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The night of the Battle of Exegol, Rey fell asleep between Finn and Poe. Her skin was freshly damp from a shower Finn helped her take (Poe offered, but his arm was still in a sling, so when it had been his turn, Rey had helped wash him, and then they both helped with Finn), her face pink and blotchy from tears – tears for Leia, for the parents she’d been told all her life by Plutt had abandoned her for drinking money but had instead risked their lives to protect her but had unwillingly condemned her to a life of misery on Jakku waiting for people who would never return, tears for herself and the life she’d had ripped away both metaphorically and literally, and most confusingly, tears for Ben Solo, and whatever it was she’d once hoped they could build together.
(She still wasn’t sure, months later. She’d felt a pull to him, through the Force, of course, but beyond that, she’d seen a soul that had mirrored her own, and Rey had been convinced that she would be enough to turn him to the Light. It had been a dual effort in the end, though, what with Leia's last breath spent trying to persuade her son one last time — not just to bring him home but to try and save Rey as well.)
When she woke up the next morning, she was still tucked in between the warmth and solidness of their bodies. Finn was more muscular than Poe from years of regimented training in the First Order, but Poe was lean and strong in a way not dissimilar to Rey, but he had more softness on him than she did. She liked laying in between them, even if the combined heat of their bodies was teetering on uncomfortable, it felt…it felt right and Rey quite suddenly found herself dreading the moment they woke and they’d leave, already feeling bereft by an absence not yet committed.
She pressed closer to Finn, not wanting to put any weight on Poe’s injured arm, closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the unfamiliar ache that was now spearing through her chest, and trying very hard not to think about how desperately she wanted every morning to be like this.
In the weeks following Exegol, things were different on Ajan Kloss. It was busier for one thing, some of the aide they’d received in the Battle having followed the Resistance home to celebrate or reunite in the case of old friends (Rey had been introduced to a man named Kazuda, who Poe claimed had been his protege once upon a time, as well as a human-Twi’lek hybrid named Jacen, whose flirtations with Poe had made Rey’s stomach twist), and Finn and Poe were busier as well, with their duties as Generals, which meant that Rey saw them less, which was fine.
It was perfectly fine that they had things to do, and it was fine that Rey didn’t know what she was meant to do now that she’d fulfilled the purpose she’d had throughout the war: she’d stopped Kylo Ren, and then she’d stopped the Emperor, and now —
Now, there was plenty that she wanted to do; she had been talking quite seriously with Leia’s Force Ghost recently, weighing the decision to take on the Skywalker name, since she’d chosen Leia and Luke and Han as her family long ago and it was them who’d seen her for who she was and could be beyond her bloodline (something that Ren had not been able to), and she still had the parts for her own lightsaber in her workshop, waiting to be forged together once she located a kyber crystal that resonated with her.
She also wanted to rebuild the Jedi Order, but that dream felt distant and blurry, nothing more than a murky shape that Rey didn’t know how to fill out yet. There was Finn, of course, he was Force Sensitive – that was what he’d been trying to tell her, since he and Poe returned with Palpatine’s message; Leia had known, apparently, but Finn had kept it to himself, not yet ready for all that it entailed, more focused on his duties as a soldier to the Resistance than the Force (“I felt something,” Finn explained one night, when Rey asked why he’d spent their adventure trying to find the time to tell her. “Leia did too, it felt like something was about to happen to you, so I thought - I don’t know. I thought we were running out of time, and I wanted you to know.”)
She longed for the routine Poe and Finn had fallen into, no matter how grueling it was, it was better than her wandering the base feeling unmoored, haunted by ghosts only she could see, that had little to offer when it came to advice on what she was meant to be doing with her life.
“That is something only you can decide Rey,” Leia told her one evening, as Rey sprawled out on the grass, staring up at a break in between the canopy of trees above her, where she could see the sky. The first time she’d done this after returning from Exegol, she worried all she would see was her friends falling, that she’d feel that same sense of powerlessness, but the sky was different on Ajan Kloss, and the constellations were too.
“What if I get it wrong?” Rey asked, turning her head towards Leia. The woman was sitting down beside her, back leaned against a tree. “I’ve almost Fallen before, and I don’t -” she swallowed, trying again - “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“No one does,” Leia began, surprisingly gentle. “Luke…did very little to train you, and I did my best to continue where he left off, but much like how I taught Poe, there’s a limit to how much I can prepare you for. You have to be willing to make that leap, Rey. You have to trust yourself again.”
Rey had opened her mouth to reply that she was trying , but a rustling in the underbrush caught her attention instead. In her peripheral vision, she saw Leia’s face soften as Poe stepped into the clearing, curls plastered to his forehead from sweat, and plates of food in his hands, “You hungry?”
Pushing herself up on her elbows, Rey nodded. “Is it dinner time already?”
“Nah, but it’s close enough to be supper,” Poe explained, moving closer to her. Leia smiled sadly up at him, before the image of her slowly dissolved just before Poe took the same spot that Leia had previously been sitting. It felt like a horrible kind of irony to Rey, that the one person who deserved to see Leia again the most, couldn’t: Luke had suggested it was a possibility that Poe might be able to, someday, due to the way the Force moved strangely around him, but he couldn’t yet.
He handed Rey her plate, before digging into his own, their elbows bumping ever so often as they ate. In between bites, Rey asked, “Where’s Finn?”
“Finishing up some paperwork, then he was going to go see Rose – I think it’s date night,” Poe said conspiratorially, before taking a sip from the thermos he’d also brought with him. “It’s been a while since they got some time to themselves.”
Rey thought the last time had been right before they’d left for Pasaana, but that hadn’t been long enough to constitute anything beyond a quick goodbye. They’d been together since Crait, settling comfortably into a relationship that was so rooted in friendship that it made Rey’s heart ache every time she saw them together. If she let herself think about it, she wanted something like that , soft and real and healthy and leagues different from whatever alm ost thing she’d been with Ben.
But then she’d see them kiss, or hear them joke to themselves about the things they did in the privacy of their own quarters, and Rey didn’t think she wanted that either. Her first kiss had likely been her last, although Rey hoped maybe someday that would change, so at least she’d have the memory of a different mouth to think about.
When she didn’t respond, Poe didn’t push the subject further or raise another, letting them eat the rest of their dinner in silence, until Rey coaxed him into talking about his day, because she could sense the way his responsibilities were weighing on him; he’d been running the Resistance with Leia before she died, but now it was solely on him and Finn, and that meant Poe had to carry responsibility different once again.
Eventually, he said, “It’s weird being called General all the time.”
Rey slurped up the last of her noodles, before asking, “Because you’re used to being a commander?”
“Well - yeah, I guess there’s that, but I don’t really care about rank anyway,” he paused, before clarifying, “although I guess I am pretty attached to being Commander Dameron, but no. I mean - I hear Beaumont or Rose telling people to talk to the General, and I half expect to see Leia standing there waiting for them with advice, but she’s not. It’s just me, or Finn.”
He looked back down at his plate, troubled expression on his face. “It’s just - the General was Leia. I don’t think it’s ever gonna fit me right, even if I’m -” Poe exhaled long and heavily - “even if I’m doing my best to do what she would do.”
Rey frowned, mulling over his words and thinking of what Leia had to say earlier. “Maybe your best isn’t trying to do what Leia would. Maybe it’s doing what Poe would. Besides, you don’t have to be General forever.”
“What, you think I’m gonna try shooting for admiral after this?”
“No, I mean -” Rey hesitated, then plowed ahead - “What Leia left you, you could…you could do that, instead.”
Poe’s throat bobbed, and he ducked his head at the reminder. “There is that. I don’t know, sunshine, Prince Dameron doesn’t sound any better than General Dameron does to me.”
Rey’s heart felt like it was glowing with warmth, her insides gone embarrassingly mushy and soft over his nickname for her. It was a slightly different sort of feeling than the one she kept having around Finn, and that confused her even more if she thought too long about the twisting, tangled up feelings she harbored for both of them that she was trying to ignore. “It might be like Rey Skywalker,” she said eventually, causing Poe to look up at her in surprise. It was the first she’d mentioned to anyone living her plans to take the name, “It may just take a while to grow into.”
Poe studied her face for a long moment, before nodding slowly. “I think it suits you, but between you and me, I don’t see myself as royalty.”
Across the clearing, the air shimmered in that tell-tale sign that a Force Ghost was about to form, and Rey didn’t wait for Leia to appear to tell Poe, “I think Leia probably did, otherwise she wouldn’t have left you as Heir to House Organa.”
“Say it a little louder,” Poe joked, knocking shoulders with her. “Suralinda hears I’m a prince, and I’m never going to know peace again.”
But he was smiling, with that boyish expression on his handsome face that no one got to see very often at all anymore, and Rey counted it as a victory, because it meant that Poe wasn’t worried about anything else, and it was all her doing.
She quickly averted her gaze, as the realization settled heavily in her gut once again that she wanted to be the person to do that all the time, that she wanted Poe to keep seeking her out, wanted someone that she could be close with, almost as close as Finn and Rose were, but not quite either.
Whatever that meant, Rey hadn’t the foggiest.
They were living on the Falcon almost full-time now.
Life Day had come and went, and it had been nice, especially knowing that even now – with the war so far behind them – that Finn and Poe wanted Rey in their lives, wanted to celebrate holidays with her, or playfully argue over the validity of holiday sweaters (Finn had given up trying to get in the middle of that argument, having given into Poe long ago and wearing a sweater of his own), or fall asleep leaned against each other at the dejarik table like she had Finn.
But sometimes it was harder to remember that they wanted her in their lives, no matter how intertwined their lives had become: she could feel Finn in the Force, they could share thoughts with each other now, and Poe was always a willing sound board for Rey’s attempts to cobble together places that might have old Jedi ruins she could scavenge from, if there was anything left worth finding; they lived in the same space, sometimes falling asleep together, and they were often the first people she spoke to every morning.
They’d also become the first people Rey wanted to talk to, her feelings for them both growing deeper and deeper with every passing day, and she only became more and more confused. Finn felt sturdy, safe , the security she’d never had growing up; he grounded her in a way no one could, gently reasoned with her when she needed it. When Rey was afraid, she wanted Finn by her side – he was her best friend, her family, and she’d protect him as fiercely as he would her, and there was something extremely powerful in knowing that he’d protect her, protect her with his own life.
Poe was safe in a way that was much different than Finn; he pushed Rey when she got too in her head about things by cutting through the doubts that plagued her to a standstill. He had an uncanny ability, also, to tell her exactly whatever it was that she needed to hear, when she needed to hear it, and she felt comfortable enough to playfully banter with him until Rey felt a flutter of nerves in her belly, but never one of fear, because she knew that if Poe ever left, he’d come back (the same as Finn).
But still, some days a lifetime of believing she’d been abandoned by a family that she was told thought her worthless, drowned out the reasonable thoughts in Rey’s head, and she’d feel like resorting to her habits before Exegol, when Poe had grown so concerned with her isolation he’d begun leaving BB-8 behind to keep an eye on her when he and Finn were away on missions.
Now that the war was over, and their lives were truly beginning, where did Rey fit in? Finn wanted to track down more information on all the children that had been taken by the First Order – himself and Jannah included – and continue rallying together troops that had deserted, and Rose seemed to plan to go with him. Poe was still busy trying to put the galaxy back together, and Zorii was visiting with enough frequency that Rey wondered whether or not they were rekindling whatever it was they’d lost when they were teenagers.
Rey didn’t have anyone, and she didn’t think she wanted anyone, not like Rose wanted Finn, or the way that Ḱare had Snap – but she knew that she wanted Finn and Poe, she just didn’t know how , but beyond that, they were her only friends (her family ), and she was worried that it was only a matter of time before they went their separate ways.
It was a fear she’d mostly kept to herself, until three months after Exegol, on the eve before the morning that Finn and Rose were meant to depart with Lando and Jannah on a (perfectly safe) mission to recover some intelligence from a now abandoned and useless First Order base, and Rey let slip that it felt as if the Force was pulling them all in different directions.
Finn paused where he had been checking the duffle bag he’d already packed the night before, turning to look at Rey over his shoulder, a curiously soft and almost worried expression on his face. It reminded Rey too much of the looks he’d given her on Ochi’s ship, when she thought she’d been responsible for Chewie’s death. “I don’t think so,” Finn began slowly, turning to face her fully, measuring his words carefully. “The Force – it brought me to you, to Poe, and it brought us together for a reason. I don’t think that reason was just to fight a war, I think we’re meant to be together.”
Rey felt her shoulders drop, tension she didn’t know she’d been holding dissolving at once. “How are we meant to be together when we’re in different parts of the galaxy?”
“We were together on Exegol,” Finn reminded her. “Poe in the sky, me on the destroyers, you with Palpatine. Rey, we don’t have to be together physically for us to stay with each other, or do things together.” He paused, growing even more gentle than before, and crossed the room to pull Rey into a hug that she sunk into immediately. “And no matter how far I go, or Poe goes, or you go, we’ll always come back to one another. Because that’s home , alright? We’re not going to leave you.”
Rey tucked her face into Finn’s neck, breathed him in. “Promise?”
“I promise. Besides, who else is going to teach me how to do those Jedi mind tricks?”
And, just as she suspected Finn meant for, Rey laughed, and held him tighter, clinging to his words in an effort to soothe the constant, reverberating belief that she’d be left alone again.
While Finn was away aboard the Falcon, Rey and Poe tried to stay busy.
It was easier for Poe, Rey knew, when he had an endless chore list of things he had to do, and Rey had resolved herself to continue her training; they weren’t at war anymore, but she wanted to stay active, and nothing cleared her mind quite like running the training course did.
And if she threw herself into it more relentlessly than she had since the end of the war, in an effort to distract herself from how much she missed Finn, how much she enjoyed having Poe around, and the growing mass of Feelings that was jammed into her head like tangled up, faulty wires – well, at least she was being productive in her avoidance.
In the evenings, she and Poe always ate dinner together in his office, which was not the same room on the Tantive IV that Leia had hers, and Rey was not about to begrudge Poe in his decision not to take it, eager for some semblance of peace and quiet. Sometimes they would talk about ships, or Poe would share anecdotes from when Black Squadron was active, or they’d discuss what the future of the galaxy might look like now.
After a particularly grueling run through the training course, five days into Finn’s absence, there was nothing Rey was looking forward to more than her dinner with Poe; she liked being around him, liked how special he made her feel because it never seemed rooted in the fact that she was a Jedi, just that she was Rey. And it was fun to bicker with him, now that they didn’t have anything real to argue about.
They ate at about the same time every evening, so it was a surprise to Rey when she arrived at his office to discover the door wasn’t open already for her to enter. Frowning, she lifted her hand to knock, when the pneumatic door hissed open and revealed Zorii on the other side. Even through the filter of her helmet, Rey recognized the genuine fondness in Zorii’s voice when she spoke, “I think your date’s here, Dameron. Good to see you again, Rey.”
Her voice was ringing with amusement as she slipped past Rey, and Rey’s eyebrows pushed together in confusion – date? She wasn’t dating Poe, unless she’d missed something in the past few weeks, and Rey didn’t think she had, but that train of thought led to an unexpected pleasant flip in her belly, because that also didn’t sound…terrible?
“Ignore her,” Poe said, cutting across Rey’s thoughts as he came into view. His cheeks were darker than they normally were, and Rey abruptly remembered that dating involved things like kissing, and she remembered the clamminess of Ben’s skin under her palms, the coldness of his lips moving against hers, and Rey’s mood darkened for reasons that had nothing to do with Poe Dameron or Zorii Bliss. “She thinks she’s funny.”
“She can be,” Rey said, defensive about her friend as Poe let her inside. He seemed embarrassed, and that made her stomach curdle slightly (was he embarrassed at the thought of being with her?). “Why was she here?”
“Same thing as always,” Poe answered, putting aside his datapad and gesturing for Rey to take a seat. There was already a spread of food set out, like always. “No one knows the criminal underworld like Zorii does, and with the First Order gone, syndicates are going to be grappling to fill the vacuum of power they left behind. I’m trying to stay on top of it, so we don’t end up living in a galaxy run by the Guavian Death Gang – or worse.”
Rey came up short, literally, of her chair, and blinked. “Zorii’s just been helping the Resistance?”
Poe, already halfway into popping open one of the styrofoam boxes to begin eating, dragged his gaze up to Rey, replying as if it was a trick question, “Yeah? What’d you think she was doing?”
Rey’s cheeks flushed, and she sat down. “I thought the two of you were…you asked to kiss her on Kijimi, I thought maybe…”
Poe’s eyebrows shot up, which was a very amusing addition to the way he had a fork shoved in his mouth. He removed it, swallowing his food. “What, that we were….together?”
“There’s been a lot of people getting together,” Rey said defensively, lowering her eyes back to her food. A lot of couples had formed in the past few months, now that the stress of the war was over with. She’s been doing her best not to feel…bereft or broken for it. “As often as Zorii visited, I thought maybe you were together.”
Instead of answering straight away, Poe poked at his noodles for a long moment before replying, “I mean - I asked again after Exegol, and she turned me down. Which is probably a good thing – we were seventeen when we were together and a lot of…lotta bad stuff happened, last time we saw each other.”
Bad luck, Rey remembered. She felt like Poe was downplaying something far worse than bad luck.
“And - yeah, we’re both different from who we were then,” Poe continued, mouth twisting up into a brief smile before falling again, “but we’re still the same in all the ways that matter. Zorii’s more comfortable in the trenches of the underworld, and she’s not the kind to settle down.” Poe gestured around his office, “According to her, I’m a goody-two-shoes, the underworld’s not where I wanna be, and I do want to settle eventually, after some more adventures.”
Rey tried picturing Poe settling anywhere, and found it difficult. “What would you do, when you settle?”
Poe shrugged. “I don’t know yet, that’s a long time away. I just know if I jump into any kind of relationship in the near future, it’ll be one I’m sure about. Where I settle and what I do after doesn’t matter as much to me as who I get to spend that time with.”
Her mind snagged on that, as Poe resumed eating his dinner: any kind of relationship. What other kinds were there, than the one that Rose and Finn had? Or D’Acy and Wrobie had?
But Rey’s heart felt dangerously close to beating out of her chest, so she only hummed and focused her attention on her food as well, because she didn’t think she was ready to know the answer yet.
The more that Rey thought about the future, the more anxious she felt.
It made her think of all those nights on Jakku, nothing but the howling wind to keep her company, and the sound of the AT-AT settling in the sands; the more people sorted themselves away into pairs, the more Rey began to wonder if perhaps she’d wind up alone again. She really didn’t want to be alone and she didn't think she wanted to be with anyone in that way either – but then she’d watch Finn and Rose, the gentle way they interacted, the way Rose’s face would go love-soft when Finn brushed some hair out of her face, and Rey wondered .
She tried imagining anyone being that physically affectionate with her, but the thought made her nauseous unless she imagined it being Finn or Poe; but with Finn, she knew it was nothing like what he had with Rose because she didn’t want to kiss him the way Rose did. With Poe, it felt closer but again…
It was frustrating, not knowing, so one evening while Poe and Finn were busy in meetings with a Senator from an inner-rim planet, Rey asked Rose, “What’s it like being in love?”
Rose nearly dropped her datapad in her surprise, and gave Rey a discerning look for a moment before glancing away thoughtfully. “I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it. It’s not something you can really put into words, I don’t think.”
Rey tried not to look crestfallen. What use was research when no one seemed able to describe the thing she was trying to understand?
Clearly, she failed, because Rose’s features softened with sympathy. “It’s - you know when we were on Pacara, and the mornings were so cold but if you found a patch of sunlight to stand in, it wasn’t terrible?” When Rey nodded, Rose continued, “It’s a bit like that. It feels - it’s everything. It feels safe but it makes you a little bit afraid too, because it’s so wonderful you don’t want to lose it.”
That didn’t sound terribly different from what Rey felt for Finn and Poe. “But you want to kiss Finn.”
That startled a slight laugh out of Rose, but it didn’t feel like she was laughing at Rey , which was a relief. “I do, I do want to kiss Finn. It’s fun,” Rose agreed, sitting aside her datapad. She looked back up at Rey, studying her like she was trying to suss out what Rey was getting at. “Is this about you and Poe?”
Rey’s heart leapt to her throat. “Excuse me?”
Rose held her hands up, “I’ve just noticed the two of you’ve been spending more time together since Exegol, and you both always have been…” she trailed off, clearly unwilling to commit to whatever it was that she wanted to say.
But it felt like the first scrap of something real Rey had to work with, so she jumped on it like it was the first meal she’d had in weeks. “We’ve both always been what ?”
Rose exhaled and sat up, moving around her desk to put her datapad away in one of the drawers. “I don’t want to say more than friends because that’s frankly an archaic statement to make,” she said, “but there’s always been something different about the two of you, with the way you bicker.”
“Different?” From what , Rey was desperate to know.
“Yeah, like – I don’t know. I’ve seen Poe be friends with people in the Resistance, he was close to Paige before…but the way he acts with you isn’t how I’ve seen him before,” Rose said, giving a shrug. “And frankly the only time I’ve seen you be so close with someone like that is Finn.”
Which was exactly the heart of Rey’s dilemma, but she didn’t really want to bring up her confusing feelings towards Finn to his partner. Instead she said, “Poe wants to settle down.”
Rose’s eyebrows rose high. “With you?”
Alarmed, Rey backtracked and shook her head. “No, no he just - I asked him about Zorii and he said that he wanted to settle down someday, into some kind of relationship.” Rey paused, heart thudding loudly against her ribs, then asked what had been plaguing her for weeks, “What other kinds of relationships are there besides what you and Finn have?”
Understanding flared through Rose’s Force-Signature, colouring it a soft shade of gold. “There’s a lot of different kinds of relationships you can have with people,” Rose began slowly, motioning for Rey to sit.
She did so, looking up at Rose with rapt interest, and listened for the next half hour as Rose explained to the best of her ability all the different kinds of relationships people had; only one sort stuck out to Rey, though, something settling behind her breastbone because it sounded so eminently like what it was she’d been wanting with Finn and with Poe.
If only the thought of telling them didn’t make her want to flee to Tatooine again, this time alone, and possibly permanently.
"Finn?"
"Yeah?"
"Have you ever heard of the term queerplatonic?"
They were aboard the Falcon , tucked up in the crew's quarters, Finn on the bottom bunk and Rey on the top. There had been a distress call from one of the core worlds, about a First Order occupation that hadn't been beaten yet — the three of them answered quickly, piling up aboard the legendary starship to provide aid, alongside an escort of a handful of carefully selected pilots.
But it was a long trip from Ajan Kloss, and Poe ordered them to get some shut eye, just in case.
Finn was quiet for a long beat, making Rey wonder if she'd been caught. But then he finally answered, and she nearly sighed with relief. "Mm…oh, yeah, I guess I have. It's what Beaumont and Kaydel are, I think, right? How come?"
"Just curious," definitely not wondering if perhaps you happen to be interested in those, and I'm too afraid to ask. "Do you know anyone else who is?"
"I mean, I dunno. Poe, maybe? I'm sure there's probably more folks in the Resistance who are, I mean - it sounds nice, you know? I don't know why they wouldn't be."
Rey's heart staggered, hope bursting inside her the way some of the flowers on Ajan Kloss that closed their petals in the evenings snapped back open at dawn. Poe was queerplatonic? And Finn thought it sounded nice….
She was still a stranger to getting things she truly, desperately, wanted, and despite her tendency to be forthright about those things, this felt like a precious secret, one that Rey didn't want to share yet because it would mean cracking open her heart in a way she hadn't, ever.
And the last time she'd even tried…
"Rey?"
"Yeah?"
There was a heavy pause, like Finn was gathering his courage to say something. "What do you know about queerplatonic relationships?"
She swallowed hard. "I know they're very committed, like - like romantic ones tend to be, and that the dynamic between people looks a lot different from other friendships. What about you?"
"That's pretty much all I know too," Finn admitted, the bunk beneath Rey creaking as he shifted around. "Rose talks about Beaumont and Kaydel's…sometimes I wonder if she doesn't want to - y'know. Be in it with them.”
Rey blinked. Stared up at the ceiling. "You can do that if you're in a romantic relationship?"
"Yeah - well, I mean. I'm guessing, if everyone was game for it. I would be, if that's what Rose wanted," Finn said, the tone of his voice giving Rey the impression that he was shrugging. "And I bet it'd go both ways, if I ever found myself in that position."
His words washed over Rey like the first time she'd truly, on purpose, reached out for the Force, all that time ago on Starkiller, and a calm like she'd never known swept over her as she defied Kylo Ren and overpowered him.
She felt that same sense of serenity, belonging , and purpose now, enough so that Rey opened her mouth to confide in Finn everything she'd been struggling with these past few months —
But then the door snapped open with a pneumatic hiss, revealing Poe on the other side. "T-minus twenty, we're gonna be making the drop from hyperspace soon."
Finn groaned, but stood up, and Rey followed, hopping down from the top bunk, willing her racing heart to go back down to a normal rate.
Then Poe gave her a warm smile as she passed him, and her heart did that kind of funny thing it had a habit of doing around him, and Rey gave up on feeling calm around either of them until all of this settled.
One perk of the war finally slowing down now that the galaxy had stood up in opposition to the First Order forces, was that Rey, Finn and Poe now had more time to just be. Or, at least more time than they’d had while the only thing standing between the First Order and total control of all systems had been the Resistance.
Currently, they were all cocooned in Poe’s quarters aboard the Tantive IV, curled up in the veritable nest that Poe called a bed, while BB-8 projected one of Poe’s favorite holovids for them all to watch – the third installment in the Rapid and the Wrathful series, which Poe had declared had unfairly gotten a bad rap when it first came out (“It’s easily my favorite,” he’d said around a mouthful of bang-corn, before passing the bucket of the salty and buttery snack over to Finn, “I don’t get why people get such a stick up their ass about it.”)
And while Rey wasn’t the biggest Rapid and the Wrathful fan, she had to admit that Poe was right in his estimate that it was a good movie, but even if she’d disagreed with him, she wouldn’t have cared because she was currently in the middle of his bed, crammed between him and Finn, and it was so pleasant that her heart kept bursting every time her awareness slipped away from the movie and back to the reality she was currently home to.
By the time the movie tapered off to the credits, the three of them were more or less dozing against each other, the late hours of the night catching up with them, and the softness of Poe’s blankets, and the gentle warmth of their bodies luring them closer and closer to sleep – all except Poe, who was easily the most awake, and who mumbled, “Wanna do this every night.”
It took Rey a moment to pull herself away from the comforting tug of sleep (sometimes, it didn’t feel comforting at all, sometimes she panicked when she started to fall asleep, because it’d take her right back to that moment on Exegol, after she defeated Palpatine, and her heart had stopped beating), but when she did, she twisted her head to stare up at Poe, barely daring to believe that she heard him properly. “Hm?”
Poe shifted slightly – he had been sitting with his back pressed against his headboard, but now he sank lower onto the bed, so that he was stretched out fully and facing Rey, his eyes slipping shut. She tried to ignore how long his eyelashes were and failed. Like Finn, Poe was beautiful, and sometimes her heart did a curious little twist every time she remembered just how much she liked his face – but she knew she liked it in a different way than most people did, judging from the fact that she wasn’t plagued with a desire to know how soft his mouth was or whether or not what that face would look like between her thighs.
(People didn’t notice her sometimes, before talking. Rey wished they would.)
Rey’s nose wrinkled at the thought. She’d considered kissing Poe a couple of times, but it was more out of a sense of safety and curiosity than any true pull. If she were to ever kiss someone again, to find out what it could truly be like, she’d be fine with it being with him, so long as nothing else was expected of her following the kiss.
Other kisses were fine, though. She liked kissing Finn’s forehead, or the times when Poe kissed her cheek. But for the most part, Rey thought that her one mouth kiss had been enough, thankyouverymuch.
“This,” Poe said, lifting his hand up and drifting it lazily through the air, bringing Rey’s focus back on the here and now. “The three of us together, watching vids and falling asleep together. It’d be nice if we could do it every night.”
Rey’s heart staggered in her chest. She hadn’t misheard him.
“It would be nice,” Finn mused on the other side of her. Rey hadn’t even realized he was still awake. He shifted too, snaking one arm around her waist, and when Poe’s hand reached out to cover Finn’s over Rey, her vision blurred slightly. “I mean, we led a Resistance together, why not a life?”
“Exactly,” Poe replied, shifting slightly on his pillow, still not releasing Finn. “We could find some place big enough for the four of us and the droids, have some adventures…it’d be good.”
“The four of us?” Rey breathed, feeling dizzy with hope.
“Yeah, we gotta take Rose with us,” Poe said, still oblivious to the spiral he and Finn had unintentionally sent Rey on. “She’s a package deal with Finn, and I got a promise to Paige to keep. I’m not leaving Rose behind.”
Finn hummed. “It’d have to be a big place. She’s partners with Kaydel and Beaumont now, too.”
Poe lifted his head, propping himself up on one elbow, looking indignant. “They finally asked her to join ‘em and they didn’t tell me?”
Finn laughed, rich and loud, and it warmed Rey’s insides with nearly unbearable fondness. “You’ve been a little busy, General. I don’t think they thought it mattered as much as all the diplomatic stuff you’ve been dealing with.”
Poe dropped back down onto the pillows with a huff of annoyance. “First off, this stuff is the most important, it’s what we were fighting for. Secondly, the fact that I’ve been up to my ears in diplomatic banthashit is exactly why they should’ve told me.” He muttered some more under his breath, about knowing Kaydel since she was nineteen, and how as an unofficial member of Black Squadron, you’d think he would’ve ranked higher on the list of people to know about important updates in her life, but Rey didn’t pay much attention to it, because all she could think about was that Poe and Finn wanted the same thing she did.
Her stomach suddenly twisted into a knot, thinking about where their desires may differentiate. She wanted to be theirs , wanted people to know that Rey belonged with them, that she was theirs, and that they were hers . Her boys, her partners – sometimes she tried rolling around the word ‘boyfriend’ around in her mind, for either of them, because apparently some partnerships went with that term, but it felt so wrong, and Rey didn’t think she much liked the idea of being a girlfriend either.
She wanted them to stake a claim on her, and she wanted to do the very same for them – so if anyone came for them, or tried to steal their hearts, they’d know that they were first and foremost Rey’s. It teetered on that hazy concept of attachment, she knew, that was forbidden for Jedi, and it wasn’t as if she wanted to control either of them, if they didn’t want her, she’d let them go, but she just…
She wanted to be with them so badly that it hurt . It was a physical ache in her chest, painful enough that she’d shed tears over it before, in the privacy of her bunk, late at night, because wanting things had never gone well for Rey before, and neither had any form of love, until the Resistance.
Would Finn and Poe want her to be theirs? To call her theirs, to live with her, and hold her and maybe call her some of those terms of endearments she liked hearing some of the couples on base call each other, that she sometimes wished someone would call her?
She swallowed thickly, a cruel and cold voice rising up from the depths of her: who would want to commit themselves to you like that?
And to that, Rey didn’t have a good answer. Because she didn’t know, she didn’t know why they would want a life with her, when she’d almost Fallen, when her grandfather was who he was, when she didn’t want to share them in the slightest with anyone, when she felt a curl of jealousy anytime someone got too familiar with Poe, that sometimes got strong enough that Rey took it out on her training remotes (there were a lot of broken training remotes in her bunk from where she’d gotten so irrationally angry at the idea of sharing them, she’d wound up slicing through the remotes with her saber, or just crushing them with her staff again).
Rey still felt just as broken and lost and rotten and worthless as she had before Exegol, just – more raw and exposed, too, like when she’d come back to life, the armor she’d worn in her last life hadn’t returned with her. More than ever, she longed for it now, like she sometimes wished she still had her pilot doll and helmet, nostalgic for items that were almost certainly discarded and buried in the Jakku desert, the way her parents were, the way she would’ve been, if it weren’t for Finn and Poe.
The sound of her name, and a gentle touch to her elbow, yanked Rey out of her thoughts. She blinked a couple times, surprised to find her vision full of Finn, although it hadn’t been him to say her name, it had been Poe.
“What’s going on there, sunshine?” Poe asked, sitting up again, as Finn brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. Poe almost sounded nervous as he continued, too casual to be sincerely unbothered, “If you’re sitting there wondering how to break it to us gently that you’ve got other plans, I think a direct approach is usually pretty good.”
Rey shook her head before she could stop herself, still holding Finn’s discerning gaze. She had a feeling that Finn knew exactly where her head had been, and abruptly Rey felt like a fool, thinking that she could’ve kept her feelings from him, that he wouldn’t have felt what she’d been feeling for the two of them all these months.
She worked some spit into her dry mouth, and forced herself to answer Poe, “No, it isn’t that. I-I never thought the two of you would want that too.”
The sheets rustled as Poe scooted closer to her, pulling his legs up underneath him. He didn’t speak, and neither did Finn, and Rey realized they were giving her the space to talk, all without pressuring her to. In that moment, she knew with utter certainty that she loved them, that she was in love with them, even if it wasn’t in the way most people normally fell in love.
“I’ve been wanting that for a long time. I can’t imagine my future without the two of you, I don’t want to picture it without you, and - and what Kaydel, Beaumont and Rose have, I -” her voice broke, hitching on an uneven breath. It felt like she was exposing a weakness, something someone could exploit, but she knew in Finn and Poe’s hands, it was safe, her heart was safe - “I want that . I want that with you both. I just - I never thought either of you would want it with me , because I didn’t know if you felt the same way, and because the two of you already have plans.”
Finn’s eyebrows furrowed. “What plans?”
Rey frowned. “You’re with Rose? And Poe wants to settle down someday, and you both have duties to the Resistance and the galaxy that you want to pursue. I don’t see where I fit into that.”
Beside her, Poe sighed and scrubbed his face. “Rey…I didn’t mean just in a romantic way, I should’ve - shoulda been more clear with you, but I was -” he huffed a little laugh, dropping his hand limply to his side - “I was nervous . I want to settle down with the two of you. Even if we don’t kiss or have sex, or whatever else we don’t want, I want a life with you, because I love you two dorks, even when you drive me up a wall.”
Finn nodded resolutely. “Me and Rose already know that our partners are a package deal with us. If I want Rose, I get Beaumont and Kaydel.” He smiled softly at Rey, “And if she wants me , she gets Poe and Rey, too. That’s how this works. You’re not gonna get left behind, Rey. Not ever again.”
Embarrassingly, Rey’s sinuses began prickling, and she had to blink rapidly to clear her vision. She didn’t get a chance to respond, because Poe leaned up and kissed the side of her head, “If you want us, sunshine, you’ve got us. You just had to ask.”
Rey’s breath trembled shakily as she admitted wetly, “I do, I do want you. Both of you.”
Finn beamed, and Poe grinned, and then she was getting tackled back into the bed in another threeway hug, and she yelped, taken by surprise, but quickly melted into them, into the warmth and strength of their embrace, and closed her eyes against her gathering tears, pressing her face into Poe’s shoulder and breathing in.
Her whole life, Rey had been homesick for a place she couldn’t remember, a pair of arms that felt more like a figment of her own imagination than a true memory. She’d craved a belonging she didn’t have, and the closest thing to ‘home’ had been her empty, lonely overturned AT-AT.
Entwined with Finn and Poe, in Poe’s quarters, each of them clinging to each other as the Ajan Kloss nightlife’s melodies drifted in through the open window, Rey knew she’d finally found somewhere she could truly call home.
It hadn’t been a place after all, it had been an ex-stormtrooper who had been the first person to ever ask if she was okay and to come back for her, and it had been a starfighter pilot who reminded her that she wasn’t nothing and helped guide her through the turbulence of Luke’s death. But more than just giving her a home — Finn and Poe had taught her what home was supposed to be, what it was meant to feel like.
The thought filled Rey with so much joy and relief that her feet twisted in the blankets, and she closed her eyes, giving Finn’s hand a little squeeze as she pressed her face into Poe’s spine. Curled up between them, falling asleep wasn’t scary, not when she knew that when she woke up, they’d be here for her, waiting for her in the sunlight – knowing that this, the three of them, was forever.