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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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Looking back at the look on his face, she just sort of laughs. ]

I've always had a knack for systems. Digital, mechanical. I told you: I'm not worried about the midterm because I can't do the work.

[ Rey knows she's clever and has no reservations in declaring it. That's how she'd gotten her scholarship. ]

Some of these new ones have been designed to resist being hijacked, though. [ She shows him the phone screen, which just shows a sort of control panel. She hits the button that promises to unlock it and looks around like maybe she expects to hear an alarm.

But if it were silent, then—

Nope. The locks on the doors audibly, mechanically churn. ]

Hey! We're in! Open one of those up. [ She points for the door and hastily disconnects her phone. ]

[ he hastily moves to open the door. ] No, no, I believe you. I never didn't believe you.

[ "i never didn't believe you." - poe dameron, ph.d. scholar.

anyway, he hasn't spent much time in the building since the renovation, but being there very quickly reminds him that ... he hates it. 🙃 it's so clean and sterile it may as well be a hospital. gross. ]

His office hasn't moved or anything, right?

[ i told u, he spent more time picking out what leather jacket he was going to wear just in case finn's eyeballs gazed upon him than he did planning out this heist. ]

Depends where you remember it. I went to his office hours earlier this semester; I know the way.

[ Surprise: Rey tried to solve her own problems in all the normal ways first. She leads Poe to the elevator, which fortunately does not need an RFID even after hours because it's like … if you can get in the building … you obviously belong here. Yo. ]

Uh, thanks for doing this. [ She looks over at him. ] For coming with me. I know we don't really know each other …

[ he shrugs his shoulders, glancing at her for a moment before returning his attention to staring at the closed elevator door. a smooth boy. ]

Any friend of Finn's is a friend of mine. I wanna help. It's the right thing to do. [ and since he can't stare at himself and call himself out on his own bullshit, he just goes for that creamy nougat of truth in the center and adds ] I really hate Ren.

You mentioned that.

[ She looks over at him more fully, disregarding the blinking light of the elevator that signals which floor the elevator is on as it descends. ]

What happened between you two?

[ Saved by the bell a little. Or trapped by it. Ding! The doors slide open. ]

[ he makes a sour expression. not like he's reluctant to talk about ren, but. you know. as he stated. really hates that guy. ]

I told you about the thing at my defense, right? It was so bad. I swear, it's like — he can see where your weaknesses are and just rip into them. You know, one time he keyed my car? I caught him. He kept doing it while I was watching. But it's not that, I guess. Not really.

[ he chews at the inside of his mouth while trying to figure out how to word ] I think he just kind of hates me. As a person. You know the engineering college dean? Leia Organa? He's her son. They've always kind of had a rough relationship. It's ... I dunno, that's a whole other story. But, uh, she was friends with my parents, and after my mom died ... I dunno. We're close. And he's ... jealous? I guess that's what's happening there.

[ he sighs. like. this whole thing is so stupid??? if he wants to his mother's son maybe he should try actually being a better son????? at least he has a mother who is alive??????? there's a lot there, most of it too frustrating for him to find the words to voice. ]

[ Wow. Mommy Issues. Both of them. Rey steps into the elevator beside him and punches the button for the right floor and takes a moment of silence to mull that over because her first three ideas for what to say are bad ideas related to mommy issues. You can't be direct with people's parent issues. How would she feel ?? ? Ok. Empathy unlocked. Here we go. ]

It sounds complicated.

[ That's some Prince fucking Zuko "that's rough buddy" level lame-ass response to a big clusterfuck of level 4 family drama bullshit. That is what she has. She's not good enough at people for this. ]

Wait. If he's Organa's son, do you really think she'd support either one of us over him? [ Rey looks suddenly panicked. ] I can't take answers from his office! He'll crucify me if this goes to a hearing, and she'll let him! [ Obviously good parents would always support their children no matter what. ]

[ i mean, he's an emotionally stunted tsundere potato, so that level of empathy is fine with him. he wasn't looking for a hug as a result of that info drop. ]

I told you. It won't be you, it'd be me. My hearing. I dunno if she'd even be allowed to be in it, conflict of interest or whatever. But if she did ... I think you're underestimating how bad their relationship is.

Do you know what happened between them?

[ Maybe she shouldn't be interrogating her professor's personal life. She is anyway. There's an uneasy sort of interest there because of her own parental issues. Maybe if she could connect with him in some way, she wouldn't have to steal test answers. He could just be a human being and not target her like a lunatic and try to fail her.

No. It'd probably get worse if she was like hey about your mom, I really relate because I grew up poor and abandoned in a group home. ]

A little bit. Kind of. His parents divorced, he went to boarding school, so they always had kind of a distant relationship. Then there was some stuff with his uncle, his dad died recently ... I dunno, maybe that's some of it. Me and my dad got closer after my mom died, but sometimes it tears you apart instead.

[ things he did not expect out of this heist scenario: having a philosophical discussion in an elevator. ]

[ There it is. It hurts to be sent away. It might not be foster care, but it's the same premise, isn't it? If his family abdicated the care of him.

Nah. She's probably projecting. Rey draws a sort of huff of a breath. She doesn't feel qualified to weigh in about dead parents at all, so she strays from that. Her parents had just been waiting to get their parental rights back. She'd been taken from them. It's not like they were gone. ]

Doesn't make it right to tear other people apart too. [ That just makes everyone feel worse, in the end. ] I don't remember my parents. I mean, obviously I had them. The guy who ran my group home, he had pictures of them somewhere, I think, but he'd never show them to me.

[ Blurts this out like IT'S ALL I CAN SAY THAT RELATES. ]

Really? He wouldn't even let you see pictures? [ the very idea of that is alien to him. and also very sad???? all the weird mommy issues are shoved to the side in favor of expressing his concern. ] That's awful, I'm sorry. And you couldn't ever find them? There wasn't paperwork or anything?

It's … complicated.

[ Life hack: I'm putting this in brackets so I don't forget what I decided. Anyway, Rey doesn't really want to dig into it with Poe that Unkar Plutt thinks she still owes him money for … raising … her, and that he's holding info about her parents hostage until that debt is paid.

She's pretty sure Poe would offer to just … help her shake down Plutt or something to get them back. And she doesn't want to expose those wounds.

Fortunately, the elevator doors slide open and welcome them out onto one of the shiny floor of offices and classrooms that happens to house the lab Ren uses and the cluster of offices that he occupies with others, including but not limited to Hux. Phasma's elsewhere somewhere. We'll get to her. Maybe she runs the ROTC program, who knows. ]

This way. [ The cluster of offices is behind another RFID-locked door. Rey gets her phone out again. ] PhD students have to do research or reports of some kind, right? What are you working on?

[ she's not wrong. he'd be like "after we steal the answer key, get back in my car because we're gonna go to unkar plutt's house and beat him up." that is just the level of full 100 emoji that he operates at.

anyway, yeah, he remembers this cluster of offices. the asshole corridor. great. who would have thought so many awful people could congregate in one place. at least they're not actually here. ]

You really wanna hear about that?

[ she can't see the way his eyebrows raise while she's working on the rfid like seriously?? i mean obviously it's very interesting to him but why would an undergrad not specifically in his program ... care ... ]

It's about human interaction with robotics in spaceflight. Behavioral coding, ways to make it more intuitive. Does that make sense? Like, what if we could control the tech out there so it's more like a Swype keyboard. The kind of modalities you'd need to map out for that.

[ Because if there's one way to get engineering and physics phds talking about something for a long time, uninterrupted, it's to ask them to explain their thesis. : ) And Rey has discovered this and really doesn't want to delve into the Plutt stuff.

Anyway. It works, so she offers semi-verbal affirmations in the form of noises in the back of her throat as she makes sense of parts while she's plugging away at overriding the RFID mechanism. It's not that elaborate. Most people aren't worried about the security in this building, go figure. Most people wouldn't break in. Most people. ]

That makes sense. You'd need to merge it with a predictive AI then, right? [ She plugs away at cords. ] You must be spending a lot of time in the computer sciences department.

[ you can do it gurl, he's cheering for you. meanwhile, he'll stand here and talk about his life. ]

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I spend more than my fair share of time in those labs. But it's not that bad, I'm used to it. It's kind of my background. Bachelor's in aerospace engineering, master's in robotics. I know the computer sciences department very, very well.

[ Very, very well, huh? Rey looks over her shoulder at him, quietly measuring whether or not that means he's got some long list of exes there. No. He probably didn't mean it that way and she probably doesn't need to be protective of Finn to that end. But that wording tho …

This lock churns like the last one and Rey gets to unplugging her phone and covering the panel back up. ]

I'm going for aerospace engineering too! [ She grins. Oh, right, wingmanning— ] Uh, Finn's still undecided though.

[ the truth is i wrote that tag when i was half-asleep. but maybe he did spend a lot of time messing around in the comp sci department. he is an attractive man. but maybe also consider: all the dumb shit he's said in the last 24 hours alone.

he opens the door to the newly unlocked asshole corridor with an enthused expression that has nothing to do with the newly unlocked door. ]

Really? That's great! Aerospace buddies.

[ going back the beginning of this tag, consider: literally this very moment ]

Yeah. Aerospace buddies.

[ Really Finn? This guy? Ok. Rey heads into the office pod with him. The locks in here are manual, so she stuffs her phone and cord back into her drawstring bag and rifles through it for a black pouch. She flips it open and there are lockpicks in there. Rey has a dubious skillset. ]

So you know which test is the midterm right? You'll recognize it? What if it's got some secret label like 'stardust' the way movies do when they're in production?

[ he'd be surprised but after this mr. toad's wild ride they've been on, nothing would really surprise him about rey at this point. she's a goddess, she walks in beauty, etc. he's delegated to moral support again. ]

If he was dumb enough to not label it, it'd be ... it's intro, right? There are key objectives you gotta cover in intro classes. I mean, it's not all gonna be exactly the same. But I'd know it if I saw it, by whatever's on it.

[ Rey pulls out a few files and tools and crouches to get at the handle while he talks. It keeps her distracted from the facts that she learned this to boost parts for Plutt's shop. ANYWAY. It seems to take considerable concentration so she quiets down during this part. Suddenly. ]

[ when she suddenly stops talking, he looks down like oh. she's doing some intense lock-picking stuff now. should he stop talking? should he keep talking? he decides to just input, quietly ]

You're good at this stuff.

Yeah.

[ This is the only reply she offers as she continues to work. It isn't that long — she's quick about it and skilled in picking up on when she has the pressure in the right place. The industrial locks that schools use are pretty straightforward. It feels like forever, though, because of her silence.

She spins the lock and something clicks. She stands again. ]

Voila.

[ And she opens the door up for him, then stands aside to stow her tools. ]

You're up. If you were a midterm and its key, where would you be?

[ he raises his eyebrows in silence while trying to think of where someone like ren would put their midterms. not someone like him, who keeps the physical copies of all his coursework in a drawer all scattered together with no apparent order but also rammed in with other completely unrelated paperwork, and the digital copy just saved on his desktop along with every other file he's created or saved in the last several months. there's not even a desktop anymore, it's just an ocean of files. welcome to a glimpse of the inner workings of poe dameron.

anyway, what are people who aren't human hurricanes like. how would a sociopath file paperwork. ]

It's coming up soon, right? So he's probably printed everything already. [ and not the morning of, ten minutes before his class starts. ] Check his desk, maybe it'll be in a folder or one of those sorter things.

[ a genius. this is his design. ]

[ The last time Rey was in this office tbh she left crying. She just wanted help. It feels eerie to be in here without Professor Ren's shadowy presence filling it. It feels deceptively utilitarian, actually, without his Aura to infect it. Rey steps around his desk and settles into his chair.

That feels more eerie still, like she's slipping into his skin or something. But this isn't a serial killer AU. So she only spends a moment looking up at Poe and trying to imagine the world from Ren's point of view before she sits up straighter in the chair and starts pulling open drawers.

The files are neatly organized, but have no clear system. At least, not labels. Ren probably doesn't need them since they're his own files and he has a mind like a steel trap. Rey starts thumbing through. ]

These don't look like class documents. I think it's stuff for his own research. [ She pulls out a paper, frowning over it. The calculations are well beyond her. Obviously. But she can figure some broad strokes out thanks to, well, coursework. ] This is military stuff.

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