Chapter Text
“Oh, and this is where I go for pastries. Han and I love to get those cranberry scones, and they also have delicious croissants. She’s doing our wedding cake you know…” Leia has her hand looped around the crook of Ben’s arm as they walk down the road. “Oh, and there a few of these little galleries tucked away here and there. Many of the townspeople are very much the art nouveau types.”
Ben hums along in affirmation as his mother continues to prattle on about the various places in town. She and Han had moved here the month before to retire. He has a feeling ever since they reconnected last Christmas, Leia made it her mission to bring the family closer together.
It all started when he called off his wedding…
“What do you mean you’re calling off the wedding?” His mother sounds calm. She doesn’t raise her voice, but there’s this indiscernible expression that Ben would translate to ‘Explain, now’.
His dad is there too. He’s standing by the bar cart. He hasn’t poured a drink yet. It looks like he’s thinking very hard about his choice of liquor.
“I just, I realized it’s not right. I don’t love Bazine, and I don’t want to go through with something just because my boss wants me too—”
Leia gapes at him. “What do you mean—are you telling me that you decided to get married for your JOB?”
When Ben doesn’t answer right away, Leia throws both her hands up. “Well, in that case. I’m glad it’s off.”
Han goes for the bourbon. He pours a double.
“You are?” Ben questions. He did not expect that.
Leia sighs. “Well, Bazine was not who I would have pegged as the right choice for you.”
She can’t see it because her husband is standing behind her. But when he turns around, his eyes raise a couple of inches on his forehead at that statement.
A crash is heard down the hall.
Han looks at Ben then. “She does…know…you called it off right?”
A month later, his mother called to say they were moving to a town called Ajan Kloss before Christmas, only a few hours away from London.
The calls became more frequent, and he had less of a reason as to why he couldn’t see them. Leia didn’t push it, but she made sure to visit London at least twice a month, and since Ben didn’t have a job there was no excuse to run and hide.
In the end, it had turned out that most of their estrangement had been due to a very unfortunate misunderstanding.
And ever since his stag night, Ben has been a changed man. It was time to let the past die. It was time to move forward.
The only problem is that in the new present, he wanted to involve someone who he was pretty sure he’d never find again. But there was this part of him that wanted, more than anything, to prove to her that he could do it—that he could live a happier life.
Even if she wasn't in it.
Leia pulls him into Tico’s Flower Shop.
“Mrs. Organa, so nice to see you.” The young woman at the counter smiles.
Leia turns to her as she steps further into the shop. “Paige, I told you to please call me Leia. I just wanted to check in that everything is in order for this weekend.”
“Of course. Rose and I have everything ready.” Just then, a shorter woman pops out from the indoor greenhouse holding a lily arrangement. She resembles Paige significantly. Ben figures they must be related.
“This is my son, Ben. He lives in London but came a few days early to help with the prep.” His mother introduces him by grabbing his arm and pulling him beside her. When he looks down at her, he notices that soft glint in her eye. Like she’s up to something. “He’s the one I was telling you about, just got out of a long-term engagement a few months ago—”
“You only have one son, mom.” He grumbles beside her, but Leia ignores him.
Rose has stopped walking, still holding the flower arrangement in her hands, and has this shit-eating grin on her face as she looks over to her sister.
“Oh, of course,” Paige says politely. Ben is pretty sure she’s blushing. Hell, he’s sure he mirrors her expression, beyond mortified.
His mother would be trying to play match-maker the second he arrived in town.
“Nice to meet you, Ben.” She says with a smile, and now it’s Ben’s turn to blush.
Jesus, he feels like he’s a teenager all over again. “Uh, yeah, nice to meet you too.” He says quietly with a head nod.
“We’ll see you Saturday then,” Leia says kindly, and she almost pulls Ben out of the shop. Once they’re back on the street, she rounds on him. “That was pathetic, Benjamin.”
“I didn’t ask for you to set me up with the woman from the flower shop.” He grounds out. “I mean, come on, that was not subtle.”
“Oh, you come on.” Leia grouses back. “What was wrong with Paige? She’s wonderful and responsible and has a great organizational eye…”
“There was nothing wrong with her, mom.”
“Well, maybe if you would just open your eyes—”
“I don’t want to discuss this with you anymore.” He says in an attempt to end the conversation.
His mother sighs. “I just worry about you. It’s been months now since you called off the wedding, and I had sort of assume that there was a reason for that. But now…”
“I would like for you not to think so much about me or my love life.”
“I’m your mother. I can’t help it. Especially now that we’re finally speaking again…”
Ben sighs, and they continue down the road. His mother wasn’t entirely wrong. There had been someone else.
But it was idiotic to even entertain the idea.
He did go back to the club that following weekend, only to find out that Rey was gone. She’d quit sometime during that week. He had no way of knowing how to find her.
There’s a small part of him that wonders if that decision had anything to do with him…
He stops himself from thinking too hard on it.
Even though he has to keep reminding himself how insanely stupid it is to even be thinking about her. He can’t help it.
He can’t move on.
Even though she did.
Ben Solo has been and is currently, a wallowing piece of shit.
“Ben, are you even listening to me?” Leia stops and turns to face him.
He brushes his hair back, a nervous tick of his, as he lets out a big exhale before turning to his mother. He’s about to apologize because no, he hadn’t been listening when a sign behind her catches his eye.
The sign reads, Niima Metalworks and the description underneath: Obscure Sculpture Art.
An odd sense of Deja-vu floods Ben’s senses because there’s no possible way…
“Can we go in here for just a second?” He asks as he starts walking past the gate and down the path that leads to a barn garage. As he walks, he notices abstract structures litter the front lawn.
“Ben!” His mother calls out to him, but he doesn’t answer. His stomach is suddenly all knotted up because there is no fucking way that—
He pushes the door open, and a bell chimes. The room is large and open, and there are more sculptures placed sporadically around the room. There’s no ceiling, just the high peak of the tin roof overhead. He absently wonders how it’s not scorching hot in here.
The metal sculptures are all abstract and…odd. It reminds Ben of something he’d see at the Tate or maybe the MOMA.
“These are lovely…” He hears his mother behind him. “Whoever the artist is, they’re certainly very talented.”
Ben doesn’t respond. He’s too preoccupied looking for clues, looking for traces of her. He can’t explain it, but even just the air around him makes him trill with the possibility of—
“Hello, sorry about that, my TIG has been acting up and—”
Ben is frozen where he stands. He can’t believe it.
It’s her voice.
His head whirls towards her the second he hears her say, ‘hello’.
The rest of Rey’s words die in her throat when she sees him.
Ben is in such disbelief that it’s actually her. To make matters worse, his mouth says the first stupid thing that comes to his mind.
“You weren’t kidding about the welding.”
Rey opens her mouth to respond, but then she promptly closes it. He watches as her chest expands with the big breath she’s breathing in. When she exhales, the air balloons out at her cheeks first before she releases it.
“Um, how—what are you doing here?” She asks, and her hand comes up to scratch the top of her head.
Rey’s demeanor is such a contrast to when they first met. If Ben hadn't been unequivocally sure it was her, he’d be convinced he was speaking to a completely different person.
“My mom,” Ben doesn’t look when his thumb points back to where his mother is assuredly watching this whole exchange with rapt interest. “She and my dad moved here a few months ago.”
Rey nods in understanding. There’s this look of disbelief on her face like she can’t understand how he is here, even though he just explained it.
Ben is on the verge of asking God if this was his plan all along. That sneaky fucking bastard.
“That’s such a…wow, such a strange…coincidence.” She mutters, and then she crosses her arms.
It’s then that Ben is able to notice more than just her presence. Just like her demeanor, her appearance is contrastingly different as well. She’s wearing an oversized t-shirt with grease stains and jeans that almost look like they could be men’s size. She’s wearing work boots and is holding worn gloves in one hand. She is the literal antithesis of how he remembers her.
That sultry and sexy dancer is nowhere in sight.
It’s so startling that Ben has no idea what to say next, let alone what to do.
Guess that’s why it’s a good thing his mother, who just tried to set him up with her florist, is there to ask the real questions.
“Hello, I’m Leia. I have to say I haven’t been by yet to see your work up close. How…” and then Leia motions between them, and there is this unrestrained curiosity in her eye when she asks, “How do you two know each other?”
Her question jolts both of them back to reality.
“Oh, we met at a bar—” Rey says the same time Ben says—
“It was at a party—”
“Right, that party at that bar…” Rey concedes, extrapolating on his lie. Neither of them explains further.
The silence is palpable.
Leia hums softly before nodding in understanding. “Oh, you met in London?” She asks, and Ben wishes she was not the sort that just loved to pry…
Rey nods good-naturedly. “Yes, yeah, it was a while ago now. A long time ago actually, way back in the end of last year…”
Ben winces and then looks at his mother because he just knows that, somehow, she knows.
Indeed, when he glances at her, Leia’s eyebrows have shot up higher on her brow.
“Oh….?”
“So, how long have you been here?” Ben asks as a way to divert the conversation.
Rey’s eyes dart back to his, and she looks like a deer in headlights. It’s not enough that both of them are scrambling for their sanity after being thrust into each other’s orbits due to an astronomical occurrence such as this.
“Late last year, yeah, I quit my job and decided to do my art full time.” She twists her fingers together as she talks.
Ben almost feels like he’s meeting her for the first time. Except, in this scenario, he already knows some things about her.
There’s also the fact that he knows what her cunt looks like… something he hasn't stopped thinking about since...
“Uh, yeah, actually, I quit my job too. I’m trying to start my own financial planning startup for small businesses. Have been since this past March. I’m still in London though, I didn’t end up venturing out to a town by the sea—”
“Right, I did that.” Rey smiles then and dimples.
“Right…” He trails off, his eyes caught in the brilliance of her smile. A small smile of his own slowly lifts. He can’t understand how his stomach can feel like it’s been free falling for seconds, can’t understand how his heart can beat like it’s thumping up into his throat. “You obviously wouldn’t know this, but I—I actually ended up calling off the wedding.”
Now it's Rey’s turn for her eyebrows to shoot up then and she looks surprised. Her mouth opens before she can think of the words, and maybe she thinks better of them because all she ends up saying is, “Oh?”
“Ah, I have to take this.” Ben whips around to see his mother holding her cell phone in one hand as she motions to it. “I hope this has nothing to do with Friday. You stay here—talk.” She motions to him before she puts the phone to her ear and exits the shop. Ben watches her leave. Curious, because he swears he didn’t hear her phone ring…
He turns back to Rey, and suddenly, now that they are alone, the air in the room feels that much thicker.
“This is so crazy,” Rey whispers, and she’s shaking her head in disbelief. “I—you… how are you here right now?”
Ben swallows the lump in his throat, the same questions buzzing through his head. “I went back to find you—after I called it off, but they said you were gone.”
Rey nods absently. “Yeah, I—I—Jesus, Ben this is going to sound completely mad, but after that night…I just…I took my own bloody advice. Non hypothetically.” She’s laughing to herself, but she wipes a tear from her eye, and Ben unknowingly takes a few steps towards her.
Maybe it is crazy, but Ben’s starting to believe all that mumbo jumbo about soulmates, about the universe…
Ben chokes through a laugh of his own as he looks at her. “It’s not crazy. I took your advice too and…and it was the best fucking thing I ever did.”
Her watery eyes look up into his. She makes a face as she turns her head and rubs her nose into the crook of her elbow. “I—that’s wonderful, really.” And then, “I have no idea why I’m such a mess.” She laughs despite the fact that she looks like she’s seconds away from a nervous breakdown.
Ben takes another step. “I can’t believe I found you.” He says it quietly, barely a decibel above a mumble. There are so many things he wants to say. There were so many times when he thought about what would happen if he ever saw her again. Scenarios he dreamed about until it drove him crazy. But now, that she’s here, he has no idea where to start.
“I wanted to—” He’s cut off by the sound of the bell chiming again.
“So sorry about that, just a few more wedding details I have to sort through…and now on top of it all, a bombshell has just been thrown at us.” His mother’s voice rings through the room.
Rey’s eyes blink over to Leia, who’s standing a few feet from Ben. He watches as a look of confusion washes over her features as if whatever she’s just realized is some of the worst news she’s ever heard.
And he instantly knows what she’s thinking. “My mom’s getting married next weekend.” He spits out. The very idea that she would think it was him—that he could possibly be getting married again—He doesn't want to screw it up, not this time.
If only she knew all he ever fucking thought about was her.
The understanding dawns on her, and she nods slowly. “Congratulations.” She says quietly, as she looks behind Ben to where his mother must be.
“Thank you, you know, Ben’s probably going to be the only young person there. Maybe it would do well for him to bring a plus one…” The suggestive tone is not lost to either of them.
Again, they speak simultaneously.
“Oh, that’s very kind, but…”
“No, Mom I’m sure Rey’s not interested.”
Ben turns towards his mother to see her very pointed raised eyebrow.
“Well, you can think about it, dear.”
“You said there was a bombshell…?” Ben asks because she hadn’t mentioned it, and he would like, more than anything, to deflect his mother’s attention from him and Rey.
Leia sighs as she remembers. “I have to go to the house and sort out the seating arrangements. Turns out Luke is coming after all. Three days before the wedding…” And now it’s his mother’s turn to look a little distressed. “It was great meeting you, Rey.” She says before she heads out of the studio.
Ben turns back to Rey, his heart once again beating wildly in his chest. “I—I should probably go after her. This is actually a pretty big deal. No one has seen my uncle in years…”
Rey just nods. “Right.”
But that can’t be the end of it—not when the girl of his dreams lives in the same town as his parents. It’s almost eerily serendipitous.
“But maybe I can come back… when you’ve closed for the day. Maybe we can talk more?” He stutters out an uneasy laugh out of nervousness. “I mean, there’s so much I want to talk to you about—like…all this.” He motions around the room.
Rey nods again, this time he thinks he can see the tinge of a smile on her lip. “Yeah, that would be great, actually. I usually close shop around 6-7.”
Ben hinges forward in what he thinks is his body’s attempt at a nod. Because he can’t seem to just be a normal person around her, to say normal things to her. “Okay.” He says, and he swallows the air he breathes, and he almost chokes on it.
She smiles assuredly. “You can come back around then, or any time after 7.”
He stops himself from saying anything else idiotic and just nods. Ben takes a few steps back without turning around as if the thought of taking his eyes off of her will make her disappear.
In true cosmic fashion, his shoulder bumps against something sharp and unforgiving. He breathes through the pain as his head snaps to the left, a tall abstract sculpture with triangle-like spikes is inches from his face.
“Fuck.” He hisses, and maybe it’s a stifled laugh he hears behind him, but he’s already too mortified to look back at her to find out.
Ben practically flees from the place with a deep flush on his face and stinging pain in his shoulder.
But his heart is stuttering uncontrollably at the thought of coming back in just a few hours, of seeing her again after all this time. After thinking he'd lost her forever, finding her again feels like fate.