Star Wars - becksolo - be still, my indelible friend

“Beg all you want,” the man spoke, “this isn’t going to work.”The man reached his hand out towards Beebee again as if he was going to pet him, and when his hand should have met with cat belly, it instead seemed to keep going. His hand went through Beebee entirely. It was then that Rey noticed the man didn’t appear to be entirely there; if she focused, she could see through him, to what was behind him.She found her feet moving towards him almost of their own volition, simultaneously excited and terrified to actually be able to make direct contact with the ghost. “You.”

1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> hi there! more than this actually being a first chapter, this is more of a preview. i'm posting this mostly just to get it out there and gauge if it's something people would be interested in reading?? a lot of this brief "chapter" is subject to change as i work on this more. i haven't written any reylo before so here's a fun new adventure

“You’re sure about this?” The words bounced off of the walls in the mostly empty room, causing a little bit of an echo.

“Yes, Finn, for the fiftieth time, I am completely sure,” Rey answered, a little laugh escaping her and, again, making an echo.

Once there was furniture filling the space, and maybe curtains on the walls, the echo would become less of an issue, but for now it, admittedly, made the space feel a little bit intimidating. Not that she was going to be scared out of this now. She had come too far to back down now because her new townhouse in a good neighborhood with nice hardwood floors was _temporarily_ a little bit creepy.

Finn opened his mouth to speak, but Rey shook her head, moving over to him and shaking her head. “It’s fine, I promise,” she told him, giving him a smile to try to help reassure him. “You’re only going to be fifteen minutes away.”

The thing was this: Finn and Rey had lived together for years. It felt like forever, though Rey keenly remembered the days before he had entered her life; she was fairly certain that she could neatly separate her life into ‘Before Finn’ and ‘After Finn’ in terms of how incredibly lonely she had felt and how her outlook on life had shifted because of him. Finn had grown up in the foster system and fate had eventually caused their paths to cross and they had been inseparable since.

But, as life tended to go, things couldn’t last like that forever. About a year and a half ago, Finn had met Poe. And Poe was wonderful, and everything that Rey could’ve ever asked for in a boyfriend for her best friend. It had come as new real surprise when, as they started getting renewal reminders from their apartment complex, that Finn broached the subject of him _not_ renewing so that he could instead move in with Poe. Despite his promise to not leave her high and dry and to help find her a new roommate, she had declined, and chose not to renew either.

“That’s fifteen long minutes. By car. You don’t own a car,” Finn pointed out.

“We would’ve been farther apart if I had stayed in our old apartment,” she said. “And this place is _way_ nicer. You don’t have to worry about someone breaking in and murdering me in my sleep.” She flashed him a quick grin before she settled herself on the floor, prying open the cardboard box which held the air mattress that would be her bed for the time being – her old twin bed had done its job, but now that she had a new place, it felt like time to upgrade.

The only problem being, of course, that moving into a new place (a nicer, bigger place, with no roommate no less) was expensive, and coincidentally, new queen-sized beds were also expensive.

“Okay, yes, true. But I’m still allowed to worry about you,” he protested as he helped her pull the air mattress out of the box and unroll it across the floor.

“You are,” she said, leaning over to lightly peck his cheek affectionately. “And I appreciate that. But we’re still close, we’re still going to see each other all the time, and there’s public transport just a block away from my front door.”

They’d had this conversation before. Change was hard, and though Rey knew that he wasn’t having second thoughts about moving in with Poe, she couldn’t blame him for being a little bit concerned about no longer having her just down the hall.

“I know, I know,” he said. “I just… I don’t know. This place still kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Rey groaned. “Not that again.”

“ _Yes_ , that again,” he said. “You’re still going to tell me that you don’t feel anything weird here?”

In order to prevent him from going on, she quickly grabbed the cord for the air mattress and plugged it in, turning on the pump and filling the room with sound to drown out anything further that Finn might try to say.

Rey had gotten a really good deal on this townhouse – an unbelievable deal, really. Rey hadn’t had any intention of buying a home, until she had accidentally come across the listing online. It had been sitting vacant for a bit, and the feedback that the realtor had gotten from showings could apparently only be charitably described as “discouraging.” The place was cold, despite the thermostat being set to an appropriate seventy-one degrees Fahrenheit (a measurement Rey was still getting used to), and Finn had sworn that there was a creepy aura to it.

A few Google searches had turned up nothing bad happening in the townhouse, and after getting the chance to talk to a couple of the neighbors, none of whom had known nearly anything about the previous occupant or where they had gone (plus, no mention of any police or rescue activity, suggesting that at least there wasn’t some sort of brutal murder), Rey had decided to move forward. The price was too good to say no to, and she was in a position where she could get a decent loan, and it was so nice. If something terrible had happened here, she was none the wiser.

Fortunately, once the air mattress was filled, Finn seemed to be willing to move on from the subject. He’d tried to talk her out of buying the house a couple of times because of the bad feeling it had given her, but had failed at every turn, so she supposed he knew when to quit by now.

They worked in tandem getting the sheets and a couple of pillows arranged on the air mattress, and once it was done Rey flopped down onto it, splaying herself out like a starfish, grinning up at Finn. “Ah, home sweet air bed,” she said.

Rolling his eyes, he nudged the air mattress, watching as it wobbled a little bit underneath her. “Last chance, you can still come back and stay with Poe and I until you at least get a real bed in here.”

Rey shook her head, waving off Finn’s offer dismissively. “No, no. You two have already had to put up with me for too long. You haven’t gotten the chance to properly… christen the bedroom,” she said. It had turned out that buying a property took way longer than Rey had anticipated, and when the lease at their old apartment had run out, she’d gone to stay at Poe’s apartment until her closing.

“You do realize that Poe’s lived there forever, and we have definitely already _christened_ his bed?”