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Apparently, Poe sings.
That’s what Jessica tells Rey, anyway, one night when they’re strolling around the X-Wing hangar by themselves. When she asks Poe about it the next day, he chuckles and waves it off dismissively.
‘Only when I’m drunk,’ he clarifies.
‘We can get drunk,’ Rey says quickly. She’s never been drunk; she’s not too sure what being drunk is, really, but it can’t be too terrible a thing. There’s a glint in Poe’s eyes to match the smirk on his lips as he debates answering.
‘You want to get drunk with me?’ he probes, licking his lips.
Rey feels her cheeks flush quickly, embarrassment rising. She’s not sure if it’s because she’s not entirely sure of what being drunk is, or if it’s the way Poe is looking at her; like he’s back in his X-Wing and he’s come upon an exploding star. He’s marveling at her. Or perhaps he’s making fun of her.
‘I… um, no.’ She begins to turn away, but he reaches out and touches her arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says sincerely. ‘I was just having some fun. We could get a drink, if you like. The base can be a pretty lonely place if you don’t know anyone.’
Rey observes him for a moment, unsure if it’s pity or a genuine want of friendship that’s edging him closer towards her. He has a kind smile, very kind, and his eyes are soft against the harsh backdrop of the whirring engines and the humming mechanics all around them. Rey glances down at where his hand is still resting on her forearm, and she doesn’t mean it to be a defensive thing but she shakes him off. It’s ingrained in her; people never touched her. She never knows what it means, or how to deal with it.
He looks apologetically between her face and his hand, then withdraws it and clasps it behind his back instead. Poe opens his mouth to speak, probably to apologize or say something to make her feel better – or worse, it could be some kind of sympathy, that she doesn’t understand him. Rey steels herself and turns bright eyes on him instead.
‘That would be nice,’ she says, and she means it.
He’s right when he assumes she doesn’t know anyone, and she thinks now is as good a time as any to start making friends. Finn still lies in the medical wing, and Chewie spends most of his days aboard the falcon, mourning his best friend and preparing the ship to follow Luke Skywalker’s map.
Poe smiles at her, and Rey finds that she likes it. He has a soft smile, despite being a little roguish in his way, and she feels like she could stand here and look at it for a little while longer.
‘I’ve got some check-ins to complete before I sign off for the night. Your room is on my way down to the cantina, so I’ll swing by and pick you up later. Is that okay?’
Rey nods, returning his smile with one of her own. She turns then to BB-8, just at the same time he does, and they both say:
‘Come on, BB-8.’
They turn and look at one another then, and once again Rey feels a blush creep into her cheeks. She forget herself for a moment, so lost in his smile she was, and then remembers that the droid isn’t actually hers. It’s Poe’s.
Poe who is smiling wide at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, but he waves her off.
‘It’s fine – you go with Rey, BB-8. If you want to, that is.’
BB-8 whirs happily and Poe grins as the little droid as it speeds off, back to the residential wing of the base. Rey begins after it, glancing back once or twice and offering an embarrassed, yet gracious, smile. Each time she does, she notices Poe looking at her too and there’s an odd sensation in her stomach. It feels airy and heavy all at once, but she finds it’s nothing too irritating. In fact, it’s a bit exciting.
*
‘I grew up in the military – in the resistance. In more ways than one,’ Poe says, just before bringing a brown glass bottle to his lips and sipping whatever liquid is inside. Rey watches the bubbles swirl intently, her grip tightening on her own basic cantina cup, and the water it holds inside. Poe had mentioned she could try something a little stronger, but Rey isn’t so sure she wants to yet. She’s been sticking religiously to water, and drinking as much as she can.
She’s half-worried someone will take it from her if she’s not careful. Wouldn’t be the first time.
‘What about you?’ he asks, angling towards her a little more. He’s leaning one arm on the bar, and the other hand is casually resting on the back of her stool. They’re in quite close proximity, now that Rey thinks about it.
She doesn’t mind. There’s a faint smell of fuel about him, and green. The smell of the green and the fresh air; the very smell Rey let herself be intoxicated by in Maz Kanata’s temple. It was so new, so invigorating. It was freeing.
Poe smells like freedom, she decides. An alluring freedom.
‘You lived on Jakku your whole life?’
‘Yes,’ Rey says automatically, as though she hasn’t been recently introduced to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, she had a family once. Before they left her.
Poe seems to notice her struggle here, and tilts his head in a way that assures her he’s willing to listen, if she’s willing to talk. Rey weighs her options; sure, she could spill her entire sad story to this strange man. Not that he’s strange – he’s Poe. He’s a fellow pilot, fellow fighter. He’s a friend, or at least he could be. Perhaps this is how people normally make friends, Rey thinks. Perhaps when they’re not being hunted by the First Order, people simply talk to each other, and it’s enough to form a bond.
Poe looks softly on her as she speaks.
‘I was left on Jakku when I was five. I don’t remember much before that, because I was so young I suppose.’ She pauses and thinks over her next words carefully.
Since discovering her powers, she’s often wondered the extent of them; how strong she really is. Leia’s told her she can feel it radiating from Rey, like a silent waterfall that’s crushing over the rocks of the rest of the world they’re on. Luke says she draws things to her, finds powers in the small and the big things. He says she brings colour back to the galaxy. If she does all that, then perhaps she can do more.
‘Sometimes I think about it. Before…’
‘Before Jakku?’ Poe asks, then sipping on his drink again. Rey notices him wince as he swallows, like the liquid is painful.
Rey pulls her gaze from his face. He clenches his jaw right after wincing and it’s… it’s distracting. She nods to bring herself back to the conversation.
‘I wonder if I’ve forgotten because I wanted to. If perhaps I could use the force long before I even knew what it was.’
‘You think you blocked out your own past.’ Poe deduces, and Rey offers a small, confirmative nod.
The reminiscing, this retracing of a time long-forgotten has Rey wishing she’d taken Poe up on his offer of something stronger. Perhaps something stronger might make her feel less exposed. She’s never had anything stronger – or a real drink, as Poe coined it earlier – and she can’t help but wonder if it could be an escape. She’s been eyeing the bottle in Poe’s hand for a while, and he seems to notice, as a moment later he holds it out for her to take.
The liquid tastes incredibly foreign on her tongue. It’s harsh but smooth, and the actual taste is something unfamiliar.
‘Berries,’ Poe informs her, when she creases her brow.
He smiles so warmly at her, and there’s a hint of an amused look in there too. But Rey doesn’t mind, so she smiles back and suddenly it’s just the two of them gazing into one another’s eyes. Rey swallows the drink then, and her gaze is torn abruptly from Poe’s when the drink burns its way down her throat. She splutters, coughs, and tries to hide it in her sleeve as she turns away from him.
Behind her, she hears Poe chuckling.
‘It’s got a bit of a kick,’ he says as his arm comes around the front of her, offering her a cloth to clean her lips with. ‘Sorry, I should have warned you.’
‘Are you drunk enough to sing yet?’ Rey asks, desperately trying to change the subject.
‘Not even close,’ Poe says, and Rey starts to lose hope that she might be able to tempt him into a tune.
‘I’ve never heard anyone else sing before,’ she says innocently as she moves back around. She picks up her own drink and takes a sip, hoping to quell the taste of Poe’s, and the sensation it’s left in her throat. Beside her, she hears something of a resigned sigh.
When she looks up, Poe is ordering them two more drinks.
Rey smiles to herself, behind the protection of her cup. She doesn’t think Poe notices the faint glimmer of hope in her face, but then he lights up too and hides it behind his own drink, and she’s not too sure.
*
‘I’ve never been drunk before,’ Rey informs Poe as they sit atop the millennium falcon. Having given him the tour – a rather misguided one at that – Poe had discovered the hatch to the roof and demanded that they go up.
‘I can tell,’ Poe replies with a smirk.
They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, with barely enough space for a strand of hair between their bodies, let alone anything else. Poe sat down a little too closely, in hindsight, but she didn’t move away so neither did he. Rey’s a small thing in most ways, and yet so big in many others. Her eyes are wide as plates whenever she spots a star she hasn’t seen before, or a cloud as it floats in a certain shape.
And when she turns to him to ask him questions about his life, about flying for a living, the expression on her face is nothing short of grandeur. Not the delusional kind, either. Poe can’t help but feel drawn.
She told him, when they left the cantina and headed for the Falcon, that Luke told her she pulls things to her. Poe doesn’t disagree, not one little bit. Lost in his thoughts, he’s pulled from the reverie quite suddenly when she shifts in her seat. She pulls her legs up so that she’s cross-legged and turns her full body towards him. She leans her elbows on her thighs and moves forward, a suspicious look in her eye.
Poe swallows suddenly, then sets aside the bottle he’d brought with him from the cantina. He turns to her.
‘Are you drunk enough to sing to me yet?’ she questions in a low voice. She squints a little, trying to scope him out. All this does is endear her to Poe, and he finds himself loath to stop smiling.
He’s not even sure how long he’s known this girl; two days, if that really. What started out as a mutual interest – this being Finn’s health – has cascaded into something much, much more. He feels like he knows her.
‘I might be,’ he admits in a tone so low it matches her own, and then some.
Rey sits a little straighter.
Poe takes a moment to consider things. He’s nervous. She’s making him nervous, but not only that – she’s making him self-conscious. He sings when he’s drunk in front of his friends. Rey… he’s not really sure what she is to him. They could be friends. She’s confided plenty in him to merit that, but somewhere inside, niggling at his head and his heart, he can feel something more. Like he wants more. Poe sings for his friends and they have a great time; they laugh, they cheer, they applaud, but he only really does it for himself after a long day, or a long battle and the troops need something to cheer them up.
This feels important, somehow. She’s never heard someone else sing, after all, and he doesn’t want her first experience of that to be a bad thing. It’s a beautiful thing, to give yourself in such a vulnerable way, to sing in front of strangers.
They’re not strangers, though, not anymore.
And somehow that makes it more terrifying.
‘You don’t need to be scared of me,’ she says off-handedly, turning her gaze to her hands in her lap.
Poe stops.
He peers at her through narrowed eyes.
‘What did you just say?’
Had he been speaking aloud?
Rey looks up at him. Her eyes are a mix of confusion and understanding, as if she knows right away what she’s done but she doesn’t understand the full extent of it. Poe’s fist tightens at his side, the side facing away from her, and he hopes she can’t see that too. If there’s one thing he hates to be, it’s vulnerable.
It’s now that he realizes that’s exactly what he’s been all evening. An open door for anyone to walk through and take what they want. That’s what she’s done.
‘I can hear you,’ she says gently, like it’s not a bad thing.
Poe stands up abruptly, and Rey wobbles backwards a little. He straightens the lapels of his jacket and looks anywhere but at her. He’s resigned to leave, and runs hand through his hair as he does.
‘Stay out of my head,’ he says, stonily, and then walks away.
‘Poe,’ she calls, like a whisper on the wind.
He doesn’t stop. He heads for his room, where he hopes he’ll be at peace and away from prying minds. He won’t go through that again; the pain, the forceful breach of consent, someone else playing with his mind so as to make him weak. He won’t do it. He doesn’t care if it’s a red light or a blue one.
He doesn’t even care if it’s Rey, and she doesn’t do it on purpose.
He tells himself he doesn’t care.
It’s hard to convince himself.
Deep down he cares too much.
*
Rey doesn’t see Poe for two days.
She waits vigil beside Finn’s bed in the medical wing; he still hasn’t been woken up from his coma. The doctors say they’re worried about the damage to his spine, and whether or not he’ll make a full recovery. Rey has little time to worry about much else once she hears the dreary prognosis, but somewhere in the back of her mind Poe Dameron is making himself known to her. She wishes she hadn’t said anything, that night. That she hadn’t asked him to sing for her, or tempted him to with all those drinks.
It had been a bad idea from the start, and she knew it.
She just wants to feel at home. Comfortable. As though she belongs.
For whatever reason, Poe Dameron felt like the right place to start.
The door to Finn’s room slides open, and in he strides.
His shoulders noticeably slump when he sees her. Rey is up and out of her seat in moments.
‘I’m sorry about the other night,’ she tells him, and he tilts his head as she speaks. It’s something of a distraction, but Rey carries on anyway. She doesn’t talk loudly.
‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ she pleads.
‘I know that,’ he tells her. He drops his helmet into the nearest chair and runs a hand through his hair again. Rey is half-tempted to do it too.
‘I shouldn’t have walked away like I did,’ he admits. ‘I just…’ he throws up his hands, and Rey knows there’s something he’s not quite telling her, but she knows better than to pry. Except it’s hard to control herself right now; it’s hard to turn it off.
‘Can you hear Finn, too?’ Poe asks suddenly, and Rey is distracted for a moment, turning to look at her friend.
She goes back to her seat at his side.
Slowly, she nods.
‘If I try, yes. It’s harder when he’s like this…’
Rey takes Finn’s hand in her own and closes her eyes.
‘He’s dreaming,’ she says quietly.
She sees a detention cell, she sees Poe in restraints. The same restraints she’d been in herself. She sees Finn and Poe in a ship, laughing and crowing as they escape. She sees herself smiling. She stands to the side and watches as Finn and Poe embrace after the battle at Maz Kanata’s temple. She sees Finn on the Falcon with Chewie and Han, coming to rescue her…
‘What about?’ Poe asks.
Rey looks up at him. He’s tense, with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed as he focuses on their friend’s face.
‘Us,’ Rey says simply, and it’s enough to elicit the smallest of smiles from Poe.
‘So you have to try to look in on him. But with me it just happens?’ he probes then.
Rey shrugs.
‘I’m not too sure how it all works, yet.’
*
They dance around each other for much of the following week. Poe feels bare when he’s with her now, so he tries not to be. Not because he doesn’t like being near her, but because he does. He doesn’t want her in his head, though. He doesn’t want anyone else in his head.
Except she won’t get out.
She’s taking up most of his thoughts. Any time he powers up his X-Wing, he thinks about how Rey looks so alive when she’s surrounded by the hum of engines. He thinks about how natural she is when she in the Falcon. How bright her smile is when she’s in the pilot’s chair.
He thinks about the way her smile makes him stumble over his words.
He thinks about how perfect her lips are.
He thinks about her.
He wonders if she thinks about him too. Late into the night, when he struggles to sleep, he finds often that his mind wanders to her. Just as it’s starting to do so now, there’s a gentle rap on his door. From where he’s been powered down in the corner, BB-8 whirs to life and beeps at the door.
‘I heard it, buddy,’ Poe says.
He slides off his bed and pads over to the door, barefoot and dressed in some standard issue shorts. He’s not been expecting company, so whoever it is can’t exactly blame him for not wearing a shirt.
When he opens the door, sleepy and blocking out the light from the hall with one hand, he finds Rey looking back at him. He’s about to speak, but she beats him to it.
‘In Finn’s dreams, you were in restraints,’ she says.
Poe clenches his jaw.
She stops him before he can speak again.
‘I was in the same ones. He… he hurt me too. Or he tried to, I don’t know.’
She’s tired, he can tell. She has dark circles under her eyes and a trembling body to match. She hugs herself as she speaks. Poe stands aside and she moves into the room, bringing with her a calming sense of peace. Poe notices that the hum of the base seems to dampen in her presence.
‘I’m sorry I listened to you,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry I looked.’
Poe scratches his arm, and the movement seems to distract her. Rey looks him in the eye firstly, but her gaze begins to travel south. Poe feels her on every part of his body, from his neck to his shoulders, and down to his chest. She rakes over his abs.
She stutters when she speaks again.
‘I won’t look again,’ she says.
BB-8 beeps at her from the corner of the room, and Poe watches the corners of her mouth as they tug into a smile. BB-8 turns to Poe then, and beeps again, and this time he has to smile.
‘BB-8 doesn’t like it when we fight,’ they say in unison.
That’s enough to make them both chuckle.
Rey takes a turn around Poe’s room. BB-8 quietly powers himself down in the corner once more, and Poe moves back to his bed. He sits on the end and grabs a shirt from a nearby drawer. He can’t be sure, but there may have been a brief glimpse of disappointment on Rey’s face. She’s looking out of the window, so Poe can’t be certain.
‘I don’t have a window in my quarters,’ she says.
‘Most people don’t,’ he tells her, hoping to sound somewhat comforting.
‘Perks of the rank.’
She nods in understanding.
Poe joins her at the window. It’s not really big enough for them to stand side by side and gaze out at the rest of the base, so he stops just behind her and looks over her shoulder at the night outside. They stand in companionable silence for a little while, until Rey shifts backwards a little and quite suddenly she’s pressed rather closely to him. Poe’s just glad he put a shirt on, otherwise she’d surely feel the goosebumps that have erupted on his skin at her touch.
‘I don’t sleep very well,’ she says quietly.
‘Why not?’ he asks.
She turns around, and Poe is very aware of how close together they’re standing now. It doesn’t seem to be fazing her at all. In fact, she draws even closer and finds his gaze when she speaks again.
‘I can’t seem to turn the world off.’
Instinct overcomes Poe.
‘I can help with that,’ he whispers.
He slides his hand up to the back of her neck and pulls her close. Their lips brush, gently at first, but then Rey follows his lead and her arms tighten around his waist.
They part, both of them panting lightly at the release. Rey’s cheeks are tinged pink when he looks down at her.
‘Was that okay?’ he asks.
She doesn’t speak, only tucks herself into his arms and presses her lips against his again. She’s soft and warm and tastes like… berries. They part again, and Poe rests his forehead against hers.
‘You’ve been on the booze.’
Rey smiles, her eyes still closed.
‘Chewie said something about liquid courage…’
‘Hmm,’ Poe says.
He wraps his arms around her shoulders and holds her tight. They seem to sway on the spot, and Poe’s not sure if it’s him leading them or her. Either way, it feels pretty good.
Perhaps he’ll sing for her after all.