10 Things I Hate About You (Reylo AU)

Chapter 1

The sounds of the repair shop woke Rey from her nap in the break room as someone revved an engine, the sputtering and roaring shaking the metal walls. A page from her mechanical engineering textbook was stuck to her cheek from dried drool. She brushed the hair that escaped from her buns off her forehead, gulping down the remainder of her now cold coffee, and got to her feet.

"Sleeping on the job again?" Han Solo scoffed at her in a gruff voice.

"I'm sorry. I was trying to study for my exam next week during my break," Rey said, straitening out her tank top.

"I know, kid. Chewie saw you. I'm just giving you a hard time," Han said, the slightest hint of a smirk forming on his lips. Han Solo was always on his own time table and impatient and liked things done in his shop a certain way, but it was small moments like these that she could see him as a father. Whether he had children or not, she didn't know. He never mentioned any and the opportunity to ask had never presented itself since she started working here in the fall.

"Oh," was all Rey could think of to say as she wiped her sweaty hands on her capri pants.

"Well, don't just stand there," he said, and this time Rey smiled. She could tell the older man liked her, maybe even saw a part of himself in her, but she still wanted to be worthy of his faith in her, doing everything she could to follow his orders and get her tasks done in a timely manner.

She had always been a hard worker, today obviously not being the best example of that however. Her teachers had overloaded her and her classmates as they prepared for midterms, and she had just taken up extra shifts at the shop. On top of that her roommate, Finn, had just gotten into a relationship and for some unknown reason, she'd agreed to allowing the girl to study at their apartment every afternoon and evening because the girl's parents breathed down her neck at home. The main issue though, was that they stayed up late talking and watching TV which she could hear no matter how many times she asked them to keep it down. The fact was, they weren't even being that loud, you could just hear everything through the paper thin walls of their dorm building, and Rey was a light sleeper, which she hated.

She returned to the minivan she was putting a new stereo in, realizing she was missing the wire harness adapter. Scooting out of the passenger seat, she made her way to the shed out the back of the large garage where spare parts were half hazardly sorted on a table where Chewie was usually going through boxes of parts he had salvaged from the junk yard Han also owned next door.

She found what she was looking for on a shelf next to a large object under a black, plastic tarp in the middle of the shed. Rey placed her adapter on the table before looking around, never having been left in here alone before. Seeing the coast was clear, she yanked the front part of the tarp back to reveal the nose of a small, white plane. She pushed the tarp out of the way enough to see the cockpit, the words Millennium Falcon painted across the side. Looking both directions, Rey climbed into the cockpit, running a hand over the yoke, noticing golden dice hanging from a chain. She reached her hand up to examine them when a deep voice cleared its throat. She jerked her hand back, her head whipping toward the doorway.

"Have you ever heard the saying, 'don't touch things that don't belong to you'?" An extremely tall guy with long, dark hair, in a black, long sleeve shirt and combat boots stood a few feet away with his arms crossed.

"Uh, I'm sorry. I was just curious what was under here," she apologized, sliding out and shutting the pilot's door. She realized her head barely met the middle of his chest, his eyes boring into her's questioningly.

"Typically when things are under tarps, it's so people don't mess with what's underneath."

"Sorry," Rey said again, feeling the blush of embarrassment creeping its way up her neck and across her cheeks. She watched the guy cover the plane back up. He only seemed to be a few years older than her. She couldn't remember seeing him in any of her freshmen classes, assuming he must be in graduate school. "It's a really nice plane," she said, hoping that maybe if she made conversation it would lessen his anger. It was moments like these Rey wished she had better social skills.