I'd love me some more awkward Ben! What about Ben as an author (pen name Kylo Ren) + finding out the girl he has been crushing on likes his book.
listen okay ben solo is my awkward son who’s very bad at expressing his feelings and his self esteem isn’t great and i love him, okay. (also rey knows what she wants and, fuck, if she isn’t going to get it.) (in both senses of get it.) (okay i’m done.)
the first time he meets rey is at his mother’s chanukah party. she isn’t jewish, at least, not that she’s aware of, and she certainly wasn’t raised that way, and ben can tell she’s a little uncomfortable because she doesn’t want to do the wrong thing, but she’s very pretty and very funny and very nice. he doesn’t think about her much, though. or at least that’s what he tells himself.
but of course, his mother keeps hosting parties and events (new year’s, purim, the passover seder) and he keeps running into her– even outside of his mother’s sphere of influence. they have mutual friends and they live in the same general area of the city, so it makes sense. it makes sense that he sees her at his favorite coffee shop, restaurant, bodega around the corner.
what doesn’t make sense is the way he starts to feel every time he sees her smile, with the dimples, and when she talks, with her accent, and his stomach warms and flutters.
and eventually, he has to admit it to himself: he, ben solo, successful author, aged thirty, has a fucking crush. on a twenty-one-year-old girl.
he’s never been good at talking to her, but there seems to be an inverse relationship between his awareness of feelings for her and ability to talk to her. which is also great, thanks for asking.
thankfully, rey doesn’t seem to hate him, which is really about all he can ask for. she still says hi whenever she sees him and smiles her stupid sunshine smile that definitely doesn’t make ben’s chest feel warm.
“oh, hey!” she says one day at the laundromat. he has a washer and dryer in his apartment, so he’s not really sure what he’s doing there. (definitely not hoping to run into rey, because that would probably be creepy and weird.) “how are you, ben?”
“good,” he says, clearing his throat and hoping he isn’t blushing too obviously. “how... uh, how are you?”
“i’m great! actually, i’m right in the middle of this amazing book. have you heard of kylo ren?”
oh, there is no chance in hell he isn’t redder than the open sign of the laundromat. “uh, you-- you could say that.”
“well, finn bought me his newest book because finn is an angel.” and, he reminds himself, her brother for all intents and purposes, and poe’s boyfriend, anyway. (and maybe rose’s boyfriend too; he’s not about to ask how that works.) “i think he’s my favorite author, honestly,” she tells him, still smiling even as she’s switching her clothes from the washer to the dryer.
“um,” he clears his throat. “um...”
“but you work in the publishing business, right?” which was not strictly true, but he preferred anonymity. very few people knew kylo ren’s real name.
ben does his best not to betray how pleased he is that she’s remembered anything about him, even if it’s not strictly true. “yeah.”
“you-- you could say that.” and between the way she’s looking at him and her intelligence and his inability to lie, especially to her, he knows his secret’s going to be out anyway, so he says, “actually, can you keep a secret?”
her eyes are sparkling and soft when she looks at him, and they dry his mouth. “for you, ben? of course,” she says, and oh holy shit, his heart is beating faster than it ever has before, he’d swear it.
“kylo ren is, um, my pen name, actually.”
“really?” rey says, and she looks interested, and amused, but not very surprised. she shrugs in response to his questioning look. “i don’t know, i kind of wondered. there were a few things your mom said, or you did, but really, he just... sounds like you.”
oh. okay. that’s fine. it’s fine, shut up!
rey is standing very close to him, he realizes suddenly. or maybe he’s standing very close to her. he’s not really sure. it doesn’t matter so much when she rises on her tiptoes and presses her lips to his cheek. then she pauses, and she presses her lips to his lips.
holy shit, she’s kissing him.
holy shit, he needs to kiss her back.
it’s soft and sweet and chaste, so it isn’t long before rey pulls back and says, “you want to get coffee sometime?”
“like right now?” ben blurts, and he curses his mouth for betraying his eagerness.
but rey dimples, and his chest is all warm and his stomach is fluttery again, and she says, “right now is perfect.”