Rey limp through the hidden gate. He tells her to wait as he goes to find his car, and then comes back and helps her get into the passenger seat of his Maserati. He moved to close the door for her, too, but she swats his hand away and tells him that she isn't an invalid.

They end up pulling up to the nearest Sonic location, and he gallantly treats her to a milkshake ("My fault for running into you, you know!") and they laugh and steal each other's fries. She makes him try a jalapeno popper and he nearly spits it out. By the time they leave, some of her drink has splashed down the top of her dress, but she still looks beautiful.

She lives in one of the apartment buildings close to Chandrila U. He drives extra slowly coming up to it, not wanting this night to end — she's enthusiastically describing her last engineering project to him, waving her arms around moving both of them to stitches. He hasn't laughed this hard in ages.

They're silent as they approach her building.

"Do you want some help—"

"Yeah, that would be great," she flashes him a sheepish smile.

He tucks her under his arm again, a feeling he's grown incredibly, unfortunately used to in the past couple of hours. She shivers slightly in her dress, and he shifts to slide off his suit jacket and put it on her shoulders as they walk up the steps and to the front of her ground-floor room.

"Thanks for tonight," she says, unlocking the door with a grin. "I had . . . a lot of fun."

"Yeah," he swallows. "Um, would you want to . . . hang out, again? I really had a great time tonight."

He hasn't dated since college, and she's way too young for him, and she's a smiling representation of everything he can never, ever have. And she's putting her hand out and asking for his phone.

He hands it over and watches as she puts in her number and name — Rey Johnson, with a wrench emoji. He chuckles as she hands it back.

"So, text me?"

"Yeah, I will. Goodnight, Rey."

She winks at him and closes the door, and he stands there, smiling stupidly for the longest time, before turning around and walking back to his car and bringing up Poe's contact on his phone.

"Hey, how long do you wait after someone gives you their number to text them?"