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“We should stay here for the time being. We need to reserve fuel before Leia sends us the updated coordinates for the new base,” Finn pointed out calmly. Poe was impressed that the ex-stormtrooper was keeping it together so well with his former employers/keepers so hot on their tails.
“Agreed.” Poe nodded, firmly, and then stood and popped his head out of the galley where they’d been sitting. “Didja hear that, Captain?” He shouted towards the cockpit.
“I heard, I heard.” Rey emerged from her station, brushing some sand off her tunic. Poe smiled at her, and she returned it, their squabble back on Tatooine already forgotten. “It should be pretty soon though, yeah? Rose sent the message ten minutes ago.”
Poe nodded, feeling queasy, and he leaned back against the ship’s old wet bar. Why does the Falcon have one of these, anyway? He wondered, his entire body tense.
“You should go lie down, get some rest, Commander,” Rey said kindly. She put her hand on his upper arm, and he breathed in at the same time she did. They breathed out together as well, and he felt his blood pressure drop slightly. He nodded at her gratefully - she must have picked up on his anxiety, realized that being chased and cornered by the First Order felt a little too much like Raddus, a little too much like the lowest point of Poe Dameron’s military career, the Worst day in a life full of worst days.
He was about to agree when an explosion nearby rocked the Falcon. Rey swore, loudly. “They know where we are!” She snarled, hand going to her rebuilt lightsaber. Poe reached out to steady her when another explosion threw her sideways. Finn ran past them towards the cockpit, doubtlessly to see what was going on.
“Leia sent the coordinates!” Rose shouted from up front.
“Plug them in!” Rey called back. “We’re taking off from this rock in the next minute!” She squeezed Poe’s arm reassuringly one more time before turning away from him, but he caught her wrist
“Whoa,” Poe warned when she looked back at him. “The First Order’s right there, Rey, we don’t have the time or the fuel to fly while we figure out where the Resistance is -”
“No time to discuss this as a committee!” Rey shouted at him, yanking her arm away, already sprinting for the cockpit. Poe stumbled and slammed into the side of the ship as another collision rocked the asteroid they parked on.
“I am not a committee!” He bellowed at her, but Rey didn’t stop. How the kriff did I become the responsible person on this expedition? He wondered, deliriously. Sometimes he thought privately that Rey from Jakku turned his entire galaxy upside down. He still didn’t know how he feels about it (Okay. So he did know). He ducked into the cockpit and dropped into the empty chair, buckling in quickly. Rey was typing something in rapidly, her fingers moving in a surreal blur over the ship’s computers.
“Want me on the ventral cannon?” Finn asked, already standing up halfway.
“No!” Rey barked. “Stay seated, and buckle up. We’re making the jump from here.”
“I beg your karking pardon?” Poe demanded. Finn turned ashen but obeyed Rey’s order. “We’re parked, Rey!” She ignored him entirely - sure, let’s ignore the guy who’s been flying since literally before she was born - typed in her final command, and gripped the clutch while engaging the ignition, smacking the compressor above her head without even standing. Rose helped her kick the Falcon immediately into Hyperspace, the telltale blue flashing by, and the Falcon left the First Order behind in its wake. Rey sighed and settled back into her chair, the picture of confidence and relaxation.
It had been less than forty-five seconds since they received the coordinates.
“How did you make the calculations for the jump so fast?” Poe wondered aloud, reluctantly impressed, staring out the starviewer.
“The what now?” Rey spared him a brief glance before tapping on a fuzzy screen.
“The calculations,” Poe repeated, feeling something strange coil in his stomach. She didn’t...she wouldn’t... “You know. The math. To make the jump accurately.”
“Math?” Rey scrunched her nose up at her co-pilot, and Rose shrugged back at her, very much at ease.
Poe felt a little less at ease. “You know. The math you need to do to make a jump accurately. It’s what astromechs usually help with. Unless you have a secret BB-8 hiding in that dashboard, you did that math in your head, right?” There was no response, just Rey fidgeting with a control. “Right, Rey?”
She coughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever...done...the math before a jump.”
“What?” Poe demanded, incredulous. “You what?! You’ve never? But I’ve been on this kriffing ship before when we went into Hyperspace.” Finn shook his head at him from the other passenger seat, but Poe was not done. “Rey, I took Astronautical Calculus for four kriffing years at the Academy! We weren’t allowed to make our first jump until we passed a test at the end of the second year!”
“Astronautical Calculus?” The grin she shot him was absolutely irreverent. “That sounds like some of that fancy Core World learnin’, right Rose?” She nudged her friend, and Rose nodded.
“It sure does, Rey,” Rose drawled. “I don’t know if my little head could handle it.” Both women dissolved into giggles, and Poe groaned.
“I cannot believe you went into Hyperspace blind!” Poe dropped his face into his hands. “This will not end well.”
“It usually does end well,” Rey pointed out, sounding a little more irritated now. “I’ve never crashed at least. And you’ve crashed...how many times, now?”
“That’s not the point-” Poe raised a finger at her warningly, and she scowled back at him.
“Seven,” Finn whispered, because Loyalty is Dead.
“Seven times?” Rey lifted an eyebrow, and Poe refused to be distracted by how attractive it was. “My last count had it at six.”
“Because it is six,” Poe grumbled, reaching over to flick Finn.
“It was,” Rose agreed. “But then you crashed that speeder last week, remember?”
Rey looked delighted, and Poe howled in protest. “That does not count for this conversation. You can’t go into Hyperspace on a speeder!”
“You tried,” Finn muttered, leaning away from Poe’s next assault.
“If you need help driving a speeder, Dameron, I knew a very nice Scavenger on Jakku who was great at it. Haven’t seen her since I left two years ago, so she must be, what,” Rey pretended to think while monitoring their trajectory. “Ten years old, now?”
“I hate all of you,” Poe moaned, resting his forehead on his knees. When he looked back up, Rey was smirking and leaning over him to tap on a different part of the navigational drive - it really was alarming, how much of the Falcon seemed to be held together with nothing more than high quality tape - and Rose had turned around fully to watch their interaction carefully.
Rose often watched Rey and Poe interact. It made him nervous, and he was already a little nervous around Rey for reasons he refused to examine.
“How about a wager?” Rose said, a coy smile on her face. Finn shook his head at her this time, mouthing something at his girlfriend that Poe didn’t quite catch. She cut Finn off from whatever he was going to say.
“I don’t know-” Poe begins, at the same time Rey says, “Deal.” He huffed in irritation and then nodded, not wanting to appear scared of a little bet.
“If Rey’s right, and this works,” Rose cocked her head to the side, and Rey rested her hand on the back of Poe’s chair, other hand on her hip. Poe pointedly does not stare up at her. Does not. “She gets to ask Poe for anything she wants.”
“Between her and Finn, I don’t have much left,” Poe complained.
“You shouldn’t have such comfortable clothing,” Rey said cheerfully, patting him on the head and then walking forward back to her own chair. Finn shrugged in agreement.
“And you said I could keep that jacket,” Finn defended, and Poe gestured in acknowledgement.
“Fine. And what do I get if I’m right?”
Rose studied him for a very long moment, and Poe felt heat creep up his neck.
“Rey gives you a kiss,” she decided. There was a spell of silence in the cockpit, and then -
“Come on, Rosie,” Finn protested, while Poe said,
“I’m really not comfortable asking for a woman to kiss me without consent,” at the same time Rey shouted,
“Deal!”
Finn and Poe stared at Rey in shock, but she grinned wildly at Rose. “No kriffing way I’m wrong,” she said confidently. “So yeah, deal. I kiss Dameron if I was wrong about the jump.”
“If you were wrong, we might all just die,” Finn pointed out, and Rose rolled her eyes at her boyfriend before turning back to the controls.
“We’ll find out in a minute,” Rey said, entirely unbothered by Finn’s totally accurate statement.
Poe wasn’t sure if he should throw up from nerves about their impending death, or nerves from the casual way Rey from Jakku seemed to accept the idea of kissing him.
He’d stared down death so much on missions, he was pretty sure the latter made him more nervous. Defy all odds and save the day? Easy. Take out a dreadnought in nothing more than an X-Wing? Pffbt, what else you got? The idea of kissing a pretty girl he might have Actual Real Feelings For?
Where is the eject button for my life?
“Here we go!” Rey shouted, yanking up on the throttle. The Falcon dropped out of Hyperspace, and Poe braced for the reality of
A) Being stranded in the middle of empty space with limited fuel reserves;
B) Finding themselves in the middle of an active supernova;
C) Crashing into a planet.
He didn’t account for option D while clutching Finn’s hand -
Option D won, however: they dropped out of Hyperspace right outside the atmo of a small planet with only a single moon.
“Gentlemen, we have arrived!” Rose announced, grabbing the comms. “Greetings from space, General Organa, this is the Millennium Falcon under the command of Commander Rey, announcing its descent into atmo. Requesting a safe landing.”
“Access code for Commander Rey?” Connix’s voice chirped back over the comms.
“Han, Jakku, Luke,” Rey answered, “Forty-two, four.”
“You’ve been cleared to land. See you soon, Rey.”
“Right back at you,” Rey initiated the secondary ionic engines as the Falcon broke atmo.
Finn sat up and slapped Rey on the shoulder. “I’m going to go make sure the shipment is secure,” he said, disappearing into the back. “Help me, Tico?”
“Sure thing,” Rose stood up and sighed dramatically. “Damn. I was really looking forward to watching Poe figure out where to put his hands during that kiss.” She disappeared back into the Falcon, and Poe felt his face light on fire.
“I need a co-pilot, if you’re up for it, Dameron.” Rey smiled at him, and he obliged, moving forward to plop down next to her.
“Nice flying,” he begrudgingly complimented her. “Sorry I was such an ass, I just...it’s really impressive, how talented you are, and I didn’t mean to insult you or doubt you, I just -”
“You know the cost of risky decisions,” Rey finished for him, kindly. He nodded, swallowing against the lingering grief of his poor decisions pre-Crait. She fiddled with the controls for a minute before turning to him, the landing gear already extended, the Falcon programmed to descend for a few more minutes. “Do you think you actually could teach me some of that math? I might not always be able to rely on the Force or my gut. I understand that.”
It only made Poe blush more, the idea that the Resistance’s one true hope, the last of the Jedi, the most beautiful woman alive (and where did that come from?) wanted a scruffy, older pilot to help her with anything.
“I’d like that,” he said softly. Rey went back to playing with the controls, but a question burned at the front of Poe’s mind, and soon found its way out of his mouth. “So, what did you want from me, Sunshine?” He rarely used the nickname (out loud), but he always thrilled at how it made her smile.
“You really want to know?” She asked, lifting a perfect brow at him again. He nodded encouragingly. Oddly enough, she looked over her shoulder before looking back at him, her freckled cheeks flushed a very pretty shade of pink.
“Kiss me.”
Poe stared at her in surprise. “I’m sorry. But what did you say?” He asked politely, worried that somehow his eardrums burst in Hyperspace, or some other misfortune befell him where he’ll now have auditory hallucinations the rest of his life.
“I want you to kiss me,” Rey repeated, and no, he definitely didn’t hallucinate the way her cheeks turned brighter pink. “If you want to, that is. I can think of something else if not, I just was hoping-”
Poe leaned forward, his knees in the aisle, his hand gentle on her cheek. He kissed her as sweetly as he knew how, quietly thrilling at the way her soft lips began to press back into him, her obvious inexperience as endearing as it was grounding. Poe kissed her as well as he could, as thoroughly as he could without being forceful, as tenderly as he could manage in this brief, glorious moment. His eyes drifted shut, and he marveled at how the feeling compared not to the adrenaline rush of flying, but to the feeling of sitting under the tree his mamá planted back on Yavin. Kissing Rey felt an awful lot like hope, and he never wanted it to end, wanted to keep kissing her, and kissing her, and -
“Not that I’m not really enjoying myself,” Rose Tico’s voice broke through the intense, private bubble that had formed around Poe and Rey, “Because I am. But, we’re going to crash if you two don’t start flying this ship.”
Sure enough, when Poe reluctantly pulls away from Rey, the ground is approaching at an alarming rate. Poe cursed, blushing furiously and apologizing profusely to Rey, Rose, Finn, the Maker, Leia Organa, anyone listening.
As for Rey, a cheerful “oops!” is all she has to offer while she spectacularly pulls the Falcon out of its nosedive.