Chapter Text
Poe putters around his kitchen, reaching up to grab the marshmallows from where Kes stores them, behind the sugar. “Hey papa, do you want one or two-”
“Three!” Kes shouts from the living room. Poe snorts, wiggling his toes in his fuzzy socks as he plunks not one, not two, but three marshmallows into his father’s mug before grabbing the hot chocolates and walking out to where his dad’s waiting.
“Here,” Poe says, handing his dad the mug that looks like Kirk’s head. “Drink up, you deviant.”
“Deviant!” Kes raises his eyebrows while taking the mug and sighing in satisfaction, his hands cupping the warm ceramic. “Good to see that fancy edu-ma-cation is paying off, mijo.”
“Yup.” Poe settles next to his dad on the sofa and inhales the chocolate-y aroma lifting from Spock’s head. “Passed my Vocab test last week and everything.”
“But what about your French test?” Kes shoots him a keen glance, and Poe winces.
“Well, if someone had let me take Spanish for Fluent Speakers like I wanted to-”
Poe’s cut off by Kes mimicking him in high-pitched Spanish. He snorts and shoves his dad. “Ass.”
“Ass!” Kes hoots and leans back against the sofa. “My own flesh and blood! No respect!”
He’s got a good comeback to that, he really does, but the undeniable theme music chooses that moment to blast from the television, and both Damerons stop arguing long enough to shout -
“It’s the Price! Is! Right!”
Within minutes, they’re screaming obscenities at the television as Tammy Y. from Florida guesses that a GE Profile Countertop Microwave costs 198 dollars - “ Try 340!” Kes shouts indignantly - and they groan as she still is the closest person without going over.
The next hour passes much the same, with their increasingly enraged commentary filling up the homey interior of their living room. After the Showcase Showdown, both of them collapse, slightly burnt-out from all the excitement, and groan.
“Has it even started snowing yet?” Kes wonders, and Poe stands up and bounds to the window - there are more than a few flakes falling at this point, and the ground has a healthy coating of the white stuff, just not on the pavement.
“Hell yeah!” Poe fist pumps and grins at his dad. “I bet we’re gonna get the full foot!”
“You better. Crazy school district, making me care for my infant on my own time! It didn’t even starting snowing ‘til now! Halfway through the school day!”
Poe rolls his eyes at his father and steps away from the window to shove him. Kes laughs good-naturedly, and then stands with a groan, cracking his back. “I gotta go get some work done. See you at two-ish for lunch?” He heads for the stairs.
“Sure thing.” Poe grins at his dad and then winces as his dad calls back over his shoulder -
“Why don’t you get some homework done?”
“Should be a crime,” Poe grumbles, kicking his Jansport along to the dining room table, stationed oh-so-teasingly in front of the sliding door to their snow-filled backyard. “Making a person work on a snow day, absolutely evil.”
He flops down in his chair, still muttering to himself, and wrenches his backpack open. He groans at the stack of worksheets his French teacher had given them in anticipation of the days off - and that should be a felony - and tosses them on the table.
“Oui,” Poe mutters, scribbling some random answer down for number one. “Hon, hon, hon baguette.” He doodles a little tiny moustache and beret on the smiley face on top of the worksheet - like that little graphic made this experience less miserable, Madame Walter - and taps his pencil against the paper, already bored by number two. “Guhhh.” Poe drops his head to the table and stares out the back door wistfully.
He sits up, frowning, thinking he must have seen wrong through the flurries; but no, he was right.
A skinny girl is in the space between his house and Ben Kenobi’s house, the one right behind theirs. That in itself is unusual, as their neighborhood is pretty free about boundaries between the units, but it’s not her location that gives him pause.
She’s digging around in the snow wearing nothing but a thin-looking shirt and leggings, sneakers on her feet, and her hair loose around her bright red face. With a little squinting, and a bit of filling in the blank, Poe figures it out: she’s bending at the waist, standing up with a handful of snow, and depositing it somewhere else, specifically on a growing mound of snow. He grins to himself, as it’s a little charming, if only because there’s less than two inches of snow on the ground, and it’s the powdery kind, that doesn’t stick together. Good for her though, toughing it out in the cold.
Then, from his spot at his cozy dining room table, Poe can see her shiver. And that does it.
He runs up to his room, using his hands as well as his feet to climb the stairs (his father always makes fun of him for it, but it’s a habit Poe can’t really break, for some reason), and digs around for his warmest sweatshirt. He sniffs it warily, trying to remember if he washed it after practice, and nods to himself. It passes the sniff test. Poe also grabs a woolen hat with a fuzzy top, and a pair of his snow gloves.
Yanking on his coat, he thunders back down the stairs.
“Why all the commotion?” Kes shouts from his study. “Homework shouldn’t make noise!”
“I’m going to play outside!” Poe shouts back, already heading for the sliding door, completely unstoppable. A veritable juggernaut , he thinks. He definitely aced that Vocab test. “It’s good for me!”
“Says who?”
“Science!” Poe steps into his boots and laces them hastily. His dad wouldn’t actually stop him, but he’s worried about that girl being outside for a second longer than she has to without proper warmth. “See ya!”
His dad’s response is lost as he slides the back door open, walks outside, and closes the door again. He inhales deeply, the sharp, clean smell of the snow clearing his cloudy head automatically. Poe clomps through the powder covering his back porch and heads down the steps towards the middle of their back yards.
“Hey!” He calls. The girl looks up warily, and Poe smiles in what he hopes is a friendly way. “What are you doing?”
“...I think that’s pretty obvious.” The girl blinks at him and rolls her eyes like he’s stupid, and then goes back to bending and scooping and re-distributing snow.
“I mean, yeah, but,” Poe draws up close to her and gestures uselessly, his hands full of items. “It’s cold.”
“Mhm.”
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Yes?” The girl gives him a weird look, and he sees that her hands are bright red from where she’s been digging, and that inspires him to hold his own hands out.
“I saw you from my window.”
“You were watching me?” She looks up with a single eyebrow arched, and Poe notices that her eyes are hazel, with more than a small hint of green in them. They’re unlike any eyes he’s ever seen before, and while there’s snow trickling down his collar, sliding down his spine, Poe feels incredibly flush-warm all over.
“N-no.” Poe eyes the gloves in his hands and feels terribly inadequate. “I mean, yes, but-”
She stops moving the snow and stands to look at him more closely, and as cold as she looks, Poe wishes she’d go back to the part where she was looking down at her task and not up at him because crap on a stick, she’s pretty.
Then: crap on a stick? Oh God, she’s going to hate us.
“Are you alright?” She looks unworried, more irritated, but part of Poe thinks oh, hey, maybe she doesn’t hate us! She cares!
Or, she’s following normal social conventions. Which reminds him:
“I brought these for you.” Without any further explanation, he sticks his hands out towards her, his arms straight, elbows locked, and presents her with the gloves, the hat, and the sweatshirt.
You pretty. You cold. You need fire?
Me Poe. Me man. Me bring you fire.
This could be going better.
“Oh.” She looks surprised, honestly a little taken aback, and she has snowflakes on her eyelashes. It makes her eyes look even prettier. “...Thank you?” She takes them slowly, weighing each item, and he swears her face goes pink around the cold-red.
“It’s no problem.”
His anxiety bubbles up in his chest, and Poe feels like he’s sitting in a movie theater, watching his life fall apart from a distance, and he even thinks, oh, here’s the part where I babble endlessly to a really pretty girl - yes, she’s pretty, this is scientific fact - and I ruin everything because of my nervous talking. Maybe I, like, shouldn’t?, but of course he can’t hear his own damn self think because he’s too busy nervously babbling.
“No problem at all! I have a lot of sweatshirts,” he starts nodding, and the girl’s head tilts to the side as though he’s a very fascinating species of bug, “And that one’s pretty warm because, you know, I thought, she probably needs a warm one, and that’s my warmest one. And the hat! My dad knitted that hat, he knits me hats every year. His name is Kes, and he’s pretty good at knitting, so that should keep you warm, I mean, definitely warmer than you were because before you had no hat, and-” Local Teen Found Dead in Snow Pile From Embarrassment, flashes across his mind like a bad Buzzfeed headline. “And, uh, yeah. Just thought you’d like to be warm.”
“Huh.” She seems to consider this - or at least, be weighing how stupid he is - and then she shrugs, hands Poe back the gloves and hat, and pulls the sweatshirt on. It’s way too big for her (Poe was right when his first thought of her was skinny, but now that he’s up close, he can see that she’s a thousand and one things more than skinny), especially in the chest and shoulders, and the sleeves reach almost to the tips of her fingers.
“Corellia High School Falcons,” she reads aloud, looking down at the words emblazoned on the front of his sweatshirt. Poe’s brain needs a second to re-wire after seeing this strange girl wearing his sweatshirt. That’s probably normal, right? “Do you play some sort of sport ball?”
“Football,” Poe says weakly, rubbing his neck. He wishes he’d brought a scarf, as the snowflake collection is really building up in his collar.
“And your dad’s name is Kes,” she continues, and Poe nods, happy that she caught one usable detail from his ramble. Then, she laughs - miraculously, and he swears the gates of Heaven open up and light shines down on them, but that’s probably a little too metaphorical - and Poe smiles easily in response, not worrying about why she’s laughing. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I don’t even know your name.”
“Oh!” Poe blinks, and his cheeks heat in an uncomfortable juxtaposition to the cold winter air. “Name! It’s Poe!” He shakes himself, mortified that he butchered an introduction like that, and he tries again. “I’m Poe Dameron.” He holds his hand out with his trademark smile, the one that got him elected Homecoming King, and the girl takes it with a small smile. “And you are?”
“Rey.” She pulls her hand away from his and slips the gloves on. Next goes the hat - she shakes the snow out of her hair with an adorable pout before cramming it on her head as though she’s never worn a hat before - and it sits nicely against her brown hair.
“Just Rey?” He asks after a suitable about of time has passed for her to offer her last name without prompting.
“Mhm.” She nods, distracted, and looks over her shoulder at the house behind her as though worried she’s about to get caught doing something.
“So, why are you outside? Like, without a coat?”
“Uh.” She squirms, embarrassed, and Poe almost takes the question back because what a stupid question, what if she doesn’t own a coat, he and his dad do the coat drive every year, it’s not that unusual, but she shrugs awkwardly. “I just moved here from Arizona, the Jakku Desert, actually. I’ve never seen snow before, and I guess I got a little...excited.” She hangs her head and scuffs her tattered Keds against the snow. “Pretty dumb, I know.”
“No!” Poe shakes his head adamantly, not wanting her to feel upset for a second more. “No, I totally get it. I moved here from Yavin! We never got snow there, so my first winter here, man, I was like, ten, we got almost two feet in one day! I thought I was having a dream about living at the North Pole!” Please stop talking. Forever.
“Really?” She smiles, and it’s a shy smile again, a sweet one, and Poe nods, hoping to relay his earnestness.
“Really really.” Poe looks around them and figures he might as well tell her. “I should let you know, though, having learned from experience - this isn’t the kind of snow that you can do stuff with.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s” - Poe bends down to grab a bit of snow and sprinkles it demonstrably; it falls between his fingers as a fine powder - “Not wet enough.”
“What?” Rey’s staring at him incredulously, and Poe nods for emphasis. “Snow is just frozen water. All water is equally wet. How could it not be wet enough.”
“Because.” Poe gestures vaguely, wishing he’d paid more attention when Leia had explained this. “It’s...the temperature of the surface! It makes it….less wet!”
“...So how is it the snow’s fault?” Rey cocks her head, clearly trying to understand, and Poe wishes he’d never brought this up.
“C’mon, you can’t even make a snowball with this stuff.” Poe scoops up some more snow as a demonstration, and tries to fling it at Rey. She squawks in indignation, but the gentle wind, gentle enough that he hadn’t even noticed its direction or existence before this point, blows it back in his own face. “See?”
Rey’s laughing again, and then she’s down grabbing more snow. “I bet I can make it work.”
“It’s not a matter of determination, Rey, I promise, it’s-” He’s cut off by snow in his face, and he coughs in surprise. “What? But, how?”
“That’s what I thought.” He wipes the snow out of his face and faux-glares at her.
“That was a fluke. And no!” He holds his hands out to stop her as she goes down for more snow. “That wasn’t a challenge! Here, if you just wait for more snow to build up, I can help you make an actual snowman later.”
“Really?” Rey’s still crouched down, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Really! And in the meantime, you can come over for some hot chocolate.” Smooth Poe, the one that he wishes would show up more often, moonwalks around in his brain. Successful Human Interaction.
“I don’t know.” Rey looks doubtfully over her shoulder.
“Do you live there? With Mr. Kenobi?” He points in the direction of the house, and Rey nods slowly, staring down at the ground. “He and my dad are friends, he won’t mind if you come over.”
“I don’t know if Mr. Kenobi will let me,” Rey says so quietly, Poe thinks he misheard her. He immediately notes that she doesn’t call him anything familiar; Mr. Kenobi. Poe even calls the guy Ben sometimes - and Old Ben, once, but he was immediately sprayed by a hose and hadn’t tried since - so it’s odd that she calls him ‘Mr. Kenobi.’
“I can go talk to him with you,” Poe offers, holding his hand out to her. Rey takes it reluctantly, eyeing it warily, and he slowly helps pull her to her feet. She dusts the snow off her black leggings, and Poe continues. “If you want to, of course.”
“No, I mean - yes. Yes, that sounds...nice?” Rey, who at first seemed so aloof and cool (in every sense of the word) suddenly looks wrong-footed and awkward. Poe lets go of her hand as they walk towards her house, and she doesn’t even seem to notice.
He climbs the familiar steps and knocks on the back door. Within seconds, Ben Kenobi comes into view; he’s an older gentleman, in his sixties, and he’s always wearing a brown sweater and jeans, and his face is extraordinarily kind, and his eyes clever. Poe likes Mr. Kenobi.
When he sees them, he waves merrily and beams - Poe smiles back, and Rey lifts a half-hearted hand, one of her arms around her stomach. Poe looks at her in concern, and then back to Mr. Kenobi as he slides his back door open. “Hey, you two!” He says cheerfully. “You’ve met, then.”
“Yes, sir.” Poe smiles at him, and Rey shuffles her feet next to him. “I wanted to ask if Rey could come over. My dad’s home, of course, and you can call him to check.”
“No, no.” Mr. Kenobi waves a withered hand and smiles. “I trust you, young master Dameron.” Poe likes it when Mr. Kenobi calls him that - it started when he was ten, and while he’s outgrown a lot from his childhood, he secretly still likes that name, as it makes him feel like a squire to a knight on a quest.
“Thank you, sir.” Poe smiles and then looks to Rey, who’s blinking snow out of her eyes.
“I see you’ve lent Rey some warmer gear!” Mr. Kenobi’s smile widens, and he looks a little guilty. “I’m so sorry, my dear, I was not anticipating a snowstorm this early in the season. We’ll take you to get a decent coat as soon as the roads clear.”
“You don’t need to,” Rey whispers at the ground, her earlobes flaming red. Something twinges in Poe’s chest, and when he looks at Mr. Kenobi, he sees the old man frowning, worry clear in his blue eyes.
“I assuredly do. It will snow again, and even when it doesn’t snow, it will be cold. You deserve to be warm.” Rey nods, her jaw tightening, and Mr. Kenobi’s smile is even softer than Poe’s ever seen it. “Run along then, and I’ll expect you back for supper?”
“Five o’clock?” Rey says, lifting her chin and offering Mr. Kenobi a tentative smile. Poe envisions, without further provocation, a delicate flower unfurling towards the sun, and his heart throbs a little more.
“Five o’clock.” Ben smiles at both of them, tells Poe to give Kes his best, and slides the door shut.
Rey releases a breath that Poe hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and her body’s still tight as they walk across their backyards. Every now and then, she eyes him defiantly, as though daring him to ask what that was about, but Poe doesn’t ask. He figures she’d tell him if she wanted to.
“He’s worried that I don’t have friends.” Rey breaks the silence abruptly when they reach Poe’s porch, and he pauses with his foot on the bottom stair. “Mr. Kenobi. He’s worried that he doesn’t see me hanging out with people.”
“Oh, uh,” he clears his throat, and feels his brow furrow. “When did you move here?”
“Only a week ago.” Rey snorts and rolls her eyes, but it looks mostly affectionate. “Mr. Kenobi’s pretty nice. Really nice, actually. But he worries a lot. And” - she lifts a finger as they climb the stairs side by side - “I do have a friend. Finn.”
“Finn Trooper?” Poe grins in recognition. “I love Finn. We run spring track together!”
“You play two whole sport balls,” Rey marvels with could be fake or genuine admiration. “Wow-ee.” Fake, then. Poe can’t seem to be bothered to be offended.
“Three sport balls, actually.” He stomps his boots on the doormat, shaking loose the excess snow. “You’re forgetting swimming.”
“Are there balls in swimming?”
Poe almost makes a terrible, horrible joke, but he catches himself just barely, wincing in a way he prays is imperceptible. Then, he looks at Rey and sees her grinning at him evilly.
“That was a set up,” Poe gasps, sliding the door open for her. He bows deeply, gesturing for her to walk in, and Rey laughs brightly at his antics, entering with a small curtsy. He grins, feeling the urge to do a dance overwhelm him. Rey stops at the entry rug, and Poe pulls off his jacket, dropping it in the drip-proof tray his dad set out for boots and wet-gear. He really should hang it on the available hook, but that would be responsible, and he’s trying to shake the snow out of his curls, so, priorities.
Rey’s still standing on the entry rug, snow sliding off the sleeves of the borrowed sweatshirt, her Keds obviously soaked through; her eyes dart around the dining room, taking in the numerous photos on the wall, the sturdy oak of their table, the countless knick knacks from Guatemala, Cuba, Miami, and Yavin cluttering up most of the available space. She looks guilty, and anxious, and Poe gestures to her.
“Come on in,” he urges her. “You can leave your shoes there, if you want.” Rey nods, and slides the Keds off - she isn’t even wearing socks, and Poe winces at how bright red her toes are - depositing them carefully to the side of his jacket in the tray. Her gloves follow, and she hangs the hat up on one of the available hooks.
Then she goes to wiggle out of the sweatshirt, and Poe stops her. “No, no, stay warm, keep it on,” he encourages, and pretends that it’s not because he sort of likes how she looks in his sweatshirt. And it sort of is about that, but he also really does want her to be warm.
“Mijo? Is that you?”
“Yes, papa!” Poe shouts back, and Kes shouts something in Spanish, something about Kenobi called, said you were bringing a guest, and Rey draws up to Poe’s shoulder. His dad comes running down the hallway, flying around the corner in typical-Kes-fashion, and Poe huffs in an overly fond, embarrassed way.
But, when Kes appears so abruptly, Poe doesn’t miss the full body flinch of the person standing next to him.
Kes notices too, apparently, but doesn’t comment. Instead, he smiles warmly. “I hear you wanted some hot chocolate?” Poe notices that his dad is speaking at about 75% reduced speed, his voice softer than before.
“Y-yes, sir.” Rey nods, nervous again, and Kes beams at her, and then looks down. He gasps in unfeigned horror.
“Cerditos pobrecitos!” Kes stares at her toes. “Let me get you some fuzzy socks. Mijo, go start the hot cocoa!”
“You got it.” Poe laughs as his dad hurtles away to grab some warm socks. Rey’s staring after him, still shivering slightly next to him. “So, that’s my dad.”
“He seems...nice.” The defiant look is back in her eyes, and Poe wonders if she’s thinking about the flinch, but his gut’s never wrong, and it’s telling him to Definitely Not Ask About It.
“He does seem nice,” Poe agrees solemnly. He nods his head towards the kitchen, and Rey follows him over. “...Until he cheats at cards.”
Distantly, on the second floor, Kes shouts, “I heard that!”
“I wanted you to!” Poe shouts back, and he grins at Rey, reaching up to the cabinet for ingredients. “So. How many marshmallows?”