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Poe Dameron was one lucky son of a bitch.
He used to think, when he was young(er) and (more) cocky, that all of his narrow escapes were because he was just that damn good. Then he got caught by the First Order on Jakku, lost his droid, was tortured by a sadist in a mask, met Finn, crashed back on Jakku, lost his second ship in less than a day cycle, narrowly avoided death or capture, found his droid, met Finn again, almost died some more, nearly lost Finn....
Now Poe was sure of one thing: aside from his skills--which, don't mistake, were top-shelf--there was no good reason he'd managed not to die yet and his current run of good luck had started with Finn. A more reflective man might have thought better of treating a human being like a talisman, but Poe was what he was, and he was damned if he was letting Finn out of his sight ever again.
The recovery period from having your back non-fatally hacked up by a lightsaber wasn’t really a known quantity, but everyone thought it was a good sign that Finn was up and about with a cane after about six months, once his burns had healed as much as they were going to. Poe had helped him with his exercises and had been the guy ready to jab clueless thumbs into tight muscles and scar tissue and call it massage until Finn waved him off saying it felt better (BB-8 had also volunteered to roll around on his back in a therapeutic manner, but Finn had passed on that). They went for slow, rambling walks when Poe was on base and Poe sat up with him when the pain in his back kept him up at night, and they talked about nonsense and--all right, all right, fine, Poe was infatuated with him. He’d even found another jacket to replace the one Kylo Ren had hacked in half, just because Finn had looked so good in it, and he’d been so happy and smiling when Poe gave it to him, even though Poe had to help him put it on because he couldn’t move his shoulders properly yet.
Poe wanted to keep him forever and was willing to pretend they weren’t exceedingly likely to die in the war against darkness so as to make this a reality. He thought he should be allowed this one delusion, and so once they were reunited with the Resistance and it became clear Finn wasn’t going to die of his wounds, Poe settled into the happiest two years of his life.
And then those two Jedi showed up.
***
He and Finn were fixing a landspeeder when it happened. First, Finn sat up so suddenly he banged his head on the left rear jet, and Poe winced in sympathy but Finn didn’t even seem to notice he’d just conked himself in the head. He had that same weird, far-off look that Poe had seen on General Organa’s face a few times, like some sixth sense was pinging. Then people started murmuring and they both stood up to see two people in grey robes swaggering into camp like they owned the place and were there for an inspection. A lion-haired old guy with a metal arm, and a familiar young woman who Finn was laser-focused on.
Poe looked between them and then he remembered where he’d seen her before: she’d followed Chewie off the Falcon while he laid out Finn on the medevac speeder, and had sat by his infirmary bed for the entire day until she’d suddenly fucked off and never been seen or heard from again, leaving him to pick up the pieces when Finn woke up. He knew her name, Finn had talked about her a bunch for a while, but he couldn’t remember. It started with an R....
"Rey!" Finn cried, dropping his wrench.
Oh yeah, Rey. Poe watched helplessly as Finn ran to scoop Rey the Jedi up into a hug and then the two of them spun around and almost fell over laughing. He looked down at the greasy rag in his hands.
Just when he’d about decided to go hide behind the speeder and pretend to be tuning it, Finn ran back, dragging Rey behind him by the hand. She seemed to be fine with being pulled around like this. "Dude, have you two met?" he asked, bright-eyed and excited. It felt different than when Poe himself was the focus of that enthusiasm. He looked up at Rey and smiled while he tried to remember any other time in his life he’d felt so much like the third wheel.
"Maybe in passing?" he managed. "Poe Dameron." He extended a hand.
She grasped it and shook once. "Rey. Skywalker."
"Okay!" said Poe, realizing all of a sudden who the old dude with her had been. "So you’re like his daughter then, or?"
She looked startled, like he’d said something terrible. "Apprentice. It’s a Jedi thing, the last name. I didn’t have one."
"Oh," said Poe. "Um. Congratulations?"
Finn looked between them. "So he’s BB-8’s master," he said into the silence.
"Oh, right," said Rey. "That makes sense. You’re the X-Wing pilot."
"I fly all kinds of ships," said Poe. "But yeah, primarily X-Wings, I guess. Finn and I stole a TIE fighter once. When we met. On Jakku."
"Oh yeah, that was before we took the Falcon, I heard about that." Rey glanced over at Finn. "Well, you were going to show me around? Nice to finally meet you, Poe," she added as she swanned off with Finn in tow. "See you later."
"Yeah," said Poe, and then crouched back down in front of the speeder, ripping out a diode barehanded. "Oh, you’re just the pilot?" he muttered to himself. "Well excuse me, princess, we can’t all have the Force." He dropped the diode in the sand when it arced and shocked him. "Dammit."
***
The Skywalkers stayed in camp for two weeks, and then one beautiful morning Poe woke up to the rumour that they were leaving on a mission. It was a fantastic morning. His breakfast tasted so good, and the sun was so cheerful and warm.
He was just getting his tools and droid collected to go run diagnostics on his ship when Finn appeared. Poe swallowed down the catty impulse to greet him with a ‘long time no see!’ and just returned his grin.
"Morning," said Finn.
Poe slung his toolbag over his shoulder and nodded at BB-8, letting them both follow him out of his bunk. "I hear the Jedi are leaving today. Did you get in a good visit with Rey while she was here?"
"Oh, she’s not leaving," said Finn, and Poe almost tripped.
"She’s not?" he asked, his voice coming out a little strangled.
Finn shook his head, obliviously sunny. "Luke told her to stay put for this one. She’s not happy about it but that guy knows what’s up."
"Well, that’s--" Poe started, and then couldn’t finish the sentence. He kept walking.
Finn slung an arm around his shoulder. "Let’s hang out today. I feel like I haven't seen you in ages."
And just like that, he relaxed. "I was just gonna tune my ship this morning. Wanna help?"
"Sounds great. Hey, Rey is really good with ships. I bet she’d have fun joining us."
"Oh, I don’t want to bother her," said Poe to the blue, blue sky. "She’s probably... meditating or whatever...."
"What she’s probably gonna do is have every vehicle in this base humming like a dream by the time Luke comes back."
BB-8 asked why Poe was so upset.
"It’s nothing," he hissed. "Go get in the ship."
"What did he say?" Finn asked.
"Oh, he was asking about the fuel pump," said Poe, and ignored BB-8 when he started getting huffy about lying.
***
It was only a matter of time before Finn forcibly dragged Rey back into Poe’s life, of course, and he found his moment when Poe admitted that he had a nagging fuel uptake problem that nobody had been able to figure out. It wasn’t dangerous or anything but it was wasteful, and Poe just accepted his fate when he looked up from his diagnostic panel to see Rey striding across the tarmac.
"Finn said you needed another set of eyes on this problem," she said by way of greeting.
"Hi," he answered brightly. "Yeah, I guess so. Well, I mean, it’s not really a pressing thing."
BB-8 started giving him shit from up in his perch. Rey glanced up at the beeping and lifted a hand to shade her eyes. "How much efficiency loss are we talking about, here?" she asked, and Poe watched a five-minute discussion of his fuel problem between his droid and this woman take place like he wasn’t even there.
Of course she could understand his droid. They were apparently friends. Of course they were. Poe was just going to walk off into the night and nobody would even notice.
Eventually, he decided to clear his throat loudly. It hurt a little but they both shut up and looked at him like they were surprised he was still there. "Have you got a decent sitrep from the droid?" he asked.
Rey actually blushed a little. "I’m quite fond of BB-8," she admitted (which made the little jerk chirp with delight). "All right, I have a couple of ideas quick enough to check, although maybe you already tried those."
Poe was going to take to his grave how self-satisfied he was that after three hours of crawling over his bird like ants, even Rey’s apparently superior mechanical intellect couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on with his fuel uptake. For Finn’s sake, he might grudgingly admit someday that a couple of hours into discussing engines and with grease all over the place, he caught himself not minding Rey’s existence quite so much.
That being said, he was totally unprepared to wake up two days later to her standing next to his bunk, shoving at his shoulder and hissing, "I figured it out, get up, get up, I’ve already got your tools and breakfast." When he blinked the sleep out of his eyes, BB-8 was rolling around the room excitedly with a bun balanced on his head. It was still grey outside.
"I’m up," he said, but she was already out the door.
Two hours later, everyone else was stretching and yawning into their morning and the pair of them were staring at the readout from his fuel injectors, which was finally at the top of the green zone.
"Thanks for all your help," he said to a grease smear on his left hand.
She coughed and mumbled, "It was no problem." They awkwardly shook hands before she stalked off back to the barracks. Poe watched her go, only half-listening to BB-8 rambling about their fuel efficiency and how nice she was and how that bun had only fallen off his head once before Poe woke up.
***
Finn was the shittiest liar and schemer Poe had ever met. He was also blessed with a complete inability to recognize this about himself and seemed to think his machinations were clever. It was by far his most annoying quality. That was why Poe always felt like his heart was exploding in his chest whenever he saw that completely transparently sly look cross Finn's face--it wasn't because it was incredibly endearing, it was because he was annoyed.
So he wasn't charmed, he was exasperated when Finn bounced into his peripheral vision as he was cleaning up his tools and putting the access panels back on his newly fuel-efficient ship.
"Did you get it fixed?" Finn asked brightly. "I heard Rey was giving you a hand. That was nice of her."
"Yeah, she helped a lot," Poe agreed.
"Man, she's great, isn't she?" Finn went on. "I guess she must have heard through the grapevine about that problem you were having and wanted to make a nice gesture, get to know you a little."
Poe zipped up his toolbag and straightened up. Finn was trying to look casual. He was seconds from trying to whistle innocently. Poe was not letting him have this one. "She told me when she came that you were talking to her about it."
The warm feeling in his chest spread to his fingers and toes when Finn responded to that with incredibly forced mock outrage. "I--! You think--! No! Me?" He reeled back a little, pressing a hand to his chest and gaping at Poe. "How dare you think I had some kind of master plan!"
Poe rolled his eyes. "Thank you for meddling. It got my ship fixed and that helps the Resistance. And she's not that bad," he conceded. "She's pretty nice."
Finn looked mollified and the ghost of a grin started pulling at the corners of his mouth. Poe's heart skipped a beat and his sense of good judgment and restraint went out the window. "Honestly, after the first day of no progress she could have said she tried her best and left it, but she kept thinking about it and came back and fixed it. And that was all her, not obligation to you. So, fine, I understand why you like her so much." His cheeks felt hot but Finn's smile was coming out full-power now, so he didn't care if he was blushing.
A hand on the back of his neck was Poe's only advance warning of the hug Finn wrapped him in. He committed to it and hid his hot face against Finn's shoulder, breathing in the delicious combined smell of leather jacket and Finn's skin. "I knew you guys would get along once you got to know each other," Finn muttered against the shell of his ear.
Poe let that one go by him and focused on trying to imprint on Finn's smell.
When Finn released the hug, he kept one hand on Poe's elbow. "Come on, lunch," he said.
"Okay," said Poe.
***
Around the third time Luke and Rey came back to the base after going off on another top-secret Jedi mission, Poe accepted that they'd moved in with the Resistance and weren't leaving for the foreseeable future. It made sense; whatever Outer Rim mountaintop they'd been meditating on for years couldn't have had much in the way of food or showers, and General Organa was here. The consensus among the Resistance was that Luke, the General and Chewie had closed ranks since they'd all reunited, that Han Solo's death had mended some fences. Poe thought it was sad but also acknowledged, quietly and to himself, that their grief was a benefit to the cause. They apparently made a good command team and having the guy who'd taken out Darth Vader wandering around camp was good for everyone's morale.
He could also acknowledge, because he was an adult, that it was probably a positive thing for Rey to be in camp. She was clearly a loner type, spending all her social time with Luke, Finn or BB-8, and Luke seemed pretty messed up. Two years on a mountaintop with that guy was probably more than should be considered healthy for anyone. There needed to be at least one sane Jedi or life in the galaxy was doomed.
So Poe learned to share. Finn got better about splitting his time between Rey and everybody else (Poe, specifically Poe) once the novelty of having her around wore off, and Poe got his friend back. He graciously conceded his sovereign right to monopolize all of Finn's free time and attention and kept himself busy when he wasn't flying a mission. He also knew whenever Rey was gone, because Finn would inevitably glue himself to Poe's side, looking for things to help with and generally being underfoot. Poe understood that feeling, embraced the full force of Finn's attention and need for comfort, and wondered in a tiny corner of his brain if Rey ever got to deal with this when he was the one running off to find trouble.
"She's fine," he said sometimes, when it seemed necessary. "I'm skeptical she even can be hurt. She might be the first droid ever able to use the Force."
Finn's mouth frowned but his eyes smiled a little. "She wishes."
Eventually, Rey went on a mission that seemed to last a little too long. Her absence stretched and Finn started to lose it a little. Poe did what he could to ease that, telling Finn she was fine and starting to panic a little over what was going to happen if he was wrong. The night that Finn quietly came to his bunk, at an hour when the only people who should have been awake were the night watch, Poe was glad that sleep had evaded him too.
"I'm having some nasty bad dreams," Finn admitted to the wall above Poe's rack, fidgeting awkwardly in the middle of the room and surrounded by the sleep sounds of Poe's bunkmates. The bags under his eyes punctuated his words. Poe slid over in his rack that wasn't big enough for two, his blankets bunching up between his back and the cold wall as he rolled onto his side and made room.
"Come on," he said.
Finn stared at the empty space. Had he intended something else to happen? "I--" He cut off whatever he'd been about to say.
"I wouldn't offer if I wasn't okay with it," Poe said, keeping his voice low. "I'm not sleeping too great lately, either." Not that it was Rey he'd been losing sleep over.
Finn met his eyes, looking lost and making his heart clench, and then thankfully started toeing off his boots. He stretched out on top of the covers, taking the offered half of the pillow as Poe propped himself up on his elbow, leaning over Finn just a little like he was sheltering him with his body. Finn laid on his back, hands folded over his middle, and turned his face to meet Poe looking down at him. It was very dark, but the floodlights outside cut through little cracks in the wall seams and found the outlines of things, like the earnest expression on Finn's face. Maybe Poe was leaning a little overly close, but he was trying not to seize Finn up in his arms and curl around him to soak up Finn's body heat against his bare chest.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm taking advantage of you," Finn murmured.
Poe arched his eyebrows. "Funny thing to say after climbing into my rack in the dead of night," he murmured back. Sennie, in the bunk at the foot of theirs, turned over and muttered in her sleep, but settled down again.
Finn's eyes had gone wide, as if he'd just then realized their circumstances. If he so much as twitched in the next heartbeat, Poe was going to wrap around him to keep him there and nothing short of surgery was going to remove him again. But Finn stayed still. "It's weird to realize that I'm the kind of person who gets clingy when I'm scared for someone I care about," he said, looking away from Poe and up at the ceiling. "But it's--I don't know how to tell you that it's just that when I'm worried about something important like that, that I stop worrying about what it looks like when I give into the clinginess."
The part of Poe that wasn't falling to his knees at those words was praying to any being that might be listening that he'd never be away long enough for Finn to go crawling into Rey's bed. It was a very petty part of him. He shifted, letting one hand fall from propping up his head (it curled very naturally along the top edge of the mattress, above where Finn's head was resting) and his other hand release his defensive grip on the blankets to land on Finn's forearm, sliding over his sleeve and his wrist to find Finn's hands and hold onto them, covering Finn's stomach together. Poe lowered his head to whisper in Finn's ear, "Who cares what it looks like?"
Finn's breath hitched a little and he moved his hand under Poe's until their fingers intertwined. Poe gave into the urge to collapse the space still between them, and fell. Finn made a very satisfyingly content noise and shifted inwards where they shared the pillow, until their noses almost touched. When Poe spoke again he almost felt Finn's cheek against his lips. "Go to sleep. She'll come back soon. Until she does, I'm here."
"Better be here after that, too," Finn slurred as he drifted off.
***
Rey came back. Finn took off to go meet her and probably conduct a thorough inspection, and Poe accordingly picked up extra duties--he was sent to count the medical inventory and log what needed to be replaced. It took hours--who knew they had so many rolls of bandages, or that everything associated with the medevac vehicles counted as 'medical inventory'--and when he was done and had sent off his shopping list to command, he walked tiredly outside into the dusk, stretched up onto his toes until his back cracked, and decided to go see what scraps he could sweet-talk out of the mess for a very late dinner.
It was getting dark enough that his eyes were starting to play tricks on him in the shadows but not quite time for the floods to turn on for the night when he made it to his barracks. Finn was loitering outside the entryway. Poe gave him a smile that was coming a little more easily lately, closing the distance between them and reaching out to touch his arm. "Hey. Didn't expect to see you for a while."
One hand slid around Poe's lower back, pushing up under his jacket and pressing through his shirt like a brand. The other hand cupped the back of his head, and he barely processed being reeled into Finn's chest before Finn was kissing the hell out of him.
He made a surprised noise; he couldn't help it. They hadn't done this. This had not been on the table so far. But Finn didn't scare off. If anything, he pressed more, and Poe died a little. He reached around Finn's back and clung on, taking fistfuls of his jacket in a death-grip, and groaned helplessly. His mouth opened a little and Finn took the invitation; Poe insinuated a knee between Finn's legs, pressing them even closer together, and wormed his hands up under Finn's jacket and shirt trying to find skin.
They broke apart panting and Poe felt a little dizzy. "What the hell," he gasped against Finn's jaw. A thumb stroked along a tight muscle in his neck and he pressed up into it like an animal being petted.
"I didn't want to do that before Rey came back," Finn muttered into the warm space between them.
"Well, now I'm extra glad she did," said Poe without even thinking. Finn huffed out a little laugh; Poe felt his chest shaking with it against his own. He was glad it was dark and nobody could see them trying to merge into one joined being.
"I just, I wanted to make it clear to you how I felt about this. I was actually going to talk, not just attack you. Sorry."
"No, no," said Poe, "you made the right move. No need to talk. Waste of words. Just give me another demonstration, make sure I'm really clear on all your points."
Kissing Finn's smile was fucking great and he wanted to do it all the time. When the floods kicked on and bathed them in a squintingly bright spotlight, they ducked around the corner of Poe's barracks and pressed into a shadow under the eaves to stretch the moment just a little bit longer.
***
Poe was high enough in his squadron command that he had to deal with strategy meetings, and right after breakfast he was summoned to join the rest of the Resistance command to hear intel from the Skywalkers' mission. The weeks-long delay in their return had been because they were trying to shake a tail; Luke was of the opinion that it had been a bounty hunter, probably after him specifically, but he'd contacted some acquaintances for help and was confident they had nothing left to worry about. It sounded kind of harrowing when they recounted the whole story, and Poe was fleetingly glad that Finn wasn't around to hear it. Hopefully he wouldn't hear much about it secondhand. He shot a glance at Rey when he had this thought and caught her looking back. She held his stare with no expression and his lips prickled as memories of making out with Finn superimposed themselves over her face. He licked his lips self-consciously and turned his attention back to the argument two admirals were having about First Order battalion positions.
He left the meeting with a pile of squadron orders for recon patrols, and was consumed enough with how to assign those that he didn't notice Rey walking alongside him right away. He blinked down at her.
Once she was confident she had his attention, she stopped looking at him and looked straight ahead. "I went to the canteen for tea after I finished meditating this morning," she said, "and someone stopped me to very seriously let me know that while I was away, Finn was cheating on me. With you." She spared him a quick glance when he choked a little at her words.
"I--" he started.
"I think they thought they were being helpful," she went on, interrupting whatever he'd been about to blabber out. "By so gravely informing me of some perceived infidelity." She sounded completely fucking baffled by all of it, which was somehow soothing. He still didn't know how to respond to this.
Rey stopped walking and Poe followed suit, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets as she turned to face him. "You likely know enough about me to know I'm not good with people. Or relationships." She paused. He waited. "So I really have no idea how people normally proceed but I also find I don't give a shit."
"Finn is special," Poe felt compelled to offer.
Rey smiled, just a little. "He is," she agreed. "And I respect you for being smart enough to realize it. I'm very glad that he has you in his life, because I know that when I have to leave, I'm leaving him with someone who'll take care of him and appreciate him. And I do my best to repay my gratitude by being there for him when it's your turn to be away."
Poe's eyes widened with understanding; Rey clearly read it on his face because her smile widened a little more. Silence started to stretch out between them.
"Should we shake hands or something?" he said. "Is this a pact we've made here? It feels like some kind of formality needs to happen and I'm lost."
Rey rolled her eyes and left him standing there.
"We've really made a breakthrough!" he called after her, delighted. "I thought you were gonna kill me!"
She waved over her shoulder at him without bothering to look back.
***
Poe realized he was not some kind of expert on Jedi. He only really knew one, and it still wasn't like they were close and she told him all her secrets or anything, although that was one more Jedi than most people knew. But they told stories among the Resistance and he’d seen Kylo Ren too, and he was pretty sure that lightsabers were pretty much the weapon Jedi used. He was also pretty sure it was a historical fact that they were obligated by their code or whatever to build one so they could be Jedi. Maybe Luke had done away with that, though, because all Rey ever fought with was a staff. It was a cool staff, one that telescoped out to its full length at the press of a switch when she wanted to use it and snapped back down to just a handle that she kept stuck in her belt, but it was just a staff. He’d stopped occasionally to watch her dance through her daily exercises on the edge of the ship tarmac and the ends whistled through the air around her in a way that made the hair stand up on his arms. She was very good.
But when it was just them, his blaster and her staff facing down like three units of stormtroopers, he found himself wishing she was more of a classical Jedi.
"Did you take some kind of oath of nonaggression, or what?" he panted as he leaned his head back against the crumbling wall he was using for cover. His blaster was warm to the touch.
She poked her head out to Force-push three stormtroopers and send them flying into trees. "Pardon?"
"I could have at least gotten you an extra blaster," he said, waving at her staff. "You don’t have to fight with a stick and your brain."
She glanced down at it and then looked him dead in the eye. "I don’t need anything more."
"You’re just gonna give the whole First Order nasty concussions and let them rethink their life choices?" he snarked.
Rey shook her head and Force-pushed another wave of troopers. "Finn was a stormtrooper, once. Have you forgotten?"
Poe winced. Of course he hadn’t forgotten. He just--Finn was different--
"On your nine," said Rey calmly, breaking through his moral panic. He moved automatically, aiming for centre mass, but was a little relieved to see the stormtrooper just roll over in pain when they hit the ground. That armour was sturdy.
They broke out of the firefight and were about a klick from the rendezvous point when Rey’s flat-out run staggered into a walk and then a standstill. She had that Jedi look like she could hear something and he strained to listen before he remembered, foolishly, that he was never going to be able to hear what she was hearing.
Her hand grabbed at his sleeve. "Get to cover. High ground. Stay out of sight. Now."
"But--"
She turned a glare on him. "Poe. If I go down, you get to the rendezvous and tell Chewie not to come back for me. Do you understand?"
"What the f--"
"And tell Finn--never mind, just get out of sight!" She shoved him a little and he staggered back, then ran for the nearest pile of rocks he could see like he was on autopilot. He wondered for a second if she’d just mind-tricked him into not arguing. He could just see her from his hiding spot, standing with her feet apart as a Sentinel lander flattened the trees ahead. Inevitably, it was Kylo Ren who stepped out, switching on his lightsaber as he walked down the ramp onto the dirt before her.
"It’s the little Jedi apprentice," greeted Ren. "You continue to be a thorn in my side."
"I aim to be more than that," said Rey, pulling her staff handle out of her belt. The bottom dropped out of Poe’s stomach. What did she think she was doing?
"Your master is weak," sneered Ren.
Rey pressed a button on her staff that Poe had never seen her touch before. Twin green beams shot out of either end of what had apparently been her lightsaber hilt the entire time. He thought he was going to cry.
"You’re not fighting my master," she said, and attacked.
Poe couldn’t watch. He couldn’t look away. She was blindingly fast. Ren was stronger, but he couldn’t keep up. She fought like more than her own life depended on it. It was terrifying. He suddenly felt profound sympathy for Finn.
She didn’t kill Ren and he didn’t know if she’d intended to, but regardless Ren made it back onto his ship and got away with his life. When the coast was clear, he came out from behind his rock and almost made it to her before she hit the ground, her lightsaber-staff sizzling itself out as her grip went slack on the hilt. He picked it up out of the dirt and let her cradle it to her chest as he lifted her head onto his lap. Her other arm was held tight to her side and her breath came out in hisses; he batted her elbow out of the way to find a burn across the side of her ribs, smoking bits of her robes sticking to the edges of the wound.
"Well," said Poe, at a complete and total loss. "That was something."
She shook with laughter and then her breath caught and she curled into him, all wet hiccupping noises. The pain must have been incredible.
"Let it out," he said, supporting her neck as she cried into his jacket. "I promise not to tell anyone that any of this ever happened."
"What, the crying?" she rasped.
"The fight. The fact that you keep your lightsaber a secret. That you’re actually just human."
She huffed, still clutching him with one arm and her lightsaber with the other. "I don’t know what Finn sees in you."
"Me neither," he admitted.
"I was joking," she said, and eased herself up into a sitting position.
Poe cleared his throat and looked away, at the flat wreck of landscape the Imperial ship had left behind. "I think Chewie will come after us with that crossbow in a Wookiee blood rage if we don’t get to the rendezvous," he said. "Can you stand?"
He ended up looping her arm over his shoulder and they dragged themselves the last kilometre to where the Falcon waited. The entry hatch dropped open promptly and Chewie came to scoop Rey up into the warm belly of the ship.
Poe took point on treating her wound while Chewie got them the hell out of there. Rey sagged into the bench seat that seemed to be reserved for bleeders and settled into a pattern of deep breathing while Poe busied himself with finding a roll of bandages and some antiseptic. He kept having to bat her hands away from her side to get a good look at it; in his opinion it looked, to a medical certainty, gross. And the crispy, gory bits of her robes that were sticking to the wound had to be dealt with. He sat back on his heels and dug a pair of scissors out of the medical kit.
"What are you doing?" she murmured, although when he glanced up at her face her eyes were still closed.
"It's impractical to strip you out of this so I'm going to cut a big hole around the wound," he said, snipping the scissors in the air in illustration. "You can tell people that side-windows are all the rage in Naboo this season."
He was hoping for a laugh but she just gave him a weird look. Then she lifted her arm and tried to look down at herself, which made her skin twist around the burn and left her collapsing into the bench and hissing through her teeth.
"As your first aid administrator, I suggest you not do that," said Poe. "Also, watch out for the scissors," he added, reaching for her top and planning his angle of attack on the cloth.
She obligingly lifted her arm out of the way, hugging it against her chest. "I liked this top a lot," she said a little mournfully.
"You know, I don't think I've ever managed to bleed seriously all over clothes I didn't care about," Poe told her hip as he carefully snipped through the wool. The scissors were tiny and his hand was already starting to ache around them. "It's definitely one of the less-discussed hardships of war."
She did snort at that one, her side hitching. "I wonder how that could possibly be," she said.
Poe grinned down at his work. They went silent but it was the nice, settled kind.
"Done," he said after a few minutes, sitting back again and shaking the tension out of his hand. "It's time for the worst part. Please don't hit me."
"What's the worst--" she cut herself off with a yell because he'd already pulled the cloth out of the wound and pushed a handful of antiseptic-soaked gauze into it instead.
"Fucking bantha fucker!" she gasped, flailing at him and trying to get away from the pain. He ducked and kept pressure on her side until she calmed down.
"Sorry," he said, experimentally easing the gauze away from her skin and feeling relieved that it wasn't too soaked with red. He leaned down and dabbed bits of fabric out of her wound with the gauze while she pretended she wasn't wiping away a few more tears.
"You have terrible bedside manner," she sniffled, blinking rapidly at the bulkheads. Her eyelashes were wet and dark and clumping together and he looked away quickly, back to cleaning her injury.
"The good news is you got through the bad part," he winked back. "Time for fresh gauze and a bandage and then the rest is up to you."
That part got awkward; he hadn't realized that it would be better to wrap the bandage against her skin and that would mean her hiking up her now-butchered top anyway. She ended up holding her shirt up above her (toned, very toned) stomach with one arm and holding the gauze in place with the other hand, while he tried not to mash himself right up against her front every time he reached to pass the bandage roll around her back. But they avoided looking at each other or breathing too much in each others' faces and Rey had a properly secured bandage over her lightsaber burn by the time Chewie dropped them back to sublight speeds.
Poe fell onto the bench beside her and used another piece of gauze to wipe blood off his hands while she rearranged what was left of her clothes.
"Thanks," she told her belt.
"Not a problem," he answered his pink-stained gauze.
"Do we have to tell Finn this happened?"
"If you think he's going to fail to notice you have an owwie, you know him less well than I thought," said Poe.
She sighed heavily, then winced and grabbed her side.
"I can try to keep him at a reasonable distance," Poe offered.
"I'll just let him fuss a little. Get it out of his system," she said, leaning her head back against the bulkhead.
Poe nodded at the games table, wadding up his piece of gauze in his fist. "What were you going to have me tell him?" he asked suddenly, before he could think better of it.
"What?"
"Before you kicked Darkside's ass. You wanted me to tell Finn something but you changed your mind."
"Oh!" she said, in a way that made him think she'd known all along what he meant. "It doesn't matter. I survived."
"So you're going to tell him yourself, then? Whatever it was?"
"Yeah," she said, rubbing idly at her bandage. "Maybe."
***
Poe helped Rey off her bench and down the gangway of the Falcon with a steadying hand between her shoulder blades and her arm looped around his neck. They weren't moving quickly but it was still faintly ridiculous that Finn charged right up onto the gangway to meet them. Poe spared a brief thought to letting go of Rey (mostly to get the hell out of Finn's way) but they were each grabbed up in one arm for a hug before he could do anything. The way Finn hauled them both in, their arms across each other's backs turned it into an odd triangle embrace.
"Okay," said Poe, resting his chin on Finn's shoulder and rubbing his back gently. "Okay, we're good."
It was too late for those lies, because Finn had just spotted the bandage through the giant hole in Rey's shirt. "What is this?" he demanded, stepping back and grabbing Rey's other shoulder to turn the bandage to the light. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"It's not a deep wound," Rey said, watching him rub his thumb over her hip as he stared at her dressing like he could heal her with his gaze alone. "Poe already cleaned it up, so I'm sure I'll be just fine."
Finn's attention switched to Poe. It was like staring down the cannon of Starkiller Base. "How did she get wounded?" Finn asked intently. "Are you wounded too? Don't lie to me, man."
"She took a glancing blow," Poe said, trying to be evasive. "Just... an energy weapon. It's going to be messy but she'll heal just fine. I'm not wounded, don't look at me like that."
Finn clung to both of them again. "Next time, you two don't get to go without me," he said fiercely.
Poe made eye contact with Rey behind Finn's back. Whoever had been trying to keep him sane while they were on the mission probably needed an apology. "You don't do missions, buddy," said Poe cautiously. "You said that wasn't the way you wanted to fight, not anymore."
"You said you weren't going to take orders from any side anymore," Rey chimed in. "You said that when you turned down Force training."
Poe started at that. Force training? Finn almost became a Jedi? What the hell? But Rey was shaking her head--not now. Fine then, he was definitely going to bring this up again later.
"I know what I said," Finn mumbled into Poe's shoulder. "But I'm not waiting around the base, begging for scraps of information just to find out if you two are alive or not. I can't handle it."
"Okay," said Poe. "We can all discuss this later in excruciating detail, all of us together. But for right now, how about we finish getting off the ship and let the nice medics check Rey's wound, huh?"
Finn straightened up from the group hug, seeing sense, and Poe relaxed. He didn't know why he'd relaxed, though, he realized a second later, because this was Finn, who was now kissing Rey soundly on the lips in front of the medics and Chewie and whoever else was around. Poe didn't know where to look.
"Thank you for keeping him from getting hurt, too," Finn said against her lips.
"Hey!" said Poe. "I kept myself from getting hurt!" But he forgot he was indignant in the next moment, when Finn turned to him and he got his own welcome-home kiss, also in front of Chewie and everybody. At least he could just close his eyes and pretend they were alone, not scandalizing everyone he knew.
"Thank you for patching her up and bringing her home," Finn told him, his voice so low and intense that Poe's knees turned to jelly.
"My pleasure," he croaked back.
Finn let the medics swarm Rey and led Poe the rest of the way down the gangway with a hand around his elbow.
"You don't want to go with her and the medics?" Poe asked.
"You said she's okay, then she's okay," said Finn. "She'll just yell if I hover right now. I'm going to settle for making sure you weren't lying about any injuries to yourself."
"Oh?" said Poe hopefully. "Gonna strip-search me?"
"And then," said Finn, using that sexy voice, "I'm going to convince you to tell me what the hell happened to give a Jedi a flesh wound."
Poe had a bad feeling about this.
THE END