Whenever Poe gets a scraped knee or a cut or even a bruise, his parents always kiss it better. So when he is seven years old and his new friend Ben falls and scrapes up the heels of his hands, Poe knows just what to do. Ben's eyes water and he takes in a sharp breath, but he doesn't cry. He lets Poe take his wrists and pull them close so he can inspect the dirt-encrusted, reddened skin, one small cut oozing blood. "We can clean it up," he says, leading Ben inside his home and to the small medkit under the counter in the kitchen. "Don't worry, I know what to do."
He grabs the stepstool his parents keep in the kitchen for him and urges Ben up next to the sink. Turning on the water, he opens the medkit and pulls out the bacta gel Mom always uses, and from a drawer he grabs a washcloth. Then, just like Mom does, he checks the water to make sure it's warm but not hot, and then he nudges Ben's hands toward the stream.
Ben puts his scraped palms under the water, but immediately flinches and pulls away, complaining, "Ow."
"We have to clean it first," Poe says.
"I know." Ben frowns, his eyes darting sideways toward Poe, and then he eases his hands under the water again. He winces, but keeps them there.
Poe carefully helps rinse the dirt clear of Ben's hands. The scrapes aren't too bad except the one gouge; he must have landed on a rock or something. The water speeds up the slow ooze of blood from that cut, running reddish water into the sink. Once Ben's hands are clean, Poe shuts off the water and uses the washcloth to gently dry around the scrapes.
A scuffing sound from the corner draws Poe's attention over, and Mom is there, leaning in the kitchen doorway. She's smiling, and she nods for him to keep going. So Poe returns his attention to Ben's hands. They're very close together on the stepstool — it's not very wide, but they're small, so it doesn't matter. He grabs the bacta gel and spreads some carefully across Ben's scrapes, paying special attention to the gouge that's trailing blood down Ben's palm.
Poe blows on the bacta gel to help it solidify, then uses the damp washcloth to clean the blood from Ben's palm. And, finally, he steps down from the stool and kisses the skin of Ben's wrist just above the sealed wound. "There. All better," he says, and he smiles brightly.
"Thanks," Ben says quietly. He doesn't talk much, but that's okay. Poe likes talking, and Ben's a good listener.
A hand ruffles through his hair and Poe looks up to find Mom standing just behind him, smiling. "You boys hungry?"
Poe looks to Ben, who meets his eyes and gives a small nod. So Poe looks back up at Mom and announces, "Starving."
She laughs. "Okay, but I'll need a little time to get lunch ready. Have you shown Ben the A Wing yet?"
He hasn't! Poe shakes his head and grabs for Ben's hand. "Come on, I'll show you now!"
Mom's laugh follows them out of the kitchen. Before they make it out the front door, she calls, "I'll come get you when lunch is ready!"
Poe wonders if Mom might take them both up in the A Wing after lunch. It might be a tight fit, but they're small. And Ben should definitely see what it's like.
He glances over his shoulder to grin at Ben, and finds Ben smiling back.
Poe is ten years old when he gets home late from school (they've got good flight simulators, he likes to stay and practice) and he realizes they've got company — he recognizes Senator Organa's ship, which means Ben is here. He hasn't seen Ben in months, almost a year, and that is definitely too long.
He bursts through the front door before remembering he should probably be polite. Dad and Senator Organa are in the sitting room, talking about adult things, but they stop and Ben's mom smiles over at him. "Hi, Senator," Poe says, slightly breathless.
Senator Organa chuckles, her eyes crinkling. "It's good to see you, Poe. Ben is out by the Force-sensitive tree."
"Thanks!" Poe calls, already bolting for the back door.
Outside he slows, caught by the tension spread between the kids in his yard. Ben is angry, hands fisted at his sides. Haro's talking: "Show me, do something with the Force!"
Poe's cousin Lina pulls at Haro's wrist — "Come on, Haro, leave him alone." — but Taina and Fergo have that same greedy look on their faces that Haro does.
"No," Ben says, his voice low and strained.
"You can't be a Jedi if you can't even float a hydrospanner!" Haro crows, tossing one into the air and catching it. "Come on, unless you just can't —"
And then he jerks through the air, colliding with Fergo so that they both go stumbling, and Ben's hand is out, and it takes Poe a moment to register that that was the Force. He's across the yard a breath later; he puts a hand on Ben's chest, then looks over at Haro. "Hey, cut it out," he says in his strongest voice, drawing on that hard look Dad gets when Poe knows he's done arguing because there's no way Dad's going to bend. "He doesn't have to do anything."
"He pushed me with the Force!" Haro accuses, his eyes a little wide but his mouth set angry.
"Kind of asked for it, didn't you?" Poe says. His hand is still on Ben's chest, and he can feel how fast his friend's breaths are coming.
Haro bends to pick up the tool he dropped when Ben pushed him, then waves it in front of them. "Pushing me is not the same as floating a hydrospanner!"
Poe shakes his head. Haro is one of his oldest friends, but sometimes he's just stupid. "Go home, Haro," he says.
"You'd rather hang out with that freak?"
Poe's shoulders pull back, his jaw clenching. "When you're acting like this, yeah!" Nevermind that he can see Haro's stupid face anytime, but Ben's rarely ever here. "Get out of my yard."
With a sound of disgust, Haro tosses the hydrospanner aside and turns. "Let's get out of here," he says to the others.
Fergo and Lina hesitate, watching Poe, but he crosses his arms over his chest and they trudge out of his yard behind the others.
Finally Poe turns to look at Ben. His friend is still rigid, his fists clenched at his sides as he watches the other kids leave. Some of the lower branches of the Force-sensitive tree hang down behind Ben's head, their blossoms a stark contrast to the dark cast of his expression.
Poe sits down beside Ben, under the shade of the tree, and asks, "You okay?" But Ben doesn't answer. His eyes are half-wild. Poe's not sure what he's thinking, but it looks like — like he's in pain. "You wanna talk about it?"
Ben shakes his head.
He looks so hurt Poe could kick himself. Why didn't he leave school earlier? Why didn't he step in right away? He reaches up, grabbing Ben's arm. Gradually his friend's hand relaxes, his fingers uncurling against the underside of Poe's wrist. Poe leans and draws Ben's hand closer, laying a gentle kiss on his knuckles. It's not like a scrape or bruise; maybe it's not something you can kiss better. But the tension starts to leak out of Ben, and finally he lowers himself to sit beside Poe.
"I'm sorry," Ben mutters.
"For what?" Poe asks. "He really was asking for it."
Shaking his head, Ben says, "I could have hurt him."
Poe shrugs a shoulder. "But you didn't. And maybe you knocked some sense into his head."
A smile creeps across Ben's face.
The first few weeks of Ben back on the Light Side, among the Resistance, are stressful for everyone. And Poe doesn't know how to handle it. There's no manual on former friends who go to the Dark Side, kill a bunch of innocent people, torture you for information, and then come back trailing apologies in their wake even when they're too uncertain to voice them aloud.
Poe is furious, and for a little while he even avoids Ben because — because how is that supposed to go? But the first time Ben's eyes ease up to meet his and then flick away, hurt by whatever's on his face, the hard shell around Poe's heart cracks. When he sees Ben now, it's all parallels to Ben from before, and it makes Poe ache, but not the way he expected it to.
The Ben he knew isn't gone, not even close. The problem is that Poe was an idiot kid before, and blind to things that are obvious to him now. The pain Ben's carrying around and trying to shoulder all on his own. How incredibly, impossibly hard this must be for him.
The next time their eyes meet, they catch, and Poe hesitates but then — he offers a tentative smile, or at least he thinks it's a smile. The general says something that pulls Ben's eyes away from Poe, toward her, and then they're moving on to wherever it is they're going, but Ben casts a last glance over his shoulder.
And Poe knows even less what to do with himself than before.
It takes time. First, Ben comes to apologize, and it's maybe just as hard on Poe as on Ben. Their first interactions are rough because they neither one know how to view each other anymore. Poe begins to grasp the depths to which Ben was used and broken in his childhood, and how it warped him. And Poe hates himself for it it, but he learns to forgive Ben for the wrong he did everyone else first — until all that's left is the ache he guards over that interrogation on the Finalizer and How could you do that to me? — as though Poe is somehow more important than all the other victims of this war.
But eventually the broken edges between them mend. Poe's focus shifts. Before he noticed the hurt and apology Ben (or Kylo, as he'd rather be called now, because he can't undo his past) carries around with him everywhere, but now he imagines what it must be like to suffer under the weight of past mistakes and walk among people who, by and large, hate you furiously. He starts to piece together a picture of what it must be like to grow up as Ben did, with Dark forces actively trying to corrupt him, with parents who were never there enough — and to be pushed into doing the things Kylo did, but then to walk away from it.
What kind of strength must it take to be in that dark place and climb your way back out, even though the people you're climbing back to are trying to kill you for what you've done?
And his heart aches for Kylo.
The first time Poe sees Kylo angry, he's surprised to see those fists clench, to see his anger rise after weeks of hurt and regret and sadness too deep for more vivid emotions to break through.
And then he's surprised that Kylo hasn't been angry before now, because half the people here treat him like dirt even though he's trying so hard — it's made Poe angry on his behalf a couple of times.
He's not sure exactly what caused it, because it stopped when he entered the room, but judging by what little he heard in the hall and the soldier who's currently glaring at Kylo, it was someone who thought the general's orders to leave Kylo alone (to bring any complaints about him directly to her) only apply when there are no commanding officers around.
"Do you have a problem?" Poe asks the soldier, unyielding as steel.
"No sir," the man says, but there's an undertone to it that tells Poe the man could use a good thumping.
The drum of boots quickstepping across the floor sounds behind him, and Poe turns to find that Kylo is sweeping from the mess hall, his fists still clenched. Poe leaves the soldier to follow, but Maker, Kylo can move when he wants to. He turns a corner and Poe nearly jogs to catch up.
He finally closes the distance between them as Kylo turns into an empty hallway, and he reaches out for Kylo's wrist, catching it as the man turns back to face him. Anger and hurt battle across his beautiful face and Poe aches for him. He remembers being ten years old and seeing a look a lot like this on Ben's face after he Force-shoved a boy who pushed him a little too far, and now Kylo can't even do that much to defend himself. Not with so much distrust surrounding him and his Force abilities.
So Poe raises Kylo's hand and kisses his knuckles, just like when they were kids. It's like magic; tension starts to bleed from Kylo, his shoulders relaxing first and then the hurt slowly easing from his face. He watches Poe, something new warming his expression.
This is the first time Poe has touched him since they were kids. It hits him like a fist to the gut. Poe is always touching someone — he's been teased about it before — but with Kylo it's been hard. He gets the impression Kylo doesn't like to be touched, and anyway, things have been so strained between them.
Now, though…
Poe steps forward and wraps his arms around Kylo, and warm arms wrap around him in return. He lifts his chin and presses his mouth against the side of Kylo's jaw, just under his ear, laying another gentle kiss there. "Is this okay?" he murmurs.
"Yes," Kylo says in a gruff tone that suggests it might be better than okay.
If it is possible to kiss Kylo's hurt better, Poe wonders, how many kisses might that take? He pulls away just enough to find Kylo's mouth. With their lips close enough to brush, he asks, "What about this?"
Kylo answers by kissing him, and Poe's heart surges, sending sparks tingling out along his synapses.
Poe has been so focused on Kylo's aches, he ignored his own, but the relief of this kiss expands through him and carries a piece of the pain away. They've both been hurting, and if kissing it better is what it takes, Poe's suddenly sure he's willing to commit to as many kisses as it takes — and more.
Hiii! I also write on ao3 under this same penname (kherezae). And I have a tumblr (sheikahtrainee). Thanks for reading!