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“Sir, I... require some advice,” JS-5983, who is still getting used to the fact that her name is now Jasa -- for that matter, that she has a name -- says, catching herself before she snaps a salute but still clicking her heels together as she stands at parade rest.
“Don’t call me sir,” Finn says automatically, then smiles at her, warm and genuine. “What’s up, Jasa?”
This is the part she’s deeply uncertain of. She’d rehearsed this with the others -- Skip and Sev and MT; since she’s going to share with them whatever Finn tells her, she figured the least they could do was help her piece together how to ask the damn question in the first place -- but she still bites her lip for a second, her eyes falling to the ground as heat rushes to her cheeks.
“We,” she says, then hesitates, starts again. She’s going to share the knowledge, but she wants to make it personal. That’s what they’d always told her about getting information out of someone: make it personal. The context is entirely different, of course, but her training is still (almost) all she has. “I have noticed that… that is, I have some, er. Ah. Some…”
Finn’s eyebrows are slowly creeping up and up and up his forehead, waiting for her to spit it out, but he keeps smiling, and his eyes are kind and soft. “Some…?”
It comes out all in a rush. “I have noticed that we are allowed to have -- er -- relations here, and there is a Lieutenant in the intelligence division that I think is very lovely, and I was hoping you might have advice on how I could -- uh -- court her.”
Finn takes a second to parse that, his brows sinking back down to knit together. “You… want me to give you advice on how to… date someone?” He pauses, blinks. “Me?”
“Yes,” JS-5983 -- Jasa -- says, a slight frown marring her features. All of the Troopers have seen the way Finn acts around Commander Dameron; it’s the only reason she really has the confidence to ask this question in the first place. Allowing relations between members of the Resistance and their own is one thing -- though allowing them in plain sight is still a far cry from the First Order’s position -- but it was only seeing living proof of the fact that relations would also be allowed between a born-and-bred Resistance fighter (and one of their most important, at that) and a former Stormtrooper that convinced Jasa and the rest of her squad that it could be done.
Which is lucky, because prior to this point in her life, she’d been surrounded only by black-and-white shells and sour-faced officers. Now there’s life of all kinds all around her, and though it took some getting used to, it is beautiful. Especially Lieutenant Klar.
“I understand if it is a sensitive topic,” she adds, because Finn still looks… baffled.
“No, no,” he says. “I just don’t know why you’d… well, I’ll. I’ll try my best?”
“Oh, thank you!” Jasa says, inordinately relieved. It seems that Finn is being modest, saying he didn’t know why she would come to him; Commander Dameron looks at him like he hung every last star in the galaxy. It is adorable -- which is a relatively new word in her vocabulary -- and more than anything she wants Lieutenant Klar to look at her the same way.
“Yeah, no problem,” Finn says, still a little bemused. “Well, uh, how does she… act around you? Does she look at you a lot, or, um, talk to you all the time, or always laugh at your jokes, or…?”
“I don’t make many jokes,” Jasa says drily, and Finn quirks a smile. “But, well, she… always asks how my training is going. And she sits near me at meals, and she introduced me to all of her friends.”
“That sounds good!” Finn claps her on the shoulder, one of the few acts of physical contact that doesn’t seem inordinately strange to former Stormtroopers. “So you should just… try talking to her. Ask if she wants to come to your quarters and watch a holo with you sometime. Or go hiking outside of base, or… something.”
“Is that what you did with Commander Dameron?” Jasa asks, a little breathless, and instantly regrets it: Finn gasps a little and flushes darkly, his eyes going wide.
“With Poe?” he chokes, and Jasa nods, confused.
“That’s why I came to ask you,” she says slowly, watching as he regains control over his breathing. “Your relationship with him seems very… strong. We’ve all noticed it.”
“Uh,” is all Finn says. And then again, “Uh. Well. That’s…” Somehow he blushes even more fiercely, clearing his throat. “Wow.”
“I apologize, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Is… is your relationship with Commander Dameron a secret?” Jasa asks, fidgeting nervously with the hem of her shirt. Privately, she thinks that if it is a secret, they certainly aren’t doing a very good job of hiding it, but then, neither of them is or, to her knowledge, ever has been a stealth operative, and also she supposes that it isn’t really any of her business.
“Secret. Yeah. Big secret,” Finn says. His voice is still very strange, like he can’t quite get enough air, and Jasa half-considers asking if he needs medical attention. “So secret you can’t even tell Poe we had this conversation, okay?”
Well, the Force be damned. They apparently think that they’re being a lot more stealthy than they actually are. But, again, she supposes that isn’t really any of her business. “Of course. Your secret is safe with me, sir -- Finn. And thank you very much for your help.”
“No problem.” It sounds like he’s recovered a little bit, and he’s even able to summon a shaky smile for her. “Let me know how it goes with your Lieutenant, okay, Jasa?”
She smiles at him, quick and bright. “I will.”
---
Jasa did follow Finn’s instructions. She did. She didn’t really know which holos were good to watch, or which ones Lieutenant Klar might already have seen, so she took his other suggestion and asked the Lieutenant if she might like to take a hike in the woods around the base. Lieutenant Klar agreed very quickly, which made her heart soar, but then when the day came, Lieutenant Klar had brought several of her friends from Intelligence along as well. It was a wonderful afternoon, in the end -- they all had a great time -- but it wasn’t quite what Jasa had wanted. She followed Lieutenant Klar’s movements with her eyes, tracing the arc of her throat and the way her muscles shifted just under her clothing when she walked, and knew that she was going to have to step it up a notch.
And, well. She had promised Finn that she wouldn’t tell Commander Dameron about their conversation, but she hadn’t promised she wouldn’t talk to him at all.
“Commander, can I have a word?”
He’s sitting next to his X-Wing, bent over some or other spare part, with grease smeared on his fingers. He looks up at her with a bright grin, though, and motions easily for her to sit down across from him. “Jasa, right? How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Commander.” It feels different when he asks her than when Lieutenant Klar does the same. Commander Dameron is much more casual; it isn’t that she thought he doesn’t care at all, but she gets the feeling he asks everyone that question. It doesn’t really have anything to do with her. “I… wanted to ask you for some advice.”
He quirks a brow at her. “Are you looking at trying to become a pilot? Because we could always use more, you know. We may not have any TIEs lying around, but we’ve got these old beauties,” he says, thumping the side of his X-Wing lovingly.
“No, sir, not quite,” she says, because the very idea makes her a touch space-sick, and also that’s not why she’s here at all. She does still have a mission -- for herself and her hopeful relationship with Lieutenant Klar, and for Skip and Sev and MT and the rest of her friends, too, who are all still trying to figure this out. Still, though, now that she knows that this is supposed to be a secret, she handles it with much more delicacy and grace.
“I understand that this may be a… sensitive question,” she begins, and Commander Dameron carefully sets down whatever it is he had been working on, focusing his attention on her entirely. “I assure you, I will treat anything you tell me with the utmost discretion. But there’s -- there’s a -- I’m rather fond of Lieutenant Klar, you see, and I was wondering if you could… if you could…”
Damn, but this shouldn’t be so hard. Jasa thinks a little bitterly that abandoning her post and fleeing the First Order hadn’t seemed this hard. She’d known it could be done, and known her squad was behind her, and so she’d done it. But this, all of this relationship nonsense… well, sometimes she feels like she can understand why Phasma and Hux and the other officers had forbidden it. Disorder is certainly right.
Commander Dameron, though, is smiling at her, his expression knowing but friendly. “You want dating advice?” he says, half-laughing; he sounds much more confident than Finn had when he’d said much the same thing to Jasa not long ago.
“Yes,” she manages to get out, and his relatively positive response seems to make the next bit a little easier. “You see, I -- that is -- I’ve seen the way you look at Finn, and I… I want Lieutenant Klar to look at me that way. I want to know what I should do, what I should say, to make someone look at me that way, too.”
She almost misses it: the way he freezes for just a second and then carefully schools his face back to neutral. His voice is softer when he says, “Lieutenant Klar, huh? I don’t know her well, but I’ve only heard good things said about her. The two of you seem like a good match.”
Normal, completely unregulated human conversation may still be relatively new for Jasa, but even back in the First Order, Troopers had been allowed to change the subject, and she knows a smooth deflection when she hears one. “Due respect, Commander, but that’s not what… that’s not what I asked.”
He snorts a laugh, leaning back a little in his seat and running a hand through his hair. Apparently, he doesn’t mind if he gets grease in it; maybe that explains why it stays swooped like that. It seems fussy to her, but Jasa supposes she can appreciate Finn’s taste. “No, I suppose it’s not. Well, um -- I assume you’ve been spending time with her, you know, showing interest in her interests, meeting her friends, things like that?”
It still seems a little evasive, a little… impersonal. Though maybe that’s more from the Commander’s tone than anything else, and the way he’s not meeting her eyes anymore, staring at the ground between their feet instead, with occasional glances up and around the hangar. Still, Jasa thinks of all the times she’s seen he and Finn with their heads bent together over a meal, or that she’s heard Finn slowly learning Binary to speak with the Commander’s astromech unit, or that she’s seen Finn spending time with Black Squadron and the other pilots as though he were one of them, always glued tight to the Commander’s side, and thinks that maybe that doesn’t mean it’s not genuine advice.
The trouble, though, is that she has tried all of those things. Part of the reason she’d asked Lieutenant Klar to go hiking with her is that she had heard the Lieutenant speak many times about similar trips in her childhood, time spent with loved ones out exploring wild places. And it had been truly lovely to share that with her, even if they were also sharing it with other parties that Jasa hadn’t anticipated. But it wasn’t -- isn’t -- enough. It’s not what she truly wants, what she came here to ask Commander Dameron for advice on.
“I tried,” she tells him, and something about the way it comes out of her mouth, defeated and as though it were ripped from her, makes his eyes finally flick back to hers. Something about him is sad and knowing; the set of his mouth tells her that with just those two words, she’s made him perfectly understand, and that he’s been where she is. “I am not -- I need to change, somehow. To do something differently. I think.”
Commander Dameron sighs, then takes a deep, slow breath in. “Jasa, that’s… that’s not --”
“Please,” she cuts him off. “Clearly, what I’m doing isn’t working. What about Finn -- what about him drew you to him? What things are -- desirable?” What could make someone like you love a Stormtrooper? she wants to ask, but holds her tongue.
He sucks in a breath much more quickly this time, but he smiles, too. It’s a sad little smile, and Jasa isn’t quite sure what it means. It’s gone just as quick, anyway, and he shakes his head at her.
“Jasa,” he says gently, and leans forward to lessen the space between them, but not too far; if nothing else, Commander Dameron is better than anyone on base at knowing how to handle former Troopers. Better than anyone who hasn’t worn that black and white armor themselves, anyway. “That’s not how… how it works. If Lieutenant Klar, or anyone, isn’t interested in you, that… it’s terrible, Jasa, it’s kriffing awful, but you can’t just pick and choose different personality traits, to become someone else that you think they’ll like better.”
That’s not really quite what she means, but the way he says it makes her pause, and he seems to be caught up more in himself than in her now.
“Sometimes that’s just the way it goes,” he adds after a heavy moment, and it’s only a shout from the other side of the room that reminds Jasa that they’re still in the hangar, that there are other people all around, just out of earshot. It seems to bring Commander Dameron back to that reality, too, because he visibly retracts back into himself, shaking his head a little bit, and that familiar, easy smile slides right back onto his face as though they’d been talking about nothing more impactful than the weather.
“I didn’t mean to…” Jasa says, but she’s not quite sure how to complete that sentence. Offend? Bring up a sore spot? She’s more than a little baffled -- she assumes she must have dredged up some bad old memories. Clearly, Finn and the Commander are more than happy, even if they are keeping their relationship a secret. She’s sure, if Commander Dameron has been in her position, it must have been a long time ago.
“No, it’s not your fault. You didn’t know,” the Commander says ruefully. He looks her over again, glances towards the hangar doors, and then when he looks back, his gaze softens. “Look, Jasa. You’re a wonderful person, and if Lieutenant Klar -- or anyone else -- doesn’t see that, that’s their loss. Talk to her about it, straight out, just to make sure that you’re on the same page, and then… if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.”
Jasa can hardly imagine just walking up to the Lieutenant and saying, what… ‘I find you attractive?’ ‘I wish to enter a relationship with you?’ That seems so cold. Then again, she is certain that if she thinks about it, she can say it more gracefully than that; putting her mind to it, and motivating herself with the thought of Lieutenant Klar’s softly parted lips and the way she laughs and the way her eyes soften when she looks at Jasa, ought to be enough. She hopes that Commander Dameron will forgive her just one last overly personal question, though.
She takes a deep breath and asks, “Is that what you did, then? When you… with whoever it was? Did that work?”
All he does for a moment is blink at her, and then he laughs as though he can’t quite help it, shaking his head ruefully. “Well, not quite,” he admits, and Jasa narrows her eyes. “But, you know -- do as I say, not as I do, right? That’s definitely the right thing to do, Jasa. Learn from my mistakes.”
Well. Even if that’s the case, she thinks again about every time she’s seen the Commander and Finn together, the way their whole bodies seem pulled together point-to-point as though they have their own central gravity, and Jasa decides that maybe he’s something close to an expert on this. Maybe he’s right.
“Thank you, Commander,” she says as she stands, and he mirrors the motion almost unconsciously. “I’m sorry if my questions made you uncomfortable.”
He shakes his head, smiling. “That’s okay, Jasa. Just -- hey, let me know how it goes, okay? I’m rooting for you.”
They’re barely more than acquaintances, in all honesty, yet once again Jasa gets the impression that he’s being completely genuine. She can’t help but smile back, inclining her head slightly in thanks as she turns to leave the hangar.
Lieutenant Klar should be departing for the mess hall soon, she thinks. If she hurries, she can catch her.
---
Poe waits until Jasa is all the way out of the hangar before collapsing into his seat like a puppet whose strings have been cut, but it’s a very near thing.
He’d been pretty certain that his feelings for Finn were painted on his sleeve -- well, no, that isn’t quite right. He’d known that trying to hide it from anyone who knew him was a lost cause, and all the confirmation he needed had come from the fact that Snap and Jess and Kare and Iolo, and most of his other friends, have actually stopped teasing him about it and come all the way around to genuine sympathy, but up until now Poe had managed to convince himself that it at least wasn’t so obvious that every damn sentient on the base could figure it out. Even the ones who, up until recently, had lived their entire lives inside black-and-white helmets.
That’s probably not fair to Jasa or any of the other former Troopers -- to Finn, for that matter, who’s been friendly and affable from the get-go and seems to get people in a way Poe sure doesn’t and has quickly wormed his way into the hearts of nearly everyone on base -- but… kriff. Kriff. Poe groans, covering his face with both hands.
What about Finn drew you to him? Well, Poe thinks, there’s a question for the ages. He could have sat there with Jasa and probably listed things off for hours, but even beyond the fact that that would’ve been possibly the most embarrassing moment of his life thus far, which is really saying something, there’s still a tiny corner of Poe’s brain that says that Finn should be the first one to hear those things, to be regaled with every detail of how Poe can’t keep his eyes or his mind off of him for more than about a second at a time.
Which, obviously, is never going to happen, but the thought is… nice.
“Get yourself together, Dameron,” he mutters under his breath, before sighing, straightening up in his seat, and glancing down at his chrono. It’s almost time to head off to dinner, and after all that, he’s willing to admit (if only to himself) that he’ll probably be too distracted to be any good for the rest of the day anyway. So he packs it in, waves to the few pilots and techs still lingering in the hangar, and sets off across the base.
He misses D’Qar, sometimes; at least it had been more or less green, instead of all the foliage being this off-putting red color. He’s just starting to learn all the shortcuts and back roads through this base, too; they’ve only been here for a little over a standard month. Poe has to duck under an overhanging branch to cut quickly across from the hangar to the mess, a path Kare had shown him just the other day, and in his defense that’s why he almost runs into Jasa and Lieutenant Klar.
They’re far enough down the path that they probably won’t have noticed him, thank the Force, and they’re bent together, their foreheads touching. He can’t see Jasa’s face, but the Lieutenant’s eyes are soft, her mouth curved up in a gentle smile, and -- wow. They sure got that sorted quickly.
He turns on his heel and flees back the way he came. Part of him is patting himself on the back for giving such obviously sound advice; part is more focused on trying to ignore the way his stomach had given a jealous lurch at the sight of them embracing. Poe takes the slower, regular path to the mess hall, and tries not to think about any of it too hard.
Dinner is fine; hanging around and shooting the shit with his squad after dinner is also fine, though he gets one or two slightly puzzled, concerned looks that he fends off by smiling rakishly and diving headfirst into whatever conversation is nearest him. Walking back to his quarters is fine, until he arrives and realizes BB-8 isn’t there. The little astromech has a tendency to run around during the day, but they’re almost always back by the time Poe is, ready to slide happily into their charging port and chatter to him about whatever it is they got up to. He frowns, trying to decide whether it’s worth shaking down the entire base to find them; they’ll be fine on their own for the night, there are plenty of other places they can go to charge up, but Poe’s still getting shit for the last time he locked them out.
There’s movement in his peripheral, and though it’s too high to be BB-8, he’s still a little surprised when he turns and it’s Jessika.
One look at the expression on her face tells Poe that this probably isn’t going to go well for him. He shoots her a look, but she just stares back, one eyebrow raised, and says, “Let me in if you know what’s good for you.”
They’ve obviously been friends for way, way too long, because Poe sighs and does it.
“So,” Jess is saying in a much brighter tone even before they’re properly into Poe’s quarters, and he mentally resigns himself to whatever’s coming. “I heard the craziest thing at dinner tonight.”
“Jess,” he complains, but she steamrolls right past him, flopping down on his bed to sit with her legs crossed like a little kid.
“See, I was walking by the table where the Troopers usually sit, because Yvanos was at the next bench over and that bastard still owes me like forty credits. Anyway, I’m walking by and I hear Skip saying to MT, ‘Apparently whatever Commander Dameron told her worked.’”
Yep. This is going to be exactly as terrible as Poe thought. He rolls his eyes heavenward and idly sends up a message to the Force or whatever else might be up there to strike him down where he stands, but whether or not he grew up with a magical Force tree in his backyard and thinks that really ought to win him some sway with the universe, nothing happens.
“As you know, Poe, I’m a very stealthy and smooth person, so I didn’t outright ask Skip what they were talking about, I just went on down to threaten Yvanos like I had originally intended and kept an ear tuned towards the Trooper table.” Jess has now pulled what appears to be a broken screw out of her pocket and is using it to clean dirt and grease out from under her nails, both eyebrows raised as she fakes nonchalance. “Good thing too, because next I hear MT say back, ‘Well, it’s no wonder, he and Finn are obviously so happy.’ And then Skip says back, ‘Sure, but Finn’s advice didn’t work out for her, so I was a little worried.’”
Poe freezes, mouth falling open slightly, because that’s new and potentially terrifying information. It’s working its way slowly back through his brain; his (admittedly underdeveloped) instinct for self-preservation is shrieking at him not to come to the obvious conclusion, not to reason out exactly what questions Jasa must have asked Finn, based on what she’d asked him. But he can feel it coming, dread settling heavy on his shoulders.
“So then, of course, I was properly curious, and since I’m a very good friend to you and always have been, I wanted to go and figure out just what the fuck they were talking about. So after I finally got my kriffing credits out of Yvanos, I went to go talk to Finn.”
“Jess, you didn’t,” Poe groans, and her eyes flick up to him, her expression completely unamused.
“Yes I did, Poe, that’s what I just said. Speaking of which, Finn had some very interesting things to say, which he confided in me no doubt because he sees me for the warm and maternal figure in his life that I so clearly am,” Jessika says, her voice going completely flat in a way that might have made Poe, had he not built up at least some immunity to her in particular over the years, cower like a frightened child.
“I thought we had agreed you wouldn’t do shit like that,” he says instead, and Jess jabs her screw threateningly in his direction.
“That was before I learned you were giving love advice that you don’t even have the guts to follow to impressionable reformed Troopers!” she snaps, then schools herself back down until her tone has the same faux casual air as before. “Anyway, don’t you want to hear what Finn said?”
No, not really is what Poe wants to say, but he can’t even really lie that convincingly to himself, let alone to Jess, and at any rate she’s going on ahead without waiting for him to answer.
“Finn said, ‘She asked me for advice about dating and stuff,’ and then when I said, ‘But you haven’t dated anyone, have you, sweet boy?’ he said ‘No, Jessika, you’re right and very perceptive, but the baby Troopers think that I’m dating someone,’ and then when I said, ‘Who do the baby Troopers think you’re dating, Finn darling?’ do you know what he said?”
Poe sighs, because he does know. “Me?”
Jess gives him a small, achingly sarcastic round of applause. “Very good! They think that he’s dating you. And when I asked if him if he set them straight…”
She trails off, and it finally seems like she’s actually going to wait as long as she has to for Poe’s input before she continues, which is stupid, because he has no idea. Except… if Jasa had gone to Finn before going to Poe, which is what it seems like, then Finn must not have set her straight. He must have done the opposite, in fact. Which makes Poe’s stomach twist in a funny way, and also gives him just the tiniest smidge of hope, which can only end poorly for all involved.
Jess is still waiting, her eyes softening now, even though her mouth still sits in a hard line and her shoulders are still drawn up with tension. Poe knows she’s only worked up and snappy like this because she’s worried about him; also, Poe knows she’s one of the best friends he’s ever had, which is most of the reason he’s playing along with this instead of telling her where she can shove it, because Jess’ position on his whatever-it-is -- if he were still a kid on Yavin 4, he’d call it a crush, but he’s a kriffing ranking Resistance officer, he doesn’t get crushes -- has been made quite clear over the past, Force, several months now that Finn’s been awake and roaming around, with Poe always roaming right after him.
Jess’ position, of course, is that Poe needs to (in her words, on many different occasions, usually at high volumes) “put your credits and your mouth where your gods-damned heart is, you wimpy son of a bitch.”
This line of thought isn’t exactly helping, though; she’s still staring at him, and she’s clearly not budging until he does. Whatever; kriff it, fine. He’s not going to stop playing along now, she’ll just bug him about it for days if he tries.
“Finn didn’t set Jasa straight, did he?” he says finally; he’s going for bland, but there’s a little bit of a shake to it that gives him away.
“Nope!” Jess pops the ‘p’ way more than it probably deserves, finally taking her eyes off Poe to go back to cleaning her nails with that damn screw. “This part took me a while to get out of him, poor guy, but I have my ways, as you well kriffing know, and anyway finally he told me that he did the exact opposite of set them straight. He told them you were dating, but in secret.”
Poe chokes on air. Jess is steamrolling through again, picking up momentum with every word, and only spares him about a second of her best withering glare.
“Apparently Jasa totally bought it, and the other Troopers must have too. And hell, even I would have bought it, given the way you two pine after each other all over base like teenagers, but never seem to actually get caught having sex in the broom closets the way any self-respecting couple in the middle of their honeymoon phase in this gods-damn army would do. And anyway --”
“Okay,” Poe says quietly, and this time when he cuts her off she actually stops talking, crossing her arms to stare at him with both eyebrows raised. He takes a deep breath, because he knows that even when she’s fed up with him like this she’s probably trying her best to look out for him, and also -- though he will never, ever say it to her face -- historically she’s proven to be right about these things just as often as she’s been proven wrong, and anyway he doesn’t want to scream at her where someone could maybe hear him. The walls aren’t exactly thick around here, and given the nature of this conversation, Poe would really prefer if it stayed… well, as private as anything ever stays on a base full of people who, when not actively fighting for their lives, don’t seem to have anything to do but gossip.
“Okay,” he says again, when there’ve been a few seconds of silence and Jess is still just staring at him, waiting. “What’s your point?”
“My point,” she says, and her voice is simultaneously gentler and so fatally over what he knows she would define as his “constant, never-ending stream of bantha shit,” which Poe is sometimes (sometimes) willing to admit might be a little bit fair, “is that I don’t know what further sign from the kriffing heavens you’re waiting for before you ask that man on a date, and frankly, Poe, I think the entire Resistance is more than a bit tired of waiting for it to happen.”
“Jess, you know it’s not that simple,” he says, and she waves the screw she’d been fiddling with threateningly in his direction.
“I’m going to tell you something that is probably going to blow your damn mind,” she says. “If Finn wasn’t interested in you, he wouldn’t have kriffing told Jasa you were secretly dating. He would have just told her she was mistaken and gone on his merry way.”
Half of Poe wants to believe her. The other half was there when Finn woke up in the medbay and the first word out of his mouth was “Rey,” and notices the way most of the eyes in the room follow him wherever he goes, and has seen even the grouchiest beings the Resistance has to offer eventually fall prey to Finn’s bright, bright smile over the past few months.
“I’m sure he was just trying to -- you know, let her down easy or something. Not make her feel stupid for assuming,” he says, and it’s partially lost as a mumble into his sleeve when he shifts his weight and rakes a hand through his hair because he can’t quite make eye contact with Jess.
He can tell when she rolls her eyes, though -- hell, he can practically hear it -- and he certainly can tell when she finally unfolds herself from her position on his bed, instead coming to stand aggressively just inside the bubble of his personal space with her hands on her hips.
“I’m so fed up with this little self-sacrificing thing you’re doing, Dameron. It doesn’t kriffing suit you,” she says, jabbing him in the chest with one finger. “Talk to him. This is your final warning.”
“Before what?” Poe hisses after her, but she’s already on the move, swinging his door open wide in preparation for her grand exit.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she tosses back over her shoulder. She hesitates one more moment, repeats, “Talk to him, Poe, for all of our kriffing sakes,” and then she’s gone, as suddenly as she’d come.
She didn’t close the door behind her, so Poe has to do that before he can flop down onto his liberated bed, groaning into his hands. He kind of hates they way Jessika -- and half his other friends, for that matter -- seem to think they know what’s best for him, and the way they won’t accept his no for an answer when it comes to the idea of hashing this out with Finn. More than that, though, he hates that he’s finally starting to believe them, hates that there’s a bubble of hope growing in his chest even when he knows it’s beyond stupid.
He thinks of Finn’s smile, of Finn bent over BB-8 trying desperately to learn Binary because he wants to befriend the droid, of Finn popping into the hangar at odd times when Poe’s pretty sure he actually has work to do because he was “just passing through” and staying for well over an hour, sometimes, slotting right in with Poe and the other pilots like he’s always been there, and he doesn’t hate any of those things. He can’t even bring himself to hate the warm feeling those thoughts spark through him, or even, anymore, the much deeper heat that fills the pit of his stomach when he thinks of the curve of Finn’s neck, the strong, sure lines of his shoulders, his eyes looking up from under dark lashes.
Not for the first time, he wonders what his mom would have to say about all this; he wishes with all his heart that he could ask her. Not that he doesn’t value his dad’s advice, but Poe and Shara Bey had been the same soul split into two bodies, and there’s no one -- no one -- else that he could actually trust to tell him that this particular thing will be okay. His dad knows all about loving pilots, but his mom… his mom knew what it felt like to love someone so much they make you want to stay on the ground. Poe just wishes she was around so that they could compare notes.
Hey, mom, he thinks, staring up at his ceiling and imagining he can see straight through it, see this planet’s three moons glowing yellow in the sky, see the vast sweep of the galaxy painted pure and bright out here in the middle of nowhere. What do you do when you love someone and you’re too scared to take your own advice?
He doesn’t know what she’d say if she were really here, but in his head she says, Suck it up, kid, which is distressing. If even his fake made-up vision of his mother is telling him to get his shit together, he may have finally gone beyond the point of no return.
BB-8 still hasn’t come beeping to his door, and he has early maneuvers at 0700 tomorrow, so with that cheerful thought, Poe decides to pack it in for the night. Maybe, he lets himself think as he reluctantly rolls back off his bed to wallow in the ‘fresher for a little while, things will look different in the morning, and he can go back to how his life was just a few short hours ago, when he was completely resigned and almost content with the idea of never, ever talking to Finn about how he feels, and when he didn’t yet know that all of the former Troopers think the two of them are engaged in a secret relationship the likes of which Poe would kill for.
Unsurprisingly, that train of thought doesn’t actually help much.
---
Things do look different in the morning, in a manner of speaking. The way things look in the morning is as follows: Poe walks into the mess after his early morning flight, half-in and half-out of his flight suit, in the interest of securing some kind of brunch to supplement the protein bar he’d swallowed down at a bleary-eyed early hour, and the first thing he sees is Jasa and Lieutenant Klar off in a corner of the room, sitting so close together that it looks like they’re trying to occupy the same space. He feels his eyes drawn to them, Jasa’s dark hair and skin a stark contrast to Klar’s utter paleness; Jasa makes eye contact with him for half a second and smiles wider than he’s ever seen her smile before, and Poe thinks that he’s glad for them.
The very second thing he sees is Finn and BB-8 and Jessika all sitting together around a table along the back wall -- well, Jess and Finn are sitting, and BB-8 has rolled up right between them -- and he doesn’t know how the hell Jess managed to beat him down here, but after the way she’d left him last night Poe has no misconceptions about the fact that this, too, is probably going to be terrible for him.
“Look at that, the man of the hour!” Jessika calls, her chair screeching loudly as she stands, and suddenly Poe notices that Finn’s blushing. His skin tone hides it pretty well, but… oh, kriff, what did Jess do?
She meets him halfway, clapping him on the shoulder and leaning in just a little so that she can mutter into Poe’s ear, “Look, I got a little impatient.”
“What did you tell him?” Poe hisses, even as he shoots what he hopes is a reassuring smile over Jess’ shoulder at Finn, who looks ready to sink into the floor. For what it’s worth, Poe feels about the same way.
“I told him what Jasa told me,” she says. “Congratulated him on your secret dating and swore myself to secrecy.” And that’s all he gets before she claps him on the shoulder again, waves jauntily back at Finn, and all but disappears.
Well. Poe is a master of getting himself out of seemingly impossible situations he doesn’t want to be in, but the only alternative he can see right now is to turn tail and run. And one more look at Finn, who’s staring down at the table now like he can’t quite meet his eyes, tells him that’s not an option.
He closes the distance as quickly as he can, all but jogging over, and it’s that patented Bey-Dameron zest for danger that makes him fall right into the place where Jessika had been sitting and say to BB-8, “Hey, Beebee, would you mind giving us a little space?”
The droid whirrs an affirmative, but also butts their head into Finn’s knee quickly before trundling away. Watching them go, Poe’s surprised to find that as much as he hates the idea of Jessika (and Jasa, who, he supposes, is something like an unwitting accomplice) scraping away all of his excuses until there’s nothing left he can do but finally face this thing, now that it’s happened, he… well, he leans a little closer to Finn.
He doesn’t get a chance to sneak a word in edgewise, though, before Finn blurts, “I’m sorry.”
Oh. Poe plasters on that good old flyboy smile, even though he’s almost positive Finn is one of a half-dozen people in the world who can reliably see through it. “For what, buddy?”
Finn bites his lip, and Poe feels a twist of guilt at the way his eyes trace the motion. “Uh -- I figured you knew, because Jessika knew, and Jasa said she talked to you, and -- you don’t know?”
Okay, this is fine. He can do this. He meets Finn’s eyes, but that’s too much, so he looks down at the table instead when he says, “No, yeah, uh, I heard. Last night. About what you told Jasa.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Finn repeats, and Poe shuts his eyes. “I didn’t ever want to make you, you know, uncomfortable, because I…”
He trails off, but against his will Poe feels something flaring in his chest, hears an echo of Jess’ voice from last night: If Finn wasn’t interested in you, he wouldn’t have…
“It didn’t make me uncomfortable,” he says, very quietly, and tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want to be overheard -- why are they having this conversation in the mess, again? -- and not because he can scarcely breathe.
Finn doesn’t answer, and when he risks a glance up, his eyes are almost comically wide, staring across at Poe like he’s sprouted several additional limbs. Strangely enough, that’s what finally gives Poe the last bit of courage he’s been lacking.
“It didn’t make me uncomfortable,” he repeats, slowly this time, watching the way each word seems to make impact against Finn’s skin as it falls from his mouth, “A little sad, maybe, but not uncomfortable.”
“Sad?” Finn parrots back, and Poe watches his throat work. He’s leaning closer without even realizing it, the space between them dwindling and their voices getting quieter and quieter, too.
He’s never, ever telling Pava she was right about this. Which is unfortunate, because he’s damn sure she knows anyway.
“If I were in a relationship with you,” he says, the words heavy with a second meaning, and Finn may be new -- relatively new -- to all of this stuff, but he can tell at least part of it is registering from the way Finn’s eyes go warm and dark, “I’d want to know about it, for one thing. And -- I wouldn’t want it to be private.”
Finn takes a deep, shuddering breath, and they’re leaning in so close together now that Poe feels it break against his skin. “What did Jasa ask you?”
Poe bites back a smile: not the flyboy smile, the Finn smile, no less wide and bright but a lot gentler around the edges.
“She asked me what it was about you that made me fall for you.”
“Poe,” Finn says, and then, “What -- what did you tell her?”
“That it was none of her damn business,” Poe breathes, and slowly, unerringly, kisses him.
His eyes flutter shut, and the rushing in his ears means that his world narrows town to just touch and taste: Finn tastes like caf and granola, and his mouth is warm, a little chapped, lips trembling ever so slightly. It’s over way, way too quickly for Poe’s tastes, but they are, after all, still in the Force-damned mess hall, and unless Finn’s into exhibitionism they should probably… not.
“Sorry,” Poe says, pulling away reluctantly, and when he sees Finn’s scowl, fear lances through his gut like ice for a half second until Finn reaches down to grab his hand.
“Now you’re sorry?” he says. “What for? That was… I want to do that again.”
He licks his lips, just the tiniest little hint of his tongue darting out to wet them, and Poe has to swallow a really embarrassing noise.
“Me too,” he promises, with just this side of too much fervor -- not that Finn seems to mind. “But we should -- I mean, for one thing, we should talk about this before we, uh, go too crazy. And for another thing…” He gestures wordlessly around them, indicating all the other beings in the room with them, who, thankfully, don’t seem to be paying too much attention. Yet.
“Right,” Finn says, voice breathy, and leans back ever-so-slightly. Poe mourns the loss of body heat, but he’s already standing, a hand on Finn’s elbow to pull him up and away. Distantly, he realizes that he hasn’t really eaten yet, that he just showed up and now they’re booking it out of here for seemingly no reason and someone’s going to notice, but… well, he doesn’t really care if they notice. Maybe word will spread and they’ll know to leave him well enough alone for at least an hour, since he doesn’t have any critical commitments until the afternoon.
“C’mon,” he says, half-nonsensically, but Finn’s already following, so there’s no need. They wander together through the base, pressed together at the sides, with Finn’s fingers shyly tangling with his, and while Poe’s almost inclined to steer them into the first available room with some semblance of privacy, he remembers Jess saying something last night about getting caught in a broom closet and resigns himself to making it all the way to his quarters before they -- what? Fuck? Talk about their feelings? Talk about their feelings and then fuck?
The thought makes his head spin, dizzy with heat, but he only lets himself focus on that for a split second before firmly reminding himself that, no matter what, they’ll go at Finn’s pace. It’s not like he thinks Finn’s some sort of complete ingenue; he knows better than that, but he also knows that this is all still relatively new to him.
Then again, if the way Finn keeps tossing him these little glances, eyes heavy on Poe’s lips and hands and throat, means anything -- well. Maybe Finn’s pace and his pace are exactly the same after all.
Silence yawns between them, and they’re halfway across the base to the barracks when Finn finally says, out of nowhere, “How long?”
“What?”
“How long?” Finn repeats, and Poe’s playing dumb a little bit, but he knows what he means; he feels a blush spread over his cheeks, feels the tips of his ears get hot.
“Uh, a long time, buddy,” he finally says a little sheepishly, as they finally turn around the last corner and he can see his door at the end of the hall.
“Since I woke up?” Finn guesses, looking sidelong at Poe again as he quickens his pace just slightly, and Poe laughs awkwardly, shaking his head.
“Since the Finalizer,” he admits just as they draw to a stop in front of the door. He hears Finn’s surprised intake of breath as he keys in the security code, and he steps quickly over the threshold without really making eye contact.
Finn waits until the door swishes shut again behind them before he jokes, “So it could’ve been any old Stormtrooper, and you would’ve felt the same, huh?”
That, at least, Poe knows unequivocally how to answer. “Buddy,” he says, laughing breathlessly with his heart thundering in his chest as he turns to crowd Finn against the wall. “It wasn’t just any old Stormtrooper. It was you.”
Finn makes a wordless, choked little noise, but it’s lost anyway when Poe kisses him again; this time, alone in his quarters instead of in the middle of the kriffing mess, neither one of them is overly concerned with gentleness or chastity. This is a hot, slick press of mouths, Poe tilting his head so their lips slide together, Finn curling insistent fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. But now Finn’s got him talking, and Poe’s nothing if not a chatterbox, and under the suffuse heat and giddy joy of all this there’s so much he’s bursting to say; the dam’s busted open.
He pulls back, just a hair’s breadth, so that his lips brush Finn’s when he speaks, and says, “You know what I didn’t tell Jasa?”
“What?” Finn says, not dumbly, but dazed; he blinks several times, and Poe notes with satisfaction like a punch to the gut that his pupils are blown wide.
“When Jasa asked me what made me fall for you,” Poe elaborates, an almost-smug grin curling across his mouth as he takes in the way Finn’s chest is heaving from just that one kiss. (Well. Two, technically, and Poe probably shouldn’t be throwing stones from inside the biggest, most transparent glass house of all time, but that’s not the point.)
“What didn’t you tell her?” Finn says, his voice evening out, but one hand is rather pointedly sliding down Poe’s side to settle on his hip, so Poe’s pretty confident he’s not exactly losing interest.
Where to start? Poe thinks, but as he leans in to press a kiss to the crook of Finn’s neck what he says is, “Well, for one thing, you have a killer smile.”
“That’s pretty shallow,” Finn says. If he thinks that conceals the way his breath hitches when Poe nips experimentally at the corner of his jaw, he’s wrong, and Poe smirks and keeps going.
“Is it? Have you seen you?” he says very seriously, leaning back to look Finn straight in the eye before pressing their foreheads together. Finn’s hand at his hip tightens, and this time he’s the one who leans forward to catch Poe’s lips in another slow, heady kiss.
They’re pressing together at nearly every point, which is something Poe’s starting to find it very, very hard to ignore; his arms are bracketing Finn’s head, and he’s leaning up against the wall (well, against Finn against the wall) in no small part because he really does need the support.
“And oh, Force, buddy, your arms,” he says immediately as they break apart, and Finn stifles a laugh into his shoulder.
“Poe,” he complains, but in a way -- in several ways -- he got himself into this, and now that Poe’s got himself going, dammit, he’s going.
“Seriously, the first time you came into the hangar and took that jacket off and you were just wearing that sleeveless top I about died,” he says very seriously, and Finn’s definitely laughing now. “Me and half the base, I might add.”
Which is very true -- there had been more than one dropped tool or spilled can of oil, as well as several jaws to scoop up off the floor, after that incident, because not only had the top been sleeveless, thus revealing that Finn’s biceps are insane, after he’d gotten a little sweaty helping Poe out with Black One, the damn thing had started to go see-through.
“You like the jacket too, though, right?” Finn asks suddenly, almost shyly, and it’s still muffled into Poe’s shoulder -- why is he still wearing his flight suit? This seems ill-advised, he’s going to have to rectify it here in a minute -- but it snaps Poe out of memory lane quickly and effectively. So effectively, in fact, that he can’t stop himself from groaning just a little.
“Yeah, buddy,” he says emphatically, and this time Finn doesn’t laugh; this time there’s a slightly questioning press of his hips, as he finally lifts his head off Poe’s shoulder to look him in the eyes. “You know I do. Kriff. You look so good in that thing it should be illegal.”
Finn lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a moan and a whimper, and Poe swallows at the way his eyes flutter shut, the way his throat visibly works. Kriff. He wants so badly to lean in and -- well, do a lot of things, but once again he reins himself in, pulls back just enough to grab Finn by the wrist and lead him over to the bed.
“Come on,” he says, and his voice is what he would like to think qualifies as respectably even, though definitely a little hoarse. “We should talk this through a little bit, seriously.”
Belatedly, he wishes he’d planned this out better; his bunk isn’t exactly in the neatest shape, and he has to hastily shove aside a datapad in order to make room for them both to sit down. But Finn doesn’t seem to notice, and he twines their fingers together and squeezes as he sits down.
“What are you so determined to talk about?” he asks, and the hint of impatience in his tone makes Poe feel a bit giddy.
“We can’t just dive into this. Well.” He has way too much experience with that kind of relationship -- back in the Republic, sure, and a few people here with the Resistance, too, and that’s fine depending on what you’re looking for, but he wants this thing with Finn to work out. To really work out. “We could, but we probably shouldn’t. I want to talk about -- what you want out of this, what I want out of this, that kind of thing. Make sure we’re on the same page.”
Finn’s brow furrows, but his eyes are still burning like twin coals so Poe’s pretty sure it’s not really a bad thing.
“That seems simple enough,” he says, leaning in just a little bit, almost swaying. “I want you, and you want me. Right?”
Force. “Right,” Poe chokes out, then clears his throat. “Yeah, that’s -- right. But I mean -- you know, other stuff. Uh, don’t take this the wrong way, but have you… had a relationship before?”
Finn hums, but doesn’t move back into his own space; if anything, he only gets closer, to the point that Poe is once again starting to reconsider talking later. Much later. But:
“No. Not really. I mean, I’m not -- I’ve done this before.” He gestures between the two of them, in a way that encompasses all off it, the way Poe’s pants have gotten tight and his hair is mussed and Finn himself isn’t much better, and the way they’re both breathing just a bit off-kilter. “But it was different, back there.”
There needs no explanation, and Poe nods; it’s not something they’ve ever really talked about before, but that’s more or less what he was expecting to hear. There’s something in his stomach that twists with a jealous heat at the idea of Finn having ‘done this before,’ and the image that flashes briefly in his mind of Finn and some other nameless Trooper curled up together in the showers or in the barracks or in a dark corner somewhere makes him shift.
Finn seems to catch it, his eyes visibly tracing over Poe’s lips, and he adds, quieter, “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before you.”
It hits like a blaster bolt, searing hot through his stomach, and he has to shut his eyes and focus on his breathing for a second. “Buddy,” he murmurs quietly; at this point he’s completely given up on pretending that he doesn’t sound absolutely, embarrassingly wrecked. “You can’t just say shit like that.”
“What, you can and I can’t?” Finn shoots back, and the bed shifts under him, and when Poe opens his eyes he’s in motion, moving smoothly to straddle Poe’s lap, hands settling in his hair again, which -- that’s always been something he’s enjoyed, but Finn’s hands strike the perfect balance between soft and insistent and even just the softest tug makes him want to cry out.
“Uh, yeah,” he manages, but it doesn’t matter; Finn’s kissing him again, tugging on Poe’s hair until his mouth falls open, hips pressing forward in little stutters, and it’s like Poe’s kriffing brain short-circuits. He clamps his eyes shut, dizzy with sensation, but it just makes everything even more overwhelming. Finn’s tongue slides into his mouth, and Poe sucks on his bottom lip in response, which earns him an almost startled moan, the sound going straight to his gut.
“Finn,” he says with feeling when they pull apart, “you’re so good,” and it’s nonsensical, but Poe feels the way it makes him shiver, and slowly slides his hands up and under Finn’s shirt, cupping his shoulderblades. His eyes flutter open again, and Finn’s lips are a little swollen and spit-slick, and that’s the moment that really seals the deal.
Finn’s shirt is gone in a flash, and the broad expanse of his chest is something else; one of these days, Poe promises himself dreamily, he’ll spend hours and hours just exploring, but for now, he wriggles under Finn until he can slide into motion, pushing further back onto the bed and coaxing Finn forward with his eyes and one finger in his belt loop.
“Not fair,” Finn mutters even as he moves to loom overhead in a way that makes Poe’s mouth dry, and that’s all the warning he gets before there are fingers fumbling at the zip of his flight suit, pushing aside the heavy fabric to reveal where Poe’s chest is heaving under his thin undershirt.
He smirks. “Sorry, baby,” he says in a tone that’s completely unrepentant; he doesn’t catch the change in nickname until after Finn does. Finn freezes for a split second, but then heat bleeds into his eyes and the set of his shoulders and his fingers move even faster, divesting Poe of his flight suit with all the efficiency of someone who’s been in and out of uniform all his life. Then he moves in on his own weather-beaten trousers, and Poe’s mouth keeps on moving without his permission, words flooding out.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, and Finn’s eyelashes flutter; “You’re so kriffing amazing, sweetheart,” he says, and Finn groans. Poe’s babbling, not even thinking about what he’s saying, but he means all of it with every fibre of his being, and he knows that Finn knows, that Finn can tell. With the full breadth and depth of what he feels for Finn bubbling just under the surface, it’s more than a little dangerous, but then his mouth’s gotten him into trouble before.
While he’s been talking, Finn’s got both of them stripped down to their underwear, and his hands resettle on Poe’s hips. He goes in for another kiss, but this time his lips press against the column of Poe’s neck, and Poe can’t hide the way that makes his toes curl. When Finn tentatively opens his mouth and bites, just a little, he definitely can’t hide the moan it rips out of him, or the “Kriff, Finn, Finn, you’re so good for me, so incredible, please --”
He doesn’t even know what he’s asking for, but Finn bites just a little harder before he pulls back, laying another wet kiss on the spot and Poe’s praying to the Force or any deity that will listen that it leaves a bruise.
Finn’s hips stutter forward again, and Poe feels the line of his cock burning against his own through the thin fabric of their underwear like a brand. He squeezes his eyes shut for another instant before looking half-lidded up into Finn’s and says, “Can I touch you? Wanna make you feel good, baby, c’mon.”
He barely gets the words out before Finn’s saying, “Kriff, Poe, yes,” and kissing him again, getting progressively sloppier, but that doesn’t stop Poe from humming and reaching down, fingers sliding under Finn’s waistband and pushing his underwear down until his dick springs free, until his fingers can curl around it, and kriffing hell, he wants that inside him. Not now, not today, he doesn’t think either of them are really ready for it, but even just the thought makes his own cock twitch with expectation of what that stretch would feel like.
For now, though, he just slides his hand down the shaft a few times, smoothly, experimentally, listening with rapt attention to the way it makes Finn keen and watching the way his back arches and he bucks forward into the light touch. When Poe squeezes just a little harder, Finn’s hips only snap forward more intensely, and he can’t help but grin into Finn’s mouth, their kissing disintegrating into a wet, messy slide of mouths.
“You like that?” he whispers, and Finn nods, his mouth falling open in a way that makes Poe’s dick twitch again.
“Can I,” Finn says, breathless, and Poe leans up to kiss him, open-mouthed and completely filthy, even as he nods.
“Anything, sweetheart, anything.” He means it like he’s meant every word he’s said all night, and Finn groans, bucks his hips again, and reaches down to pull the last of Poe’s clothing off almost unceremoniously. Before Poe can even miss the hands tangled up in his hair, one’s back, with the other curling hot around his cock, and he groans with feeling, the sound practically punched out of him.
“You like that?” Finn parrots back at him, cheeky, but instead of answering Poe rolls his hips up. They’re a tangle of limbs, and between the sheen of sweat across Finn’s back and the way Poe’s cock is starting to leak precum things are starting to get sticky, too, and something buried deep, deep in the back of Poe’s mind is screaming at him that this is all so sudden and they should take it slow. But even on top of all of that, that press of his hips, of his dick up into Finn’s hand, that speaks volumes, and one look at Finn tells him the message came across loud and clear.
“You’re beautiful like this,” Poe informs him, and at that Finn bows his head down, groaning, and it’s not too hard for Poe to gently knock his hand out of the way so that he can wrap his own around both of them, and he knows Finn likes that as much as he does from the way he keens and the way his dick twitches against Poe’s and it’s all Poe can do to start moving in anything like a rhythm.
Finn’s free hand finds Poe’s waist, and his teeth are at the crook of Poe’s throat again, and this time when Poe’s eyes flutter shut it’s because he’s worried that they’ll roll back into his head. Which is embarrassing, this is all a little embarrassing, he’s not a damn teenager but Finn completely wrecks him like it’s nothing. He doesn’t think anyone can blame him for wanting to wreck him right back.
“You feel so good, baby,” he purrs, and he doesn’t need to have his eyes open to catch the way Finn shudders. His voice is shaky, but the raw feeling behind it sure isn’t, and Finn doesn’t seem to mind, anyway. Poe flicks his thumb across the head of Finn’s cock and thinks, oh no, he definitely doesn’t mind, but what comes out of his mouth is, “so good, just for me --”
“Just for you,” Finn breathes back, breath puffing across the wet skin of Poe’s neck, and now it’s not just a hope, he knows there’s going to be a bruise there tomorrow, creeping out from under the collar of his shirt, where everyone can see it. “Just for me.”
“Yeah, Finn, buddy, sweetheart, yeah, just for you,” which isn’t the most elegant way he could have put it, but it’s no less true. Poe removes his hand for just a brief moment to spit into it -- inelegant, but his slick’s in his locker across the room and no way is he getting up right now -- and when he puts it back everything is even better, his hand moving over both of them, and Finn’s hands on him, and all of it seems to crystalize down to a hot, heavy feeling in his stomach.
He speeds up a little, jacking them both off with a purpose, and Finn bends and twists above him to press a sloppy kiss to his sternum. Suddenly, everything tips over the edge from perfect to almost too much, and Poe’s chest is burning under Finn’s lips like there’s just so much feeling he still has to get out.
“You saved me,” he whispers, not able to summon his usual volume, barely able to get the words out at all, but Finn still whines, breathing ragged. “You saved -- all of us, Finn, you’re so -- you’re so brave, and kind, you’re so good --”
“Poe,” Finn says, and he’s half sobbing now, “Poe --”
“Yeah, buddy, I got you,” he says, nonsensical with the heat pressing in from all sides, “I got you, baby, come on.”
Finn holds out for only another second and then he’s tipping over the edge, spilling over Poe’s hand, over both their stomachs, and Poe -- Poe’s eyes snap open, and he freezes, trying desperately to commit this scene to memory, because he’s never seen anything so beautiful. Every inch of Finn’s body is drawn taut, and he’s still looming over Poe with one hand curled in his hair, and his eyes are half-lidded where he’s looking at Poe through his eyelashes.
There’s a feeling in Poe’s chest that’s trying to burst out, and he could sing or scream or sigh it but he doesn’t think that would make him feel it any less, and anyway he doesn’t do any of those things; he pumps once, twice more, Finn whimpering a bit at what must be too much sensation where their cocks are still pressed together, and then he’s coming, too, falling apart just a little bit in Finn’s arms.
They’re frozen like that for several long seconds, chests heaving, eyes drawn together like they’re magnetized, and then the moment is broken: Finn quirks a soft smile and rolls off to the side, squeezing right up next to Poe in a bed that’s just slightly too small for the both of them, and Poe fumbles around for a piece of clothing or something to clean them off with, because he’s not quite up to walking even as far as the ‘fresher when Finn’s right here, all flushed bare skin and soft eyes.
“You’re lucky,” Poe tells him as his hand finally lands on something -- his undershirt -- and he begins to carefully wipe them both off, enjoying the way Finn’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles. “I don’t usually put out before the first date. After’s one thing, but we jumped the gun a little.”
“Don’t you think Jakku counts as our first date?” Finn asks, and he snorts, tossing his shirt back to the side once it’s served its purpose.
“Absolutely not, and even if it did, it would be a terrible date.” Poe rolls over on his side, propping his head up on his hand so he can look down at Finn, on his back and blinking up at him and with his lips still a little puffy and bitten red, and he’s absolutely powerless to stop the surge of emotion that all but knocks him off the bed. “I can treat you better than that, sweetheart.”
Finn hums. “I like that,” he says, tracing one finger over Poe’s collarbone.
“What, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, and all the other ones. I like it when you call me buddy, too, but that’s different.” He pokes Poe solidly in the chest, and his lips curl up in a bright, amused grin. “You just keep giving me names, I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep up.”
I’ll give you whatever you want is what Poe wants to say, but even now that sounds a little desperate to him. So, instead, he leans forward to press a kiss to Finn’s forehead, decidedly chaste after everything they’ve just done, and doesn’t feel the need to say anything else at all.
---
She’s in the gym, stretching out after a workout, when he comes to find her.
“Hey, Jasa, do you have a minute?”
Jasa turns; it’s Commander Dameron, all right, uniform a clear indication that he’s not here to work out. She’s a little surprised to see him. After all, he and Finn have been the talk of the base for the past few days with the way they’ve been all over each other. Whatever relationship they have is certainly not secret anymore, as evidenced by the days-old bruise blooming just under the collar of the Commander’s shirt, barely visible.
“Of course, Commander,” she says, standing up and barely restraining herself from falling into parade rest. She’s really trying her best to break that habit.
“I hope I’m not interrupting.” He gestures aimlessly around the gym, at the other beings exercising all around the room, and quirks a little grin at her. If anyone asked Jasa, though -- and they probably won’t, but still -- she’d have to say there’s just a little bit less of that roguish quality to it, replaced by something a bit softer, instead.
“Not at all. I was just finishing.”
He nods, shifts his weight a little bit, and the smile drops away entirely, replaced by an expression Jasa couldn’t hope to explain.
“I just wanted to say thank you.”
Jasa blinks, utterly confused. “For… what, Commander?”
He grins at her again, and suddenly she notices that something about him seems lighter than before. Freer. She has no idea what it means.
“You came to me looking for advice, but it ended up being you who helped me figure some stuff out,” he tells her very seriously, which makes absolutely no sense at all, but he’s still smiling at her so she does her best to smile back pleasantly. “So thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Commander,” she offers, though she still doesn’t know what’s going on. He inclines his head and turns to go, and she slumps a tiny bit with relief, thinking maybe she’s free to go back to finishing up her stretches and then she can go ask Lieutenant Klar -- ask Hyri -- what she makes of all this, but then Dameron hesitates and turns back around.
“You probably don’t need or want the answer to this anymore,” he says slowly, “but now I kind of do, so I’m going to tell you anyway. I fell for Finn because he’s one of the bravest, strongest, and kindest people I’ve ever met. He saved me, and then he saved my droid, and then he saved all of us. He’s so incredible I can hardly believe he’s real, and I just hope I get to spend the rest of my life telling him so.”
And with that, he finally does walk away, leaving Jasa staring after him with an odd, wistful feeling in her heart. She surprises herself with how fervently she wishes, for their sake, that the Commander gets his chance, and that she and Hyri get theirs.
Things really are different here, she thinks, and turns to go and find her Lieutenant.