Sugar

EDIT: Well this got a lot of attention! I got a few users asking to print or repost my art and I am unimaginably grateful to everyone's interest, especially since it's a really simple drawing I made on a whim haha! Anyone who is looking to print these out to hang or hand out or repost on another platform is free to do so, although I ask you to credit me and let people know it's from my Tumblr profile! If anyone wishes to do anything else with my art or post and wants to clarify what I consent to then they can message me privately and I'll explain! <333 all my love to my queer siblings

A vested interest.

As a commander in the resistance.

Yes, that’s it.

That’s definitely how it starts, at least.

An interest.

Your name is mentioned casually to him one morning in the mess, a name he doesn’t recognize and one that is suddenly everywhere.

Repeated and repeated and repeated.

Until he wants to burst, because who are you and shouldn’t he know and why did everyone else know you and not him?

He hears about you for kriffin weeks.

Black Squadron adores you. You make an impression on Rey and Finn and Rose.

Yet, Poe never sees you.

You’re never around when he is – off doing some other thing, always just out of the room, just moved, just – not around.

It goes on for so long, that he starts to suspect you’re avoiding him. Or, that it’s an elaborate prank that’s went on for far too long and no one knows how to tell him the truth.

That you simply do not exist.

He starts to suspect you aren’t real.

He knows everyone on the base, can pick out most people by name and face and has talked to all of them at least once, in passing, in the mess, in debriefings. 

Not you.

You are a faceless mechanic that came from nowhere, that has charmed people quietly and quickly, that has a supposedly famed and wicked aim (if he has to hear about how you only hit the bullseye on the holodarts board at the cantina again he’ll lose his mind – really). 

The holodarts thing only bothers him a little – mostly because Poe has never seen you at the kriffin cantina. 

People whisper that you’re kind, that you’re quiet, that you’re stubborn, and that you’re hiding something. 

Even BB-8 knows you. The droid that almost never leaves his side, somehow knows exactly who you are.

Poe has no idea what world you come from, what led you to the resistance. He supposes it doesn’t really matter, and the fact you hadn’t offered that particular bit of information to anyone not unsurprising, considering that the things that led people to the resistance were usually traumatizing.

Poe is intrigued by you.

He has no good reason to be, really.

And at the end of the day, you are just one of the many mechanics. You’re just one of the many people that live and work on D’Qar, that’s a part of something bigger than yourself. 

But Poe? He’s never really been good at letting things go, letting it lie. He’s stubborn, he knows that, and usually he can work that to his advantage.

Not this time though. This time he feels like he can’t do anything but dig his heels in.

Poe isn’t used to being…left out. He isn’t used to feeling left out, like someone just doesn’t want him around.

He’s…well, the poster boy, the golden child, Leia’s favorite – the leader everyone looked too when things got tough.

Poe hits his breaking point when Rose mentions that you were at the cantina the night before. 

Again. 

And that he didn’t see you. 

Again. 

“What? What do you mean? I was there the whole night! And I never – ,”

“Left right before you got there,” Rose shrugs, looking to Finn for backup. “You got there later than the rest of us – the debriefing with Leia?”

Finn nods, glancing from Rose to him and back again, lifting a brow at Poe’s slightly distressed tone. “Yep. It went late, remember?”

Poe sits with that for a moment, scratching a hand over his jaw, nodding slowly. “Why doesn’t this person want to meet me?”

Finn and Rose share another concerned look. “I don’t think it’s on purpose, Poe – ,”

But Poe decides that’s enough. “Right,” he says, standing, making an effort to clear the irritation from his voice. “I’ll go introduce myself now.”

Before anyone can stop him, before he can think it through and stop himself, he’s striding away, through well-known halls and familiar corridors, BB-8 trailing along at his heels whirring and beeping as he goes.  

“I know, buddy,” he says, glancing down at the little droid. “I know it’s not on purpose.”

But it kind of feels like it’s on purpose – like you know something about him or heard something about him that makes you stay away, that makes you avoid him. Something that either isn’t right, or he needs to correct.

You aren’t avoiding him, right?

You don’t even know him.

Why are you avoiding him?

His stomach twists, because there’s always the possibility you know him from his spice runner days. “Can you lead me, Beebee?”

Really, he should have done this weeks ago. It was his responsibility to be familiar with the other pilots and mechanics.

BB-8 rolls ahead of him with a whirr, leading him toward the one of the hangars.

Another series of beeps.

Uneasy. Cautious.

Poe frowns, stepping quickly behind the droid, to the entrance to the hangar. The smell of fuel and oil and something slightly charred greets him like an old friend. It’s a smell that’s as close to home as Poe feels he’ll ever get these days.

It’s a smell that’s like flying and falling, like stars and sky, and hope.

Most people are in the mess for dinner at this time and so the usually chaotic hangar is quiet, only a couple of people lingering, quickly finishing up whatever they were working on to get to dinner too.

BB-8 races around a banked ship, Poe following closely when he pulls up short.

He watches BB-8 cross the duracrete to you and knock into your ankle.

Poe has definitely never seen you before.

He would remember someone like you.

You smile, immediately stooping down to run a hand over BB-8’s side. You have a wrench in your hand, a smear of grease on your forehead. You’re working on his x-wing. Poe does a lot of the maintenance himself, but not all of it, not these days, not with the responsibilities that weigh on him.

He can’t figure out how to put one foot in front of the other suddenly, struck a little bit dumb from where he watches you attempt to communicate with his droid. It’s obvious that you don’t understand binary, but that you’re trying to interpret his beeps to the best of your ability anyway.

You frown, furrowing your brow, mouthing something under your breath. The movement of your mouth pulls at a scar that spiderwebs over your jaw and a portion of your cheek.

Kriffin hell.

He hadn’t expected you to be so pretty. He hadn’t expected you somehow. Even from where he stands, he can see the long flutter of your lashes against your cheek, the curve of your bottom lip, the delicate knob of bone in your wrist.

You touch the droid’s domed head softly, your voice finally carrying over to him, “– sorry, honey, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

With a series of exasperated beeps, BB-8 rolls away from you, back toward Poe.

You glance up, your gaze like mourning flowers, like the sharp points of rocks at the bottom of a whirlpool, like raw burning grief. Something about you is overwhelming, something about your gaze is like tumbling through open space, like free falling in a star shower.

For a moment, he thinks you won’t spot him, but then your eyes snap to his and those fathomless, unknowable depths soften just a bit.

You lift a hand in greeting, still crouched on the floor, the corners of your lips lifting in a smile.

Beep. 

He looks down at his meddling droid.

Another sassy beep.

Go. Over.

But he can’t get his feet to carry him over to you.

So, Poe just waves, smiles back at you. He feels dopey and stupid. Black Leader, Commander Dameron, afraid to approach one of the kriffin mechanics. 

You lift a brow, dusting off the knees of your trousers as you stand.  

“Sorry for bothering you! Don’t know what’s gotten into him!” He settles on calling over to you, pointing down at BB-8 like it was his fault, like Poe didn’t ask him to lead him to you (the droid gives an indignant little whirr at the implication), before he turns on his heel and marches away, like he has somewhere important to be.

Poe Dameron is not a coward, but what he sees in the depths of your eyes scares some part of him he didn’t know existed.

Well, at least he knows you’re real.

And he now, now, he can say he’s obsessed.

Because Poe’s never backed away from something that scared him. 

~

A crash sounds to your left, makes you jump, your bad ear ringing. 

You glance up and around just in time to see your toolbox slipping to the floor in a cascade of metal. The only thing you can do is watch as your carefully organized madness spins across the floor, the noise catching the attention of a few passersby. Despite the usual chaos and noisiness of the hangar – it still attracts attention.  

A final wrench pings to the floor and you trace the orange flight-suited legs behind the new mess up, until you meet the eyes of Poe Dameron.

He’s cringing, his face contorted into a pained expression before it eases into the relaxed smile he usually sports.

Maker, he’s beautiful.

He’s unfairly attractive actually – soft dark brown curls with eyes to match, a kind of warmth behind his gaze that couldn’t be faked.

You lift a brow when he stoops down to sweep your tools back into the box, haphazardly piling anything that would fit back into the box.

The carefully organized compartments are all but ruined, it’ll take days to sort them right again. “Sorry about that,” he says, righting the box on a stool as his ever-present droid beeps at him, a little orange and white BB unit that most people adore.

Including you. 

You’re more familiar with the droid than you are with his owner.

BB-8 had a strange habit of periodically checking in with you. 

Still, you’re surprised to find Dameron in front of you at all. That day he stared at you from across the hangar is burned into the back of your mind, the way he’d looked at you like he was seeing a ghost. 

Or something worse. 

He couldn’t wait to be out of the same room as you.

Everyone who mentioned him had nothing but kind things to say, even when they were criticizing him - a little hardheaded, a little reckless. But a good leader, a good man. 

You resist the urge to reach a hand up and cover the scars that stretch across your jaw and cheek, anxiety beating through your chest. 

“It’s okay,” you answer, only a little bit of carefully controlled despair dripping through your veins, despair at your things being knocked about, despair at having been so swiftly judged by someone so supposedly kind. 

His presence is a reminder of that day, that odd little lie he told, the rejection you’d done nothing to earn but lift a hand in greeting. 

You had precious little, your things were your touchstone when everything else disappeared, when you no longer felt safe, or like yourself. Some of those tools had been with you since –

You force yourself to take a breath. 

They’re just things, you remind yourself, things that could be rearranged and replaced. 

The droid whirs and beeps again, sounding a bit irritated.

“Right,” Poe stands and sends you another overly charming smile, like he’s trying to make up for something other than your upset tools. “Beebee is right. That was a bad apology. I’m sorry for startling you and I’m really sorry about knocking over your things. I can help you reorganize them, if you want,” he offers, sheepishly rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. 

You blink at Poe, a little bewildered at his offer, more than a little baffled by his sudden presence.

Maybe you’d caught him at a bad time that day, maybe he’d really been rushing somewhere.

The droid swivels to look up at you, chirping excitedly, apparently now satisfied you’d been properly apologized to. You can’t help but smile and crouch down, reaching out to pat BB-8 who happily rolls forward into your hand like he always does. “Does your droid always scold you?”

“Only sometimes,” Poe says, smiling again, the crinkles by his eyes pulling at his cheeks. You’ve never seen anyone smile like that before, with their whole face, like they were putting effort into it.

If it were anyone else, you might still be a little bit irritated, but Poe’s inflection is one of total earnestness.

That, and you can already tell he’s the kind of person that it’s impossible to stay angry with.

It only helps him a little that he’s the most beautiful person you’ve ever laid eyes on. His energy is infectious, too, and you suspect that even if he wasn’t a pretty boy, he’d still be able to charm whoever he talked to, that he’d still sound like sunshine radiated right out of his veins.

You both glance at the messily assorted tools. “Don’t worry about it,” you say, some tension rolling out of your shoulders. “They needed to be sorted out again anyways. No harm done,” you say, partially to reassure yourself. “Is there a reason you’re here knocking over my things?”

Why are you suddenly talking to me now? Your real question goes unspoken.

Poe scrubs a hand through his hair, curls artfully threading around his fingers, messy but like it was supposed to be that way. “Well, word around base is that you can fix pretty much anything.”

You frown at him, cocking an eyebrow up.  

Were people saying that? It’s verifiably untrue. There are plenty better mechanics than you. You preferred tinkering with more delicate things anyway, smaller machinery than the ships that surround you. 

“I can certainly try,” you answer cautiously, still patting BB-8. “But I gotta ask – who told you that? I think I’m a pretty average mechanic.”

You don’t know much about Poe Dameron, besides the popular, regular gossip about him.

He’s hotheaded, he’s reckless, he’s a great leader, he’s the best pilot in the whole kriffin galaxy, he’s the poster boy of the resistance, he’s kind, he’s a flirt, he’s –

He’s staring at you guiltily, like he’s been caught doing something bad, and you have a feeling that his sudden interest has something to do with the day he avoided you.

It’s a miracle you hadn’t seen him before that day, especially considering how much you interacted with Jessika and Snap and Finn and so many others. Because Poe knows everyone, is friends with damn near everyone.

But you haven’t really had cause to speak with him yourself before he so boldly strode over and knocked your tools to the floor, before he stared at you from across the room and sent little bolts of panic racing around your veins.

It had been hard not to notice Poe, to wonder about him, even if you didn’t interact with him yourself.

“Finn and Rose. Rey too. Which, if Rey is saying that you can fix anything…well, I thought she was the one that could fix anything.”

You tilt your head and straighten, BB-8 rolling back to Poe’s side as you do. “What is it that you need help with exactly?”

Poe stares at you for a long moment, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes before he recovers himself and reaches out a hand. “Poe Dameron, by the way, I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

You don’t take his hand, nodding back at him, locking your fingers tightly together behind your back. “No. You were in such a hurry the other day,” you say, watching as Poe winces, testing your theory of guilt. “But everyone seems to know you around here,” you let him off the hook a bit and tell him your own name, though he clearly already knows it.

He lowers his hand, doesn’t make a big deal about you not taking it.

Which you appreciate.

“Everyone knows you, too,” he says. “Except for me.”

“I really doubt that.”

“No, really!” He exclaims. “All of Black Squadron – all they talk about is you. Kriffin hell, if I have to hear one more time how you’ve never miss the bullseye in holodarts...” he trails off, shaking his head. 

You blink, just a bit surprised. Though you see all of the pilots quite a lot, you didn’t think they talked about you, thought about you outside of your brief conversations with them, your very occasional outings to the cantina. 

“Maybe that’s just because I keep them from falling out of the sky,” you say to Poe before you can really think your words through.  

Poe laughs, and it’s a nice sound, even if it startles you just a little.

Maker, how did anyone bare being around him for more than a few minutes? When he looks the way he does and smiles like that and laughs like that?

Poe is the kind of person who burns, scorches the world around him. His energy is like an exploding star and you can already feel yourself getting sucked into his orbit. 

He nods you in the direction of his x-wing which you’re more than familiar with. You frown as you approach. “Something happen in flight? It was fine before.”

There had only been drill flights earlier so you can’t imagine something drastic could have happened to it. 

Poe maneuvers behind you, brushing a friendly hand across your shoulders as he passes you. You stiffen and the hand is retracted, but he doesn’t call attention to it, just works at removing an external panel of the ship while you stand by, arms crossed over your chest as you watch.

He lifts the panel, chattering on at you about some of the wiring.

You frown and watch him, the flutter of his lashes, the movement of his throat, the bit of warm brown skin that peeps through the open collar of his flight suit.

The problem he claims to be having with the wiring is so simple a child could have fixed it. You narrow your eyes and watch Poe Dameron lie straight to your face about not knowing how to fix it, about not even knowing what was wrong in the first place.

Stars, he’s a bad liar.

But when he turns to you with those wide, brown eyes, you don’t have the heart to call him on it.

Though you have to wonder why.

Why pretend?

Why pretend not to know what the problem is? How to fix it?

Just to speak with you? Surely not. 

You glance down at BB-8 who stares up at you, like he knows what’s going on too and is begging you not to mention how stupid it all is.

A laugh bubbles to the back of your throat, one that you have to bite your lip to avoid leaving you.

Poe feels guilty about the other day, you would guess, and this is his in to talking to you, making it up.

Like he couldn’t have just approached you under the guise of introducing himself.

Its profoundly circuitous and you find yourself warming to him because of it.

So, you just reach out, point out to problem with the wiring. “There’s your issue. Here – ,” you step forward and make quick work of righting the issue, holding back a grin as you do.

This is certainly not something you expected from Poe, he seemed like a more direct person to you.

Like the day he’d marched into the hangar, clearly with the intention to talk to you, only to back away and lie.

Maker, he does feel guilty.

He’s smiling at you again, watching you with rapt attention.

BB-8 rolls slow circles around the pair of you, engulfing you in your own personal bubble with Dameron.

“So, are you heading to the mess now? For dinner?”

You tilt your head, “Sure, Poe.”

“Wanna eat together?” He’s not looking at you, there’s a tracery of pink on his neck, creeping up his throat. He knows he’s been caught.

“I promise I won’t tell Rey,” You say, just to watch him blink over at you in surprise, just to watch the pink spread and turn red. “That you would think she can’t fix something like this.”

He laughs, the sound loud and unrestrained. “Thanks. Guess I should have made up a real problem.”

“Should have,” you chirp. “Something really complicated. Next time, rip out this,” you suggest, pointing to a panel. “That’s a real problem. No steering.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he’s grinning like a fool at you.

Famous charm, famous flirt.

You shake yourself, wonder at how quickly you were sucked in by him.

You clamp that feeling in place, ice it off, seal it away. You won’t, can’t, get attached to anyone. And you don’t like the feelings bubbling up in you. “Glad we finally got to talk, Commander Dameron. I don’t think I’ll be able to join you at dinner.”

Before he can ask, you walk away.

But you feel that burning gaze, the weight of his eyes on you, until you turn a corner out of his sight.

~

Poe tries to right his wrong.

Of course, it backfires. Of course, he decides to do it in the stupidest way possible.

Beebee doesn’t let him forget it. 

He’s still a little bit afraid of you and the things that lie in your eyes, but that only fuels his interest, his obsession. 

But approaching you after that first encounter – casually – seemed like a bad idea. He didn’t want to mention how he’d basically fled the room – Maker, he can only imagine what you think of him because of that.

Having a reason to approach you, like needing help with something, seemed so much better.

“So, you’re going to lie to her?” Rose had asked him. “Why? Just introduce yourself, Poe. I thought you did that when you marched off the other day.” She’d seemed disgruntled. “It’s not even a good lie!”

And Poe was notoriously bad at lying.

Still, he hadn’t been able to regret it as he watched you replace the couple of tangled wires he’d hastily tugged out of their respective panels. Not when you were so close to him, not when you smelled like engine fuel and something distinctly earthy, not when he could see the swoop of your lashes against your cheek and the webbed scar that extended down your neck into the collar of your shirt.

The way you hold yourself, upright and proud, but guarded, makes him want to peel back the layers of who you are.

So even if the excuse is stupid, even if he pulled those wires out himself, he’s glad he did it.

Even if you turned down his offer to eat together, it gives him an opening into your life.

Whenever he has time, which isn’t much, he makes a point to seek you out.

Anytime he sees you in the mess, he makes a point of sitting beside you and talking to you, even if it’s just to watch you grumble about how close he is.

He notices that you don’t like to be touched, that you seize up like you’ve been electrocuted. You try not to tell him things, but some things slip out, some things are just hard not to notice about you.

You’re afraid of flying, your home world was warm year-round and you don’t like feeling even a little bit chilly. You like those blasted holodramas that Poe thought no one in the galaxy actually watched, you read maintenance manuals in your spare time. The tools you use have undue importance to you, he catches you cataloguing a couple of them more than once, just to check they were still there. He notices that your hearing isn’t as good on your left side, that you’re more easy to startle if he approaches from that way, and so he always goes to your right.

Poe brings you cups of caf until he realizes you don’t really like how bitter it is, your face screwing up with the bold flavor of it. So, he starts bringing you something sweet instead, something warm. It makes him happy because he likes sweet things too, he always found the caf too bitter too.

He hunts down a jacket for you, one of the ones with fur on the inside and leaves it on your workbench.

He has a feeling that if he gave it to you in person, you’d never wear it.

Poe isn’t sure why you’re so closed off, especially with him, but eventually you stop frowning when he appears, you smile and greet him and ask him how his day has been.

Poe doesn’t think you realize it, but one day, one of the days when he’s lost people and things feel hopeless and he still smells like kriffin fuel after washing for so long his skin feels raw, you pass your cup back to him – filled with that something sweet.

It’s still warm, and he likes to think maybe he can taste the shape of you on the rim of the cup.

“I heard what happened,” you say. “I was waiting for you.” You don’t offer any platitudes, and he’s glad for it. It just makes it sting worse, when people say things like – I’m sorry and It’s not your fault.

It’ll always be kind of his fault.

That’s just who he is, what he does.

But you don’t seem to realize what you’ve admitted. That you wait for him, think about him while he’s gone.

And before Poe can think about that too much, you’re passing something else to him. “They had them in the mess while you were away. Saved some for you.”

You press a koyo fruit into his hand, your skin carefully not touching his.

You smile and take the cup from him, sipping from the same place his lips had just touched.

Instead of saying thank you, like he should, like he wants to, he asks for something else from you. Some deeper part of who you are. He slides his thumb across the skin of the fruit, reminded of home. His throat is tight with gratitude when he asks, “Why don’t you like to fly?”

You blink long at him, fingers tightening on the cup until he worries you’ll hurt your hand.

He waits, is about to tell you that you don’t have to say it, not ever, but you nod, and loosen your grip on the cup. Instead of speaking, you gesture to the scars that disappear into the collar of your shirt.

Poe just nods.

“What about before?” He asks, probably against his better judgement. “Before that?”

“Nothing better than being in the stars,” you answer easily, gaze distant. “Maker, I loved flying.”

He can’t help the grin that pulls over his face.

~

Poe Dameron easily becomes a menace in your life.

A nuisance some could say.

He starts appearing in your life, in your carefully created little bubble, anytime he can.

Really, he’s got no good reason to.

Still.

He starts finding reasons to be in your presence.

Poe becomes your problem, and your solution.

True to his word, even when you tell him he doesn’t have to, he helps you reorganize your tools.

He sits with you at your workbench any free moment he has, brings you cups of caf and then replaces it with a sweet drink you can’t name, makes probing small talk, tells you about his home world.

You learn a lot about Poe, about his life. He talks about flying a lot – a romantic edge in his voice that doesn’t fit with being a pilot in a war. You let yourself imagine Poe as a different kind of pilot, the kind that could just go, be, explore.

But you can’t figure out why he tells you these things, you offer hardly anything in return. He shouldn’t be interested in you, he should have given up on you a long time ago, he should have gotten bored of you a long time ago.

You don’t tell him how your home world was destroyed, you don’t explain your fear of flying even if you do let that information slip out.

Poe’s eyes go round when you tell him that, like he can’t imagine it, being afraid of something he lived for, loved more than anything.

He doesn’t ask why in that moment, though he does eventually.

And when he does, you tell him.

You tell him, and he accepts it for what it is.

A sneaky little, “You should let me show you how to love it again,” slipped in before he left you that night, koyo fruit in hand.

You do not want to know Poe Dameron. You don’t want to care about him. You don’t want to care about any of these people. Caring about people just complicated things, just made everything worse, when something inevitably took them from you.

And you’re starting to rely on Dameron, you’re starting to care about him. Really care about him and weather he made it back in that banged up ship of his.

You never meant to make an impression on them, never meant to make them think about you more than they should. Never, you never should have gone to the cantina with Black Squadron when Jessika Pava invited you. And you certainly shouldn’t have gotten sucked into a game of holodarts – something which apparently lived in everyone’s memory just because you happened to be a good shot.

Dameron is the worst of all – always around, always smiling, always cracking jokes. He’s also the one who leaves the most, who comes back to D’Qar singed and beaten and who takes far too many risks.

He makes you nervous, not just because of the way he flies – like nothing can touch him, like he’ll always make it out alive – but also because of his penchant for digging himself into your skin, burrowing himself inside you and becoming a part of your life, your routine.

You want to hate him so badly.

You want to stop caring about him, but Dameron is determined to be in your life, he’s determined to assault you with daily kindnesses.

And so, you start to care about him, to like him, to wonder about him and find your thoughts occupied with the ways you could make him smile on the days where he can’t.

The world always feels like its ending. The war feels never ending. Something life altering is always happening, always just around the corner.

You hate it.

Poe is talking to you now, rattling on about something or the other, and you can’t focus because it’s hard to breathe – it’s hard to breathe when you have to stand by and watch him climb into the x-wing you take meticulous care of, and stick that stupid helmet over his head.

“I’ll be okay, you know,” he says, grinning down at you. “You don’t have to worry so much.”

Maker, let that be true, you think.

Instead, with acid on your tongue, you say, “I’m not worried about you, Poe.”

“I’ll come find you when I’m back.”

Like you wouldn’t be waiting anxiously the entire time, like you wouldn’t go sit out on one of the bluffs hidden by the trees and stare up at the stars, imagining you might be able to see his ship if you looked hard enough. 

“You don’t have to do that. I probably won’t even notice you’re gone. It’s not like I send all my time thinking about you.”

Poe laughs at your tartness, “Okay. I’ll be thinking about you though, so I’ll still come find you.”

You roll your eyes, annoyed that it makes you happy. “Bye, Beebee, stay safe,” you say to his droid instead of him, walking away before Poe can say anything else, the noise and commotion of the hangar too loud for you to hear anything else anyways.

Despite your best intentions, you think about Poe while he’s gone. You save some of those blasted koyo fruits from the mess because he always acts like he’ll die when he misses out on them. They’re native to his Yavin IV and remind him of home even if he doesn’t say it. His mother had planted a koyo tree when he was a child, and they grew in their yard.

You’re always one of the first to know when he’s back. People make sure to tell you, even when you don’t ask.

You never touch Poe, but you sit close to him when he gets back, and give him those stupid fruits, and share a cup. He still smells like fuel, but you don’t mind, because its Poe, because he’s alive.

And you admit to him that night that you were waiting, that you always wait for him, if only to see him smile.

He makes you feel like an idiot, he makes you feel uncertain, because he is so very certain.

Despite it all, Dameron is there, and if he can’t be, his droid is.

He invites you to dinner whenever he can, and once you go, just to watch him beam like sunshine, just to watch him hold court, make everyone in the mess his best friends for an hour.

Hope, Poe had a way of inspiring hope, of making people laugh when things got tough, of making them believe in something better.

You grow a little bit attached to him, find yourself waiting for him from time to time, even when he’s not away, before you catch yourself and feel that ice around your heart shiver and spiderweb and crack.

Maybe you should stay away from him, but you can’t – not when the sun of him feels so nice, is melting the ice.

Not when he looks at you with eyes softened by something unknown, something you don’t want to see or recognize. 

Because you can’t have the inside of you exposed to the light again.

But you can’t quite bring yourself to make him stop either.

~

“Here.”

You glance up, squinting into the low light. “Poe,” you say, not at all surprised. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

He rolls his eyes, smiling. “Just take it will you?”

You grin back, flip your magnifying glasses above your forehead and peel off your gloves before taking the cup Poe is offering you.

“Do you ever stop?”

“Do you?” You counter easily, sipping at the sweet drink as Poe sits on the spare chair across from you at the workbench.

He shakes his head, “Guess not. Hard for me to sit still. There’s always something else to do.”

You nod, yanking the glasses off your head and tossing them onto the bench. You haven’t seen him in a while, you want his attention. “It’s late,” you comment, trying to hide a yawn.

“I know.”

There are purple circles beneath his eyes, creases at the edge of his cheek, like he’d accidentally fallen asleep on something.

“Why don’t you go get some sleep then, Poe?” You ask gently.

He shakes his head, leaning back in his chair, closing his eyes. “When I haven’t seen you in weeks? Never.” 

You snort. “What, you need me to put you to bed or something?” 

“I wouldn’t say no to that,” he hedges. 

“Of course you wouldn’t.” 

He peeks one eye open at you, “Is it so surprising that I like being around you?” 

You look away, fidget with your fingers, the edge of your jacket. A jacket you know is a gift from Poe. “A little bit. It’s hard to imagine why.”

For a moment, you don’t consider continuing, you don’t even think of it, because there’s nothing more to say. It really is hard to believe. Why should he? When you give so little of yourself in return? When Poe burns brighter than the sun and you are but a faded star?

But before you can think of something to say, of the words to describe how you feel, before you can get your next words out, Poe leans forward, right into your space, the smell of him, the scent of clean soap, the fresh smell of the shampoo he used, the cologne he put on, invading every part of you, diving down into your veins, like sunshine on ice. “I like you,” he says softly. “That’s why.”

His gaze is warm and open. Big brown eyes staring at you from beneath thick lashes.

You blink at him, “I like you too, Poe.”

And you do, you like him too much, maybe to your own detriment. 

But you don’t say it the way he does, with teeth and grit and meaning. You say it like you don’t understand what he means, what his constant presence means, what his patience with you and you only means, what the jacket left on your workbench means, what the cups of something sweet, and always approaching you from the right side means.

Poe likes you. And he wants you to know it.

Poe doesn’t smile at you, just watches you for a moment. “You don’t get it do you? What do I have to do to make you get it?”

“Poe…” You trail off, not sure what to say to him. “I don’t understand why.”

“Does it matter why?” He sounds a little bit offended. “Why is it such a surprise anyway? I’m not…I don’t really know how to be subtle,” he offers. “I’m telling you. I like you.”

You bite your lip, worry at the hem of your shirt. 

But there are things he doesn’t know, and there are things you aren’t sure you can give. 

And because he could have pretty much anyone he wanted and yet he wasted his time here with you. Because the world is always ending, and you can’t lose everything again.

And Poe, he’s sort of becoming everything to you.

Instead of answering, you drain the rest of the drink, flick out your light, and switch off your datapad. “You need sleep, Dameron,” you say. “It’s making you delusional.”

Poe stands, following along after you without complaint, rounding a corner into an empty corridor.

“So, it doesn’t matter why?” he chirps, smilingly upbeat again, like you didn’t just reject him without explanation.

You roll your eyes, following a well-known path to his quarters. “Of course, it matters.”

“It shouldn’t. You could just accept it.”

You reach his door, automatically punching in the code, stepping back to wave him in ahead of you. “Poe,” you stop him, standing very close to him in the low light of his room. You can see every lash against his cheek, the bruise darkening along his brow. “It’s better this way.”

“I don’t think it is,” he says, obstinate about it.  

You sigh, exasperated, opening your mouth to respond when he cuts you off. “No. You’re wrong about this. It’s not better this way.”

“Poe,” you say again, growing frustrated. “You don’t know anything about me. I give you nothing in return for all you do. You should hate me. I can’t even touch you. I can’t even look at you when you leave. I can’t even say goodbye.”

You stop, press your hands across your chest, ribs aching with the pressure you exert. You wait for him to get it, but Poe just says your name, so quietly and sweetly it makes you want to crumble. “Baby,” he coos, and you know he’s thinking about reaching out to you, about how much easier it would be if you were an easier person. Your throat goes tight with the sound of that pet name on Poe’s lips, directed at you. “Baby,” he repeats, palms open, eyes like little galaxies of their own. His lips twitch up into a gentle grin, “I know you. You’re easy to know.”

And Poe repeats the things he knows about you. That you like it warm and come from a warm world. That you don’t like bitter things. That you’re meticulous with your tools and work, that you preferred to be alone when you worked but you like to have company when you eat. That you’re easily annoyed by loud noises and that your left ear is sensitive. That you pretended to think the koyo fruits were too sweet but that you now look forward to them just as much as Poe does.

“You tell me things. You just don’t realize it. I like who you are.” Poe steps away from you, toward his bed, slumping down to yank off his boots.

The circles under his eyes are in sharp contrast with his skin in the low lighting of his quarters. You stand there, not sure what to say, not sure if you want to say anything. Not really sure how to say anything.

“Poe,” you say softly, his name on your lips making him pause, glancing up at you with eyes that are such a rich warm brown, you’d gladly lie there forever, gladly lie in that shade and sleep. “Thank you.”

His brow softens, that little pinch smoothing out, and he holds out a hand to you.

You hesitate, not sure the contact won’t kill you, won’t end everything you know.

“C’mon, you’re tired too. Stay with me,” he lays back, scoots as far away as he can. He doesn’t say it, but you hear it anyways. I won’t touch you.

You pull your feet out of your shoes and kick them away, and you lie down beside Poe as he flicks out the light. He turns to you in the dark, the shine of his eyes the only thing visible to you before your eyes adjust and his features come slowly into focus.

He’s beautiful, unreal in his beauty.

Poe smiles. “Are you going to stay?”

“Sure, Poe.”

“Good.” His eyes flutter shut and you have to tangle your fingers together to resist the urge to reach out and touch his cheek, to trace the arch of bone.

You shut your eyes instead, and listen to Poe’s quick breathing, the shift of him on the bed, still fully clothed and above the blanket.

You tilt closer, wriggle closer.

You want to press your nose into his shoulder, into his bicep, you want to dig your teeth into him, to consume him.

Because he’s just so…Poe.

He’s everything you don’t really deserve.

The scent of him overwhelms you – forest pine and rainwater, the lingering smell of fuel that you’re starting to become addicted to.

Just before you fall asleep, you press your nose into his shoulder, you feel the briefly light touch of his hand against your cheek. The feather light touch is immediately retracted, jerked away, a reprimand unto itself.

But you wish it would linger.

~

You don’t make things easy on him after that night, like you regret falling asleep so close to him.

He should have known better than to fall asleep too, he was a clingy sleeper, and he hated the panic in your eyes at finding his skin against yours when you woke.

There had been a moment, between waking and realizing, where Poe had been blissfully happy. It had been a long time since he woke up touching someone else and he was loathe to let that feeling slip away, it was only a bonus that this person smelled just like you.  

But then he’d opened his eyes and found you really there, a look in your eyes like you were deciding whether to push him away or pull him closer.

Instead, you mumbled an apology and stumbled out of bed, out of the room.

There are some days after that when Poe just can’t find you, no matter where he checks, no matter what he does.

He thinks about the way your hands sometimes shake, about the times where you look like you haven’t slept in days and days and days, the scar that trails over your jaw, the circles under your eyes, the haggard, drowning look in your gaze. Like something is tormenting you. 

He wonders sometimes if he should just let you be, he wonders if he is the thing that’s tormenting you.

Your eyes haunt him, the look in them still scares him. 

But he doesn’t want to look away, he doesn’t want to give up on you, not for anything. Poe doesn’t give up, doesn’t look away from things that are difficult. And you always come around eventually, looking for him but pretending that you aren’t, quietly sitting down beside him or waving to him from across a crowded room.

There are times that things keep him away – he’s off planet, he’s on a mission, he’s participating in kriffin diplomacy. He misses you like a part of himself has been lost. 

And ever since you came around, he can’t focus on anything else, can’t think about anyone else. 

No one else can warm his bed, not even for a night.

He doesn’t consider anything more with anyone else because –

Well, because they don’t bring him koyo fruits and sit out and stare at the stars when he’s away and tells BB-8 goodbye and not him because it’s too painful, it’s too close to losing too much.

He wishes you would just let him in. 

~

“You’re going,” Poe says, standing with his arms crossed at the threshold of the mess. He’s vaguely sweaty, a black mark across his forehead and down his cheek, a frayed kind of burned smell emanating from him.

Half the buttons on his shirt are undone and you want to hate him for it. You hate that expanse of skin, the ever present chain around his neck poking out. Another piece of himself he’d given you, why he wore the necklace. That his mother’s ring is looped on the end. Poe had let you see it, let you fist your hand around it, trace the edge of the ring.

He’s back from a mission, something, you don’t know.

Your brain goes all fuzzy, blanks out the specifics of what goes on with the actual flying in the sky part of things. You don’t like to think about it, don’t like to know the details of what he does, what any of the kriffin pilots do. 

Maker, to be afraid of flying in a place like this was like being a bird with its wings clipped, defenseless and easy to be left behind.

You wrinkle your nose and turn away from him. “Not sure what you’re talking about, Dameron.”

Poe strides forward and takes the seat across from you. “Cantina. Tonight. You’re going. We had a very successful mission,” he beams at you, clearly proud, satisfied. He doesn’t offer details, knows it makes you anxious. “And you’re coming to the cantina.”

You don’t care about the mission, you’re just glad he’s back. 

But all you say is - 

“Nice try. I don’t respond to pressure,” you refocus on your datapad.

“I command – ,”

You groan, “No – ,”

“Yes! As Commander Dameron, I…” he hesitates, clearly trying to think of a synonym for command. You lift a brow, and he continues with much less zeal and gravitas, “ –command you to come with me to the cantina tonight. I can finally watch you beat everyone at holodarts in person.”

“That really hurts your feelings, doesn’t it?” You snort. “It’s just darts.”

He pouts at you, an exaggerated expression that makes you laugh. “Yeah, it does actually.”

You shake your head, reaching out to adjust the collar of his shirt a little bit. Poe stops breathing, his shoulders tense, as you smooth the fabric back. “What happened to your flight suit?” You ask, silently begging anyone listening for him not to mention your fingers against his shirt.

“Had to look my best before I came to see you,” he recovers quickly, his eyes on your hand as you withdraw your touch, brows ticking up. “Didn’t I?”

You wrinkle your nose, “Stars, this is your best?”

“Hey!”

You bite down the smile that threatens to overcome you. “You definitely didn’t hit the fresher before you came here.”

Poe rolls his eyes, “Are you going to come or not?”

“Sure,” You agree. “Just this once.”

He blinks, surprised, because you’ve never gone with him. “Really?”

You pause, watching him, “Kriff, Poe, do you want me to go or don’t you? I can change my mind – ,”

“No! No, no, no, you’re coming. You already said yes.” he’s beaming at you, just sitting there looking at you, eyes flicking over your face, smiling like you’ve agreed to something much more important than going to the cantina. “I missed you,” he says suddenly, the words bursting forth like they no longer fit inside his mouth.  

“Right,” you agree, sliding your gaze to your datapad again, not acknowledging his words, “Just come find me after you’ve found some soap.”

You should tell him, you think. You should tell him what happened to you.

There’s something like hardened trust between you and Poe now, something deeper than that too, something you’re afraid to name.

He deserves to know.

And selfishly, you want him, you want him to touch you again, you want to touch him again without surprise pulling over his features, you want him to keep bringing you cups something sweet and you want to keep hoarding koyo fruit for him. 

You owe him the truth, the core of you, in exchange for everything he’s given you, so he can make a decision about you. 

~

Poe finds you exactly where he left you earlier, hunched over a datapad in the now nearly empty mess, brow furrowed as you review schematics, make notes on them, absently twirling a stylus.

He plucks up the datapad and switches it off.

You glance up, your fathomless mourning eyes brightening when they fasten on him. “You look nice,” you say in a rare moment of openness, like you can’t help but let the words tumble out.

A heat he doesn’t expect crawls up his neck, traces over his cheeks. “Let’s go. We’re holodarts partners.”

You wrinkle your nose as you stand, carefully wrapping your hand around his elbow, your fingers avoiding direct contact with his skin. But he can feel the warmth of you through his shirt and that’s enough. “Who decided that?”

“Me.”

“So I’ll be carrying our team then.”

“Ouch,” he lies his other hand against his heart, trying not to disturb your touch on his arm.  

The pressure of your fingers at his elbow feels so good, warm and heavy, and Poe thinks he’s actually starting to become a bit touch starved. Never has indirect touch felt so good.

He’s normally a touchy person, and it’s been a bit of a challenge to remind himself that touch scared you. He hugs his friends, sure, and the pilots are a strangely tactile bunch, but there was something deeper he craved, something only a partner could really give, something that he hasn’t had since he’s gotten hung up on you.

Poe isn’t really even thinking about sex, just touching, just holding you, any part of you, of being allowed to hug you when he sees you, kissing you, holding your hand.

He fantasizes, sometimes, about getting to hold your kriffin hand.

You’re gradually coming around to careful touches though.

Even a couple weeks ago he could have never imagined you willingly tucking your hand against his arm.

Once at the cantina, you refuse to play holodarts with him, claiming it isn’t fair. “Black Leader should have to fend for himself, shouldn’t he?” You say quietly over the rim of your drink, not looking at him but grinning when everyone starts to heckle him.

So it ends up that everyone is partnered but Poe.

You sit out the games, instead chatting with Rey, the two of you bent over your glasses, talking lowly about something. What you might be talking about, Poe can only guess. But it’s distracting enough that he loses every single game.

Finally, after all this time, you’re here at the cantina together, and you don’t want anything to do with him.

You laugh at something Rey says, your eyes crinkling at the corners, fingers laced together over the tabletop as you lean closer to listen.

It’s only much later, when you’ve had a few drinks that someone fits a dart into your hand and nudges you up that he gets to watch your famed aim. You refuse at first, and so adamantly that people start to complain, and Poe has to warn them off it. You’re a little bit tipsy but you’re still game, still willing to indulge them a little.

They make you stand much further back than normal, make you spin in a circle a few times, until you’re laughing and dizzy and Snap has to catch you gently when you almost trip. The others are trying to test you, to see if you really have skill or if you’re just particularly good at holodarts.

You barely take a breath between shots.

Every single dart meets its mark, dead centered on the glowing board across the room. Drunken cheers erupt and coalesce around you. You look vaguely embarrassed, like you don’t want the attention. Your smile is tense, your fingers tight on the next dart, eyes flashing to his gaze where he hoots along with everyone else.

“Someone needs to get a blaster in your hand!” One of the recruits says, jostling an arm around your shoulders.

Your smile goes, tight, hard, panicked – and you gently extract yourself, laughing, brushing your fingers over your arms before you cross them tightly across your chest.

He starts to move toward you, but someone else is already there. Rose and Finn pulling you toward the bar, away from him again.

Poe misses the searching glance you direct back at him.

~

“Hey,” you press your hand against Poe’s back hours later, squeezing in next to him at the bar. Poe immediately turns to you, beaming like sunshine incarnate. He tilts his head down and your breath stalls for a moment, your mind curiously blank.

Touching Poe, you’ve found, is nice. Your skin doesn’t crawl with the sensation, pain doesn’t echo inside you with the warmth of him against you. It’s so nice, and you want more.

That first time had scared you so badly, you were conditioned to find pain in touch, and it was only after you abandoned him in his quarters that you realized you felt none of those things. It had felt good, warm and safe, like being bundled up against a cold wind.

“Hey!” he answers, a curl of his dark hair feathering along your forehead, his nose nearly touching yours. “You havin’ a good time?”

“Yes,” you answer, your fingers still against the back of his shirt, curling into the fabric. “But I miss you. You left me,” you echo his words from earlier in the evening, the ones you couldn’t make yourself parrot back to him in that moment.

“I’m right here,” he smiles at you still, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He looks tired, exhausted, older than you’ve ever seen him.

His skin is warm through his shirt, and you have to resist the temptation to lean into him, to press your nose to his throat and inhale. The smell of his skin is coppery with sweat and his cologne, the breath of something very Poe just beneath. “Sorry I wouldn’t partner with you earlier.”

“S’okay,” he says, eyes dark and framed with lashes that make you jealous. You want to touch them, count each little hair.

He’s pretty, so very beautiful, and you’re angry with yourself for wasting your evening anywhere but right here. His shirt is unbuttoned, the chain he wears around his neck peeking out, the length of his throat, the twist of tendon in his neck, mesmerizing.

Poe tilts his head closer to you, carefully not touching you, eyes fluttering shut, lashes long and dark against flushed golden skin.

You laugh.

He’s a little bit drunk and it shows.

You tighten your fingers into the back of his shirt again, tugging gently, “Poe,” you say, breathing his name out softly. “Poe, will you come with me?”

He doesn’t even ask where, just nods and follows you when you step away from him.

You let go of his shirt and watch him frown at you, like he just realized that your hand had been on him at all and now he’s missing the feeling. “C’mon,” you nudge, “It’s a secret.”

“Secret,” Poe echoes, an excited smile tugging back into place on his face. “Okay.” You start to trail away, through the thick forest greens that make up D’Qar, and Poe follows closely behind you. You glance over your shoulder to make sure he’s still there but Poe does you the service of talking your ear off, so you don’t have to constantly check he’s still there, rambling on about whether or not droids have souls, stomping loudly through the dark forest, your path lit only by the light of D’Qar’s moons.

The dry swell of his voice is comforting, the rumble of it pitching upward when he gets particularly excited about something.

You drop back to walk next to him, pushing aside verdant undergrowth as the ground begins to slope upwards. Poe doesn’t question you, just follows, climbing up the hillock until the trees thin and a cool breeze slips through the hanging vines.

The edge of a cliff looms ahead.

The bluff isn’t that high, and there’s a small waterfall that feeds into a pond. You think it’s beautiful, lush emerald below and the flight of stars overhead, the glow of two moons. But Poe turns to you with a frown, a worried line appearing between his brows. The spray of mist from the fall rises around you both, cocoons you in itself.

A light breeze shifts the collar of his shirt, all those undone buttons, the breath of exposed skin and the chain that hangs around his neck.

And before Poe can say anything, to you or about you or about this strange little world you’ve brought him to, you lose the courage you thought you had – the courage to tell him, finally, why. And what happened. And what you feel.

Before you can change your mind, you step around him and leap into the void.

~

When he looks over the edge of the cliffside, he imagines the spikes of rocks in the water below.

The swirl of the water reminds him of that thought he had about your eyes the first time he saw you. Grief like the sharp tips of rocks at the bottom of a pool.

Poe gets that feeling again, the same one that had bubbled up in him when he first met your eyes. Fear rakes through him, but he’s never backed away from something that scares him, not even you. With his heartbeat loud in his ears, and an unknown feeling tugging at the back of his throat, Poe watches you jump.

He lets out a strangled gasp.

You hang there for a moment, suspended in space, light from the moons crystalizing around you, threading through your hair. And Poe thinks, Maker, save me, because you look like a falling star, you look like all the stars in the galaxy raining down.

And then you drop and fall into the pond, sinking so deeply he loses sight of you.

You disappear from sight and Poe curses, not hesitating to follow you, jumping over the side too, without hesitation because all he can think about are the blades of rocks.

The water is dark and something darts by his ankle, but when he surfaces, you’re already there, smiling at him, your teeth shining in the light of the moons. Any warmth he felt from the glow of the drinks settled in his veins has evaporated. “Kriffin hell, what were you thinking – ,”

You bob closer to him, the falls a distant roar, your lips dipping below the surface of the water. His breath stutters to a halt, through the cool cut of the water, your warm hand tangles with his.

For the second, third, fourth time tonight, you’re willingly touching him, and this time it’s your bare skin against his.

You stroke your thumb over the back of his hand, “I do it all the time. It’s fine.” You point up at the cliff, water trailing down your arm, “That’s where I watch for you.” Your arm ticks out, pointing at the stars now.

Poe catalogues that information for later, his brain short circuiting at the thought of you at the top of that cliff alone, waiting and watching the stars.  

“A little warning would have been nice,” he huffs. “You know there are predators in this forest.”

“And yet, I’ve always been fine.” You ghost your other hand up his arm, fisting in the collar of his shirt. “Jumping…It’s the closest feeling I get to flying these days.”

Poe doesn’t know how to respond for a moment, watching beads of water pearl and drip down your face, over the line of your nose and curve of your jaw. “What happened?” He asks the question he never dares to.

You hesitate for only a moment, sliding your hand down his arm. The moment is surreal, the warmth of you like walking on the surface of a sun, like flying through fire. It’s only made more intense by the cold water around you, binding you together. “What happens to everyone, I think. I’m not special.” You shrug, the whites of your eyes blinding in the dark quiet world you’ve brought him to. “The First Order came. I was the only one left. After.”

The way you say it is breathless, like you’re breathing through pain, an old injury.

“It’s more than that,” he says, stubborn about it. “There’s more.”

You blink, water webbing in your lashes. “And I want to tell you, Poe. Will you listen?”

~

You tell him about the destruction of your home world.

“I raced,” you say hollowly, sitting next to him in the sand that rings the pond. “I used to race. I always won. I was really good at flying, Poe. I can’t remember ever losing.”

Poe squeezes your fingers, the sensation of finally getting to touch you muddling his brain just a bit. “What did you race?”

“Anything,” you say breathlessly. “Anything that I could. Anything that would fly.” You pause and clear the tightness from your voice, “Anyways, we didn’t have much of a resistance presence and no connections. So, when the First Order came…” you trail off and don’t continue for a long time, turning your forehead into Poe’s shoulder, the crown of your head heavy against his arm.

“It was over before it started. But we had to try. I thought I could fly anything. And I could. But it was just me and a few others and it was…there was no way…” you swallow. “I was the only one left, and I crashed.”  

There are a lot of details you’re leaving out, that’s clear. But the pain in your voice makes him keep his questions to himself. Instead, Poe strokes his hand along your temple, the curve of your cheek, swipes away the tears before they can really escape.

You only continue when he wraps an arm around your waist. Those eyes, your mourning flower eyes, like the deadliness of unseen depths, like something sharp and angry and deep, flash open.

You still scare him, but he never wants to look away, he never wants you to look away. Those pierced, shattered bits of you stare back at him. “I crashed. And there was nothing and no one and – everyone was gone.” Dead, you don’t say. Everyone was dead. “And I didn’t even have a medpack. No food. Everything hurt. It still hurts sometimes, like I can feel how raw my body was for so long. That’s why…the scars. The wounds weren’t treated and so I scarred really badly. And the pain never really goes away. It’s worse when people touch me because it wasn’t over. That wasn’t the end of it.”

You close your eyes, “They found me. But I didn’t know anything because I was just some kid with a ship and guts. They thought I knew some kriffin resistance secret.”

Poe goes still.

You were tortured.

“What happened?” he asks, instead of lingering on that thought, on those dreadful memories that swarm up the back of his throat.  

“I wasn’t worth killing. Or maybe they thought I was as good as dead, or already dead. They left me. Somewhere. I don’t remember. Until I was found and healed. I don’t really remember by who. I don’t remember where I was. And then I didn’t know what to do for a long time. My memories are…they come and go. Eventually, I joined the resistance because what else was I supposed to do? Everything I knew, it was all gone. All I had were a couple of spare tools from my ship.” Your eyes flash open, “But now I can’t even look at a ship without – ,” you stop, jaw clenching.

“It’s why I worry about you and why I don’t want to say goodbye and why I tried so hard not to let you see me. Why I didn’t want you to touch me, for anyone to touch me.” The words spill out of you in a torrent, like you can’t get them out quickly enough. “Anyways. Now you know.”  

Poe doesn’t have any words to offer you, nothing that can take away what happened to you. He pulls you close, tucks your head under his chin, and you lean into his shoulder, nose pressed to the fabric of his shirt.

It’s quiet for a long time, so long the sky starts to lighten, and he knows you both need to head back to base. He’s already been gone too long. The only thing keeping him from going is that fact he hasn’t been commed.

If something drastic happened, someone could always contact him.

Your fingers tighten on his before you release his hand and pull away and lumber to your feet. You open your mouth, blink at him, an amused expression pulling over your face.

You reach down and brush a hand through his hair. “You’re covered in sand.” You show him your hand, a lot thin layer of sand coating your palm.

Maybe sitting on the sand in your entirely soaked clothes hadn’t been the best idea.

He wouldn’t change it for anything.

Poe grins, “You are too. We’re about to have a reputation.”

“Okay,” you shrug. “I’m okay with that.” You don’t look at him when you say it, eyes turned toward the horizon instead.

His heart shutters, his lungs seize, at the meaning behind your words. “Oh, yeah? Y’know gossip goes around quick.”

“It’s not really gossip, is it? More like an announcement.”

He grins, takes your hand when you offer it to him and pulls himself up, smearing more of the sand down your cheek and over your neck as he does, leaning into you, pressing his nose to your cheek, because you let him. You squirm, trying to pull away. “C’mon,” he laughs, stooping for another handful of sand, “I thought you were okay with this!”

“Poe…” you warn, a smile finally jerking into place on your face as you back out of his arms and away from him. “Don’t.”

“Too late!” he starts forward, and you dash backward, crashing into the copse of trees and out of sight.

When you finally make it back to the base, both of you covered head to toe in sand, Poe finally catches you.

He doesn’t hesitate in kissing you for the first time, doesn’t mind that it’s gritty and kind of gross. You taste like D’Qar, like stars and evergreen. You tilt your head up, smooth your fingers up his arms.

Poe tilts you back into the nearest wall, not caring who sees or what they think. It’s an open secret that he’s in love with you anyways, so if any reaction was warranted, he feels it’s cheering.

Besides, what better what better way to announce yourselves?

Your fingers cup around his wrists, mouth soft and giving beneath his. A sigh slips past your lips, the breath of you against his chin.

Poe can’t help smiling, grinning, into you, knocking his forehead against yours. “This is okay, isn’t it?”

“You would have known by now if it wasn’t, Dameron,” you say. 

“I mean,” he thinks back to your words, “You’re not in pain? I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“You can’t, you wouldn’t,” you murmur, tilting your head to the side, eyes wide and open, those unknowable depths just a bit less grief stricken. His gaze trails down your neck, over the soft skin, the bump of scar tissue. You have sand there too. “How did you get sand inside your shirt?” Your fingers slide against his chest, inside the open buttons, fitting right in above his heart.

He closes his eyes, jaw clenching.

You trace the vein in his neck, cup his cheek, press a kiss to his nose. “Sorry,” you say. “Sorry it took so long. Sorry I ran out of your room that day.”

“It didn’t take too long,” he blinks at you. “But I will be making up for lost time.”

Poe mirrors the grin that spreads over your face.

~

“ – well, but, baby, if I’m the one that’s flying,” Poe whines. “Would that be as bad?”

You glare at him from your workbench, huge eyes staring at him from behind those magnifying glasses you use to work on delicate equipment. “Yes. It’s still in the air, isn’t it?”

“What if we have to suddenly evacuate?”

“Guess I’ll be standing out front with a blaster,” you snark. “Waving goodbye to your ship.”

Poe rolls his eyes, “You're gonna have to fly again someday. Why not with me? For a start?”

“I absolutely do not have to fly again.” You ignore the rest of his offer.

“So, you’re planning to stay on D’Qar…forever?” He pauses, “How did you get here?”

You frown at him, taking off the glasses and tossing them on the table. “By ship, and it was horrible. And so what if I am? I like it here.”

“Well,” he approaches your place at the bench, circling an arm around your shoulders, “hopefully one day this war ends.”

You don’t look at him, but you do tilt your body into his, warm and pliant against him, scrolling idly on your datapad. Poe catches the way your fingers shake a little bit. “Hopefully,” you intone, scooting over on the bench so he can sit next to you. “That doesn’t mean I have to go off planet.”

Poe decides to drop it, instead leaning in to press a kiss to your temple. “I’ve never crashed you know,” he says against your skin. 

You grin and glance over, “That is a lie, Poe Dameron.”

“Only a little one.” He presses a hand to either side of your head, tilts your face up. “You look pretty today.” He swipes at the line of black grease down your cheek. “Really pretty.”

“Just today?”

“Everyday. But especially today,” he presses a long, lingering kiss to your mouth, likes the way you follow his lips when he pulls away.

“Poe?” You say against his lips, and he hums back at you, nuzzling his nose against yours.

“Yes?”

“I’m not going in that kriffin x-wing with you.”

He sighs, standing to pick up his helmet, “Worth a try. Are you going to come say goodbye?”

“Of course. I’ve never let BB-8 leave without telling him goodbye,” you hold out your hand to him, folding your fingers between his.

You smile and brush your thumb across the back of his knuckles.

~

Poe wears you down one night.

About the flying thing.

He doesn’t let it go, like he can’t let anything go, though he tries to be gentle with you about it.

“Baby,” he says into your skin, and you melt, and sigh, and you’re mad, because he knows what he’s doing. You’re vulnerable because he’d come back this time in a limping ship, had been regulated to the medcenter. “For me.”

His skin is warm and still bruised under your touch.

Kriff, you hate him.

You open your mouth to refuse him again, when he says, “Don’t you miss the stars?” And your throat goes tight, “I mean, you used to race. Do you remember what it was like the first time you left orbit?” His voice goes dreamy, and soft, “I do. I never wanted to land.”

You tangle your fingers into his hair, prop yourself up on one elbow. “If you could live in the stars, would you?” You tug on a curl and then settle your chin on his chest, feel the tips of his fingers draw over your bare shoulder blades, he’s tracing your scars, but you don’t mind. You close your eyes, the feeling so nice after so long without even casual touch.

“Yeah.” And you think he’ll leave it at that but of course, Poe is sickly romantic. “But only if you’d come with me.”

“Poe,” you wrinkle your nose and squeeze your eyes shut tighter. “You’re horrible. Maker, you’re just – just kriffin awful. How does anyone say no to you about anything?”

“They try,” he chuckles. “Doesn’t really work.”

“Ugh.”

“So, c’mon, do the easy thing and say yes.” You don’t answer, only look at him, at the bruise on his cheekbone, the home you’ve found in his eyes. “I’m taking this as a yes.”

You frown at him, “You’re very cruel. Asking me this after you crashed back onto this planet.”

“I’ve never crashed. It was just a hard landing.”

You scoff, poke the bruise, turn your cheek into his chest. “Uh huh, hard landing. Worst landing I’ve ever seen.”

His chest rises and falls with a few long breaths, and you think he’s finally fallen asleep when – “So…is that a yes?”

You roll your eyes and groan, “Yes, Poe, it’s a yes.”

Poe tucks his arms around you, breathes against your temple for a moment, before you find yourself on your back, his mouth trailing down your neck, along the ridge of your shoulder. “I’m so proud of you,” he says excitedly, like he really is, like it means something to him that you’d let him take you up in that stupid ship. “We don’t even have to go anywhere. Maybe you can just sit there? Get used to the cockpit again. Beebee can keep you company – ,”

“Won’t you be keeping me company?” Your throat is a bit tight, your voice strained.

He frowns down at you, ignoring your hand on his bicep, the light way you trail your fingers over his chest. “Are you okay?”

You cup his face between your hands, not really sure how to answer him. “You are unbelievable.”

He frowns, opens his mouth –