Work Text:
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
– Maya Angelou
*
Dameron looks shot. Like maybe three steps away from recovering-from-prison camp shot, which is a look on him that Jess is intimately familiar with and never really wants to see again.
(“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Poe had told her the first time she’d visited him after the rescue op, rough-voiced and slurring from the pain meds they’d given him.
“Yeah?” she’d said, folding her arms. “Just out of curiosity, boss, exactly how bad do you think this looks?”
Poe had tilted his chin down, considering the general wreck of his body. “Medium-bad?” he’d offered, looking up to give her a weak grin, and Jess hadn’t been sure whether to laugh or cry. )
His eyes are flat and dull today, dark circles beneath them, and his hands shake as he pours them both some coffee. It’s lukewarm when Jess takes a sip.
He’d smiled at her, though, when he’d opened the door. That’s a good sign. He used to get so blank back in the medical wing sometimes, just stare at nothing and drift off to wherever the hell, and he’d give you this confused look for a second when you said his name, like he didn’t know who that was.
“Sorry,” he tells her now, as if he really needs to. But that’s a good sign too. “I brewed it like four hours ago.”
“Sleep?” Jess asks, and Poe blinks slowly at her.
“Is good?” he tries, a flicker of humor returning to his eyes.
Jess rolls her eyes, but she has to work not to smile. “When’d you last get some?” she clarifies, and he hmms at her. He’s sloshing the coffee around in his mug idly because he can’t just stand still for one goddamn second. He’s going to spill it everywhere.
But Jess doesn’t stop him, because fidgeting is another good sign. Fidgeting is a hell of a lot better than when he gets all still and silent.
“It’s been,” he says, then stares around his little kitchen. It’s weirdly clean, but that’s more concerning than anything; it means he probably hasn’t been eating much. “Three days?” Poe says, eventually.
Jess manages not to swear at him, because that won’t help. “I thought Kalonia gave you those pills.”
She likes Kalonia. She went with Poe to see her one time, when he’d tripped like a moron and sliced open his palm on some broken glass by the dumpster around the corner. (It wasn’t anything too serious. A couple of stitches. He’d just gotten this funny look in his eyes and kept glancing at the cut like it was going to bite him or something and she hadn’t wanted to leave him alone.)
“I ran out.” Poe shifts his feet. “They won’t, uh. Prescribe more than three at a time.”
Jess frowns. “What? Why? That’s stupid.”
He shrugs. “I’m an ‘at-risk patient.’ Apparently.” He must see the expression on Jess’s face, because he adds hastily, “Not for real. Just, like, statistically speaking.”
“But you’re,” Jess starts, and then stops.
He knows what she means anyway. “Better, yeah,” he says, and rocks back onto his heels, then forward again, and now he does spill his coffee all over the kitchen tile. “Oh, shit.” He reaches around for a dish towel, drops it over the spill, and proceeds to just stand there on it. The Poe Dameron Cleaning Method has never been particularly effective except when applied to fighter jets.
“It’s in my file, I guess,” Poe adds. “The whole sob story. Risk factors.” He looks down at the coffee seeping through the dishtowel, shifting his sneakered feet. He hadn’t had any dishtowels, when Jess had moved back to the city. She’d gotten him some shitty ones with flowers on them as a belated housewarming gift, and then Poe had genuinely liked them and totally ruined the joke.
Jess wants to tell him to quit talking about it like that – the whole sob story – to quit acting like he’s some burden on the system or whatever he thinks he is, whatever’s making him stand like that with his shoulders slumping downward and his eyes on the ground instead of the sky.
But she doesn’t tell him that.
She tells him, “Come on, boss. Let’s go for a walk.”
*
It’s a decent neighborhood. Pretty quiet, not quite attractive enough to be snapped up yet by the gentrification monstrosity that’s taking over her own neighborhood. Poe’s apartment building is decent too – crumbling at the edges, sure, but decent. (Enough so that she’s almost sure Kes Dameron must’ve pitched in for it somehow, because there’s no way in hell Poe’s affording this on VA comp. She has to wonder exactly how that argument went down.)
They walk slowly, heading nowhere in particular, although Poe mentions a couple of takeout places nearby without seeming very interested. He’s trying to be polite. He isn’t hungry, he tells her, when she asks.
A slow, drizzling rain starts and prickles at Jess’s bare arms. She shivers, and Poe says, “Hey,” and nudges her arm, handing over his jacket before she can tell him no.
She sighs theatrically but shrugs it on, mostly because it makes him smile.
“I really,” he starts, after a while, and then shakes his head.
Jess thwacks him gently with one too-long jacket sleeve. “What?”
They stop walking. Poe doesn’t look at her, instead squinting up at the dark clouds.
“I really hate this weather,” he says finally, an edge in his voice. “The fog and everything, I really – it was like this the whole week after I got back. Everything looked weird, and like it was just – in the wrong spot, or something.”
Jess just watches him, waiting. He’s biting at his lip, eyes all dark like he’s about to send her on a mission with bad odds.
“It was like...like somebody came in and rearranged everything in your house three inches to the left, and you know it’s all wrong, but you can’t tell why. And you can’t find anything, you’re always opening the wrong drawers and...” He trails off, hands in his pockets.
A raindrop splashes onto Jess’s forehead. She blinks and wipes it away. “It felt that way for me too,” she offers, and Poe looks surprised.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Like it was – wrong. Different. Somehow. But I knew it wasn’t. I knew it was me.” She pauses. “I think that’s normal.” She knows it is. She’s done the whole support group thing and she knows he has too. But Poe’s always had different standards for himself.
He nods slowly at her. “Probably, I just...” He looks away again. “Everything’s like that all the time. For me,” he says quietly. “And I don’t know when it’s s’posed to go back. I keep on waiting for it to go back. But maybe it just doesn’t. Maybe it just stays like this.”
Jess wants to hug him or shake him or something. Instead she hooks her arm through his, and he lets her walk them forward.
“It’s not going to go back,” she says after a moment, and Poe looks at her with tired resignation. “We’re different now,” she goes on. “Everything is. It’s just what it is. It doesn’t have to be bad. It’s just – different.”
This is the closest Jess has ever come to trying to deliver an inspirational speech to somebody, and she’s not exactly sure it’s going over the way she wanted it to, but Poe feels a little less tense beside her.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Yeah, I know.” He kicks at a stray pebble. “You know, I don’t even like those pills? They make me feel all...” He gestures at his head with his free hand, making a face. “Fuzzy. I hate it.”
And how does three days without sleep make you feel, exactly? Jess does not ask, because she has some self-control.
“Then you find another way,” she tells him. “You’ll figure it out. You know you will.”
He casts her a faintly amused glance. “I do, huh?”
“Dameron, you’re the most stubborn motherfucker I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m me.” She elbows him lightly in the side. “Never seen you give up on anything yet.”
Poe hmms at this. “I came home,” he says, after a while.
“That’s not giving up, dumbass.”
He shrugs, jostling her arm. “Felt like it.”
“You know it isn’t. Don’t you hit me with that bullshit.”
Poe snorts. “You’re a real well of compassion, you know that?”
Jess elbows him in the ribs this time. “I know.”
“I’m glad you’re back,” Poe says, his voice rough. “I mean, I’m sorry the squad – I’m sorry. But I’m glad you’re back. Everybody. I didn’t know if I’d see you.”
Jess frowns. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Means I didn’t know where you guys were gonna end up.”
“What, you thought we’d leave you here all by yourself?”
Poe doesn’t answer.
Jess stops dead, jerking him to a halt beside her. “Fuck, Dameron, is that what you –”
“No,” Poe says, looking alarmed at her expression. “No, I just – I didn’t know.” He stops, looking down at his feet, and Jess can’t stand it. She moves in front of him, forcing him to look at her.
“Poe Dameron,” she says. “You really think, after all that bullshit, we’d just –”
“You don’t have any obligation to me,” Poe interrupts with a sudden flare of frustration, and it’s the first time she’s heard any real life in his voice all day. “Just because I got all fucked up –”
“You idiot,” Jess says, and thumps one fist against his shoulder. Poe doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move at all other than to furrow his brow. “You fucking moron,” she tells him. “What, you think I’m here because I feel sorry for you? You think we all came back here for some kind of extended pity party?”
“No,” Poe says, but he won’t meet her eyes.
“You –”
He lifts his chin. “If you’re gonna just call me an idiot again –”
“Well, that’s what you are,” Jess retorts. “Because you never fucking get it. It’s been years and you still don’t fucking get it.”
“Pava –”
“We’d follow you anywhere,” she says, low and fierce. “Anywhere. We keep telling you.”
“And I keep telling you,” Poe says steadily. “You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t get to choose who follows you,” Jess snaps.
Poe raises an eyebrow. “I did, though,” he says.
“And you definitely – what?”
“I chose everybody. That was sort of the whole thing. When the General told me to put the squad together.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Jess runs a hand through her rain-damp hair, tugging at a few wayward strands in irritation. “You don’t get to choose who follows you outside of a military context,” she amends.
Poe’s lips twitch. “That just sounds a little creepy, Pava, I gotta be honest.”
Jess heaves an exasperated sigh. “I am trying to tell you,” she says, prodding him in the chest, “that you’ve won the undying loyalty of your friends because you’re an incredible leader and a truly, truly weird human being and our fucking friend and we aren’t gonna abandon you in some random city somewhere. I am trying to tell you something nice, and you’re arguing with me, and I’m reconsidering now.”
Poe looks like he can’t decide whether to be uncomfortable with this declaration or amused. “The nice part?” he asks.
“The whole fucking thing. The friendship, the undying loyalty, everything.”
He rubs at his chin, fingers trailing over stubble. “Damn,” he says. “Really blew it this time.” And his tone is light enough, but he’s blinking hard now.
“Christ,” says Jess, and then – fuck it – she hugs him.
Poe stiffens for a fraction of a second before he settles, his arms wrapping tight around her so that they’re clinging to each other, heartbeat to heartbeat in the drizzling rain. Just a couple of sappy ex-soldiers having a moment, Jess thinks. Nothing to see here.
“Sorry,” Poe mumbles into her hair.
“Anywhere, you asshole,” Jess answers. “Anywhere.”
*
The rain picks up after that, driving them back toward home. Which is good, because Jess doesn’t really feel much like walking anymore anyway, and Poe’s started to look like he’s tired enough to topple over right on the sidewalk.
So they tromp back up the stairs to Poe’s apartment, leaving little puddles in their wake, and Jess shrugs his dripping jacket off and onto a chair.
“You need to get changed,” she tells Poe when he goes to sit down, all shivery and soaked.
He pauses with his hand on the back of the chair to give her a long, tired look, and drawls, “Sir yes sir.”
Jess rolls her eyes. She digs one of the flowery dishtowels out of a kitchen drawer and tosses it at him so he can mop the rainwater out of his hair, and then she pours the rest of the coffee into the sink, and Poe goes and changes into this awful orange t-shirt and a pair of truly unflattering gray sweats. He shuffles back across the floor in socked feet, his hair sticking up in roughly a thousand different directions.
“Wow,” Jess says, looking him up and down.
“It’s called fashion,” Poe says, except he yawns halfway through. He picks up the empty coffee pot and frowns at it.
“It’s called regret,” Jess answers. “It’s called I’m going shopping with you next time.” She takes the coffee pot from his hands and slides it firmly back into place. Then unplugs the machine. Just to make a point.
“Because you know fashion,” Poe says flatly, giving her a dubious look. Jess chooses to ignore this.
“C’mon, my show is on.”
Poe’s expression turns wary. “The one with all the drama?”
“That one,” Jess confirms, already heading for the living room. Poe’s TV is small, and he only even has cable because Jess bullied him into it, but it works.
He trails after her. “I don’t get why they can’t just be happy,” he says, with an incredible level of weariness for somebody talking about a mediocre, non-primetime romance drama. “I don’t get why they don’t just talk to each other about stuff.”
Jess settles herself cross-legged on the couch, shoving a couple of pillows onto the floor. “That’d get rid of the drama part.”
Poe frowns, sitting next to her with one knee drawn up to his chest. He’s already leaning slowly toward her, clearly struggling to keep his eyes open. “I don’t get why that’s –”
Jess sighs heavily. “It’s just a genre, Dameron. It’s just a thing.”
“Mm,” he answers, giving the TV a nonplussed look as the show’s opening theme plays. After a while, he adds, “Just, if I had somebody...if I had somebody, I wouldn’t...”
He trails off, and Jess glances over just in time to see his eyes close. There’s a soft thump against her shoulder as he slumps over to lean his head there, and she shifts to free her arm from underneath him, draping it over his shoulders instead. His hair is still damp, and he grumbles wordlessly at her when she ruffles it, twitching away from her.
“Is that all it takes?” she says. “A walk? Shit, Dameron, you need a dog.”
Poe’s eyes flicker open, and he shifts to lie down with his head in her lap instead before closing them again. “Can’t,” he mumbles.
“What?”
“Dog. M’not...” He trails off again for long enough that Jess thinks he’s actually asleep this time. “Better...enough.”
Which gives her that feeling again, like she wants to shake him or hug him. Or yell at him. Or maybe do all three at once.
Instead she just pets his dumb hair, her eyes on the beautiful nonsense currently occurring on the TV screen. Poe doesn’t move or gripe at her or anything, so probably he really is falling asleep now.
“You will be,” she tells him. “You know that? You will.”
For a long time he doesn’t answer. And then, softly, without opening his eyes: “I know.”