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Once upon a time, Poe loved Ben Solo.
And, you know, it made sense.
Poe had always had a habit of getting too into things. Too into people. One person became his entire life, he had one friend, one love, one reason for living-- everything narrowed down into the black hole of a single person. Poe was just like that, and then he was like that with Ben.
It had never really been a problem. For a month or two, he would be in love with only one person, and then it would pass, and they could just be friends. And it had certainly looked to be that way with Ben-- no, Kylo, because the next year he decided to change his name, and he’d come to Poe all proud about it, all crooked teeth and awkward smile, and Poe had accepted it one-hundred-percent. Because that was what friends did.
And it was just as easy to fantasize about a boy named Kylo as it had been about a boy named Ben.
Poe had one specific dream, one that he kept coming back to. In it, he and Kylo had a little house. Somewhere far out on some deserted planet, just the two of them. Leaves and plants and greenery all around. Someplace warm, but rainy too, and just big enough for them to have a garden and a pond to swim in during the summers. Poe thought about that, sometimes, when things were too much.
It had seemed such a definite future. Poe looked up at Kylo sometimes and thought, yes, that’s where we’ll be. You and me.
He’d never worked up the courage to tell Kylo that. Not even when he’d made promises to himself that tomorrow he’d do it, not even when he looked into Kylo’s eyes and was sure that he felt the same. Not after Kylo broke up with his first girlfriend and came to Poe about it. Not even then.
But Poe had known it, just as Kylo might have known things with the Force. That was what Poe had wanted to say. That it was just as certain as anything Kylo could tell his Uncle Luke.
And then it wasn’t.
Poe remembered getting the news. Being in shock, mostly. Trying to separate the Kylo Ren who’d just killed children from the Kylo Ren he’d loved as a child. Like ripping apart separate squares of a quilt, and discovering himself tangled in the strings.
Of course, he’d moved on by then. No people at the time, really. No specific loves.
But Kylo Ren might have just as well come to him specifically and driven a stake through his heart.
Poe dreamed about him, later.
He woke up in the night, sometimes, after some stupid fantasy where he just happened to be talking to Kylo again-- and how in fuck would he manage that, just stumbling upon Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, in the forest, just fucking finding him and talking to him-- and falling back in love with him. Poe woke up thinking he might have made it, he might have just made it, if he had only told Kylo.
Dream after dream after dream. Each time, Poe bringing Kylo back, each time, Poe talking to Kylo, each time, Poe waking up to a sweat-and-tears-soaked pillow, thinking fuck, fuck, thinking why wasn’t it real, feeling like it had to have been real because for all his sweat and tears he could do nothing and that wasn’t fair.
It was never fair.
Poe thought about Kylo in the air, too.
Back in his first days of flying, Poe had thought of Kylo in his ship. Had his little fantasies of feeling Kylo’s hands over his on all the buttons and levers, Kylo sitting in his lap or leaning on his side. Silly little things.
And those fantasies didn’t just go away.
Not even after the massacre.
Poe repeated that to himself, in his ship. Flying high enough to lose himself up there, in his thoughts. Just reminding himself, you’re still in love with a murderer.
“I don’t want to be,” he’d say to the sky.
“It’s not my fault,” he’d say to the stars.
“Please,” he’d whisper to the big, dark moon.
The galaxy doesn’t answer prayers.
His missions hadn’t brought him quite so near to Kylo Ren, generally. He hadn’t made a lot of requests one way or the other.
But there was still some secret part of him, some little shade of his heart that wanted things back the way they were. Some sleeping, gentle slice of his soul kept every one of his crushes in it, and Kylo Ren was there too. Still. Even then.
Which was why he’d been so fucking hopeful when he’d finally seen Kylo for the first time.
He’d shot at him, yeah, shot at the guy he used to love, shot at him because for God’s sake, somehow he hadn’t expected him to kill like that, had thought maybe there would at least have been some pain in it for him, or something, something different from the way San Tekka dropped to the ground.
Kylo stopped the blast, of course. Never could resist being a flashy fuck. Poe used to like that, used to sit and watch Kylo Force-throw little rocks at targets, hitting the center every time. Poe used to be Kylo’s adoring audience.
But he’d glared at Kylo, then. At first. As best he could. Wasn’t easy, what with-- the memories. Of what was behind his mask. Wondering how he knew, knowing he was right. There wasn’t a single scar behind that mask. All that black metal, all the little mechanisms; just Kylo’s show-off ass at it again.
So, trying to keep himself balanced, trying to forget, trying to remember, Poe had asked--
“Who talks first?”
You want to tell me how long it’s been, or should I? Want to have a little chat about what we’ve been doing since we saw each other last? Oh, yeah, you know, just Resistance mission stuff, out here saving the world, just happen to be on opposite sides of a war, yeah, I know, under your mom, real hard worker she is, definitely a tough woman, hard to please for sure, yeah I do remember when she put us together to help her, that was fun, and your uncle Luke too, yeah, he probably never liked me-- no, of course he didn’t like me, come on, you were his favorite, no, not just ‘cause you were related, he definitely liked you better, out of everyone too! That was why it was such a betrayal, at the end, when you-- When we-- We thought-- I thought I knew you-- I couldn’t believe it-- We couldn’t-- I couldn’t-- I loved you--
“You talk first?”
Poe had heard Kylo could read minds. He didn’t think he was doing it then, at least, he couldn’t tell.
And then it was the response--
“The old man gave it to you.”
Business.
Obviously.
Fuck knows why Poe was so hurt, why he thought Kylo would remember, why he thought he might do anything to jump start Kylo’s memory back to the days where that little brown-haired kid tailed him around, even though Poe had always been a couple years older, he was shorter than Kylo from the start, and fuck Kylo for forgetting him so easily, but God, Kylo...
He tried again.
Smiled.
(A little.)
“It’s just-- very hard to understand you, with all the--”
He barely finished his sentence, what with Kylo ordering the troopers to search him. And Poe had known, he’d known all along this was a murderer. This was a cold-hearted fucking killer, this was someone at the head of an organization that wanted to enslave the galaxy, but this was his friend--
“Put him on board.”
Thank God.
Thank God, Poe thought, maybe he remembers me, maybe he’ll let me off easy, maybe he won’t kill me as soon as we get on board, maybe I can talk some sense into him. Like I used to, when he got mad.
With his arm around Kylo’s shoulders and everything. Letting Kylo cry into his sleeve.
Poe was so distracted he barely heard the order.
“Kill them all.”
And then he turned his head and saw it happening, and even before he could register it was his own voice screaming he was crying out, he was crying, he was crying and crying and crying and beaten and crying and shackled and crying and everything was a blur until he found himself in that room.
Barely awake.
Not knowing if he’d imagined the crying or if it had really happened.
Cursing himself for the weakness anyway.
Feeling the chill stare of something fully inhuman through the vents of Ren’s mask.
“I had no idea we had the best pilot in the resistance on board,” Ren said. He was unnaturally still, like the Force kept him anchored. “Comfortable?”
So you’ve recognized me.
Poe wanted to say it. Poe wanted to say any number of things-- Poe wanted to ask how it had taken so fucking long for Ren to recognize him, how Ren could compliment Poe right now, how easy it would be to take Ren away and back home.
So Poe decided to just keep things simple and answer the question he’d been asked.
“Not really.”
Not with you looking like you hate me.
“I’m impressed,” Ren said, and Poe felt a stupid little surge of pride. “No one has been able to get out of you--” Poe thought he sensed a little frustration there-- “what you did with the map.”
“Might wanna rethink your technique,” Poe shot back.
Take off your mask. Let me see you. Let me hold you.
There was ice in his throat, suddenly.
Poe felt Ren in his head, in his heart, like a flood, drenching him, drowning him in the current, breaking him against the rocks in his own mind--
“Where. Is it?”
Poe could feel him angry, could feel him upset, could tell he’d sensed what Poe had thought, that Poe had dared to taunt him with love, with what Ren had already ended, with what Poe could still feel and Poe could see Ren was about to get everything else, managed something through the blackness threatening to breach his eyelids:
“The resistance. Will not be intimidated. By you.”
Or me. Or my thoughts of you.
And then Poe could feel Ren stumbling over all Poe’s old thoughts about him, and Poe was gasping, and Ren saw everything there was to be used against Poe, and--
Poe dreamed about him again.
Later.
Poe woke up from dreams where he was back in the torture chamber, he was strapped to the chair again, but this time it was Kylo and not Ren and Kylo was whispering “here, let’s get you out of here, c’mon, let’s go before they catch us!” and suddenly they were in the Millenium Falcon, out on one of those joyrides Kylo could never help taking, and they were both so much younger.
Poe woke up from dreams where he stayed in the chamber, and Ren asked how he could ever have thought Ren might like him.
Poe woke up from dreams where he kissed Kylo.
Poe woke up from dreams where he killed Ren.
Poe woke up from from dreams that made him vomit, from dreams that made him scream, from dreams that made his eyes in the mirror grow red and raw as his heart.
Kylo Ren haunted him.
Haunts him.
When he’s in his ship, on the Falcon, at the base, looking at the General’s face or Finn’s or Rey’s. All it takes is someone making the wrong expression, and Kylo’s back.
The dreams have faded, now. But Poe still thinks he might never sleep again the way he used to. He thinks he might never learn to live like a free man.
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There are things Poe doesn’t know.
For instance--
Poe doesn’t know that, in just a few years from now, he’ll be living out on a deserted planet.
In a nice house. Wooden siding, little windows with checkered shades. A nice little table in the kitchen, one that folds right up against the wall for more room if he wants to use the dining chairs as a fun little lounge area. No splinters from any of the furniture, either.
It’ll be up among the trees, greenery so strong it threatens to overtake the roof of his house, to the point that sometimes he worries during the storms (always for naught.) Shrubs and plants and grass everywhere, flourishing in the monthly rains. Pure sunlight filtering through the leaves.
A garden out in the back. Starting with little plants, of course, just a couple of herbs and the seeds of some little yellow flowers he’ll find out in the woods. Growing into a bunch of lovely little plants and things, with those little yellow flowers growing to overtake every sprout until Poe has to cut swathes of them and put them up around the house in little vases.
With a good husband who loves him. Someone who puts an arm around him when he’s cooking. Someone who kisses his cheek before going out and after coming in. Someone who sleeps beside him, someone who lets him cry, someone who will never, ever, betray him.
And sometimes, Poe will wake in the night.
And his husband will wake beside him, stretching wearily, reaching out an arm to touch Poe’s hand.
“What was it?” he’ll ask sleepily. He’ll always want to know what’s waking Poe up. So he can comfort him in just the right way.
And Poe will answer him with “a storm.” Or “failed my mission.” Or “a bunch of lothcats were in our closet, and they just wouldn’t get out, you know?”
But the answer will never, ever be Kylo Ren.
Never again.