Writing is hard. But I think this is almost done. [confetti popper emoji]
Probably just one more part to wrap everything up.
***
Finn bunks with Poe again that night. They’ve been sharing a bed more and more, lately. Sometimes it’s Finn who wakes up in a cold sweat, shaking, brushing away the cobwebs of a half-remembered nightmare. And other times, it’s Poe, jerking himself out of sleep with a hoarse, strangled cry. Sometimes Poe wakes with his attacker’s name on his lips. Sometimes he clings to the front of Finn’s shirt and trembles against his chest until his breaths even out and he’s asleep again.
On this night, Finn slips up. He makes a mistake.
He lets himself into Poe’s dreams.
It happens, Master Luke had told him, when a Jedi-in-training hasn’t sharpened their telepathic skills.
Telepathy isn’t something Finn had ever been interested in, so he focused on other areas of study, like lightsaber training and physical combat. Moving objects with his mind.
Finn walks down a long, darkened corridor that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. It’s steeped in shadows that skitter away like frightened animals the closer he gets to the end of the hall.
There’s a single door at the end, a slash of pale yellow light at the bottom. He can sense someone on the other side, though he can’t quite see them. Their presence is heavy and dark, like a cloud of black smoke.
When he lifts his hand to open the door, he realizes he’s in Poe’s head, in Poe’s dreams.
Smoke billows through the crack between the door and the floor, winds around Finn’s arms and legs and binds him in place. Finn tries to open his mouth, tries to yell, but his mouth isn’t moving. Something’s gotten disconnected between his brain and his tongue and his mouth, and the signals aren’t getting through.
He twists and contorts, trying to free his arms and legs, but the bindings only grow tighter. Breathing grows more and more difficult, and he isn’t sure if it’s from the thick smoke in the air—is something on fire?—or because his own body has become his greatest enemy and he’s panicking.
Then someone grabs Finn about the shoulders and thrusts him out of Poe’s dream.
Finn jerks awake with a scream tearing out of his aching throat. A light snaps on and then Poe’s hand is on his chest, guiding him gently back against the pillows.
“I felt you in my head,” Poe says, settling next to Finn and folding his hands over his chest. “I threw you out.”
Finn rolls onto his side. Poe slides him a sideward glance out of the corner of his eye. “I didn’t mean to. I slipped up.”
“I know.” Poe rolls too, until they're eye to eye. “My head’s not a great place to be. Especially not at night.”
“Do you dream like this every night?” Finn asks, his tone hushed.
“Not all the time. Sometimes I have good dreams. You’re usually in them,” Poe admits. “Sometimes Rey, and even Luke.”
Finn scoots a little closer to Poe and lets his head drop onto his shoulder. “Do you talk to a psytech about this stuff?”
“When I have a little downtime, I guess,” Poe says, taking Finn’s hands in his. “Most of my time’s been getting eaten up by X-Wing maintenance, lately.” He pauses, and Finn can hear the thoughts churning in his brain. He waits for Poe to continue, and then he does: “What about you? Have you gone back?”
“Not yet,” Finn says. He tries for a casual shrug, which is kind of hard to do when you’re lying in bed. He settles for vaguely gesturing with his hands. “I just had that one evaluation.”
“Are you afraid to?” Poe asks.
The Resistance base’s psytech is a pleasant, older woman with a soft touch named Mirella. She looks like she could be someone’s grandmother, with her cloud of puffy white hair and a face lined with age. When Finn met with her just that once, she immediately put him at ease. He knew he didn’t need to be afraid of her, that he could trust her.
With the First Order, it had been far, far different. His FN unit had its own psytech, but she was nothing at all like Mirella. She was trained to look for weakness and expose it.
Thinking about her makes his stomach turn, so he pushes those thoughts aside.
Finn rolls the word afraid in his mind like a heavy stone up the side of a hill.
“I don’t know if I’m afraid,” he says, pulling Poe’s hand against his chest. “Maybe? I guess I didn’t really think about it. We—my FN unit, we got good at compartmentalizing. Burying things. Maybe it’s all still in here somewhere.” Finn taps a finger to his temple.
Poe shifts closer, until Finn can feel his breath skimming across his cheek and the strip of exposed skin where his night shirt has slipped down.
“We could both go,” Poe says.
“Together?” Finn looks down at the back of Poe’s hand. He doesn’t think he wants Poe to hear about all the things he had to do as a stormtrooper. He doesn’t want Poe to look at him any differently.
“Only if you wanted to,” Poe says softly. “I was thinking more like… On our own. Just to talk some of this stuff out with someone. Someone you’re not really connected to, personally.”
Finn nods slowly. He thinks about the box in the back of his mind, where Master Luke had told him to lock away the Dark.
“It could help,” he says.
Poe doesn’t respond. Finn can feel him thinking though, working through something like picking apart knots in a tangle of rope.
He waits.
Finally: “I was trying to push you away. Not because I didn’t trust you. I didn’t want—don’t want to hurt you. To remind you of what you tried to run away from.”
“I kind of figured that out,” Finn says, pressing his cheek against the top of Poe’s head. He folds an arm around Poe’s shoulders. “It’s usually totally random stuff that reminds me of the First Order. Like the way the service droid folds the towels in the ’fresher. Sometimes it’s just hearing the scrape of durasteel on duracrete. Or the sound a blaster makes when it’s being disassembled.”
Poe drapes an arm over his chest. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Stuff you wouldn’t normally think about. It’s kind of why I left with Rey for a while,” Finn admits. “I knew the Resistance was eyeing me for an infantryman, which is basically what I was in the Order. And I didn’t want to do that. So when Master Luke offered to train me alongside Rey, I jumped at the chance.”
“I didn’t know that,” Poe says, and Finn can feel a twinge of guilt coming from him. It aches like a phantom limb, then fades.
“I didn’t tell anybody the real reason I left. I didn’t even tell Rey,” Finn says. “I think Master Luke had me all figured out a day into training, though.”
“I’m honored you’re telling me this now,” Poe says, very seriously.
“It’s only fair.” Finn rubs in slow circles on Poe’s back. Poe’s hands are doing the same on Finn’s back, over his scar in gentle, soothing passes.
“What a pair we are.” Poe presses a muffled laugh against Finn’s shoulder.
Finn doesn’t think it’s quite that funny, but he finds himself laughing too. Poe lifts his head from Finn’s shoulder, smiling a real smile that reaches his eyes. Finn feels a smile forming on his own face, then Poe’s hand on his cheek.
The nightmare—Poe’s nightmare—is a whisper at the edges of his consciousness now. He can hardly remember what it was that had scared him so much. Poe’s hand is still on Finn’s cheek, heavy and warm and steady.
“Finn?” Poe asks.
“Yeah?” Finn makes a valiant attempt to button down the laughter threatening to spill out of him.
“Can I—can I kiss you?” Poe’s thumb strokes against his cheek.
“Of course you can.” Finn swallows down all his laughter. He can feel his joy flowing into the locked box in his mind, burning up the Dark.
Poe leans forward and brushes his lips against Finn’s.
Finn’s kissed people before. Plenty of them. Other ’troopers, mostly, in the barracks after lights-out. There wasn’t anything romantic or gentle or kind about it. It was just sometimes they needed an outlet. It was just sometimes they woke up achingly hard, or desperate for touch. Those kisses usually involved more teeth and tongue and saliva, though.
The Order chose to look away as long as it didn’t lead to undesirable emotions, like caring, like empathy, like love.
This is nice, though. Finn likes this. He could spend the rest of his life doing this. Just kissing whomever he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants.
Just kissing Poe.
Poe sips at his lips like he’s trying to drink Finn up, one of his hands sliding down to cup Finn’s elbow with loose fingers.
He breaks the kiss to hold Finn at arm’s length, his lips slick and slightly pink.
Finn feels dizzy, and he isn’t sure how much of it is him and how much of it is him absorbing Poe’s emotions like a sponge.
“Was that okay?” Poe asks.
“It was more than okay. It was great.” Finn leans in to catch his lips with his own, but Poe holds him back with a hand against his chest.
For a moment, he worries, and fear clutches at his heart.
“You’re good,” Poe says, and the grip loosens in Finn’s chest. “I just wanted to—to thank you.”
“For what?” Finn asks.
“Everything. For everything. You’ve been such a good friend to me though all of this, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell you exactly how much that means to me.” Poe looks down, hair flopping into his face.
“Well,” Finn says, reaching out to tip Poe’s chin up so he can kiss him again. “This is a good start.”
Poe kisses him back, a hand sliding to the back of his neck. “It is.”
[FILL] Poe is raped on the resistance base (Finn/Poe, Finn & Rey) 14/15?
Probably just one more part to wrap everything up.
***
Finn bunks with Poe again that night. They’ve been sharing a bed more and more, lately. Sometimes it’s Finn who wakes up in a cold sweat, shaking, brushing away the cobwebs of a half-remembered nightmare. And other times, it’s Poe, jerking himself out of sleep with a hoarse, strangled cry. Sometimes Poe wakes with his attacker’s name on his lips. Sometimes he clings to the front of Finn’s shirt and trembles against his chest until his breaths even out and he’s asleep again.
On this night, Finn slips up. He makes a mistake.
He lets himself into Poe’s dreams.
It happens, Master Luke had told him, when a Jedi-in-training hasn’t sharpened their telepathic skills.
Telepathy isn’t something Finn had ever been interested in, so he focused on other areas of study, like lightsaber training and physical combat. Moving objects with his mind.
Finn walks down a long, darkened corridor that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. It’s steeped in shadows that skitter away like frightened animals the closer he gets to the end of the hall.
There’s a single door at the end, a slash of pale yellow light at the bottom. He can sense someone on the other side, though he can’t quite see them. Their presence is heavy and dark, like a cloud of black smoke.
When he lifts his hand to open the door, he realizes he’s in Poe’s head, in Poe’s dreams.
Smoke billows through the crack between the door and the floor, winds around Finn’s arms and legs and binds him in place. Finn tries to open his mouth, tries to yell, but his mouth isn’t moving. Something’s gotten disconnected between his brain and his tongue and his mouth, and the signals aren’t getting through.
He twists and contorts, trying to free his arms and legs, but the bindings only grow tighter. Breathing grows more and more difficult, and he isn’t sure if it’s from the thick smoke in the air—is something on fire?—or because his own body has become his greatest enemy and he’s panicking.
Then someone grabs Finn about the shoulders and thrusts him out of Poe’s dream.
Finn jerks awake with a scream tearing out of his aching throat. A light snaps on and then Poe’s hand is on his chest, guiding him gently back against the pillows.
“I felt you in my head,” Poe says, settling next to Finn and folding his hands over his chest. “I threw you out.”
Finn rolls onto his side. Poe slides him a sideward glance out of the corner of his eye. “I didn’t mean to. I slipped up.”
“I know.” Poe rolls too, until they're eye to eye. “My head’s not a great place to be. Especially not at night.”
“Do you dream like this every night?” Finn asks, his tone hushed.
“Not all the time. Sometimes I have good dreams. You’re usually in them,” Poe admits. “Sometimes Rey, and even Luke.”
Finn scoots a little closer to Poe and lets his head drop onto his shoulder. “Do you talk to a psytech about this stuff?”
“When I have a little downtime, I guess,” Poe says, taking Finn’s hands in his. “Most of my time’s been getting eaten up by X-Wing maintenance, lately.” He pauses, and Finn can hear the thoughts churning in his brain. He waits for Poe to continue, and then he does: “What about you? Have you gone back?”
“Not yet,” Finn says. He tries for a casual shrug, which is kind of hard to do when you’re lying in bed. He settles for vaguely gesturing with his hands. “I just had that one evaluation.”
“Are you afraid to?” Poe asks.
The Resistance base’s psytech is a pleasant, older woman with a soft touch named Mirella. She looks like she could be someone’s grandmother, with her cloud of puffy white hair and a face lined with age. When Finn met with her just that once, she immediately put him at ease. He knew he didn’t need to be afraid of her, that he could trust her.
With the First Order, it had been far, far different. His FN unit had its own psytech, but she was nothing at all like Mirella. She was trained to look for weakness and expose it.
Thinking about her makes his stomach turn, so he pushes those thoughts aside.
Finn rolls the word afraid in his mind like a heavy stone up the side of a hill.
“I don’t know if I’m afraid,” he says, pulling Poe’s hand against his chest. “Maybe? I guess I didn’t really think about it. We—my FN unit, we got good at compartmentalizing. Burying things. Maybe it’s all still in here somewhere.” Finn taps a finger to his temple.
Poe shifts closer, until Finn can feel his breath skimming across his cheek and the strip of exposed skin where his night shirt has slipped down.
“We could both go,” Poe says.
“Together?” Finn looks down at the back of Poe’s hand. He doesn’t think he wants Poe to hear about all the things he had to do as a stormtrooper. He doesn’t want Poe to look at him any differently.
“Only if you wanted to,” Poe says softly. “I was thinking more like… On our own. Just to talk some of this stuff out with someone. Someone you’re not really connected to, personally.”
Finn nods slowly. He thinks about the box in the back of his mind, where Master Luke had told him to lock away the Dark.
“It could help,” he says.
Poe doesn’t respond. Finn can feel him thinking though, working through something like picking apart knots in a tangle of rope.
He waits.
Finally: “I was trying to push you away. Not because I didn’t trust you. I didn’t want—don’t want to hurt you. To remind you of what you tried to run away from.”
“I kind of figured that out,” Finn says, pressing his cheek against the top of Poe’s head. He folds an arm around Poe’s shoulders. “It’s usually totally random stuff that reminds me of the First Order. Like the way the service droid folds the towels in the ’fresher. Sometimes it’s just hearing the scrape of durasteel on duracrete. Or the sound a blaster makes when it’s being disassembled.”
Poe drapes an arm over his chest. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Stuff you wouldn’t normally think about. It’s kind of why I left with Rey for a while,” Finn admits. “I knew the Resistance was eyeing me for an infantryman, which is basically what I was in the Order. And I didn’t want to do that. So when Master Luke offered to train me alongside Rey, I jumped at the chance.”
“I didn’t know that,” Poe says, and Finn can feel a twinge of guilt coming from him. It aches like a phantom limb, then fades.
“I didn’t tell anybody the real reason I left. I didn’t even tell Rey,” Finn says. “I think Master Luke had me all figured out a day into training, though.”
“I’m honored you’re telling me this now,” Poe says, very seriously.
“It’s only fair.” Finn rubs in slow circles on Poe’s back. Poe’s hands are doing the same on Finn’s back, over his scar in gentle, soothing passes.
“What a pair we are.” Poe presses a muffled laugh against Finn’s shoulder.
Finn doesn’t think it’s quite that funny, but he finds himself laughing too. Poe lifts his head from Finn’s shoulder, smiling a real smile that reaches his eyes. Finn feels a smile forming on his own face, then Poe’s hand on his cheek.
The nightmare—Poe’s nightmare—is a whisper at the edges of his consciousness now. He can hardly remember what it was that had scared him so much. Poe’s hand is still on Finn’s cheek, heavy and warm and steady.
“Finn?” Poe asks.
“Yeah?” Finn makes a valiant attempt to button down the laughter threatening to spill out of him.
“Can I—can I kiss you?” Poe’s thumb strokes against his cheek.
“Of course you can.” Finn swallows down all his laughter. He can feel his joy flowing into the locked box in his mind, burning up the Dark.
Poe leans forward and brushes his lips against Finn’s.
Finn’s kissed people before. Plenty of them. Other ’troopers, mostly, in the barracks after lights-out. There wasn’t anything romantic or gentle or kind about it. It was just sometimes they needed an outlet. It was just sometimes they woke up achingly hard, or desperate for touch. Those kisses usually involved more teeth and tongue and saliva, though.
The Order chose to look away as long as it didn’t lead to undesirable emotions, like caring, like empathy, like love.
This is nice, though. Finn likes this. He could spend the rest of his life doing this. Just kissing whomever he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants.
Just kissing Poe.
Poe sips at his lips like he’s trying to drink Finn up, one of his hands sliding down to cup Finn’s elbow with loose fingers.
He breaks the kiss to hold Finn at arm’s length, his lips slick and slightly pink.
Finn feels dizzy, and he isn’t sure how much of it is him and how much of it is him absorbing Poe’s emotions like a sponge.
“Was that okay?” Poe asks.
“It was more than okay. It was great.” Finn leans in to catch his lips with his own, but Poe holds him back with a hand against his chest.
For a moment, he worries, and fear clutches at his heart.
“You’re good,” Poe says, and the grip loosens in Finn’s chest. “I just wanted to—to thank you.”
“For what?” Finn asks.
“Everything. For everything. You’ve been such a good friend to me though all of this, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell you exactly how much that means to me.” Poe looks down, hair flopping into his face.
“Well,” Finn says, reaching out to tip Poe’s chin up so he can kiss him again. “This is a good start.”
Poe kisses him back, a hand sliding to the back of his neck. “It is.”
***
TBC