PublicPrivate

by Keryl Raist

This is the third book in the Tao-of-The-Force-verse series. If you haven't read Tension/Balance or Rumors/Gossip, it's not going to make a lick of sense. If you have... We're starting off right where we left off. The First Year parties are ending, the Order is coming into it's own, and Rey and Kylo...

17. The Grand Marshall and The Commander

2/5/2

Jon wakes up as second shift slips into third.

His head thuds back onto his pillow, hoping he might grab another hour or two of sleep. Rest now, eat, work through the night, grab a stim in the morning, and crash again after the formal diner.

He's had longer days.

But he's awake, his brain is buzzing, there are things he hasn't checked in on yet, and…

His eyes peel open, and he's up.

---

Details… So many details. Threepio's got Rey. Good. Dress done. Great. His mom says he's got his new dress uniform ready to go, too. Excellent. The K'Aran delegation is… His secretary tracks that down for him as he's heading toward the throne room. Fourteen hours away… All right.

Food? He checks in with the Chef of the Supremacy, who sounds a bit miffed to be dealing with him. Possibly because, technically, at least right now, he outranks Jon, and doesn't appreciate him micro-managing, but… Well, he's the fucking Grand Marshall, or he will be as soon as he puts that new uniform on, and he'll micro-manage as he sees fit.

Food is prepped and will be ready to go as necessary. When the K'Arans get here, they'll be greeted by Colonel Jefferies and General Threepio, led to their suite… (He reroutes himself to make sure he visits the suite before going to down Kylo's throne room) offered refreshments and the time to settle themselves.

He checks is chrono. Eighteen hours until he, and Rey, and Poe will formally meet the K'Arans.

By then, he'll have all of his players up and ready to go… Except… Shit. He doesn't have anything to put Poe in yet, and he hasn't seen the 'suit' Poe doesn't think he'll think is good enough.

Okay… He comms his second-in-command, who is technically the head of Tactical Design these days, and isn't, actually, supposed to be doing diplomacy stuff, but… He needs more people, and he doesn't have them, yet. "Hey, Em, can you get my bolts of 12-45-6, 45-2-54, and 28-9-12 to my rooms."

"Sure, Boss. New project?"

"Something like that."

"Another suit for the Master?" After all those are good fabrics. Not the sort of thing you'd generally use for armor. "You expanding his palette?"

"Nah, this one's not for him. He's too cool toned for those colors. Ummm…" He rubs his hand through his hair… "Get me the box with the metal samples in it. The fancy ones, okay? And my tin snips and files."

"I can do that. What are you planning?"

"Not entirely sure yet, but I'll show you pictures soon."

"Good."

"Oh, and… the bolt of 163-09-88."

"You're making something with leather?"

Jon sighs. "Maybe. With any luck it won't be a disaster."

"Good luck."

"Thanks. I need it."

---

Jon double, and then triple, checks the K'Aran suite. It screams wealth. Everything in the place is beyond sleek, gilded, (metaphorically if not literally, though he's noticing silver accents abound) and rare. He smiles a bit, they've even got flowers in the bedrooms.

Flowers…

He's on his comm, "Threepio, did you check the flowers in—"

"Yes, Jon, I did."

"Good. Didn't want any surprises like last time."

"The only surprise waiting for you is how Rey's going to look in the dress, and I'm willing to say it'll be a pleasant one."

"Good, that's the kind of surprise I want. I take it you're with Mom, Rey, and Ellie right now?"

"I am. We're going over everything we know about everyone attending the meeting. We should wrap that up in a few hours, and after that I think we're going to leave Rey to have some time on her own."

He hears a soft, muffled voice in the background of the comm. He assumes that's Rey agreeing to time on her own.

"Okay, good. Comm me if you need me. I'm off to check on the throne room that isn't."

"Yes, sir."

"Tell Rey, Poe and I will be at Mom's room at two past the start of second shift tomorrow."

"I will." He comms off with Threepio and begins the trek to the not-a-throne-room.

---

The landing bay the K'Aran delegation will land at is twenty-one levels below the floor their suite is on. It will take time to get from the one to the other, though it's mostly a long elevator ride.

That said, the trek from their suite to Kylo's throne room is an hour and a half, mostly through the K-Deck. It's not the fastest way to get from their suite to Kylo's rooms, but it does involve them going through the main fighter deck. Fifty-eight point six klicks of fighters, more fighters, additional fighters, and then, even more fighters should do an adequate job of showing off that, if needs be, they can bring quite a bit of "fight" to a fight.

And, of course, that's just the main fighter deck. The view from the floor of K-Deck allows you to see up to O-Deck. And each of those floors is also stuffed full of anything and everything that a good pilot can use to kill people.

And, of course, those are just the fighters. Bombers, CityKillers, land weaponry, all of that is elsewhere.

They want strength, well, they're gonna walk through a metric shit ton of it.

He's grinning a little at that, somewhat wishing he was going to be joining them on this walk, but when he planned this, he'd been intending to be keeping Kylo in the right mood for this, and now he's got Rey, so… Maybe next time he'll get to be a part of the group that shows off the Supremacy.

He shrugs a bit. Besides, all he actually knows about the ships around him is they look cool and kill things. Force forbid they ask him any real questions about this stuff.

---

Ninety-six minutes. Longer than Jon wanted to spend on the trek, but he also wants to make sure that every step of this is good to go, and it is.

The scale alone of this place should sell what they're offering more than any response they could come up with.

They want power?

They want big?

Oh, he's gonna give it to them.

Jon closes his eyes as the elevator door to the throne room opens, and then, once it's full open, he opens his eyes and sighs.

A billion kilos fall off his shoulders.

The walls are light gray. The pillars and doors are still black. The carpet is gray, it looks rich and lush, glinting a bit, like the not-quite-velvet it is. From the close wall, the Order's hex in black and white hangs, interspersed with the K'Aran's blues and greens. He's been told the large golden thing in the middle of the blue and green is a narwhal, but he's got no idea what, other than that golden thing, a narwhal might be.

Rey's dais and throne… The dais rises not quite a meter off the floor, and it's gleaming polished black hexagons with white edges, just like the Order hex. Rey's throne… He's very satisfied to see it came out properly. The chair itself is stained ebon wood, whorls of black and gray. (He took his inspiration from Kylo's marriage band.) The seat is white. Rey in her black and gray should pop against the light color.

The table is set. Order black and white blended with K'Aran greens and blues.

There are ornamental spheres of water floating around through the courtyard, with various water living critters in them.

He double checks the drinks menu… Yes. Perfect. The preferred cocktails of the K'Aar are on rotation and ready to go.

In fact, everything in here looks so perfect, and so ready, and… He checks his chrono. They should still be working. That makes him wonder if just adding Poe to the work crew sped them up this much.

He glances around again. The throne room is empty.

And… He appears to have lost Poe.

Shit.

---

"Poe?"

Poe's eyeing the walls of Kylo's office when he gets Jon's voice on his comm. "Hey buddy. Have a good nap?"

Jon sounds slightly irked by that question. "Yes, lovely. Where are you?"

Poe laughs. "Afraid you lost me?"

"Well… Yes, actually. It's a huge ship."

"Where are you?"

"Throne room."

"Then walk through the door to his office, and see what happens when you let Lady Ren do some Lady Renning."

Jon's not sure if he's feeling the floor dropping out under his feet or not. They aren't entertaining the K'Aran in there, but this is where everyone on their side of it will be gathering for the chat and decide what they're going to offer— "Oh."

Poe's grinning at him, spattered with pain, and he's got a crew of maintenance workers cleaning up a painting project as a small droid and C8 appear to be chatting about something. "Rey decided to do the walls to match."

Jon's looking around. "This is… nice." He sees C8. Really sees him. The droid usually blends into the background so thoroughly it's easy to miss him, but not anymore.

"Yeah, really lightens up the mood of the place."

"You… got all of this done?"

Poe nods to the crew. "We did. They're good men. One of my best friends used to do maintenance on this ship, and… whatever else is true about you guys, you train men to fix things right, and do it fast. I just offered up a few dirty tricks learned having to scrap things together on the fly."

Jon blinks at that. "Okay." He looks around again. Then he looks at Poe. Dirty, little sweaty, paint in his hair and on his clothing, grease on his hands from putting together the dais. He mentally bites his lip and whimpers, but doesn't let it get to his face.

Poe who also doesn't have an outfit for tomorrow. Work. Work that's got to happen, fast. "I think we've got to get moving from here," Jon says.

Poe nods at that, and then says, "Yx, you guys got it from here?"

YX-4489 waves him off. "Sure Commander. Pleasure working with you."

"And you. I'll say 'Hi' to Finn for you."

"Thank you."

He turns back to Jon, smiles, and says, "I'm all yours."

"Commander?" Jon asks as they head out of the office.

"Like I said, that's the one that mattered to me."

Jon nods.

Poe adds, "Plus, on this ship, Master Poe's kind of asking to get my ass kicked. It's one thing if I'm with the kids. Hell, more than half of them just call me Poe. But here especially… Commander'll do me just fine."

"I think we're going to introduce you to the K'Aran delegation as Master Dameron of the Maji."

"I can live with that. But with Kylo's men, I don't need to be worming into his territory."

That makes sense to Jon.

---

As they're walking through the F-Deck, Poe says, "So, what's the plan for tonight? The throne room's been beaten into submission. I'm sure most of the details are done or in motion. Even the napkins are folded to spec. So, now… Kick back, relax, have a drink and shoot the shit until morning?"

Jon laughs, hard, at that.

"Yeah, maybe for you." He gestures to the F-deck. "Let me see what you've got in the way of a suit, and then you're free."

"What'll you be doing?"

"Depending on how close to right you were with, 'not that I'd think' on the decent suit front, I may be making one for you. Otherwise I'll be going over every detail of tomorrow, twice, and likely popping in on my mom to double check on Rey."

"Jon, you've got to relax, or you're going to burst a blood vessel."

The look on Jon's face might be called a smile, or a grimace, depending on how well you knew him. "That's what the day after tomorrow is for. Or are you going to tell me you aren't tense on the eve of a battle?"

Poe bats that away. "Well, for a lot of them, they didn't waltz up ahead of time and tell me they were coming, but, sure, when I knew… Before is tense. Or doing stupid shit to fight tense. During is…" Poe rolls his lips together, really looking at Jon, and then shakes his head. "Closest you've ever been to a fight was basic training, wasn't it?"

"I watched Kylo shove a lightsaber through a man's balls from about six meters away. Then he snapped his neck while he was writhing on the floor, hurting too badly to scream. Is that close enough?"

Poe winces. That's not what he'd call a fight. He'd likely call that a murder, but he's assuming Kylo had a good reason for it. "I'm sure that made sense to him, but…" He cringes.

"Multiply that by the fifty thousand other people who watched him do it. And it made sense to him because the guy was fucking the trainees, whether they wanted to, or not."

"Ah. Yeah. Well…" Not a murder then. He doesn't have the full story on that, but he knows enough about what happened on Jakku to put the dots together and figure that's going to be a sensitive topic for Rey and anyone who loves her. "That's a… way to make sure that doesn't happen again, I guess."

"On the most literal level of that one trainer isn't going to do it again, yes, indeed. I've been told training is getting better, but that's not my department. And, yes, besides watching Kylo fight, the last time I got into a fight, I was in basic training, and even then, my preferred weapon was a sniper's rifle."

Poe traces his eyes over Jon. Keen eye, good with detail, likely given what he does, good with math and distances, patient. "I can see that. And the reason I brought it up is… well, unless you've really been in one, you can't, not really, get it, but… You're not tense or nervous or… anything… when you're fighting. It's…" Poe smiles a little, again. "It's fucking perfect, is what it is, and I know we're not supposed to say that, but…" He looks a little wistful. "Nothing else feels like it. After, when the adrenaline crashes, and you get shaky, and you love all your loves that little bit more because you lived and they did, too. That's different. That's when you get nervous, and that's when you party that much harder just because you can. But during…" he sighs.

"I get some of that. Just, playing for different stakes."

"What's on the table for us?"

"If we do this well, come up with a plan they like, manage to get them to stick around long enough for us to give them a plan—"

"You think they're going to take one look at Rey and leave?"

"I'm afraid they might. It's not a society where women do things like this, but… they are a birth right monarchy, and she's the closest thing I've got to something like the kind of succession they might have, for Kylo, so… Anyway, if they don't bugger off when they see her, and they do take our advice, we get eight billion credits, a good relationship with the K'Aran, and with any luck, more of these contracts."

Poe whistles slow and low. "That's a hell of a hand."

"And that's why, the day after tomorrow, I can relax."

---

"Food?" Poe asks as they continue to walk through the F-Deck. He's eyeing the eateries and cafes.

"I'll order for us. You get into my shower, get cleaned up, show me the suit on you, and by the time that's done, food'll be up, and we can eat and talk and work."

"Sounds like a date."

Jon raises an eyebrow. "I really hope not."

Poe smirks at that. "Good."

Jon nods to the end of the market zone, and the third hallway from the aftword side. "That one is mine."

Poe nods back at him. "I remember."

"Good with directions."

"I bloody well have to be. Not like space has a lot of landmarks. And the ones that it does have, move."

"Isn't that why you've got the navi?" Jon asks, looking at BB trailing beside Poe.

BB-8 chirps at him.

"He didn't mean it, buddy. He just doesn't know any better." Poe says to BB, and to Jon he says, "BB's a hell of a lot more than a navi program. But yes, he does that, too. Still the navi is for making sure you get where you want to go. If you're dog-fighting…"

"Right. Of course. It's probably really easy to get disoriented in space zipping around."

"Really."

They take a few more steps. "What do you want to eat?" Jon asks.

"I'm easy. I like pretty much everything." Poe thinks about it, and about tomorrow. He sighs. "Okay, nothing more than medium level heat, or I'll be up all night with heartburn. Can't toss back the chilies like I used to."

Jon smirks at that. He remembers a similar conversation with Lane. "Not twenty-two any more."

"For which, most of the time, I'm grateful."

"Most of the time. I suppose tomorrow will be a reminder of all the fun twenty-two was, or wasn't."

"I'm not saying twenty-two wasn't fun." Though Jon gets the sense Poe's lying about that. "But I wouldn't go back."

Jon nods at that. "I had a blast at twenty-two. Mom hadn't booted me out yet, so I was mostly going to parties and sewing. Nothing darker or deeper than if I'd gotten a seam right, or if the client liked the sketch, and who I was going to take to bed."

"Fun and easy."

"Fun and easy, and kind of boring, and…" Jon smiles at him a little. "I wouldn't go back. Twenty-five or seven, maybe, but not twenty-two."

Poe wiggles his hand a bit to indicate he understands that.

---

Once they get back to Jon's place, there's a moment of standing around followed by Jon sort of jerking into motion. "Refresher, right. You don't want to grab your suit, go all the way back to your ship, and then back here again."

"Not unless you're looking to kill two and a half hours."

"I'd really rather not."

"In the morning, I saw you've got something in there, but… Shower? Sonic? I didn't see any controls, so…"

Jon leads him toward his bathroom. "Yeah, it's not tricky once you know how to work it, but the first time, someone's got to show you how to. I've got water and sonic. Sonic is free. We've got to pay for water, but… I just prefer it."

Poe smiles at that. "My current ship's got a shower. Micah's got a hetabex fuel conversion system, so I've got all the water I could want, but everything before that had a sonic or was too small for anything but a hygiene pack, and… that first few minutes under real water after, say, six months of living in a ship…"

"I know." Jon grins at him on that one. "Trainees only have access to a sonic, and when I just started here, I had better things to use my credits on." He glances at the bag Poe had over his shoulder when he joined them. "You have your kit in there?"

Poe winces a bit. He's got his suit in there, because he was supposed to show it to Jon. And he's always got a change of clothing in there and a toothbrush, because he's never entirely sure when he'll need them, but it hadn't occurred to him there'd be a several hour commute back and forth to his ship, so the rest of his gear is in his refresher, in there. "Shit, no. Will I put you out if I use yours?"

"No." Jon opens the door to the refresher. He crosses to the sink, grabs his razor and quickly switches out the old blade for a fresh one. "Everything else you could need is in there," he gestures to the glass enclosed shower. Then he slides the door open, and gently touches the wall just below the shower head. The tile glows, and a menu comes up. He taps once, "That sets it for water, what temperature?"

"Thirty-nine?"

He taps the screen again, and pulls his arm back as the water starts to flow. "Just nudge it up or down to change the temp. It'll take a minute or so to get warmed up. Towels are under the sink. I'll lay the suit out."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

---

Poe does not moan, loudly, when he steps under the water. It's a quiet, dignified sort of salute to whatever bit of the Force decided that hot water should feel so damn good on sore muscles. It's not like he was killing himself out there today, but… It's abundantly clear, on a lot of levels, that he is not twenty-two any longer. Apparently, if he spends hours building and painting his left shoulder just aches. So, he is taking advantage of hot water sluicing down on him, easing said ache. (He supposes at some point he should ask Kylo what they charge officers for water so he can get Jon some sort of equally nice present back, but… With his luck, Kylo won't know.)

He lingers under the water for another moment, and then attempts to figure out which of the way too many bottles in the shower is soap or shampoo.

Jon's got… He's picking up bottles… Body soap. Facial soap. Hair soap. Hair Masque. Conditioner. Moisturizer. Shaving soap. Post-shave balm. Dr. Feelgood's Motion Potion. Poe's hand goes limp when he reads that, and he almost drops the bottle. Then he gets a good grip on it and bites the meat of his thumb so he doesn't laugh loud enough for Jon to hear.

He's grinning as he turns the bottle around, and… Yep, it's specifically designed to be "Extra slick and super long lasting for good, clean, shower-time fun."

Shit… Now there's an image. Jon's already way too damn pretty, and him jerking it here in this shower… Poe bites his lip. He puts the motion potion down, and reaches for the last bottle, wondering what else Jon may have in here. He can't imagine there's anything else the man might slather on his skin or hair… Though why said hair looks so soft and said skin so practically edible is no longer a mystery. Jon takes care of himself.

Poe pauses for a moment. There is the husband. Maybe only some of this stuff is Jon's… But… No. One soap, one shampoo, lots of other do-dads, but only one of each of the basic cleansing items. He glances to the razor… Only one of them. If the husband is still around, they share.

He looks at the motion potion, and a flood of images that raise Poe's body temperature, and make his hand go drifting to his shaft, go cascading through his mind. Jon on his own in here… Jon and his man in here… Fuck!

He reaches for the last bottle, curious as to what else Jon or his man could possibly be putting on himself. There's nothing written on it, and he can't see anything that looks like a lid on it. Poe flips it over and sees the shape around the small hole in the bottom. Oh. Well, now he knows what Jon does with the motion potion. A smirk spreads even wider across his face, as he puts the wank sleeve down.

Then he looks at his own shaft, which he's been absently stroking, and it's happily standing at attention at the idea of any of this. He tells it to go the fuck back to sleep. There'll be a time and place for spinning out the fantasy of Jon covered in soap suds, jerking it in his shower, maybe… maybe just because Poe wants to watch him do it.

Maybe, he'd put on a show for him.

Shit… Maybe, he could be in the shower with him, and the husband could watch both of them. The man in the pictures is good looking, and if he and Jon play around enough for Jon to have a friend…

Maybe, he could be their friend, too?

Force, get between the two of them… suck and fuck at once… Poe shudders and gives his shaft a good, firm squeeze. And then a long pull. And then… He's got a job to do, and he's been standing around in here too long babying his shoulder, and… And… maybe if he asked nicely Jon would rub his shoulder… Maybe the husband would come home while Jon's rubbing his shoulder. Maybe he'd want to help.

Stop it! Those images are doing exactly nothing to deflate his shaft.

Firmly flicking the top of it with his fingernail on the other hand, does.

Forcing his brain to stop thinking about sucking Jon down with the husband watching them while seeing how much fun that sleeve is helps even more.

And when he's out of the shower, with his hair a hell of a lot smoother and softer than usual, he's feeling pretty damn normal.

And, by the time he's got his pants on, all of his various appendages are behaving themselves.

---

When Poe gets out of Jon's bedroom, Jon blinks at him. He was not expecting that. That's… "Nice!"

"Nice?" Poe asks, stepping closer to him, and turning around so he can see the whole suit.

"Yeah, that's a legitimately good suit. You not only clean up well…" He notices the stubble. "Didn't shave?"

"Morning. No point to doing it now, I'd just have to do it again, then. Gotta shave twice a day if I want to keep clean shaven, and my skin doesn't much like that."

Jon nods. "Okay." His eyes go roaming up and down Poe's suit, but, and this is a first for Poe, he appears to be looking at the suit as opposed to him in a suit. "The color suits you, the cut is good, and the fit is a touch snug, but I can tell that's intentional. After working with Kylo and Rey… and… well…" Jon looks uncomfortable at letting that sentence go on that long.

Poe arches an eyebrow at Jon.

Jon opens and closes his mouth, and then commits to it. "No one ever accused the Resistance of being stylish. Rumor has it you guys went out of your way to find the ugliest clothing possible and never, ever spent even a single credit on anything beyond the barest functionality. Plebeian sentiments or something."

Poe rolls his eyes. "Or something." He sits next to Jon at the kitchen table, and pulls the plate that's not in front of Jon to him. Dinner appears to be some sort of curry and flat breads. "You run an entire battle fleet on charity, good will, and the luck of the Force and see how spiffy your uniforms are."

Jon figures that's a legitimate point. "Yes, well, I didn't have to. Between Snoke's policies and the people who got rich off of them, me and mine never wanted for material goods." Jon glances around at everything from the room to the food that was delivered while Poe was in his refresher, figuring that also makes the point. He reaches for the bottle of vodka. "We drinking?"

"One. We're both supposed to be sharp tomorrow," Poe replies.

"Do you have to stop at one to be sharp in the morning?"

"No. And you don't either, but we're going to because we're adults with an important job to do, right?"

Jon pours them a glass each. Big for a shot, but not multiple servings. "Of course."

Poe takes a sip. It's good vodka, too. He touches the glass, and also looks around at everything around them. "When you aren't stealing everything that isn't nailed down, and then the taking a crowbar to the ones that are, it's tricky to keep yourself in nice things, like pretty uniforms," Though he notes, that, apparently, while he was in the shower, Jon changed into his laying about at home clothing, a gray shirt and trousers. "good booze, and comfy apartments."

That gets an amused look from Jon. It's true that the First Order did take, a lot. But that's not where most, or even a significant minority of its funding came from. Jon smirks. "You ever talk to Kylo about how much money we owe?"

Poe raises and eyebrow. "Owe?"

"Yes, owe. That's a big chunk of why this contract, and any contracts that may spawn because of it matter so much. The Order is something in the range of 27 trillion credits in debt, and that's after Snoke blew up the Hosnian system, and the banks on it, and Kylo liquidated our largest creditor and stole their holdings. People lend you that kind of money when they think you can win. They may not have liked Snoke, or thought he was doing the right thing, but they knew they'd get rich off of him, so the money came pouring in."

Poe sips his drink, feeling smug. "Pouring right into Starkiller, which I personally led the attack on, and blew the fuck up."

They stare at each other for a long moment.

Jon nods slowly, looking at Poe, eyes roaming up and down his body, seeing his physical person, here, now, and his image of the fighter pilot destroying the single largest military weapon ever created. "Among other things, yes. A huge chunk of it was here, in the Supremacy. More in the rest of the fleet. Some sprinkled throughout the 60,000 planets Snoke had men on." He keeps looking at Poe, sitting, leaning back, legs wide, in gray and teal silk/wool blend suit, looking beyond cool and confident. Well, if this ship is going to explode before it gets out of dock, might as well do it now… He takes a long swallow of his drink. Maybe it won't burn so much if the alcohol gives him a little armor. "I've… wondered… what the hell did you all think you were going to do against Snoke? If Kylo hadn't turned… I mean… I'm a fucking design officer. The closest they let me to a fight is watching people train in the armor I made to make sure it works. But even I knew you didn't have the numbers to even get close to winning this. You took out Starkiller, apparently personally, crippled the Supremacy, we still had more than two million men and five hundred thousand fighters left. You had, what, one ship?"

Poe shrugs at that. "There are two sayings, among the old Rebels, well, some of them. The Church of the Force ones don't really believe in the idea of Hell, but… The first one is this: It's better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. The second is this: Your place in Hell is determined by the size of the honor guard you bring with you." Poe offers Jon a knife sharp smile. "I figure mine's at over 2.5 million. I mean, I know, compared to say, Hux or Tarkin, that's a piddly sum, but for a flyboy from Yavin IV, that's not a bad count, you know?"

Jon decides not to attempt to put a number on how many people he's indirectly killed by working for the First Order. More than he's comfortable with. "No, it's not. So, was that it, just nibble away, kill as many as you can, because… You couldn't stand the First Order?"

"Couldn't stand them," Poe shakes his head. "It's not like this is jizz music or mushrooms or something. There's a difference between personal preference and not idly sitting by and letting evil eat the galaxy."

Jon's eyes are cold. "Is there? I'd say have a chat with my Mom about that, but honestly, I don't want the headache. I'll sum it up like this, a group of terrorists spent twenty years sniping at a democratically elected government, claiming to be for a 'Republic' even though a functioning and legal Republic put that government into power. It's possible, thought I don't genuinely know, that that sniping goaded Tarkin into destroying Alderaan. Maybe that was just an excuse. But Alderaan was nineteen years into a civil war started when a group of rebels lost an election and decided they wouldn't abide by it.

"Tell me, Poe, when the Rebellion started to attack Empire outposts and military targets, was that evil? Did your Mom sign up before or after Alderaan, and if she signed up before, was it because of the Empire's attacks on 'civilian' targets, all of which were either retribution for terror attacks or places hiding terrorists?"

Poe shakes his head. "I'm not going there, and you don't get to go there, either, because we're not talking about the Empire, but about the First Order, and for all you can claim the Empire were the good guys—"

"I'm not claiming they were the good guys, I'm claiming they were the legal guys. Figuring out who the good guys are is a different job."

"Maybe, but that's beside the point, because there was absolutely nothing legal about the First Order, and those are the guys I signed up to fight, so let's keep it here, and now, and between you and I, and not between your Dad and my Mom."

Jon nods. "Fair enough. Well then… If memory serves, there was nothing legal about you and yours, either. You overthrew one legitimate government to set up a second republic, and as soon as it refused to go the way you wanted it, off you went on your own… So… Again, legal and good might not be the same thing, but how are we figuring out what evil is, beyond things you just don't happen to like, if we toss aside any formal idea of law?"

Poe spends a moment staring at Jon. "You know, for a guy who dropped out of school and spent most of his life sewing and as a party boy, you're way too well-versed in this stuff."

Jon smirks, and then takes a bite of his supper. "You don't have a good argument, do you?"

Poe's eyes flash. "Don't kill people who aren't threatening you. There's the baseline. Evil is fucking with people who aren't fucking with you. That's as fancy as I need to get. One day, maybe Rey'll dress it up prettier, but I'm good there."

Jon inclines his head a bit. "I can live with that." Then he says, voice quieter, "And… if your side had lost the war, you'd be damn good at arguments for why they weren't evil just for existing, too. You'd probably know all there is to say about legal and moral might not be the same thing, but without law, all you've got for moral is personal preference, so it's got to start somewhere, with some shared concept of law, because otherwise you just get trillions of different ideas of evil."

"Fine. I'm still going with my version of evil, and I'm okay with that, too. I don't… need a billion other voices to agree with me on this. Snoke was fucking with people all over the galaxy who weren't fucking with him, who never wanted to fuck with him, and the New Republic, who were supposed to protect the fucked-with, wouldn't get off their asses and do it. Leia left—"

"Got tossed out."

That gets a glare out of Poe.

"I'm just saying, would she have left if they hadn't booted her out? Or like her father, would she have decided to try and work it from the inside?"

Poe's eyes narrow. He thinks… "She would have left. She hadn't said anything about it, not yet, but… It was there. I could feel it coming. You can't… Her whole world, literal world, was blown up… And after that… You can't just… sit on your ass and do nothing."

Jon nods. He shrugs a bit, his body language making it clear he's done a lot of ass sitting over the years, then looks at the chronometer, and the suit on Poe, which is really nice and absolutely won't work for this, and sighs. Assuming he doesn't want to be sewing while they're going to meet Rey, he's got ten hours to get this done. Less eating, more working. "It's a good suit. It looks really nice on you. And if I was going to take you somewhere elegant, it'd be great. That said, the K'Arans want something that screams power and wealth, and not in an understated sort of way, so…"

Poe raises an eyebrow at him, understanding that they're tabling larger issues for right now. "So…"

"How do you feel about chocolate brown and coppers?"

"I've worn screaming orange flight suits. Brown and copper I can deal with."

"Good."

---

Dinner's done. Poe offered to wash the dishes, and Jon just looked confused by that. Apparently, the droid who brought the food will take the dishes away when it comes back with breakfast. So, a quick rinse, put them back in the box they came in, and off they'll go in the morning.

Poe's not sure what to do with himself. He sent BB back to their ship, keep watch on things, but now he's just sort of sitting around, as Jon's unrolling bolts of fabric. He's on the floor, kneeling next to the fabric, a deep, dark brown… Poe thinks it might be velvet, and he can't imagine what Jon's going to do with it, but… He's the professional.

He looks around, supposedly, he could be 'relaxing' but that feels wrong while Jon's working. He watches Jon work, which is certainly a pretty sight. There's a man who belongs on his knees. Then he glances to the pictures of Jon and the handsome man.

Husband.

He's got to be Jon's husband. Jon's wearing a marriage band. Poe does a little math, figures he's been in Jon's company, his home for going on fifteen hours now, and there's been no sight of the man, or mention.

"Is your… husband… stationed on a different ship?" That feels like a safe way to get near the question.

Jon's head snaps up, and he goes dead still before saying, "No."

Poe's maybe not the smartest man to ever draw breath, but he can feel the wave of back off radiating off of Jon on that question. Poe just knows that the Husband is no longer in the literal picture. He's dead or divorced or… gone somehow.

"Oh. Okay. Uh… The boys, tomorrow. I'm supposed to show them around and get to know them, right?"

"That's the idea." Jon looks a lot more comfortable talking about tomorrow.

"Give me the specs for the ship."

Jon blinks at him.

"They'll ask questions, and look, I can spin a story like no one's business, and I know enough about ships that whatever I come up with will at least make sense, but if you want me to impress them with how big and strong and powerful this is, I need to know something about it beyond, 'See that bay there, that's where I stole a TIE, and slipped the whole First Order to escape with my friend Finn.'"

Jon blinks. "That's how you met Finn?" He's, of course, heard of the infamous Finn, and met his wife, but never him.

"Apparently he'd gotten Captain Phasma's attention, and not in a good way."

Jon winces. "Reconditioning?"

Poe nods. "I've never asked what's involved in that, but I take it that's not good."

"I don't know, either. Me and mine… There's a reason we've got names and not numbers, but… I've never heard anyone say anything about it to indicate that anyone thinks it was fun."

Poe nods at that. "Anyway, Finn comes to the conclusion he needs to be somewhere other than the Supremacy. Ren had me, and was trying to pull everything out of my brain, so I needed to be somewhere else, too. So, it's a good story, and I tell it well, but me hot-tailing it off the Supremacy might not be exactly the image you're looking for."

Jon nods. "You're not wrong about that. It's… just…"

Poe raises an eyebrow.

"I don't know if I can get what you're looking for," and it's also clear that Jon's not entirely comfortable handing that over to Poe even if he could get it.

Poe grins at him. "Last I checked, Grand Marshall, you should have access to anything your little heart desires. That's what having a rank like that means. You ask for Stormtroopers to dance in front of you scattering lilac petals across your path, and they ask how many of them do you want, and do you want pink, purple, or white lilacs."

Jon starts to giggle at that image. When he stops, he says, "I have a feeling requesting something like that is how you immediately lose a rank like Grand Marshall."

"Or, at least, Kylo just hits you with that look. You know the one, where you've said or done something so far outside of anything approaching his experience his brain just freezes up and he's got to reboot before he can deal with it."

Jon sniggers at that, too. "Oh yeah, I've seen that look." He's smiling as he thinks, because that look is amusing, and then it's not, because that look generally goes along with something that if anyone who'd been even a quarter competent at raising kids had had Kylo, he wouldn't have that look on his face. The smile starts to fall, then he says, "You knew his Mom, right? I mean… really knew her?"

"I don't know about really. I like to think I did, but she was my boss, so…"

"Okay. Seriously. Part of my job is training him in things he should have learned as a teenager."

Poe's looking at Jon curiously. He's, of course, noticed that Ren's got some holes in how he behaves compared to normal people, but he thought that was just… Ren. The idea that he never learned in the first place didn't occur to him. "Like what, table manners?"

"No, those he got. Like…" Jon thinks. "Like how to use cologne, or it's okay to be attracted to women who aren't Rey, or if you get out of the refresher, and there's someone else in the room when you get out, the towel goes around your waist, not your hair."

Poe covers his mouth to stifle the laugh. "Oh, Jon…"

"Where the hell were his parents? Okay, Jedi school is apparently… lacking… in basic how to be a human in society skills, fine, but… I'm honestly shocked he knows how to shave. And I still don't know if he doesn't use deodorant because he and Rey think he smells fine as is, or if he doesn't know it's a thing."

Poe makes his eyebrows drop. Apparently Jon's spent quite a bit more intimate time with Kylo than he has. Though, as he thinks about different afternoons and days spent working with Rey, especially when it was still summer. He shakes his head. "They just don't know it's a thing."

"Great. Well… I mean… I can say a lot to him, but I'm not about to start up a conversation with, 'Hey, do you smell that way after a workout intentionally?'"

Poe smirks at that. "I can see that. Meanwhile, as the asshole pseudo-older brother, I can cover that one." He's actually rather enjoying the mental image of taking care of that. He might even tell Finn about it. That should make his decade.

"Yeah, but you shouldn't have to. Luke or… whoever, should have sat his ass down two decades ago and explained this to him."

Poe shrugs. "Jedi… I don't know. They were supposed to be apart, right? Not really people in society, right? At least, that's as best as I know about it. And Kylo's said things about how they weren't supposed to want or get attached or be anything other than Jedi, so maybe it was a way to help keep temptation at bay… People generally don't want to be near me after a hot day with no deodorant… But… Okay, yeah, you'd think the towel thing…"

"You'd think! Maybe he was just pranking me, but he seemed on the level with it." Jon's watching Poe, waiting.

"Right… Uh… Leia. I knew she had a son. She had a few pictures of him in her office. One of her and Han and Ben, but… I thought Ben was a lot younger than he was, because he was like, six or seven in the picture. A decade went by, and he was still six or seven in the picture, and it occurred to me that if I thought he was younger than he was, everyone else likely did, too, so they'd be looking for a kid, not a teen or young man.

"And, you have to realize, Leia was a target. I worked security for her, and people were constantly trying to take her out or down. I am good at this sort of thing because I needed to be. She wasn't, by a long shot, the only member of the senate who kept her family far away and hidden. She didn't like it, but it was safer that way."

"She didn't go home at night to her family?"

"Not when I was there, but… I got there at seventeen… so that puts Kylo at twelve, and… He was already with Luke then. I don't know what it was like before he went to Luke. Not from Leia's point of view.

"So, I knew Ben existed. I met Han a few times, saw him more. I saw Luke, once. The day he showed up is the day the pictures went away. And Han did, too. I never saw him again. And Leia never mentioned Ben again.

"Kylo captured me, and I'm smartass-ing my way through interrogation, because that's what I do, and I had no idea he was her son. He just about went nuclear at the idea that I was the best pilot in the Resistance. Apparently, that's who he'd wanted to be before it all went pear-shaped.

"Before that mission… There was a chance the First Order would be there. We didn't exactly want them to show up, because that would complicate things, but we also knew Ren was looking for the same map I was, so he might show up, and I had orders to take out anyone I could, anyone I saw, and if that meant Kylo, that meant Kylo, too. I got a good shot at him. Fucker can stop laser bolts with the Force, which is a snazzy trick, but if he couldn't have, I'd have shot him dead, and gotten a medal for it."

Jon blinks. "And she would have pinned it to your chest."

"Yeah."

Jon sighs at that. "She sounds hard."

Poe shrugs a bit. "Hard like a diamond. Sharp and bright and sparkly. Strong, too. Funny… But… You'd have to be, right? A soft person would have been crushed by the weight of it."

Jon shrugs a bit, too. "I suppose." He looks at the fabric on the floor in front of him, and begins to lay the pattern out on it. "Do you think she wanted him?"

"I never got the sense she didn't, but I mean… he was there before I met her, so… They didn't have any other kids. And… well… Apparently, his birthday is exactly ten months after the Battle of Endor, so… Not like he couldn't have been an oops."

"Let me guess, Battle of Endor was a big celebration day for Rebels."

"Second only to Concordance Day."

Jon rolls his eyes.

"Stop that, didn't you guys have Empire Day?"

"We might have. I think my mom's mentioned it. But by the time I was on the scene, openly celebrating it was a one way ticket to prison, so it's not like it was part of my childhood."

Poe feels that line. There's a glib reply on his lips, but he stops before he say it. "That was real for you? Growing up, afraid that…"

"My mom or oldest sister or brothers-in-law were going to get tossed in jail? Yeah, it was. Earliest dream I can remember was a nightmare of New Republic Gendarmes coming to our house to take Mom away."

"Your mom is a dressmaker."

Jon just sighs at that, a long, drawn out sound. "Apparently more than that, but, no I didn't know that. Not then. Not until… what, last week? I could feel she was nervous all the time. I was too young to understand, but her clients would whisper about who got taken, or who was going away… 'Extended vacation in beautiful Celjonia courtesy of the New Republic,' I didn't know that was sarcasm until I was twelve or so and got to hear about what the Empire did to Celjonia, and then understood why the New Republic used it as a prison planet for Imperials. She'd always stiffen up a bit when she'd see a Gendarme. If one was walking toward us on the street, she's pull me a little closer, hold my hand a little tighter, and fix her smile bright and steady, and her gaze straight ahead. Her Happy New Republican look." There's a lot in how Jon says that.

Poe's not entirely sure what to do with it. "Home for me is… was… Yavin IV."

Jon nods. Even he paid enough attention in school to know Yavin IV. "Let me guess, you never saw an actual Imperial…"

"Until I was seventeen and assigned to Leia's protection detail." He shrugs some. "They weren't… you know, real people. Faceless monsters on the holovids. Literally faceless, we always saw the pictures of them wearing the armor. Even on Coruscant… There would be whispers about un- or barely-reformed Imperials, but… Those were whispers. I didn't see a real one until I was standing around, being security at a hearing where a few of the prisoners were testifying. There were rumors, even that many years after the war, that someone would try to kill them to keep them from talking."

Jon's eyes are hot, but his voice is mild as he says, "Yes, I know. I had to watch those vids, too. And a lot of those trials. Part of why I dropped out of school. As a teenager, I had a difficult time not getting pissed at those, and… Well, we couldn't afford to have the New Republic looking too closely at us. We were Happy New Republicans," he flashes Poe his version of his mother's smile, "all getting along in peace and harmony with the new order of things."

"What did your Dad do? Design the bloody Death Star? Run the work camps? Pull the trigger on Alderaan? I mean… Okay, yeah, I'm sure it sucked, but… They didn't just throw Imperials in jail right and left with no good reason. I know we had rules of war, and any Imperial who didn't violate them didn't go to jail. They wouldn't have put your family away just for being… Imperials."

"That's not how I understood it. That's not how a lot of kids on Coruscant understood it." Poe knows that. Growing up, he'd play Rebels and Imperials, and everyone wanted to be a Rebel because the whole point of the game was pretty much to pile onto the Imperials and beat the shit out of them. "That's not how it was taught to us. And… maybe it's because we were on the outs and they were on the rise, but… If you were part of an Imperial family, you took a lot of shit."

"So, you weren't sitting in a class full of other Imperial kids?"

"A few. Most of my classmates were the kids of senators or the people who made their money catering to them. Some were old Coruscanti families like mine. All of our teachers, best I knew, all teachers on the planet, had to be approved by the New Republic, make sure we were getting the rightsorts of lessons. You know, so history couldn't repeat itself."

Poe chews his lip. "We didn't go there earlier. You side stepped it, but… Do you think the Empire were the good guys?"

Jon shrugs. "Yes? No? I… don't know. Obviously not for the average person wandering about on Alderaan on the wrong day. But I also know, speaking of those rules of war, that if you run a bloody rebellion on a planet, you make it a fucking target, and you don't get to bitch when it gets blown to pieces. It'd be one thing if they'd picked Alderaan at random, but they didn't. Bail Organa was not some random guy who just happened to live on that planet. Leia Organa was not an innocent bystander picked at random. And I also know there were a lot of planets on the verge of starvation that The Empire got up and working and eating again. I know a lot of the local wars were crushed, and peace popped up all over the galaxy in places that hadn't had it for decades. I know they took out unpopular local regimes, and popular ones, too. And I know they cracked down hard on smugglers, organized crime, the drug and prostitution trade. A lot of people liked that. And I know there were planets that were lush and flush that they crippled to keep power, and… I know the work camps were real. I know the prison camps weren't just filled with criminals. I know collectivized farming was used as a weapon on some planets to starve people into submission, and I know the food it raised was often sent to other planets to end famines. So, I don't know. For some people, in some places, at some times, yes. For others, in other places, at other times, no.

"I know they were the legal guys. They were voted in in a clean election, and supposedly that's the kind of thing that matters, right? Consent of the governed? I think that's what they called it in school. That was the claim of why the New Republic were the good guys. They had the consent of the governed."

"Yeah. That's how we learned it. And we also learned it as people have the right to withdraw that consent and demand a new government. That was why the Empire didn't have legal standing. When the Senate finally got enough votes together to demand the removal of Palpatine, he dissolved the senate."

"Hence the Rebellion and Resistance and whatnot. Though if memory serves, the Rebellion had been going on for nineteen years when they finally won that vote."

"Yeah."

Jon finishes pinning the pattern to the fabric. "So… If you can bugger off whenever the powers that be go against you, what's the point of a democracy?" Jon makes a mental note to fly that by Kylo at some point, too. After all, right now, anyone who doesn't want to stay can leave, and theoretically, at some point they'll be voting on this stuff, so…

"No idea. I'm much better at the blow shit up side of this." He half smiles a bit, but it's not a happy look. "From everything I can see, you're getting that Grand Marshall because you're good at this stuff. I got Admiral because besides Leia and Connix, I had the most seniority, and it sounds good when you're going to try and talk a few battle cruisers out of someone. I'm… not a tactician. I'm not particularly good with supply lines or… any of the billion things you need to run an army. I was just… there, and looked good in a suit, and could talk a good line."

Jon looks at the patterns in front of him. "Kylo likes talking to me, supposedly because I know stuff about politics and culture and how things are supposed to look." Jon looks up at Poe and rolls his eyes. "And I hate the fact that the only reason it looks like I know this stuff is because someone abysmally failed at training him to be a human being in this galaxy. If he'd been even minimally prepared for-"

Poe stands up, crosses the room, and kneels next to Jon, resting a hand on his shoulder. "I think he likes talking to you, because you're good to talk to. And because you do hate the fact that he didn't get what he needed as a kid. That's probably more empathy than he ever got from anyone who wasn't Rey before a few months ago."

"That's appalling." Their eyes meet, and hold, for a long second.

"I know." Poe lets go of Jon's shoulder, and looks down at the pattern on the fabric. "Are those going to be velvet trousers?"

"Yes."

"Why…." Poe's just looking. It's clear he's shifting them away from the heavier topics again.

Jon's fine with that. They probably don't need to leap headfirst all the way into the deep end at once. "It's a culture that values wealth, power, and strength. I'm sticking you in an outfit that oozes the first two, and it's your job to look like you've got piles of the last and you're just choosing not to do anything with it."

"You're saying I don't normally look like I've got piles of strength?" Poe asks with a raised eyebrow, and just possibly, flexing a bit.

"I'm saying they're expecting Kylo, who is a fucking mountain of a man, and you aren't."

Poe sighs. Kylo's got half a head, and likely fifteen kilos of muscle on him. "That's fair." Then he looks Jon in the eyes. "So, I'm not a mountain, but I've got a very good head on my shoulders for things that fly. Get me the specs. Let me study. And I'll blow them away with how well I know this ship tomorrow."

And for a heartbeat, it feels… bizarre, like looking over the edge of a cliff. But a cliff behind glass. Jon feels like he knows he can't fall, but the sense of it is still real.

Poe's not going to fuck him over with this. He knows that.

And it still feels like a massive leap of faith to both order up, and then give Admiral Dameron of the Resistance, the full technical specs of the Supremacy.

But he does it anyway, because if this is going to work, he's got to trust the people around him.

---

It's later.

A lot later.

Poe's taken off his jacket, undone his tie and tucked it in a pocket, rolled up his sleeves, nursed his way, slowly through two glasses of tea (Jon was horrified to see him pour his tea over ice in a tall glass. "It's good, try it!" "Are you out of your mind? Ice, in tea? Are you going to tell me you drink vodka warm next?" "No, but ricewine's good hot." "Heathen!") and read over more pages of technical specifications than he can count. He's fairly sure, at this point, the only people who know more about the make-up of the Supremacy are droids.

Some of the bits are fascinating. Some of it make him want to get off this floating death trap, fast. It's still holding together, so… Yeah, that's a good thing, but… Whoever made it went wild on the weapons and put hull integrity so far down the list of priorities he's stunned it doesn't lose chunks every time it hits hyperspeed.

Hell, for all he knows, it does.

He stretches, working the kinks out of his neck, and reminds himself that he's looking at the original specs, and in the intervening years, hopefully, things have been improved. (Apparently, even for the Grand Marshall, some things are just not going to be shaken loose, among them, the up to date specs of the Supremacy. Pretty much, they told Jon that if he showed up, in person, with Kylo, he could look at a copy of one specific section of the ship, in Engineering, with the Head Engineer next to him, making sure he didn't compromise anything or remove anything. Something about Grand Admiral Schiff tightening up security on the ship build, or something. Jon didn't feel like fussing, so he's got the original specs, which are more than close enough for Poe to BS a hell of a story tomorrow.)

He looks over at Jon, who is still on the floor, working on something. There's a droid next to him basting pieces of fabric together. The droid makes a little beeping sound, and then stops.

Jon glances at it, and then at Poe, who's watching him. For a second, Poe almost feels flustered at getting caught looking, but he knows what to do with that. He flashes his best grin, and then says, "Looks like your sewing machine wants your attention."

"He does." Jon's eyes linger on his. "Up you get, pants off, let's see how these things fit."

That widens Poe's smile.

He puts the pad down, steps out from the kitchen table, and toes off his shoes. He carefully, with full eye contact, undoes each of the buttons on his vest. Then he slowly, deliberately undoes his belt. Jon stares at him as he does it, eyes on his fingers, and then he seems to mentally pinch himself, and the tenor of his gaze shifts.

He also tosses the trousers at Poe. "Try them on. We've got…" He checks the chrono. "Eight hours for me to get this done, assuming I'm not going to be marching you through the decks in your skivvies, sewing as we head to Rey, so…"

Poe pulls off his trousers which much less fanfare, and then slips on the new ones. "They feel nice." He's never contemplated velvet trousers before, but the fabric feels good against his skin.

Jon's looking at him now, too. This doesn't feel sexy, or romantic, or… anything. This is professional. "You've got bigger thighs than I thought. Go sit down, make sure they're still comfortable."

Poe does. He sits, gets up, walks around, sits again. "They're good. Little snug, but I like that."

Jon's nodding. "They are." Then his eyes flicker a bit, and he's really looking at Poe under the trousers, and how they just sort of cling to his hips and thighs. "Yeah, they are."

Poe, his back to Jon, pulling them off, and maybe, just maybe, giving him a bit of a show, smiles at that.

---

Jon's putting together the strap that will keep Poe's cloak in place. He's kneeling on the floor, carefully gluing each piece into place. If he was doing it right, he'd be wiring it, but… There just isn't time for that. It's based on the idea of scale armor, small squares of highly reflective copper, patina-ed dull brown copper, more blinding shined red-gold, and cerise-stained brall wood, all overlapping each other on a flexible belt that will go from his left shoulder, around his chest, under his right arm, and across his back to his left shoulder again, securing his cloak.

Poe glances down at it as he places a glass of water next to Jon. "Shiny mirror-ed strap? I'll look like you peeled a disco ball and put it on me."

Jon blinks, and then looks at Poe. Then he blinks again. "You know what a disco ball is?"

After all, there are clubs, and places that have disco balls, and Jon has been to several of them. Some of his very best memories with Lane involve one of those clubs. But… Jon's never seen one at a place that didn't cater to a sort of… particular… narrow… clientele. The sort of place a man like Poe would never… Well, maybe not never… There have been some bits tonight that are indication Poe might not be quite as narrow as Jon was originally thinking, or if he is, he's narrow for men, but… Still… Poe wouldn't dare to set a foot in a club like that.

Except, well, maybe he would.

"Of course I do. I've been to a party before. I'm not Kylo, for the Force's sake. We had parties in the New Republic. Hell, even in the Resistance we could, on occasion, scrape up enough credits to go out drinking and dancing. Speaking of Kylo, were you going to dip him in sparkles for this, and if so, how fast were you intending to run away once he saw what you were going to do with him?"

Jon mentally winces and backtracks, in the parts of the galaxy he's been, he knows the sorts of clubs that might have a disco ball, but from the way Poe just said it, it sounds a hell of a lot more common where he's from. Still, a little spark leaps up at the fact that he knows what one is… Don't get your hopes up. Yeah, Poe's laying on the double entendres tonight, but some men think that's just… fun.

And… If Poe is what Jon fantasizes about, narrow for women, officially, publicly, with just a little niggling thought in the back of his mind about, maybe, occasionally, kissing a boy, double entendres might be all he can get out of the man.

Fortunately, Poe takes Jon's momentary quiet as him debating what Kylo would have done to him had he attempted to get him into an ornate velvet and glitter outfit.

"Uh, no. Just his formal blacks. There's enough power and strength coming of his physical body, and the fabric's good enough, I wasn't worried about conspicuously signaling wealth on top of it. I mean, we're standing in his ship, and it's the largest one in the galaxy."

"The man who's rich enough not to show it off." Poe nods to the strap. "For the record, I don't mind some glitz, but if we ever do this again, tone it down some, please."

"For the record, once this is over, we can sit down and talk about the look of the Maji when you're off being The Maji, but right now, since we're winging this with," he checks his chronometer, "six and a half hours to go, you're just going to have to go with what I put you in."

"You're pretty bossy for a man on his knees."

Jon blinks again at that, too, wondering how much of a double entendre that was meant to be. "You've got no idea."

Poe grins down at him, keeps the eye contact up, and then says, "What if I wanted one?"

Okay, that absolutely is flirting, so… "Get us through this, and maybe I'll give you one."

"Yes, sir."

He really, really needs not to be staring at Poe's crotch, and the lovely bulge there, which is more or less right at eye... mouth level right now, thinking about how many other ways he can get Poe to call him sir, and get back to making sure that strap look right. He tears his eyes away from Poe and looks at the strap some more, and then decides that, if it reminds Poe of a disco ball, and not scale armor… He starts picking the bits of metal off. Just leather. Good, supple, leather, snug around Poe's chest, draping over…

Maybe, if things go really well tomorrow, it might be between Poe's teeth, biting down on the leather, muffling his moans, as he-

Okay, he's really got to stop thinking about that.

---

It's a discreet tube. Smaller than Jon's thumb. They're standard issue among the Order, and fit into a small pocket sewn into the left thigh of the standard uniform trousers.

With six hours to go until he needs to be done, when he's starting to seriously flag, Jon pulls it out, removes the lid, and pops one of the tabs between his molars, biting down, hard, feeling the bitter hiss of the stim cap breaking, and then closes his eyes for a moment as the rush of energy floods through him, making him feel alive again.

Poe looks across at him, from where he's reading up on more of the Supremacy specs, making sure he's ready to show off the Supremacy and get to know the boys as he does so.

"You okay?"

"I am now." He offers the tube to Poe. "You need one, or if you get a nap can you keep going without collapsing?"

Poe understands what Jon's got in the tube. "Uh… Nap." He checks the chronometer. He's cutting it short, but, six hours should do him well enough. A bit of tea on top of that, and he'll be good to go. "I… uh… don't use those."

Jon raises an eyebrow. "They're perfectly safe. I've been up to… shit… uh ten of them a week at one point. You get jittery, and they say you shouldn't go more than three cycles on them without natural sleep, but if you need to keep going…"

"Yeah. Don't get me wrong; I've been on them, too. But… I make bad decisions on them. You know… You feel like you can take on everything and anything and you're right about everything and…" He can see the way Jon's looking at him. "No?"

Jon shakes his head. "Uh, not for me. Jittery and wired sometimes. Wide awake. Heart beats a little too fast. Ultra-confident isn't on the list."

"Oh."

They're both quiet. Jon keeps eyeing Poe, and Poe puts his datapad down. "You guys… Well, Kylo, captured me. I was at Tuunal, had been there for… three hours… ten flying to get there. Kylo knocked me out, which isn't exactly restful, and I wake up in interrogation, which also wasn't restful. Finn got me out… I don't know how many hours later. Too many. I get us off the Supremacy. That was… exciting… We get shot down on Jakku. More not so restful hours unconscious. Then slogging through the desert. Not restful and dehydrated likely with a concussion. Stole a ship. Got back to the Resistance. Took an anti-stim, got four hours of sleep before the next attack. From there we roll right into Starkiller. That was enough adrenaline to kill a man. Get done with Starkiller, get another anti-stim, two hours of rest before your entire Navy shows up, and by that point I'm downing stims like they're candy. We had… three days I think, time gets blurry after too many stims, of a fighting retreat, you bring out your big boys, and I come up with a plan to get the last of our people out, before we get crushed by Peavy and his dreadnaught.

"And, you know what, with that many stims in my body I was sure I had the perfect, Force-blessed plan. And you know what, it fucking worked. One in a million shot, and it worked. I stood down the Fulminatrix, one lone X-wing against you're whole fucking navy, fast talked Hux into knots, and we got our people out. So, I've got a direct line on the Fulminatrix, and three bombers, and a small but functional navy behind me, and I take them in. Dreadnaughts… If you can take one of those babies out…

"Leia told me to call off the attack. I had direct orders to retreat, and I didn't do it. The Force was smiling on me and I couldn't make a wrong decision. I took my whole fleet in, and we killed the Fulminatrix. But… We lost three quarters of our fleet, too. And unlike you bastards, we didn't have replacements.

"She demoted me when I got back, slapped me, too. Didn't send me to the brig. She probably should have. Holdo definitely should have. I'm guessing we were at more than a week since I'd had actual rest at that point. More stims.

"You bastards show up, blow the shit out of our ships. Leia's out of it. Holdo is second-in-command at that point. Granted, even demoted, so many of us are dead, I'm third-in-command at that point. She won't tell me her plan, doesn't like me, and I'm not exactly her biggest fan either, and… So, more stims, and I'm running a mutiny.

"Cause, you know, I'm making good decisions and really need to be in command at that point.

"Leia wakes up and shoots my ass, and eventually I get some sleep and…" Poe looks to the ceiling. "Fuck."

"Holdo wouldn't tell you her plan?" Jon's voice is intense, and Poe's got the sense there's something important there, but he doesn't know what.

"Nah. Part of it was putting me in my place. Part of it was just bad command skills. I know, I know, when does a Vice Admiral have to explain herself to a Captain? Never. But you know what, when you're down to fewer than five hundred people, and that Captain has worked with most of them, and ten minutes previous he was a fucking Commander, AND he's the guy who blew up fucking Starkiller, AND he's the one who came up with the plan that got the civilians out, AND you're playing the destruction of the Fulminatrix as a win because you don't want to completely fuck morale, AND fewer than two hundred of them know you, you bloody well take the fucking time to explain it to the Captain or you throw his ass in the brig, or else he raises a mutiny against you, because from what he can see you've frozen and are going to get all of us killed with indecision."

"What was the plan?" Jon's voice is quiet.

"Crait. There was a refuge on Crait. Let our ships go. You guys would chase us, but only focus on the big ones. The little ones were shielded. They could slip away to Crait, and you'd think you'd killed us when you blew up the last of the ships."

"Cutting the Supremacy in half?" Jon's voice doesn't tremble, but it's so hot, even Poe can feel it.

"If that was part of the plan, she never told us about it. But, she also didn't get off the Raddus when we evacuated, so… The shields didn't hold. You guys were picking us off, one by one, and could see where we were going… I don't know if she rammed the Supremacy to give the rest of us an out, or if that was always the plan, or… I don't know. She didn't exactly like me, and I was unconscious anyway." Poe tries a smile, and it comes off flat. "Anyway, no stims for me. Not anymore."

Jon nods, and tucks the tube back into his trousers. His voice isn't shaking, but he can feel his pulse in his ears and eyes. "If you had known her plan, would you have mutinied?"

"No." That prickles, electric, through Jon. But Poe's not done. "I would have talked to her. The thing I knew, that she didn't, was that there was a way to fuck with the tracker you guys had on us. We had to find a refuge within range of the little ships because we couldn't jump to hyperspace, because you guys were tracking us through hyperspace. If we'd been working on killing that tracker, all of us, together, we likely could have slipped it, jumped to hyperspace, and gotten clean away." Jon relaxes, a bit, hearing that. "Don't get me wrong, I'm obviously stupid enough to run an attack with bad chances of winning, but I'm not into literal suicide missions." Poe's quiet for a moment, and then almost laughs. "I never thought to wonder how many stims she was on at that point. Not like any of us had had a restful week."

Jon's very quiet, staring at the picture on the wall, behind Poe. Then he says, "You asked about where my husband is."

Poe nods. "Yeah." He feels the shiver down his back.

"Kylo had told me you ran the mutiny against Holdo. That was the only reason I was willing to work with you."

That shiver morphs into a tight ball of dread in his stomach. "Okay…"

Jon looks around at his apartment. "This is home. His home before it was mine. We're… organized so you're above or below your station, but Lane didn't start in Tactical Design. He, originally, was in Shipping Logistics, but he was good enough at seeing how making each bit work better made everything else work better, and Tactical Design was a morass at that point, so they shifted him over. That's how he got his Major's stripes. He didn't move. He liked this apartment, and wanted to stay in it, and didn't mind the fact that getting from here to Tactical Design took close to an hour and a half. He told me he liked the enforced thinking time. Not much to do besides think when you're on the tram going from here to there. He said a lot of the time, he needed that quiet space.

"1,298,092 people died when she ran her ship through the Supremacy. As best they could tell, she hit five levels below where Tactical Design used to be." Poe winces. He knows where this story is going. "Lane was on duty. If our apartment hadn't been here, and if I hadn't worked a double the day before…" Jon shakes his head. "Stupid fucking problem. The filtration systems on the Stormtrooper's backs jutted out just a bit too far, messing with range of motion in their arms, and I'd spent sixteen hours playing with it, trying to pare it down by half a centimeter… He told me to leave it be and go to bed. So… I did. And… uh… I half woke up when he went to work, gave him a kiss, and woke up for real when my face smacked into the ceiling because we didn't have gravity any longer."

Poe closes his eyes and nods. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too." Jon looks to the door to his bedroom. "Go, crash. Get your nap. I need you bright and shiny for the K'Aran delegation."

Poe nods. He takes a step over, and gently squeezes Jon's shoulder before saying, "Yeah. Bright and shiny. No problems."

---

As soon as the door to Jon's room closes, Poe wants to kick himself in the ass with both feet.

Shit.

SHIT.

SHIIIIITTTTT!

Then he decides that as soon as he's up and moving again, he's going to kick Kylo in the ass, too, because the absolute least the man could have done was mention that Jon's husband was fucking dead and the bastard died in the attack on the Supremacy.

Except, of course, that would require Kylo knowing things like what the least possible thing he could have done to smooth this over would have been.

Which brings him back to Jon, who's sitting out there, sewing away, still wearing his fucking marriage band two bloody years later, in his husband's apartment with pictures of them still up, and

SHHHIIIIITTTTTTTT!

It's been years since he's seen someone he's been more than vaguely interested in. Since he's wanted more than a dance and a shag. Decades since that someone also liked men, and, of course… He's still in bloody mourning.

Poe wants to collapse on the bed and moan into the pillows, and if he were in his own bunk he'd fucking do it, but… SHIIIITTTT! This is the bed Jon and his husband used to share and the idea of flopping onto it to curse the heavens that this shit never fucking works out for him is just… Too fucking much.

He gets undressed. He, unusually for him, when he gets to sleep in a bed, leaves his skivvies on. He carefully, respectfully, turns down the sheets and blankets, and slips into bed. Jon's bed. The bed he should be sharing with his husband if Holdo hadn't plowed through the Supremacy. If the Supremacy hadn't tracked them through hyperspace. If they hadn't been at war. If Snoke had kept his ass in the unknown regions. If…

A billion ifs didn't happen.

A million concrete things did.

Meaning right here, right now, Jon's in his living room, finishing up a suit for Poe. And Poe's lying here, thinking about a lot of things he'd prefer not to think of, from the ring he wears on a chain around his neck. The ring he shouldn't have, because it should have been on Micah's finger when…

But it wasn't.

And Jon's got a ring without a mate, too.

And…

Two years. Everyone moves at their own speed. Poe knows that. Two years after, he was dating, well, fucking again. And he was… sober whenever he was on duty… Sometimes he had to take a stim to do that, too, but… Jon's drinking habits are suddenly making a lot more sense. Whatever else he is, he's not just a party boy with nebulously defined borders between on duty and off duty. Two years… Poe wasn't flying again yet, other than occasional transport duty. He couldn't bear to be even near a fighter, and Leia was kind enough to indulge him on that. Jon's… still doing the job. And a hell of a lot more. But… work can be a distraction. Leia gave him a spot in her physical security team, and he buried himself in it, learned it inside and out, and did it every hour of the day he could, and Poe's willing to bet that's exactly what Jon's done with Tactical Design and whatever the hell he's calling what he does now.

Jon's got a friend, but… fucking hell, she might just be a friend. Or he's got someone he's fooling around with, but there's no way it's more than that, not with him still living in a shrine to his husband and their marriage.

"Fuck." There's barely any voice to it. He'd been flirting up one side and down the other with him, and he'd gotten the hint that at least some of those looks were getting some interest in return, poor boy just about popped a stand with that 'on his knees' comment, but…

He rolls over, face in the pillow, inhaling… He can smell Jon's shampoo and cologne in the fabric. He wants to smell it on his skin. Wants to lick it off him. Wants… a lot.

And he just knows, in his heart and soul and shaft, that if they get to the post-mediation dinner with a signed contract in hand, he can pin Jon with a good long stare, lick his lips, and get him into bed. He knows it.

Poe sighs. A lot of men got him into bed not long after Micah died, too.

And it's all they got.

He can see Jon, the wave of his hair, those fucking blue eyes, and the suggestion of his body under his clothing, and… Force, they'd be so good together.

He makes himself close his eyes and breathe deeply. Makes himself relax into the pillows and mattress. He's always been good at getting himself to sleep when he needs it, and tonight he does.

He makes himself drift, and his mind go soft, and it does, flitting about as it seeks sleep.

He's thinking about talking with Jon. And enjoying it. A lot more than any other conversation he's had in a long time.

The scent of him is in the pillow. His words are in Poe's mind.

And he knows he's falling hard, and fast, and likely stupid.

And more than that, he knows, that if he's going to get what he wants out of this, he's going to have to wait. Jon's not ready for him, yet.

But he knows, starting to drift off, that he can wait, and likely should, because this is going to be worth it.

Notes:

Hey guys!

Okay, I can feel it now. "Wait, who the hell is Micah? You're cheating Keryl, whipping up a new character on us out of nowhere with no backstory!"

Guilty. (Ish. If you were reading closely and have an amazing memory, you'll have noticed that Poe's ship is named Micah… But, really that's not exactly playing by the rules here.)

So, when I began to write Jon, a billion years ago, I didn't know I was creating a second Dark/Light Order/Maji relationship. Eventually, as my version of Poe took more shape, I knew I'd be going there, but that was well after I had Jon and just about all of his backstory in hand. (For any of my Shards readers, Jon may look a tad familiar. You met him the first time as Dr. Sam Allen, Jimmy's Assistant ME. He's morphed a bit, but the core Sam became the core Jon. I'm a firm believer in making sure my OCs live forever, in one form or another.)

And as I was doing that, I noticed I'd set him and Poe up to mirror each other in a lot of ways, subconsciously. (Dead parents, Jon wears his wedding ring still, Poe wears his mother's wedding ring, dark/light, both lost a parent to the Battle of Endor, blah, blah, blah.) None of those were intentional until I was re-reading and noticed I'd been doing it. (Sometimes the muse knows where I'm going before the brain does, but sooner or later the brain catches up.)

Micah's intentional. I don't write in order. So the first time Micah shows up is further along in the story, but written months ago. He's been part of my idea of Poe for at least six months, though I didn't intend to bring him up for a while, yet. But then I got here, and we got to the reveal of Lane, and… Well, that's the sort of thing that's got to get Poe thinking of Micah.

Even before I had an idea of Micah, I knew that Poe needed to have had at least one serious relationship. A guy gets to 38-years-old, and if he's never had a real relationship of some sort, that's not just a red flag, that's a parade route full of red flags. And while Poe's got issues, those aren't the sorts of issues I wanted for him.

Anyway, just know that we'll get more of the Micah story eventually. You will know who this dude is and why he matters, and also a lot more of why Poe is who he is.

Point the second. Yeah, I'm getting heavy into the politics here, because… mostly because neither Jon nor Poe has enough Force sensitivity to just float along on the idea of this is right because it feels that way. Rey and Kylo are sort of feeling their way through it. Jon and Poe have to become intentional moral thinkers because it's not enough to just sort of feel it. (Yeah, we're into the philosophy part of porn with philosophy. I promise cum shots in the not wildly distant future. But first, more politics! Yeah, I know. ;) )

The reason I'm bringing this up is that I think it's important to make it clear that I, personally, do not approve of or think the Empire are the good guys.

But they absolutely were the legal guys.

And legal is not good. Democratically elected is not good. The "will of the people" does not make something good. Anyone with a role playing background is familiar with both lawful good and lawful evil. And in the StarWars universe we've got a LOT of lawful evil.

But even evil, even regimes intentionally designed to fuck over as many people as humanly possible, will, for some people, at some times, in some ways, be the "good guys." (Not to put too fine a point on it, but until 1942, the Nazis made life significantly better for Joe Average German Dude, and a hell of a lot better for Loyal Party Member Dude. You cannot maintain power if you make life better for no one but yourself.)

The only question is, how much collateral damage are you willing to inflict, and to whom, to get your 'good guys' into play? (In a galaxy the size of the Star Wars one, the genocide of Alderaan is likely about the equivalent of the massacre of Hiroshima. Take that for whatever it's worth.)

As Kylo and the Order get more up and running, and develop more of a political philosophy, you'll get to see more of my ideals of a good/just regime, but even that will hurt people. Because we don't live in a fairy tale, and there is no happily ever after, and the handsome prince and his lady aren't actually magic and can't make everything work out just by willing it.

As Rey was thinking last chapter, it's all a series of tradeoffs. It's not that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter (though that's obviously true), it's that one man's justice is ALWAYS bought at the cost of another man's oppression. (Which, fairytale-land, and the real world, does it's best to gloss over.)

Anyway, that's enough of that. More fun next week, when the Queen of the Order comes into her own!

Happy reading!

Keryl