Chapter Text
I wish I could just chug you
He is pulled from a deep dreamless lumber from a soft sound next to him.
Did he leave his fan on? It’s only when he rolls over to his side, that he feels something.
A weird feeling creeps upon him. Like his body has no clue what is next to him but somehow his brain knows it.
It’s a weird feeling, a warmth filling him. He slowly turns around to see Rey sleeping peacefully next to him.
For a second he thinks Rey might be in his room, but when his mind fully wakes up the familiar feeling washes over him, it’s the force that connects them.
For a few seconds he just looks at her. Mapping the freckles on her face, syncing his breaths with hers. But that peace is disturbed when Rey begins stirring.
He is in her room, maybe he can play it off like 'Ben' being there is all a dream.
It’s only when he ruffles his hand through his hair -an automatic stress response- that he realises he never took his disguise off last night, he was too tired.
And now he is fucked, because there is no way to explain that Matt would be able to form a dyad connection with Rey.
She will have some serious questions if Matt is suddenly force connected to her, questions he cannot and is not prepared to answer.
So the moment he sees her eyes slowly open, he realises he needs to think of a game plan, quickly.
Regretfully enough, the best he can come up with in such a short time frame is rolling under her bed.
Meaning he also chugs himself on the ground in his own room, his frame hitting the concrete floor quite hard.
While Rey stirs awake, Ben tries his utter best to temp down anything force related emotional projections he is making.
He can feel the bed move and sees Rey planting her feet on the ground.
She walks around, picking up some stuff, moving forth and back throughout her room, all while Ben tries to do every single meditation he ever learned to not make his presence known.
Sometimes she stops mid-walk or movement, he knows she is looking around, it’s almost like she can feel something going on.
Ben’s main focus remains to concentrate and stop thinking all together.
Easier said than done, he has to forcefully close his eyes when he sees her pyjamas drop to the floor, he leaves out a small shocked gasp before trying to shut off his mind completely.
Rey makes a small sound, she’s frozen to the spot, she feels something.
All the while he tries to stop his mind from screaming ‘REY IS NAKED NOW’, or, ‘Remember later today she will be technically naked under her clothes, you Ben can now only think of naked Rey’.
When he hears the faucet in the little bathroom turn on after Rey murmured “toothpaste, where is the damn thing” he sees his window to leave, he could slip out now, just a sprint to the d–
The sound of a knock on the door ruins his plans.
“I’m coming,” Rey yells with a mouth full of toothpaste.
Ben can hear her spit out the foam and rinsing with some water before she opens the door to the voice of a cheery Poe.
“Good Morning Rey I–”
The moment Poe opens the door a few little creatures walk through the door.
PORGS!
He has had the displeasure of meeting them before, and for some reason those little pesky creatures hate him.
They keep bugging him, biting him with their weak teeth and just being a nuisance.
The problem now is, for some mysterious reason one of the annoying creatures sees him.
Like, actually sees him.
The little feathery bitch squints its eyes at him.
Do they have Force sensitive Porgs as well?
That’s just going to be great.
The little creature runs over to him -making one straight beeline to the place he is hiding under Rey’s bed- making a screeching sound that halts the conversation between Rey and Poe.
The Porg runs under the bed, leaping at him. Ben in turn moves back, his head hitting the night stand, a lamp falls over with a hard thud.
“Kriff! Jumbo, you little rascal, are you okay?” Rey quickly moves towards the little shit.
Ben can see her feet moving towards the bed, he can see her getting on her knees, her hands on the floor, and then she is moving to look under the bed.
He is screwed, he closes his eyes firmly, ready for whatever is about to come and then…
Silence.
There is just a faint buzzing in the background. He opens his eyes and she isn’t there, he can spot his own bag next to the bed.
He’s back, alone in his own room. And he can only pray that the force faded just before Rey had the chance to look at him.
He gets ready for the day, his hands slightly trembling because of what happened that morning, and his back and arm stinging from the fall of the bed.
He sits alone at breakfast, talking to no one as he eats in silence.
The moment he is done he cleans his stuff and tries to leave as unnoticed as possible.
During breakfast he noticed people around him laughing, joking around, forming friendships, even some players forming a bit more than friendship.
But as alone as he has felt he can’t, not right now.
In his mind he hopes that one day he can stay, form meaningful friendship, form something more than friendship with the freckled three bunned scavenger that has taken up most of the space in his heart, but right now the more people notice him, the more chance it could all go down south.
He just needs to be alo—.
He feels a sharp sting in his leg as he is walking to today’s game territory.
Looking down he sees it, one of those little bastards just but his leg, he is 99% sure it’s the same little bitch that almost betrayed him that morning. ‘Jumbo’ Rey had called him.
Preferably he could just feed them to a Wookie, but since there are none around, he will just chug it off his leg, hoping it flies away and plummets down hard somewhere further down the road.
“I think he likes you,” a soft voice interrupts, “I think little Jumbo over here escaped from the game area.”
“Hi, Rey,” Ben smiles while slowly lowering his leg again. Rey bends down to pick up the horrible creature, it jumps into her hands and she just starts cuddling it.
“You escaped, you little sneaky one.” Her voice is higher pitched than normal and she is looking at the thing in total admiration.
“Yeah,” Ben fake smiles, “probably because he doesn’t want to be thrown for Porg chugging in the game, but well too bad that’s life.”
Rey looks up at him.
“I really like your sense of humour Matt,” she immediately reverts her attention back to that smug little dirt ball, “We would never throw you right, you’re just too cute and so nice. You just wanna play games with big Matt over there right. Come on, go back to the arena, Matt will be around to play with you.”
She releases the animal and Ben swears the flying rat looks up at him, fire in it’s way too big eyes before it scatters away.
“Aren’t they just the best? I love them, my favourite animals.”
“Yeah,” Ben mutters through gritted teeth, “I love those little hyperactive frea– fluff… fluffy… fluffs.”
“Oh that’s great. I feel like a lot of the participants don’t like them very much. But I’m glad one does, so for today Matt you are my favourite. Can’t wait to see how well you work with them.”
“Yeah,” Ben swallows hard, stress starting to form, “you’ll see how much I love them and they love me.”
And with that Rey does a little sprint, leaving Ben with about four minutes to see how he will spend an afternoon not trying to stomp those vermin with wings down with his boots.
“On your mark, get set, go!”
Poe’s voice rings out of the first outdoor arena.
Each contestant has to rotate between three Porg games.
Each game is only explained one minute before the game actually starts.
Right now Ben is standing at a river, where different Porgs are floating.
Each Porg has a numerical value which is unbeknownst and Ben must catch 3 of those meatballs of doom with a little net, to get the highest score possible.
The problem is, while the people next to him are already cheering a good 30 seconds after the start because they got their first creature, the little feathered shits are actively swimming away from him.
He tries, desperately, but the fuckers are boycotting him.
But he can’t lose the game.
One because he wants to impress Rey.
Two, for his own honour, he can’t let those walking Wookie snacks win.
And three because he so desperately wants Rey to think that those feathered squeaky toys like him.
So with only a few seconds left he does the only thing he can think of.
There is a stick in the water right in front of him, he waits a few seconds until three Porgs are lined up and he uses his mind to manipulate the water.
He uses his full concentration to dislodge the stick and bring it towards him.
As the stick moves it takes the feathered mice with it, and right as the whistle blows he can catch 3 of them in his net.
He puts the creatures in their ridiculous miniature seats, waiting for a game volunteer to come and count his scores.
“Well who do we have here?” the older man asks.
“Matt DeRadarte.”
“Okay Matt,” the gentleman smiles as he looks at the wrong birds. “I can’t tell you the scores of others or your placements, as per rules of the game. But Matt, you can count yourself very lucky. You got a 10, a 13 and a 14 so a total score of 37. You definitely have a flying start.”
Ben gives a nod in appreciation as the guy sets free the animals and they all jump happily back in the water.
As Ben is walking to the place of his second game he hears someone jogging behind him.
Before he can turn around to look who it is, a voice cuts in: “You got lucky there, just in the last few seconds.”
Poe is walking next to him, an odd look on his face.
“Yeah… they–”
Before he can even start a sentence Poe cuts in, his tone strange.
“Rey said they loved you so you’ll probably get some good scores. And you were pretty good yesterday, so you might have a shot at all of this.”
“Thank you Poe I–”
“There is something about you Matt.” There is a hardness in his voice, something difficult to decipher, “Where were you from again?”
“Yerevoli, there are quite a few travellers within our people so…”
“Yeah, I probably met a few of you. Anyways,” Poe halts, stretching out his hand, “good luck with the rest of the games see you tonight.”
Ben takes his hand and shakes it.
“See you next time.”
“See you tonight, Matt.”
The way he says Matt, Ben finally deciphered the weird undertone in their conversation. There is some aggression bubbling beneath the surface of all Poe said. And Ben can’t help but feel like his is fucked.
Especially since Poe seems sure he will see Matt tonight.
But there is no time to stand still, so he continues on.
The next game is equally as stupid as the one before. They are put in pairs, and each pair has to find 5 Porgs wearing a little bandana in the right colour.
It’s basically hide and seek and he is paired up with no one less than fucking Hux.
So Ben stays silent, pointing as the round of the Wookie bait.
Armitage tries to talk, but Ben just nods or grunts until the ginger gives up.
They are not the first to round up their Porgs, but they are pretty early.
Silently Ben moves on to the last game, his heart flutters when he sees that she is there.
Rey looks over to him -just to him- and gives him a small wave, and Ben wants to melt into a puddle.
“Now that the last person is here we can start your final game. Everyone of you gets a stack of Porgs, the game is easy, you make as high of a Porg tower as you possibly can. Everybody with me?”
People around him nod, say ‘yes’ with varying degrees of enthusiasm before they are being guided to their stack of swamp birds.
“You can follow me,” Rey smiles as she puts her hand on his arm, her touch feeling warm and comforting.
It’s like all stress is gone and for a moment everything is just good.
“You’re gonna be happy, you have Jumbo in your Porg team and he is an excellent balancer.”
She leaves him at his stack of Porgs and that little fuck named Jumbo actually hisses at him.
It suffices to say that building a tower is an actual disaster.
Most of those Porgs were okay, their stupid little minds seemed content with them being placed wherever.
But Jumbo is a menace.
If he is put on the top, he keeps jumping until somebody falls over, if he is not at the top but below, no way someone can stand on him.
So then Ben put him at the side, he had plenty of other Porgs for the tower, but no Jumbo just ran through the tower.
And Ben isn’t certain but when he isolated Jumbo he swears he could feel a tiny force disturbances every time right before his tower falls again.
“2 minutes to go.”
He has stacked half his Porgs as he feels another disturbance, he quickly grabs Jumbo putting him out of its concentration.
He lifts the thing up, its big eyes looking right at his.
“You’re not going to ruin it for me, this is important, I will— AAAHHH.”
The big eyed gerbil yanked his wig hard before giving it a few soft tugs and letting out a content sound.
Ben moves it away and the animal shrieks loudly.
“What do you want?” Ben sighs. As an answer the creature lifts up a wing and points at his wig and yawns.
It’s too risky, he is only 10% sure the thing wants to nap and 90% sure it wants to yank of his wig.
“I can’t.”
The reply he gets? Jumbo sticks out his tongue before he lays down on his right arm and closes his eyes.
When Ben looks up he sees Rey looking at him, her eyes warm and bright, and she is looking at the ugly thing now eyes closed -but he can feel not asleep- on his arm.
And Ben has to give it to him, Jumbo is smart. 'Cause with Rey watching he has no choice but to let the Porg stay there.
So with one hand and only less than a minute on the timer Ben takes some more Porgs and stacks them.
Everytime he is about to carefully place one he feels a bite in his arm.
When the whistle blows he doesn’t have the highest tower but it isn’t too bad.
And what a wonder! Jumbo jumps awake evilly smiling at Ben.
“You win this round buddy.” He deposits the Porg on the ground and starts walking to Rey.
However Poe cuts in right before him, shooting him a quick glance, making him feel like he is not welcome in this conversation at all.
So Ben goes back, to eat alone, once more.
After lunch he goes back to his quarters, since he had the games before noon he can use his time now to prepare for future games.
And work a bit on his game plan, because it is getting closer and closer until his parents will also be involved. And he doesn’t even know how to hide from them.
After a few hours of brainstorming, right as he is about to leave for dinner there is a knock at his door.
Opening it, he sees Poe standing there.
“Hi, Poe.”
“Matt, can I come in?”
“Oh no, I couldn't, it is a bit of a mess. You can just tell me the score for today.”
Poe’s expression turns stone cold. “I’m not here for your score.”
Ben can feel his anxiety building. “I’m sorry can this wait ‘till later I have to shower.”
He quickly moves to shut the door, but Poe is quicker and uses his body to open it.
“What do you want?” Ben asks, voice small.
“I think you know.”
“I… I really don’t.”
Poe smirks a little, but not in a good way.
“Cut the fucking games, MATT. Or do you prefer to be called Ren or Ben?”