For a Tumblr prompt of "don't leave me, you're too warm!"
Please excuse any inaccuracies in stormtrooper education and suit technology. Handwave handwave handwave, enjoy the fluff you guys.
When Finn woke up, he thought he'd gotten transported somewhere in his sleep. Because he'd gone to sleep in the steam heat of the evening, and now?
"Rey," he said, poking her shoulder. "Rey, it's cold."
Cold didn't even cover it. The air bit at him and the blanket (so heavy the night before) wasn't near thick enough. Every bit of exposed skin was popping up in gooseflesh, and the only part of him still warm was where Rey curled into his side.
She blinked her eyes open, peering at him. "Is it morning?"
"And it's cold," he said insistently. "What happened?"
She yawned and tucked herself further into his side. "It's morning, is what happened."
"But we're in the desert." They were stopping by on some desert rock of a nowhere planet to meet somebody for Master Skywalker and General Organa. Finn didn't have enough clearance to get all the details, but Rey was there, so he was there.
She wiggled her nose a little. It was probably as chilled as his own. "The desert gets really cold at night. Didn't you know that?"
He shook his head. Did everyone know that? There were weird gaps in his education from growing up a stormtrooper. They'd only gotten taught the things they needed to know for missions, which rarely included the climate. When it was working and not all messed up from, say, a crash-landing, the stormtrooper suits were climate-controlled. He guessed he'd never needed to know that it got cold at night in the desert. "But you're not used to the cold."
She laughed a little, scrunching up her face. Her hair, out of its buns, tangled around her on the pillow. "Of course I am. All those desert nights, and Master Skywalker's hideaway where it rained most of the time - I don't like it but I can handle it."
"But," he insisted, trying to re-set his ideas of Rey's internal temperature. "Whenever it's a chilly morning and I'm on patrol, you always say, 'don't leave me, you're too warm,' and we wind up cuddling for about half an hour." He'd been almost late to patrol a couple of times, but it was worth it, this tough wiry girl wrapped around him, sleepy and sweet.
"Oh, that." She ducked her head. "It's not because I can't take the cold. I've woken up on a lot of cold mornings and I lived through them all. I just never had anyone with me."
"Oh," he said softly.
He forgot, sometimes, how lonely she'd been, and for how long a time. How small and tight and solitary her life on Jakku had been. She was so good at waving it off, shrugging it away, that he often fell into the trap of believing her. It was only sometimes, when she let something out like this, that he realized the same hunger in his chest lived in hers. The part of him that gobbled up things like her rare public kisses or Poe's easy hugs or the camaraderie of the Rebellion soldiers or even General Organa's quietly bracing words before a mission.
Or, you know, cuddling on a cold morning. Nothing to do with warmth, (mostly; it was really cold) just affection. Which she wanted from him. Finn. Not some numbered interchangeable stormtrooper, but only him.
He put his arms around her and tucked his face down into her warm hair. His nose started thawing a little bit. "You do now," he said. "Have someone with you. You always do."
She smiled. He couldn't see it but he could feel it against his neck, and he could just about picture it, the shy, eye-darting, half-embarrassed expression, as if she didn't even want him to know how much she liked it when he said things like that. "Where are the extra blankets?"
"Across the room. On a shelf. I'll - "
She stuck her hand out. The blankets lifted off the shelf and floated over to the bed, whereupon they flopped on the edge and tumbled to the floor in a heap.
He laughed.
"Stop," she mumbled. "I'm still working on that."
He reached down and pulled them up, spreading them out one by one. They both sighed as the weight and thickness piled up on top of them. Rey pulled them up over their shoulders and burrowed in.
"Is it even dawn yet?" she asked, muffled.
He squinted at the window. "Soon. Not yet, though." He tugged the blanket up higher and wrapped his arm around her. There was plenty of time for cuddling still.
FINIS