Boys back on Jakku thought Rey was beautiful. She saw it in their eyes and heard it in the way their voices deepened when they spoke to her. A few of the brashest ones even propositioned her, offering to share rations or to save up enough to take her away from there one day. In response, she moved further away from the outpost, hiding where she lived so the only time she ever saw them was when she took in the scraps she'd scavenged in the desert.
Because the boys knew her appearance, and they knew her resourcefulness, but they didn't know her. None of them cared to learn what made her heart beat or her mind tick. None of them remembered all the times she'd talked about staying at the outpost until her parents returned so they would know where to find her. As far as the others were concerned, everyone knew they lived in a dump, which meant everyone had to be as eager to leave it behind as they were.
When Poe starts looking at her in the same way they did, she doesn't know how to react. Her pulse races with that same warning that it's time to retreat, to slip away somewhere he can't track her down, to avoid this overwhelming feeling of spinning out of control. Yet at the same time, something anchors her there. Rey feels the way her cheeks warm and her breath goes shallow whenever he's nearby, and she sees the way Poe genuinely listens and values what she has to say, and deep down she knows this is worlds apart from what she was surrounded by on Jakku.
So instead of fighting what her heart is telling her, she takes a deep breath and jumps in headfirst.
A/N: Prompt: 'There will be boys who will tell you you're beautiful, but only a few will see you.' from Bone Gap by Laura Ruby