Chapter Text
(art by @miranhasart)
If anyone ever asked how it all started, Ben would swear it was an accident. He hadn’t meant for it to go this far. Had no idea that a series of small, silly little mishaps would have led him to this moment. To her.
Besides, was it really his fault that he was always so clumsy whenever he was nervous or… or… or excited?
He still couldn’t explain how he’d stumbled across the hidden files at First Order Industries, but after years of dealing with Snoke and his nasty, underhanded behavior, Ben knew he’d finally had enough. What the fuck had he gotten himself into?
Filling out the whistleblower complaint and handing everything over made him nauseous, but after what he’d seen… cooperating with the authorities to bring the company down was the right to do.
It’d been a messy, complicated affair as he’d provided proof of his former mentor’s illegal activities, and though he escaped with relatively few consequences, it had all but ensured that his life in Coruscant was over. No one wanted to work with one of Snoke’s top finance officers.
Not after the nightly news broke the scandal, talking about all the embezzlement and fraud Snoke had tried to get away with. And then they discovered the “accident” Snoke had tried to cover up…
No. His time there was over.
Before he’d found those files, Ben thought he’d finally gotten his life to where he wanted. Maybe he was a bit lonely - hadn’t found the right person to settle down with - but he’d found success in the business world. Everything – well, almost everything – he’d wanted was within reach.
God. What the hell was he supposed to do with his life now?
The trial was drawing to a close, and he felt directionless, unsure how to move on with his life now that everything he’d worked so hard for had fallen apart. He’d dedicated years to Snoke, working late into the evening night after night - skipping vacations and ignoring his time off – to climb up in the business world. And now it was all gone.
Fucking hell. He was such a fool.
Ben was left pondering his next steps as he stood outside the courtroom door - no longer necessary now that the lawyers were preparing their closing arguments - when he saw a very familiar person walking towards him.
Was that…
No. It couldn’t be.
“Hey, Kid.”
“D… dad?”
He hadn’t spoken to his dad in years. Not even at Grandpa Bail’s funeral a few years before. The falling out he’d had with his parents after he decided to move to Coruscant and start working for Snoke had been too ugly to even consider contacting them.
“Come on, Kid. You did good. It’s time to go home now,” Han said, slinging an arm around Ben’s shoulders as he guided his son out of the courthouse.
Ben nodded, confused why his dad would want him to return after all this time, but with all the stress from the trial, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take some time to figure things out.
A little break might be nice.
Chandrila felt worlds away from the noisy crowds and towering skyline of Coruscant. Looking at the scenery as it passed, the small coastal town was nearly the same as when he left over a decade before, with only a few shops and a small shopping center added.
In some ways, it was comforting to see all the familiar sights. There was Mr. and Mrs. Ersos’ house, and the Kenobis were just two houses down the street. And he was pretty sure he saw his Uncle Chewie’s truck parked outside Maz’s house.
But it wasn’t until they pulled into the driveway that Ben realized how awkward going home would be. Or how fresh some of the wounds still were after all this time as his mom greeted him at the door, pulling him into a tight hug before lightly berating him for not contacting her sooner. She’d missed her boy.
“You should have called us,” Leia said, giving him a watery smile as she hugged him again. “We’ve been worried sick about you.”
Ben just ducked his head, avoiding her questions as he awkwardly stood in the doorway. He didn’t want to risk getting into old arguments. Not now.
“Here,” Leia said, guiding him to his old bedroom after all the tears and questions finally stopped. “Things haven’t changed much since you left.”
Ben glanced around, running a hand through his hair as a wave of nostalgia hit him. It’d been a little over a decade since he last slept here, but the room was still full of his stuff.
The posters from his emo phase, the shelves bursting with comics and whatever he found at the second-hand bookstore downtown, and even the drawings from the time he thought he might pursue art were still all there.
“You… you still have the ring,” Leia said, surprise in her voice.
“Of course,” Ben said, glancing at his mother in confusion as he fiddled with the signet ring on his pinky. “I promised Grandpa that I’d take care of it.”
It might not have been the height of fashion, but Ben hadn’t gone anywhere without the ring since Grandpa Bail had passed the family heirloom on to him as a graduation present. He’d been one of the only adults to understand Ben, going out of his way to spend time with him every time he came to town for a visit. Ben was devastated when he’d received the call from the nursing home a few years ago, but in a way, it was comforting knowing that he still had a piece of his grandfather with him.
“Oh, well, I guess I'll leave you to unpack,” Leia said, reaching over to give him another quick hug. “Dinner will be at seven.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“It’s good to have you home again, Ben,” Leia said, giving him a watery smile before slipping out to the hallway. And then Ben was left to confront the bittersweet memories that tinged everything in his childhood bedroom.
It was all still here. Even the old calligraphy set he’d angrily tossed in the bottom of his dresser when he was seventeen.
God. He hadn’t thought about that old hobby in ages.
Maybe it wasn’t the most typical of hobbies for a child to have, but Ben could still remember his fascination with the way Grandpa Bail always wrote his letters and the handcrafted birthday cards he’d given Ben. And his grandfather had noticed, too, taking Ben on a little trip to the special stationary store two towns over for his eighth birthday.
He’d helped him pick out his own kit, outfitted with all types of pens and expensive paper. And when his parents had arrived home late that night, apologizing for missing Ben’s birthday, they’d found him sitting at the kitchen table with Grandpa Bail, tongue sticking out as he concentrated on following his grandfather’s gentle instruction.
He’d been too busy practicing the loops and swirls of the pen to even notice that they’d missed yet another milestone.
“Look at that, Benji,” Grandpa Bail exclaimed, praising him as he examined his latest attempt. “You’ll be better than me in no time.”
Ben glowed under the praise, unused to anyone noticing him. They’d spent the rest of the night working on holding the pen properly and how to take care of his kit. And the foolish child that he’d been back then, Ben thought that if he worked hard enough at this and impressed his mother, she might spend more time with him.
Countless hours had been spent up in his room, pouring over calligraphy guides and videos and even calling Grandpa Bail for help as he practiced over and over again. It paid off. Sort of.
By the time he was twelve, he was skilled enough that his mother’s assistant asked Ben to create a few pieces for a last-minute event that Leia was hosting for some political friends. Even now, he could still remember how excited he’d been when all the swoops and gentle curves of the lettering had turned out perfectly.
The crushing disappointment was almost suffocating as he waited for hours at the fringes of the party, hoping his mother might say something to him. But she never noticed, and Ben eventually snuck off to bed with a few stray tears trailing down his face, trying to ignore how much it hurt.
He’d eventually learned that there wasn’t much he could do to get his parents’ attention, but at least Grandpa Bail had always been there for him. Until he no longer couldn’t.
But despite all the hurt he’d experienced, a faint smile appeared as Ben knelt down to pick up all the pieces scattered in the bottom drawer before carrying the set over to the small desk in the corner. There was a slight ache in his chest as his hands traced over the wooden box, memories of all the times he sat at this very desk rushing in.
The scrap paper with his first few fleeting attempts was there, tucked behind the specialty paper he’d spent his allowance on, and the basic pens Grandpa Bail had started him with were right next to Ben’s favorite fancy quill and nib set. It even held the remnants of the special paper he’d used the last time his mother’s assistant needed his help. It was all there.
Fuck. It’d been years since he thought about any of this. He knew coming home was going to be difficult, but Ben wasn’t prepared for the mess of bittersweet memories that kept popping up. And more than anything, he wished Grandpa Bail were still here.
The next few weeks were full of stilted conversations and tense moments as his parents tried not to upset the delicate truce that had formed while they worked on rebuilding a relationship with him.
It was weird. Ben wasn’t used to how his mom would start randomly crying when he entered the room. And his dad had never been the touchy-feeling sort, but he kept giving him gruff hugs and pats on the back.
Having parents who actually cared about him – ones who paid attention as he tried to pull the pieces of his life together – was unexpected. He couldn’t remember either of them ever going out of their way to spend time with him, too consumed with their own projects to Ben the attention he’d craved, but now they were disrupting their decades-old routines just so they could have family dinner together each night.
His younger self would have done almost anything to have more than a few minutes with his mom each night before she inevitably got sucked back into her work. Or for his dad to go out of his way to talk to him before he went to watch the game with Uncle Lando and Uncle Chewie.
His absence must have hit them harder than he expected. He would have thought they would have just continued going about their lives like nothing had changed.
It stung far more than he wanted to admit, realizing that while they’d been estranged, his parents had decided they missed him, acting as if they took their eyes off him too long, he might disappear again. Where had these parents been when he was growing up?
Ben could hardly move about the house without his mom preparing to swoop in and get whatever he needed. He'd been shocked that first morning when he stepped into the kitchen to scrounge up some breakfast, and his mom had appeared from nowhere, offering to make him three different types of eggs, even though everyone knew Leia hated cooking.
And his dad was no better. Han had gone so far as to switch his hours at the garage so they could have an awkward breakfast together twice a week at the diner downtown, and he kept trying to pull Ben into the lounge every night after dinner so they could talk while watching whatever game was on.
The whole thing was cloying and awkward. Ben didn’t know how much more of their hovering he could take before he lost his temper and ruined the tentative relationship they’d started building. They meant well, he knew that, but really, it was growing increasingly uncomfortable with how clingy both of them were.
Was he supposed to be grateful that they finally wanted to be involved in his life? It was years too late for that.
After three weeks at home as he reevaluated his life, the lack of a set schedule was getting to Ben. The brief respite had been nice, but he was used to waking up before sunrise, so he had enough time for the gym before spending all day in the office. And then he’d eventually crash into his bed – or occasionally on the couch in his office – before starting the cycle all over again.
Maybe it was time that he started looking for another job. Or at least a hobby to take him out of the house. He hadn’t been in a hurry to look for anything when he first came home. His condo in Coruscant was under contract to sell, and once he tucked the profits away in a tidy little investment account, Ben would technically have enough money not to work. At least not for another few years.
But he had to find something to occupy his time. There were only so many hours he could spend aimlessly walking along the beach or up in his room, pouring through the shelves as he revisited once-treasured books.
It didn’t help that Chandrila wasn’t that big of a town. It drew a decent amount of tourism during the summer and early fall, but once the beaches were closed for the season and the leaves had all fallen, there wasn’t much to do until the weather warmed back up.
“Why don’t you stop by the Resistance Gym?” Han suggested, grabbing the plates off the table after dinner. The gym had opened the year before in a small shopping center a few miles away, and Ben had to pass the obnoxiously bright orange and blue building every time he stopped by his dad’s garage.
“I don’t know,” Ben hesitated. A gym membership felt permanent somehow - like he was planning to stay here long-term.
“You remember Rose, right?”
Ben nodded as he followed his dad into the kitchen. Rose had been at the garage when he stopped by to pick up his Uncle Chewie for lunch that first week back in Chandrila. She was a little intense and didn’t take any shit from his dad, but Rose had been surprisingly kind to him.
“Her roommate works there as a trainer. Nice girl. She’s always coming by to get some work done on her Bronco,” Han said, pausing as he opened the dishwasher to start loading it. “Anyways, you might enjoy it. I seem to recall you spending a few summers lifting weights.”
Oh. Yeah. That.
Ben had spent a lot of time in high school working out, but it wasn’t because he liked it - at least not at first. He’d been awkward in school, shy and gangly, and he didn’t know how to talk to anyone. And Voe and Hennix had mercilessly teased Ben for being a clumsy oaf. It’d sucked.
But instead of telling anyone about the bullying - it wasn’t like most of the adults in his life would have even cared - he’d just quietly started lifting weights and going for long runs. It hadn’t helped with his clumsiness, but at least it quieted some of the nastier comments.
Grandpa Bail had noticed the changes, though - he noticed everything - and the next time he visited, Ben found a brand-new pair of running sneakers on his bed.
And despite the rough beginnings, it’d become a regular part of his life over the years. The routine was almost comforting. He knew what to expect. A weight machine couldn’t disappoint him the same way people did.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to check out the gym downtown. His dad had offered to pay for a membership; if nothing else, it’d give Ben something to do.
When he stepped inside, Ben immediately realized the Resistance Gym looked nothing like the gyms he’d frequented back in Coruscant. Everything was so bright and warm – splashes of colors everywhere – with none of the chrome plating and drab gray he was used to.
And despite it being mid-morning on a Tuesday, there were still a dozen people scattered around the large room using the machines, and a few more were laughing as they spilled out of a room off to the side, having just finished some sort of class.
Feeling awkward and suddenly unsure of what to do, Ben walked over to the small desk near the entrance, hoping to find someone to help him. But the bored-looking employee sitting there as she continued to scroll through her phone, not even bothering to look up at him, didn’t bode much promise.
“Excuse me,” Ben said, clearing his throat after a minute had passed.
“What?” the girl snapped, clearly irritated as she popped her gum.
“Umm, is there someone I can talk to about using the gym? I… I’m new in town.”
The girl gave a heavy sigh, almost rolling her eyes as she popped her gum again. She didn’t even glance at him as she reached to pull out a small stack of papers from a filing cabinet next to the desk.
“Here,” she said, shoving the forms at him before going back to her phone. “Read these and then sign at the bottom.”
Had he done something wrong…
A bubble of anxiety formed in his stomach as he flipped through the membership contract with all the information about policies, fees, liability waivers, and everything else. Nothing seemed too amiss, even if he was a little worried everyone else here might be as cold as the front desk employee, so Ben quickly filled it out and handed over his dad’s card, hoping he wasn’t making a huge mistake.
Ben was three miles into a run on the treadmill when he saw her.
Oh. She was… Oh.
He did a double take as she walked near the row of ellipticals, stopping momentarily to speak with an older woman who had just finished.
His eyes were drawn to the unusual three-bun hairstyle she wore, then to how her fitted gray sports bra and leggings hugged every curve before he noticed the warm smile that graced her face. God. She was just so pretty.
Ben kept taking surreptitious glances out of the corner of his eye as she talked, feeling all warm inside when he saw how her face lit up as she laughed and gave the older woman a hug. There was just something about her.
Something wonderful and warm and bright.
Fuck. He had to stop looking at her. It was ridiculous. He was behaving just like one of the gym bros all those videos warned about.
Don’t be a creep. Eyes forward.
He tried. He really did. But when she finished her conversation and started walking behind the treadmills, Ben couldn’t help himself as he turned his head to get a better look at her.
It was a mistake.
A massive, horrendous, colossal mistake.
He only managed a few strides when his feet stumbled, the treadmill continuing to move at a brisk pace as he lost his footing. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
His stomach lurched as he tried to steady himself, reaching for one of the bars to regain his balance, but it was too late. Everything was moving too fast, and when his foot wobbled again, Ben realized he had fucked up.
And the next thing he knew, he was lying on the floor a few feet away from the still-running treadmill as he stared up at the ceiling.
“Shit.”
Everything ached from the hard impact. He didn’t even try to move, wishing the ground would just swallow him up. He wanted to disappear. Pretend it never happened even though the whole gym was probably laughing at him by now.
God. He was such an embarrassment. Who fell off the treadmill like that?