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[followhim]

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WISH LIST

★ my dark au kink:
+ being captured by the first order and subjected to reconditioning
+ trying to turn him back with the power of gay love and friendship (and possibly failing)
+ he was always a first order tie fighter pilot instead of winter soldiered
+ poe and finn first order murder squad (dynamics if they were both stormtroopers? running away together?)
+ ^ part b: the fam that gets captured and reconditioned together… stays…together…
+ Interesting Dynamics with kylo and hux from dark aus


★ finn stuff
+ what will they do after the war? romantic vacations? homesteading? sending finn's spit to space 23andme?
+ infinite escape reimagining/aus, stormpilot escape room reigning champions

★ rey stuff
+ relationship of convenience because they're both In Denial
+ sith princess rey aus where he tries to save her and/or she turns him

★ kylo stuff
+ infinite interrogating/torture room reimagining/aus
+ ^ part b: stockholm syndrome?
+ We Need to Talk about Leia


★ general
+ honestly anything regarding leia (esp processing grief post-tros)
+ talking about his sketchy spice runner past (possibly playing things taking place during that time in his life?)
+ ^ same for things taking place during academy/new republic tbh
+ i love aus. modern aus, vampire aus, a/b/o aus, let's au the entire world
+ i prefer m/m for poe but am good with most ships

kinks if ya nasty

Comments

[bythehand]

[ finn weighs his options for a few seconds.

he thinks poe banks too much on hope. he thinks poe probably really misses a friend that he'll never get back, and he's not sure if poe is in denial about it or something, because he's not looking forward to the fallout if that's the case.

he's starting to think that every time he starts to feel like he has a handle on anything, his brain is hard-wired to somehow remind him that he absolutely doesn't.

that said, he's a disaster. but he's a touch-starved disaster, so he allows this. tentatively, and certainly not relaxing into it, but he allows it. he has the full capacity to shove poe away if he decides he's done with the touching, and poe would probably definitely stop if he did it, and that makes a difference. that's more than he's been able to trust anyone in his vicinity to do since he went in for reconditioning, as far as he can figure. that makes a difference, too.

(why would any human person plan to just ask someone to move if they get too squirrelly about it... smh.) the jenga tower hobbles onward. ]

You believe in an awful lot of things.

[followhim]

[ first of all:

1) he does bank too much on hope
2) he does miss his friend but
3) he is determined to get him back and refuses to stop until he is dead from the effort of it because that's just what a poe dameron does.

he is so tired. not just physically but also emotionally. he thought taking a break to go to space denny's would give him some energy to keep going via having food inside him at the very least, but keeping finn in an okay place has been a lot of emotional labor and the weight of it is crushing him.

self-doubt starts to sink in. can he do this? it's so much. how much more good luck can he have before he completely biffs it and they both die or he dies or finn's worst nightmare comes true and he gets taken away again??

yikes. this is why he doesn't like thinking ahead more than 10 seconds at a time. when you get past that 10-second range, you start staring into the void. he needs to stop not being in motion long enough to glimpse into the void. it keeps happening and now they have a million levels to go through where he's just gotta sit and think and stare. why didn't he just go to level 1300something??? why is he like this? ]

Yeah, I do. Lucky for you, all you gotta do is believe in me.

[bythehand]

[ some people are born to think more than 10 seconds ahead no matter how terrible it is for their mental state. finn is one of them. i mean, unless he's actively doing something or fighting or talking or anything specific at all, because then most of the time he just guns it.

but in terms of broad worst case scenarios, finn is constantly putting his sights on those bad boys. some things are a given. maybe they won't happen today or tomorrow or even next week. they'll still happen. literally just constantly understand that nothing good stays, look, it's been treating him great this whole day. it's very healthy. ]

Working on it.

[ he wishes he could just say that he does. there are probably a hundred things he wishes he could say or do, in regards to poe and this whole wild-ass rescue mission. maybe someday. ]

[followhim]

[that's progress, isn't it? poe thinks it's progress. "working on it" is something. maybe finn doesn't trust or believe in him, but he's trying to.

on that note, poe knows that it's ... well, it's not exactly mentally sound behavior to grasp at straws by assigning hope and meaning to every little thing finn does. like, objectively, he should stop. but he can't stop. this is how he's keeping himself afloat. clinging onto this absurdity.

he doesn't know what else to say besides KEEP BELIEVING IN ME FINN. DO YOU BELIEVE YET? HOW ABOUT NOW???? and silence leads to existential crisis hour, so. time for him to keep talking. about literally anything. come on brain, think of things. ]

There's nothing else like being in space. I wanna show you. When we're riding in something that actually wants to stay in the air. It's just ... you feel so free. Like you could do anything. That's why I became a pilot.

[bythehand]

[ i looped that vine for 10 minutes its a mood.

he wonders what it's like to grow up getting to choose stuff. like what you eat or what you wear or what you want to be or what farm equipment you attach advanced machinery to. almost exactly that pretty much slips right out of his mouth before he can catch it-- what was it like to have a reason to become something-- but he doesn't know if he wants to know an answer.

that's probably one of those things that people couldn't really answer, anyway. it's not something that they know what it's like, it's just something about them that is. it would be like someone asking him what it's like to be a stormtrooper. what's the frame of reference? he just is one. ]

There's too much space in space. [ it yawns open around things. it never stops. there's nothing in it. it's coarse and it's irritating and it gets everywhere smdh. ] I'm better with my feet on the ground. Normally. I think.

[ maybe a flight while he's not crushed by the weight of his own issues in a tiny shitty tie fighter or actively trying to avoid getting blown up would be... good...? he's not against trying to see the appeal, god knows there are probably gonna be a ton of ships in his future. ]

Probably why I'm not a pilot.

[followhim]

[he doesn't laugh, but he sort of makes a "heh" noise. it's nice. this is nice. he can almost pretend everything isn't on fire. finn probably thought these things before, too, so. it's fine. just a normal conversation with original recipe finn kind of. just gonna talk about his life ad nauseum to fill in any silence.]

That's how my dad feels about it, too. My mom was more like me, he just ... doesn't get it. She used to take me out flying in her A-wing, but me and my dad would go camping.

[bythehand]

[ that's a good sound. that seems like a not-horrible sound.

my mom was, poe says. his dad feels and his mom was. two and two make four. finn files it away neatly, something not to slip up about. ]

Huh. That sounds nice. [ can't relate. ] They sound nice. That's good.

[ look just because he can't relate doesn't mean he wants to be a jerk about it. it is good. it explains some of why poe is so nice, probably. ]

[followhim]

Yeah. Yeah, they are. ... Were. [he doesn't see any reason to not talk about it while he's on this exposition train. literal train ig. and he went and made it weird all by himself in .05 seconds, so. ] My dad is still around. My mom died when I was little. They were both rebels, but it wasn't — not in battle or anything. She just died in her sleep. Nobody knew why. Just ... something that happens, I guess.

[he doesn't sound upset, just kind of sad as it's a sad part of his life but it happened when he was a kid and he's had to recount it numerous times, so. he's learned to deal with talking about it on a superficial level.]

[bythehand]

A lot of things are just something that happens.

[ like, they're taking a train to a giant dumpster level. even that's just a thing that's happening. what kind of other choice is there in this situation? and slip, who-- who he thinks is gone, maybe, but he can't remember for sure, all he has is fuzzy memory and the feeling of stepping around some kind of hole. slip was just something that happened, if it happened, and everyone saw it coming a mile away. that's probably the closest thing he has to even try to compare to this situation.

sometimes control is only a nice concept. sometimes you don't control anything at all, not even what you're allowed to do. definitely not what happens to you.

sometimes you get into a tie fighter with an insane rebel instead of taking his blaster and killing him. ]

I'm sorry it happened.

[followhim]

Thanks. [ he glances down at their hands, contemplating. mostly thinking about his mom. that's ... well, it's not having an existential crisis anymore, so that's kind of an improvement? but it also makes him sad. soft left turn into sadness. he's been alive much, much longer than the time he even had her in his life and it's still a loss he feels every day. he couldn't feel that about finn, not when he was right here beside him and holding his hand and letting him rest his head against his shoulder. this is why he couldn't just stop and accept things. he refuses. ]

My mom always believed that things happen for a reason. Even really horrible things. Sometimes horrible things have to happen around us, or to us, to help remind us of what's important. To keep the galaxy in balance. Because it is a good place, but sometimes ... we lose sight of things. But it comes back around. I believe that, too. It makes the bad things hurt a little less, sometimes.

[bythehand]

[ he doesn't believe that. he doesn't believe any of that. things that just happen just happen. things that people do to other people only have a reason if the person doing it has a reason.

he thinks he almost believes that things come around, that people get what they deserve. but if he believed that all the way, he wouldn't think he doesn't deserve any of this. he wouldn't be occasionally reaching up to hold a ring to try to convince himself he's really here. he'd be trying to figure out how he managed it, maybe. to accept it. like poe said.

it doesn't hurt less. he's just learning how to carry it until he doesn't have to anymore.

... he doesn't want to try to take that belief from poe. sure, he could ball up all his fear and confusion and frustration, all those things he shouldn't be feeling in the first place, and force them out through different vents. turn them into something sharp and painful to hold. he could aim his sights right now, argue back, try to shoot the sentiment down and crush it beneath his heel, even though he knows it probably wouldn't take.

he could've decided not to go easy on slip in that last melee training. he could've shot the miners on his last deployment. there are a lot of things he could do or could have done. he doesn't want to.

what's the point hurting something that either has no chance or wouldn't even try to hurt you back? maybe that makes him a bad soldier.

maybe this one time, there's really no one watching him for a slip-up, and he's allowed to admit to not wanting to hurt someone. even to himself. to admit that he just feels tired. ]

Am I the one getting reminded or am I supposed to be the reminder?

[ maybe this one time he can, in a roundabout way, at least acknowledge that what happened to him is horrible no matter which way it gets sliced.

he doesn't think he wants to be someone's reminder. ]

[followhim]

[ poe is not a philosophical genius by any means, so the question sort of takes hold of him and shakes him sideways. he doesn't know how to parse it. is he supposed to say that everything happened to finn because he needed a reminder or is it supposed to be a reminder for him????

shara bey's words were words he said and believed and didn't spend too much time analyzing, even though he'd carried them around with him since childhood. the actual words weren't incredibly important; what was important for him was hanging on to the idea that the galaxy was a good place. that things would be better eventually. there would actually be an after the war, a time when he could stop fighting and live out whatever unrelated to the war dreams he'd had and he could be

with finn.

there's a part of him — a part of him he always tries to block out by focusing on other things — that whispers to him. it says that maybe this happened to finn … because of him. not literally because of something he'd done to finn, but because he'd made too many wrong choices and spilled too much resistance blood to deserve nice things in the galactic handout. he ignores it. it's too dark and he wants to be the light and he can't reconcile both.

he decides to just be honest, head lifting from finn's shoulder to get a better look at him. ]

I don't know. I don't know which one you're supposed to be. But I think … either way, whatever's coming next? It's gotta be better, 'cause it can't get much worse.

[bythehand]

[ yeah, there's not really an ideal answer in either direction with this one. either way just sort of leaves finn thinking it's not very fair. either it's what he gets for something he did, which he could buy, he already bought that he got reconditioned because he did something to deserve it. because the universe decided he didn't learn something important enough, didn't do something good enough.

or it's something that happened to him because of something that had nothing to do with him at all. that makes him collateral for someone else's problems. he got raised to be collateral, sure. somehow it still doesn't sit well.

but hey. life's not fair. that's been well-established.

finn appreciates that poe doesn't try to pick one or the other. ]

Smart of you to leave a little room in case it does get worse first.

[followhim]

[he smiles, a slight, wry smile.]

Yeah, well, I know better than to set us up for failure by saying something like that.

[and then he will try to tackle philosophy, part two:]

I'm not — I wasn't trying to say you need to be one thing or the other. Don't — don't worry about that, it's not important. I just was trying to say that things get better. It'll balance out. It's all gonna balance out.

[bythehand]

[ bless his commitment, quite frankly.

it seemed pretty important?? it seemed like sort of a cornerstone of this life view in general. finn is moderately suspicious that it probably still is.

but he's also starting to learn to anticipate that poe is usually trying to just-- say something nice or be nice. if he's faking, he's great at it. while finn may doubt the overall position of that philosophy and what it says about him, he's willing to very tentatively dip a finger into the believe-poe water for now, and to accept that it really wasn't what he was trying to say. ]

I know what you were trying to say. It's fine.

[followhim]

[it's at this point that poe is aware that he is doing the thing he always does, his fatal flaw — going too hard. can't have a chill conversation about literally anything. always has to keep going until the other person sees it his way and decides he's right. he was just trying to help finn, okay!! his heart was in the right place.

but maybe

sometimes

it's time to stop.]

Yeah? Good. I don't know if you've noticed this about me, but I have no idea when to stop talking. [or just stop, in general as a concept, really.] And this is a long ride, so ... lots of time for me to run my mouth. If you need me to shut up, I dunno, say so.

[bythehand]

[ finn turns his head to look over at poe properly. ]

I figured you knew when you should stop. Just thought you didn't like it quiet.

[ some people aren't into silence. even the kind that gets a little filled in by background noise. he's fine with background noise, but he's mostly been thinking poe needs a more. active approach or something?

he can change his personal note on it. poe might need help keeping his foot out of his well-meaning mouth. ]

[followhim]

I don't.

[not right now anyway. ... or actually, maybe not ever. he did spend a lot of time alone in his x-wing just talking to bb-8. he's just a lot, okay.]

It's because I'm stressed out. I can't stop talking because I'm stressed out. [not wrong.] That's all.

[bythehand]

[ that's fair. that's a fair problem to have. ]

Not sure I can help you with that.

[ he's pretty sure that at several key points he has in fact contributed more stress to poe's stress load. he has no idea how to make himself stop doing that. it always bubbles up around his best efforts to completely suppress and internalize it, sometimes in a nice high-pressure complete meltdown.

he can't even handle his own bullshit enough to stop it from stacking onto poe's bullshit. this is a mess. he wishes he could. ]

Sorry.

[followhim]

It's okay.

[and it really is. he knows he can't depend on finn to help him deal with his bullshit right now. they both have large amounts of bullshit that need attending to. he's not expecting finn to take on any of his when he has his own. it's all cool. just two cool bros sitting on a train trying not to have meltdowns.

maybe the solution is just ... for him not to talk about himself. for five seconds. it's a bold strategy, cotton.]

What was it like? Before, being a stormtrooper. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, I just wanna ... get to know you. What it was like. Did you have ... friends, or ... ?

[bythehand]

[ i wish cotton, ancient guide, would answer his cohort. maybe someday he'll awaken when he sees a bold enough strategy.

poe wants to get to know him. it doesn't sound fake. maybe kinda like a road to disappointment. finn can't hold it against him, though, that's the kind of thing people presumably Do In Real Life. they get to know each other. he's been sitting here getting to know poe literally this very day.

it's the way poe goes out of his way to say he doesn't have to that makes him willing to answer. he could say no if he wanted and it would matter that he did. some tiny part of him latches onto that concept every time it can, like metal shavings to a magnet. ]

A real stormtrooper is the extension of the Supreme Leader's will, [ he says by rote, bc god knows he's a little fresh off that metaphorical train rn. ] Nothing less.

[ nothing more, part of him says. ]

We have teams. Units. Orders to follow, duty rotations. No personal loyalties. Not that we should want any. [ or need them, or whatever. and then he hesitates. because it's hard to get the words out and make himself admit it, even though it's true, but he still feels like he wants to try. ]

I had a team. Before. Sometimes I would think of them as-- [ okay yeah, that's harder than he thought. he doesn't think he's ever said it out loud. that he thought of them as friends. nines and zeroes. and slip. finn shakes his head, keeps his eyes forward. ]

They weren't. We weren't.

[ maybe that's where he started going wrong. maybe that's the thing that sparked until the mining colony made it flare, until he spiraled out and around and into this somehow. ]

[followhim]

[he listens intently, brow creasing a little bit. none of this is ... really a surprise at first, so it's not that much to take in.

until finn starts talking about his team, and stumbles over the words. that's what's hard for him to process. that's what grips him. that's — how can the first order think that's a good idea? i mean, how can the first order think taking children and brainwashing them to be soldiers is a good idea, but also: this???

he moves to put an arm around finn's shoulders. leveling up in supportiveness.]

That's — I'm a commander, with the Resistance. Was a commander, whatever. [won't specify if that's because he's leaving or because he was demoted because don't worry about it 🙃 ] I had my own squadron, and they were absolutely my closest friends. They were practically my family. When you're working as a team, I think it's really important that you know and trust your teammates. So you can anticipate how they're gonna react to certain things. Support them when they need it. That's when you're at your strongest as a team.

I'm just trying to say, I'm sorry you didn't have that.

[bythehand]

[ is poe dameron trying to make him cry again 2k18??? unfair. ]

It's fine. I think I tried that for a while.

[ a team's only as strong as its weakest link. he argued for it. thought it meant reaching out, covering what someone else couldn't manage, supporting. he tried until he wasn't allowed to try anymore.

it hurts in spite of that. it still sits wrong. it shouldn't. ]

I don't know what happened to them. I don't remember. Pretty sure that's a bad sign.

[followhim]

[well poe isn't going to be the one to be like "i'm sure they're fine sweetie." because ... yeah. that stormtrooper life. doesn't even know he's the one who killed slip like sorry for kickstarting your moral crisis. but you know what. it's fine.]

I'm sorry. [again.] I know I must've said it more than enough now, but ... you can trust me. We're a team. I've got your back.

[bythehand]

[ he's glad poe didn't try to be that guy. like, if poe went in for that, he'd have no choice but to be a debbie downer out loud about it, and he doesn't wanna have a "say it. out loud. they're almost definitely probably dead." moment.

well, he would have a choice. to not say that. he would say it though. false hope is a broad waste. ]

Sure.

[ he fits in better with poe and bb-8 in a day than he ever fit with the other cadets. probably also a bad sign. finn is starting to burn out on tallying up all the shit he thinks he shouldn't be doing or feeling or having, though. there's not much point bothering. something else is just gonna line up each time. he doesn't have a bottomless well of self hatred to spend on it. just like he doesn't have a bottomless well of vulnerability. (finn you literally sat on the ground and cried first thing???) ]

There's not much else to it. Train, follow orders. I still used to be one of the best ones they turned out. [ and he can say that with the certainty of someone who just knows it's true. same way everyone knew slip slipped up. fn-2187 was better. ]