A really neat discord i’m in. Writing fic in my free time. My cat’s shenanigans.

Finn, having spent most of his life shuttled between off-world military stations and Imperial-class warships, used to breathing recycled air and seeing the black of space through transparisteel doesn’t realize he’s doing it at first. For him, the hum of engines is a lullaby, the sound of other bodies breathing beside him in the dark as natural as his own skin. Even crowded onto the Falcon, which has seen better days (maybe a hundred years before your father was born, Chewbacca growls ruefully) he feels as though he’s come home. Home-ish. Home-adjacent. For a certain definition of ‘home’ that Finn mostly learned from propaganda films, and the gossip of troopers. 

But he remembers most of this. They sleep in shifts on narrow bunks, and Finn wakes up second shift to see Lt. Kinam wailing on the caf generator in order to get it to work. Poe and Rey and Chewbacca argue about navigation while the General sits serenely the berth, reading from her datapad. Everyone has squirreled away their handful of remaining possession in strange places—there are datapads tucked between engine components and hologram chips sellotaped to the underside of bunks. Finn opens a cupboard one day and finds a nest. With eggs.

(He very carefully shuts the cabinet again, and doesn’t ask.)

It’s all so normal, so instinctual—the low whine of the engines, the smell of other humans, sweating and living around him—that he doesn’t notice. At least until one afternoon when Poe grabs him by the shoulders and forces Finn to stand, just there, so that Poe can look at him.

Really, apparently, look at him. For several awkward minutes of looking.

Finally, just as Finn is about to fidget, Poe sighs. “Buddy, I love you, but if you don’t stop humming I will push you out the airlock,” he says, in that extremely earnest way he has. (Finn will give him that, no one in the First Order did sincerity like Poe.)

“Oh,” Finn says with a grimace. “Was I humming?”

“Only for the last three standard weeks,” Poe says. “And honestly—it’s fine. Nice, even, you have a decent sense of pitch. I’m happy you’re happy, apparently? But we’re all stuck in this tiny space with each other and between your humming the same song over and over and Bysh refusing to flush the fucking sanisteam, it was you or them. And they scare me sometimes. So.”

“I’ll stop humming,” Finn says.

“Great,” Poe breathes with obvious relief, only—

Finn didn’t realize, before, how much he hummed. That had never been a problem in the Order—he was pretty sure that would have been mentioned to him at some point, a junior officer screaming in his face: WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, TROOPER? Stormtroopers had been dressed down for minor uniform violations, Finn couldn’t imagine something like persistent humming going unnoticed.

“What song is that?” he asks, interrupting his own humming to ask Rey, who looks back at him with wide, startled eyes.

“Uh,” she says. “I don’t know. I don’t….know music.”

“Me neither,” Finn says with a laugh, shaking his head. She flashes him a grin, and he returns it. Which is why it’s weird, right? Finn wants to ask, to see if he can get Rey to laugh at it. (She’s still the one who understands what it’s…like, to be a creature out of time. Hers was a desert and his was military stations and warships, but both of them have been out the galaxy most of their lives, lack the lexicon to speak to the others fluently. Finn only just knows who Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are, and his mind is still blow by how now he spends a lot of time talking to their widow. It’s unfortunate.)

“Do you…?” Rose squints at him. She’s still recovering from Crait, and her hands shake. Finn has gotten used to holding her arm, waist, elbow, her, despite her protests that she’s fine, really. “Are you humming ‘Bright Freedom-Day’?”

“Oh, maybe?” Finn says, since he hadn’t realized he was humming at all. “What…is that?”

Rose gives him a quizzical look and then she—

Rose Tico’s voice is uncertain, thready, but she’s singing a melody he recognizes: “Make the waves stand still—make the wall that will not break—”

Finn’s aware, suddenly, of all the Resistance fighters he’s never talked to, all of them suddenly looking across the width of the berth to the both of them, where Rose’s hand is in Finn’s hand. His saving grace is that it’s only the berth of the Falcon, there isn’t much further to actually look. But Rose beams, and Finn can’t look away. 

“And now, now there shall be peace on this world—-”

“Is that a song?” Finn asks, and Rose only laughs—a true laugh, even better than any stupid alarm bells Finn has ever heard and heeded in his life, and he wants to hear it again. He takes her hand, squeezes it.

Even Rey is singing now, joining on on the chorus, “It’s always the old to lead us to the war; it’s always the young to fall. But I—I shall make the waves stand still, make the wall that will not break, and now, now there shall be peace on this world—”

“I hate you all,” Poe says dryly, not even looking up from his protein pack as he listens to them, as Rose and Bysh break into a two-part harmony, with Rey happily providing counterpoint. “So—gods, so much. I’ll never get it out of my head now.”

@butneverstoptrying replied to your post: @butneverstoptrying replied to your post: ...

HE IS SUCH A GOOD CAT. He jumps up to Investigate and demand scritches when people are trying to work. There’s the I’m Trying To Read But There’s A Cat Butt In The Way problem. The fact that this cat is in like one episode and everyone’s still talking about him is probably a sign that the show’s A Tragedy (we are all huddled in the tunnels, clinging to any fluff we get, and there’s enough fluff to make the sad parts hit you) and that he’s the Goodest Boy.

Oh you genius

i’m watching the one where geordi and data are holmes and watson

i paused the episode mid-sentence to check something and she was all “AHEM”

It is a constant effort to set boundaries for myself which are healthy. You will get to that point, but it will still be work even when you get there. Don’t get discouraged. Doing the work means that you’re making progress! <3 

Your GLASSES

The glasses are $20 (I paid a grand total of $40 with the blue light filter lenses, which are great) and proceeds go to the It Gets Better Project!!

@cheesethesecond runs one of those blogs that you can always go to if you need cheering up. She curates tags of cute animals and also of cathartically sad headcanons, depending on your mood, and she’s clearly made it a goal to be as positive an influence in the world as she can be. That she manages to achieve that goal while still dealing with Life And Its Nonsense is all the more impressive.

@butneverstoptrying is out there determined to live her best life, and it’s so great to watch. She just keeps getting up again, being excited about all the cool shirts she gets to wear or about getting to hang out with people to watch movies, and refusing to compromise who she is for the sake of the world. I know it’s been a journey to get here, and it’s awesome to see where she’s at now.

@steelplatedhearts has a blog title that makes me laugh every single time, so there’s that. Which makes sense, because talking to Madi is a delight every time. I love the stuff she’s able to come up with, and she’s always got interesting ideas and ways of looking at stories to share. Her excitement is infectious, and so is her genuine delight in the things around her.