Cut To The Feeling (Reader x Professor Ren / Kylo Ren)

Bigger Things To Worry About

In all senses of the word, Kylo Ren was lucky. He was a very lucky man who got anything he wanted essentially when he wanted. He never had to worry about anything, because at the end of the day, it would be done or his. He never had to learn how to be a great communicator, because the people in his family didn't do the whole communicating thing. Sure, there was love there, but it remained largely unspoken. His family was a dynasty, and they were to operate as such. 

In those days, he wasn't Kylo. He was Ben. Dissociating from himself in all aspects was something he picked from his family's unique way of dealing with real issues. 

This learned silent means of expressing his feelings naturally bled into his relationships with other people. He could vividly remember the first time one of his friends confided a huge secret to him with tears in his eyes. It was his friend Izzy. They were ten years old, and Izzy had his heartbroken by his girlfriend-of-the-week Sarah. Ben sat by Izzy on the top of the monkey bars as he cried, and he really felt for him. For God's sake, he had been left dumped and heartbroken by Sarah just a couple of weeks before, so he definitely empathized with Izzy. But he didn't know how to tell Izzy that he got it. All he could do was sit there on the playground and stare at his hurt friend, offering him a quiet, "it'll be okay, dude."

That's what he knew. When he was even younger than that, and the family's dog Artoo passed away, Ben was devastated. He had looked to his dad for comfort, and the most that Han Solo was capable of giving him was a quick pat on the shoulder and a, "it'll be okay, son. We have much bigger things to worry about than Artoo." When he was being bullied at school for his comically large ears and nose by Feivel Friedman, he told his mom. His mom sat him down because she had a rare moment to talk with her son and told him verbatim, "fuck 'em. It doesn't matter what Feivel Friedman thinks of you. You have much bigger things to worry about." 

That always seemed to be it. It always seemed that Ben was supposed to have bigger things to worry about. Come to find out, that bigger thing his family always talked about was the studio. The movie studio that he was supposed to run one day when his uncle Luke was too old to do it anymore. His whole family's--mom, dad, uncle--life revolved around that goddamn studio. Everything they thought, said, or did was something for the studio and the betterment of it. It was their life. Ben never really got it. All of the free time he had when he wasn't in school was spent at the studio. He'd watch his mom and dad work for hours on scripts, rarely speaking to each other about anything other than whatever project they were on. He would sit on a desk and watch his family struggle to speak to each other about anything other than the movie they had coming up. It was all he knew. 

When a moment would arise where Ben would try to have a discussion about his feelings with his family, they would bait him back with elaborate gifts. 

"That's awful, honey. Do you want to go to France this weekend?"

"I'm so sorry, my sweet son. Do you want to go buy anything you want from FAO Schwarz?"

"That's too bad. Let's go on the yacht this weekend." 

That was where his luck came into play. Wasn't he so lucky that he had a family with the means to keep his emotions at bay with such elaborate displays? Right? 

As Ben got older, he had a better understanding of the weight that his family held on their shoulders. He got it. He knew that his family was important and the entire world of entertainment looked up to his family name to save the world with art. But just because he got it, didn't mean that he liked it. By the time he was a teenager, he had stopped his pondering on why his family never really spoke to each other, and he rolled with it. He took advantage of his family's inability to talk through hard feelings. He stopped coming to the studio as much, opting to go out with friends and get into trouble. The girls at his Jewish day school took a special interest in him when he turned fifteen, finally growing into his ears and other strong features, so his arm was never vacant of a pretty girl after that--in a situation to choose who he wanted when he wanted.