It was like this every night, and it was getting worse. Poe would be lying in his bunk at the new base on Ajan Kloss, in a dark room that was usually fine for his needs. He had space for BB-8 and his few belongings, a bed, a shower. It was all fine. But at night it closed in on him like a collapsing cave.
He was a pilot, at home in a tight cockpit, with only a thin layer of poly between him and the cold vacuum of space. With adrenaline running high, he forgot everything but the thrill of the chase and the beeps of BB-8 and the jolt of the guns as they fired. He never felt more alive than when sitting on one of those rockets, spinning and sliding as he out maneuvered his opponents. In the heat of combat, any strategic thinking went out the window and his mind was taken over strictly with tactics and winning the battle, no matter the costs. It's what made him a brilliant pilot - he takes what he's got and makes instant, instinctual decisions without thinking. He reacts, and his reactions are the quickest in the fleet.
But get him alone at night, confined to a small room with a single bed, the distant sounds of machinery droning in the background, and it's quiet. Much too quiet. Before the Battle of Crait, the resistance had been growing. Hundreds of people roamed the halls, busy with the duties of planning and preparing and bustling with excitement at fighting the First Order. They had bombers and fighter pilots and a whole fleet of ships.
Now almost everyone he fought with was dead. The fleet was down to a single ship, and the whole of the resistance could fit on the Millennium Falcon. In the dead of night, the words of General Organa come back to him, about how his impulsive behavior led to a bunch of dead heroes.
The longer they've been on Ajan Kloss, the more Poe's been crawling out of his skin. He's finding it hard to be alone in his room with nothing but the ghosts of those who died to keep him company, and tonight was no different. He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and put his pants and boots on. He was going to find a drink.
He left his room and heaved a huge sigh as he looked at his wrist watch. It was way past midnight, and he knew from experience that no one would be up in the mess hall. He walked there and looked through the cabinets, not finding anything that he wanted, of course. If he wanted to find something stronger than the strange pinkish juice from the native trees, he was going to have to talk with some people. Unfortunately, his best connection was a bomber co-pilot named Maarta, and she was dead, so he'd been dry for weeks now. He kicked a chair and it flew across the room, then he signed and picked it up again and put it back in its place. He continued to walk the halls until he found himself at Finn's door.
Not for the first time.
His cheek twitched as he stood there, staring at the metal door. His stomach churned in that way it always did when he thought of finding Finn in the middle of the night, which was becoming more and more frequent. He puffed out his cheeks and turned to walk away. It's late, Finn is sleeping, this is stupid.
Fuck it. He turned and knocked on the door.
Poe held his breath, but nothing happened. He put his ear against the door and listened, squinting as he tried to hear movement inside. This is dumb. He should just go back to his room and take something apart. Work on his guns or BB-8 or something to keep his mind off … pretty much everything.
The door opened and Poe jumped back. Finn was in a thin long-sleeved shirt and shorts, a crease on his cheek from sleep. He rubbed his eyes.
"What's wrong?" he said, his voice rough. "Is it Rey?"
"What?" Poe said, then shook his head with annoyance. "No, it's not Rey. Why do you always jump to that conclusion?"
"I dunno," Finn said as he visibly relaxed and scratched the back of his head. "Because she's always running off and getting into trouble?"
"Well, so do I," Poe grumbled, and Finn tilted his head slightly and looked at him a little more closely, a small smile playing on his lips.
"Ok, then … uh, what's going on?"
This was a mistake. Finn had been sleeping. Someone should get some sleep around here. Poe put his hands on his hips and shook his head. "Sorry to wake you, Finn, it's … not important." He flashed him what he hoped was a classic cocky-Poe smile as he took a step back and pointed his thumb down the hallway back towards his room. "I'll just catch you sometime tomorrow…."
But something else must have been playing on his face as well because Finn stepped out of his dark room and put his hand on Poe's shoulder. Poe dropped his hand, his whole body swaying a little at the contact.
"You want to come in?" he said, dipping his head down a little to look into Poe's eyes. His face was calm and serious, his eyes focused and searching. Poe could never say no to Finn. Didn't want to. Despite his best efforts to push it all back down and leave, he nodded.
Finn stepped aside and held the door open as Poe stepped in. The room was dark, with a faint blue light in the corner and a red one in the kitchen. Like most of the rooms at the base, the apartment had a small living room and kitchen, a tiny bedroom and a toilet, that was it. Finn had managed to find a couch and a table, and a smaller stuffed chair sat opposite. Finn closed the door.
"Do you want something to drink?" he asked as he walked into the kitchen and opened a small refrigerator. "I have a few bottles of ale that I've been hanging on to."
"How did you - ?" Poe asked, amazed that Finn, who has only been with the resistance for a few months, could put his hands on bottles of beer in a place like this.
Finn shrugged. "People just give me things," he said with an easy smile as he pulled out two brown bottles, set them on the short counter and closed the fridge. He popped the tops and handed one to Poe, who just shook his head again.
"I've been looking for something harder to drink than pinkjuice for weeks now," Poe said and took a long draft.
Finn walked over the couch, sat down and took a sip of his beer, raising his eyebrows and looking at the bottle with appreciation. "You know, I didn't even know what beer was until a few months ago. The stormtrooper program didn't allow alcohol."
"I forget sometimes that you were raised on a Star Destroyer," Poe said and took another drink from his beer. He went to sit on the couch next to Finn but then paused. It was a small couch and he would be sitting right next to Finn, legs and arms touching. Was that too intimate? He didn't want to overstep his bounds. Poe had become acutely aware in recent weeks that he tended to get way up into Finn's personal space and it was making him weirdly self-conscious. He went to the overstuffed chair instead and sat down.
Finn stared at him from the other side of the low table, the side of his face glowing blue from the light in the corner. Finn hadn't bothered to put on any other lights and Poe was grateful. In the low light, it was easier to drop some of the bravado and mania that filled his days and remember why he was here. As the silence filled the room, he realized that Finn was waiting for him to say something.
But what could he say? That the dead from his fucked up decisions in the past several months were beginning to haunt his room and he couldn't sleep there any more? That he has actually spent more nights out on the benches in central command than he cared to admit? That he was beginning to think that he was more of a liability than an asset to the resistance? That he has found himself wanting to knock on Finn's door a dozen times in the last few weeks but has always turned away?
Finn leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, his bottle held loose in his hand, and an unsettling look of concern in his dark eyes. "Are you going to tell me why you're here in the middle of the night? Not that I'm complaining…." He smiled, and Poe let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Fuck it, he thought again. He might as well just lay it out.
"I couldn't sleep," he said simply, shrugging his shoulders. Was that really so hard?
Finn nodded his head as if considering. "Yeah, I get that. I've been having a hard time too. It's so quiet here."
"Right?" Poe said, leaning forward a little. "I just… there were more of us, and now…."
"... there are so few."
"Right," Poe said and slumped back into his chair, taking another long drink. He was almost finished with his bottle already. He should have savored it more. "Before… well, before, there were so many of us, and I'm having a hard time with…." Ok, yes, this is hard. This is very hard. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.
"You miss them," Finn's quiet voice rumbled.
Poe groaned. "It's more than that, Finn. A lot of those people aren't here because of me."
"Hey, you can't think of it that way. Poe. Look at me."
Poe reluctantly opened his eyes and looked at Finn. His friend's face had a look of determination that he's seen many times.
"I get it. I do. Even though I never really had friends in the First Order, they were still people I knew. And … well, I've killed a lot of them since I escaped. Some of them I didn't like very much, but still. Sometimes I start to think about it and I begin to feel guilty, because they didn't have any more of a choice than I did. They were all kidnapped as kids and fed all this propaganda bullshit, and most of them have never even thought anything different. It's dangerous to think anything other than what your commanders are telling you. So they were as much of a victim in all of this as anyone, but I gleefully shot them down anyway. From the moment I got into that TIE fighter with you, I didn't think twice about killing anyone who got in our way. But if I let myself think about that too much, I'll just shut down. It makes me want to leave, to get on the next transport that will take me and escape to the outer rim, find some cantina on some shithole planet and clean floors or pour beer and try to forget about it."
He reached out and touched Poe's knee, making him jump involuntarily.
"But if I did that, then everyone who has died, all of these people who have put their lives on the line, people like you, who smuggled me out without a second thought, who risked their lives for someone they didn't even know - all of that will have been for nothing."
Poe took in another deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. He knew that Finn was right, that this is just part of war. Good people die, and pilots die faster than anyone. Someday it will be him, and in some ways, the thought is almost a relief.
Finn tapped him on the knee. "Let me get you another beer."
"No, I'll get it." Poe stood up and walked into the kitchen and looked in the fridge. Four more bottles were on the shelf, along with a few unopened blocks of standard brown food stuff. He grabbed two bottles and closed the door.
"I just think that I should have been better," he said as he opened the bottles. This time when he came over, he sat next to Finn and handed him a second bottle. "Not so cocky, not so reckless. The general was right. I need to get my head out of my cockpit and follow orders."
"Now where's the fun in that," Finn said with a smile and elbowed him in the ribs. They both took a drink and settled onto the couch. The heat of Finn's body radiated against his leg and arm, bleeding through his clothes in a long line from shoulder to calf, and Poe couldn't remember the last time he had sat alone with someone like this. He allowed himself to relax, consciously slowing his breathing and just being present. His head fell back against the back of the couch and he heard Finn take another pull from his beer.
"Tell me about how you grew up," Poe said into the darkness, and Finn settled in further. He began to talk, tell stories of his earliest memories, how he had been taken from his family, how he didn't remember anything outside of the First Order. He told of the coldness of his childhood, how he cried in his bunk at night, but never during the day. Never where anyone could see him. He knew the other kids did too, but emotions other than aggression or anger weren't tolerated. He eventually made a few friends - he mentioned members of his fire team, Zeroes and Nines and Slip, with a quiet affection - but even though they were true friends and he was glad to know them, he was constantly getting reprimanded for helping them or showing weakness or affection.
Finn's stories were desperately lonely, but he spoke softly as he described how he grew increasingly disillusioned with the First Order. Poe turned to watch Finn as he spoke - his head tilted back against the couch, his eyes closed, the red and blue of the room making him ethereal and ghostly. Poe hadn't really thought about it before, but Finn was so lighthearted in nature, so optimistic and enthusiastic, with an unerring sense of right and wrong, and yet the stories of his childhood were the opposite. How could someone as vibrant as Finn survive in such an environment and come out sane?
"You really are remarkable," Poe said as Finn took a breath while telling him about the drudgery of his job in sanitation. Finn opened his eyes and looked at him.
"Um, thanks?"
"I mean, there aren't many people who made it out of there. I've only heard of maybe one or two other stormtroopers who defected. It's pretty remarkable. You're pretty remarkable."
Finn looked at him with his mouth slightly open, then a huge goofy grin lit up his face in the dim light. "You say the nicest things." And he hugged him - a strong, real embrace that rocked them both as Poe reached his arms around and hugged him back.
"See, I got to meet people like you, and if you hadn't joined the resistance and got captured and broke me out of there, I never would have gotten to know you." Finn pulled back, his hand on Poe's shoulder. "Thanks for your service, Poe Dameron. I'm glad you don't follow orders very well." He lifted his beer as if to toast, and Poe laughed and clinked their bottles together. Finn leaned back into the couch and put his bare feet up on the table, and Poe took a drink from his beer and settled in next to him.
Finn continued his story about working in sanitation and then asked Poe about his childhood. As Poe spoke of growing up dusty and hungry, the child of two rebel alliance fighters, always on the run from one place to another, he felt Finn's head rest on his shoulder. He only paused for a second before continuing. He talked about his parents and realized that even though his childhood had many challenges and losses, at least he had two parents whom he loved and who loved him back. His heart grew heavy with the thought of a young Finn growing up without that love. He missed his parents, and he told Finn so. He wished they were still with him to tell him what to do and how to be. In many ways, Leia had always been like a mother to him, which was why her words usually made their way through his thick skull eventually, even if it was days or months later.
He paused in speaking and looked down at Finn. Finn's face was absolutely relaxed and his eyes moved beneath his eyelids as he slipped into a dream. His face was so close and unguarded, and Poe took his time to study his friend, the full roundness of his eyes, his lips, his cheeks. He seemed so young, and he was. More than 10 years younger, and so much less experienced with the world. His youthfulness went deeper than just his face. He was buoyant, luminous, vibrant. Poe felt old and dirty and scarred in comparison.
Poe put his head back and felt the heavy weight of Finn's head on his shoulder. He finished his beer and then set the bottle gently on the floor. He sat there listening to Finn's deep, steady breaths for a long time, letting the rhythm of it lull him deeper and deeper.
Poe woke with a jerk. He had a crick in his neck and he groaned as he pulled his head up, his hand going to the back of his neck.
"Oh, I fell asleep," Finn said as he sat up and wiped his mouth. "Uh, sorry, I might have drooled on you."
Poe stood up and stretched. He groaned at the pins and needles in his legs. Finn was blinking heavily, and Poe held out his hand and helped him up. They stood there for a second and then Poe gave him a hug.
"Thanks for answering the door," he said and stepped back.
Finn rubbed his eyes and smiled. "Hey, wake me up any time."
Poe patted him on the shoulder then opened the door and stepped out into the bright hallway. He heard the door click behind him as he shuffled to his room and went inside. As he dropped into his bed, toeing off his shoes, he thought to himself, well, that was nice. I'll have to do that again sometime.
And Poe Dameron slipped into a dreamless sleep.