Shoutout to the guest commenter and justyourfriendlyneighbor for suggest I write this—a drabble companion to my (drabble) story "Spark," told from Ben's POV. I'm in a bit of a writing rut lately (especially my fics. wat is sentence? BLAH!) so I'm trying to ease back in with something small and hopefully not terrible. Thanks for the idea and thanks—as always—for reading!

.

Ren is taut, a cable stretched tight.

He's so angry at her, that she'd dare—(each clear refusal on her part to speak, to listen, is a twist of the knife—he offered her the galaxy, he offered her everything).

He's so angry—(the tiny changes on her face are the fuel to the flame, that first fraction of a second when she sees him, the way her eyes pass over him always a moment too long).

He's so angry he opens his mouth and lets stupid spill out. He orders her to look and she doesn't; he orders her to speak and she doesn't. It's maddening and enraging and the Force is torturing him—(he's never giving up on this, never done being aroused by what she does—)

Her elbow catches him in the ribs as he's crossing the room toward the fresher and he steps abruptly back, surprised but exhilarated that she's appeared beside him rather than in front of him like nearly every other time. He's certain she could find a way to ignore him even after this physical contact (their first since—since)—but instead of retreating she stops short, wide-eyed, looking him full in the face.

She's barely clothed, his scavenger, her torso completely exposed save the strip that covers her breasts. He can't stop himself from looking at the rest of her, can't stop himself from drinking in the sight of her small, powerful body. He's so angry, he reminds himself, angry—(but—)

Something passes over her expression. The intensity of her eyes changes, maybe it's the eyebrows—her lips move to close ever-so-slightly and Ren watches them without any pretense, swallowing thickly against the part of him that is ready to pounce.

The problem is he was always going to ask.

The problem is he always needed her to want this, too.

The problem is Ren can take whatever he wants—(but he doesn't want to).

He swears he stops breathing when she moves a fraction closer, into his space rather than out of it—when he feels the heat of her skin. She drops the eye contact, running her cool fingers up the side of his arm, and the next thing he knows he has struck, has pulled her into him, is drinking in the sensations of touching her, the exposed skin of her stomach covered in goosebumps and now pressed against his skin, the hand on his bicep tightening as her other hand goes to his chest and yes, yes, more of this—

He brings his face close to hers, nearly drunk on the way she smells—(but he stops, he waits, he won't just—take—). She brushes a finger, feather-light, along the line of a scar and he's sure she can feel how wildly his heart is beating. And then her eyes close, just so—

He's so angry at her—(but none of that matters—)

She blinks back out of existence before he's registered it fully. His body is still reacting to the way she let him kiss her, the way she kissed back in gentle inexperienced nibbles and tastes, the slide of her skin against his as she rose on tiptoe for better access.

Gradually he uproots himself. Cleans the sweat from his body. Locates his nightclothes and collapses onto the bed. His shoulders drop down to the mattress in an old way as the tension begins to ease.

He's so—

Anger isn't the name of how his heart constricted when she told him no. When she failed to grasp what it was he wanted to give her. When she failed to choose him.

Anger isn't the name of the certainty that she alone—Rey, scavenger, nobody—stands as his equal.

Anger isn't the name of the emptiness of his quarters, the Rey-sized hole she's left when the Force yanked her out of his presence once again.

Anger isn't the name of how his breath hitched as her fingers brushed his arm and his chest, the sensation of lips and arms and hands and that not-so-secret echo across the bond of relief and hunger and finally, finally—

Some part of him knew this would happen, but he's done fighting it. He's done naming it anger. Rey is a spark, and Ren is going up in flames.