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“I hate winter,” Poe announces, for probably the third time since this morning. He feels like he should be allowed, though, on account of the blistering cold on his face and the slush somehow inside of his boots and the near-offensive joy that Finn is getting out of this objectively miserable weather.
“That’s the fifth time you’ve said that,” Finn answers, making his way through a snowdrift that used to be the sidewalk.
So, fifth time since this morning. Whatever.
“Fifth time I’ve meant it, too,” Poe says, gripping tight to Finn’s hand as he skids sideways on a patch of ice. Finn’s wearing these thick woolen mittens that Rey knitted him for his birthday, and it makes it hard to hold his hand but Poe’s been doing his damndest. BB-8 bounds blissfully along in front of them at the end of his leash, all dressed up in his orange winter coat and chomping down the occasional mouthful of snow along the way. Nobody else is insane enough to be out in this storm, so Poe’s been letting him zigzag back and forth as he pleases, occasionally dragging all three of them off-balance.
But Finn stops them now, turning to look Poe over with a frown. “You have to wear the hat, Poe.”
Poe makes a face. “I don’t –”
“Oh, come on,” Finn says, and reaches into Poe’s coat pocket to find the rumpled knit hat he’d stuffed there earlier.
It’s a perfectly fine hat. Finn picked it out. Which is why it’s a sensible dark blue and not bright orange or anything. It’s probably warm, too, and Poe isn’t even entirely sure why he’s refusing to wear it except as a general protest against winter. Or hats? Or something.
“Buddy, I’m fine,” Poe complains, but he stands still as Finn tugs the hat over his snow-damp hair.
“What? You afraid it’ll mess up your curls?” Finn says, and Poe doesn’t respond to that, because...yeah. Yeah, he is. A little bit.
It must show on his face – everything always does – because Finn adds an exasperated, “Oh my god, Poe,” before he takes Poe’s hand in his and they let BB-8 pull them onward again.
“I don’t understand how you got Jess and Rey to agree to this,” Poe says, after a while.
“Meeting up for lunch on the one day nobody has work?” Finn asks flatly. “Yeah, it’s a terrible idea.”
Which, okay, he has a point, but – Poe doesn’t know how to explain it to Finn, the way this sort of cold burrows right into his bloodstream, makes him want to give up on ever moving again. So he tries out a dramatic sigh instead, and says, “This is practically a blizzard, buddy, they could die out here. We could die out here.”
Finn knocks their shoulders together lightly and stops them again five feet from the damn cafe. Poe’s about to start protesting, except then Finn kisses him, hard.
“You look good in the hat,” Finn explains, pulling back and leaving Poe to lean stupidly after him, lips tingling.
“I’ll wear the hat,” he says, as Finn drags him forward and opens the door for the three of them.
“You’re already wearing the hat.”
“Yeah, but I’ll wear it – more.”
“Okay,” says Finn seriously. “Sure.”
They knock the snow from their boots and wander over the threshold to find Jess and Rey already at a table in the back corner. They’re the only ones here, except for whatever unlucky barista drew the short straw. The death-by-blizzard straw.
“Dameron,” Jess says, leaning back in her chair and giving him a once-over. “You look miserable.”
“I am miserable,” Poe answers, and lets her reel him in by his scarf while Rey and BB-8 fuss at each other. “I’m cold and wet and miserable and it’s all Finn’s fault.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Jess tells Finn. “He’s a spoiled West Coast brat. Doesn’t understand the concept of a long winter.”
“We moved when I was little,” Poe reminds her, and she shrugs.
“Still spoiled.”
It’s not true, not really. Poe knows plenty about long winters. Knows how to scrape by on hope and pretty much nothing else, how to make one meal last you a full day, how to hunker down in a library or a cheap coffee shop so you don’t have to go back to the freezing apartment you can’t afford to really heat.
He knows how to cling to whatever rays of light he gets, how to chase a sunset around the block just to see the bright-burning colors and try to remember that the world won’t always look so gray.
He knows, because his first winter in the city had been this endless, suffocatingly gray thing, the cold rooted so deep in his bones that he couldn’t stop feeling it no matter what he did. He remembers that whole year in this weird, blurry sort of way, everything distant and broken and half-nonsensical, like a dream.
(There are flickers of clarity: C’ai, from the volunteer center where Poe used to spend the afternoons, quietly handing Poe this giant tupperware full of homemade soup after their shift one day. Or Tallie from the VA office, bullying Poe into accepting what she claimed was her brother’s old winter coat, after it started to snow and he kept showing up in an increasingly battered leather jacket. She’d left twenty dollars in the left-side pocket and claimed no knowledge of this when he’d tried to give it back.)
Of course, Jess doesn’t actually know about any of that. None of them do. So Poe just shrugs at her and pulls his scarf off, folding it up on the floor instead so BB has somewhere a little more comfortable to lie down.
“Look, I’m an old man with achy knees,” he says, bending said knees to sit down with a wince. “I get to complain a little.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jess answers, and claps him on the back before heading toward the counter.
He feels Finn’s sharp glance before he actually sees it, somehow. It’s a you didn’t tell me this sort of glance, and he’s maybe going to have to elaborate later, but for now he just settles in his chair, digging a treat out of his pocket and handing it to BB.
Rey and Finn start up chatting about something to do with Rose Tico’s garage, and Poe tries to listen, he really does. It’s just – he’s just drifting, a little, because it’s been a long few days of work and volunteering and now the snow and the cold. But it’s warm and bright in here, and they’re playing some kind of weirdly soothing obscure indie pop over the speakers, and... He’s just going to close his eyes, for a second, he’s just...
“Poe. Poe.”
“Yeah, here,” Poe says, too loud, jerking upright and nearly banging his knee into the table. Which is not his table, because...Because, cafe. Lunch. Right. He feels BB-8 gnawing on his boot and leans down absently to pet him. When he lifts his head again, Finn’s looking at him with faint amusement and less faint concern.
“I got you hot chocolate,” he says, and pushes a mug toward Poe. It’s got whipped cream and chocolate syrup and everything, although the whipped cream has melted down a little.
“My hero,” Poe sighs, and grins at Finn’s eyeroll before he takes a long sip, closing his eyes again for just a second as warmth floods through him. He scans the cafe, gaze settling on Jess and Rey up at the counter together, talking animatedly. And that’s good news for Jess, but... “They ditched us,” he says, faux-offended.
Finn nudges his arm affectionately. “They’re getting us food. You ditched us. You fell asleep.”
“You made me walk here in a blizzard,” Poe answers.
“It’s a five minute walk, Poe.”
Poe stretches, curling his toes in his tragically still-wet boots. “Felt a lot longer.”
Finn’s quiet for a moment, and then he looks at Poe in this very measured, considering way he has sometimes when he’s trying to figure something out. “Your knees ache?”
Poe blinks back at him. “Huh?”
“You said your knees...”
“Oh, no,” Poe says, shifting in his seat. “Uh. I mean, yeah, but...you’re dating a senior citizen, so—”
“I wouldn’t’ve made you walk if I –”
Poe lets out a startled laugh. “Finn, buddy, it’s not that bad. It’s not even – it’s just the one knee, mostly.”
Finn frowns at him. “Still.”
“It’s just a winter thing,” Poe says, which he feels is a reasonable enough explanation, but Finn’s brow remains furrowed, so he tries again. “It’s like – soon as it gets cold, everything that ever broke starts up complaining.” He shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.”
“You broke your knee?” Finn says.
“He broke the whole damn leg,” Jess answers from behind Poe, before he can manage to deflect that one. “We got sandwiches,” she adds, as Rey sets down a tray of them.
“What happened to your leg?” Rey asks, mouth already half full of sandwich. (He really loves that about Rey. How she talks with her mouth full and doesn’t care and asks whatever questions she wants.)
“It’s not a good story,” Poe says, waving a hand. “Just a dumb accident.”
Jess glances at him, and Finn gives him this long, unimpressed look, but Rey – Rey gets it. He can tell by her eyes that she gets it. She says, “Oh, all right,” and launches right into telling them about the strangest things Luke Skywalker has said so far this week, which turns out to be an extremely effective distraction.
“How’re you supposed to feel the balance of the universe?” Finn asks, mystified, and Rey shrugs.
“You just...do. You guys should try it.”
“I don’t think I’d be good at that,” Poe says doubtfully.
“You’re good at knocking the universe off-balance,” Jess offers.
“I’m good at other things too,” he protests.
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like –” Poe starts, and flounders.
“Flying dangerous machines at unnecessarily high speeds,” Finn suggests. So apparently he isn’t over the whole barrel roll thing, but it’s not like he was even in the plane so Poe’s just gonna go ahead and ignore that for now.
“Flying,” Poe repeats. “And wearing hats.” Finn snorts.
“Aren’t you afraid it’ll mess up your curls?” Jess asks.
“No,” Poe says firmly, and refuses to meet her eyes.
*
“What did happen?” Finn asks, as they’re trudging home later. “To your leg.”
Poe doesn’t answer for a second, too intent on getting one foot in front of the other on the increasingly icy sidewalk. “I got shot down,” he says distractedly, as BB-8 drags him toward a trash can and his boots slip right out from under him. Finn, being an actual hero, grabs Poe around the waist to steady him.
“You mean when you were–”
“Yeah,” Poe says, glancing toward Finn. “And it didn’t, uh. I mean, those guys didn’t care about, you know. Healing. So it’s sore sometimes. But hey, it works.” He kicks out at a snowdrift to demonstrate. “These boots, though—”
Finn frowns. “What’s wrong with the boots?”
“They’re not waterproof is what,” Poe says. “Got my feet all soaked.”
“Poe!”
“What?”
“You were sitting in there with freezing wet feet?”
“Yeah?”
“You should’ve said something. You never say anything.”
That’s another thing he remembers, from that first gray winter. His dad visiting his freezing cold apartment, looking around with growing distress at Poe’s empty cabinets and the single tupperware of soup in the fridge. Damn it, kid, you shoulda said something. Why didn’t you say anything?
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Poe says. “What were you gonna do, give me your socks?”
“I don’t know,” Finn huffs. “Maybe. We could’ve moved by the heater.”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Poe repeats.
Finn’s breath puffs out white in the cold. “You’re gonna get frostbite and tell me it’s not a big deal. You’re gonna get stabbed one of these days and tell me it’s not a big deal.”
“I mean, hey, as long as I’m not losing any limbs...”
“Poe.”
“Okay, okay,” Poe says. “So I’ll say something next time. You can give me your socks and save the day and then die of frostbite yourself. A Shakespearean tragedy. They’ll write songs about us.”
“Poe,” Finn says again, but it’s more of a sigh this time.
Poe squeezes his gloved hand, and says, “I’m doing fine, buddy. You gotta trust me on that.” He wishes, sometimes, that he could show Finn exactly how not-fine he used to be, make him understand how much better things are now. Except that he doesn’t think he could deal with it, having Finn see him like that.
“You fly like you have a death wish,” Finn says, after a pause.
“It was a barrel roll!” Poe protests. “Standard trick. The people love it.”
“Yeah? They love it when you dive straight for the ground too?”
“Hey, that was a great dive,” Poe says. “Tell me that wasn’t the best dive you ever saw.” Sure, the plane wasn’t technically built for that sort of thing, but Han Solo had looked sort of begrudgingly proud even as he harangued Poe about it later.
“You’re gonna give me a heart attack,” Finn mutters.
“You knew what you signed up for, buddy.” He tries to ignore the way his nerves prickle in his stomach at his own words, reawakening the fear that’s always lurking somewhere in him – that Finn will realize that no, actually, he hadn’t signed up for this, that maybe he doesn’t actually want this.
But then Finn smiles at him, and the nerves all but disappear.
“Yeah,” Finn says, holding tight to Poe’s hand, “I did.”
Poe tries to answer that, except all he really does is let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He lifts his eyes toward the patch of sky he can see between buildings, watches it going all pale purple and pink and edged with gold.
“C’mon,” he says abruptly, guiding Finn and BB-8 toward a side street.
“Home’s the other way,” Finn says, bemused.
“Yeah,” says Poe, marching them determinedly onward, “yeah, but you can see a really good sunset from over here.”
Finn doesn’t say anything for long enough that Poe turns uncertainly back toward him. And is summarily pulled into a soft, slow kiss.
“For the hat?” Poe asks when they pause for breath, unable to keep the stupid grin off his face. BB’s tugging at the end of the leash, impatient, and Poe has to shuffle his feet to keep his balance.
Finn’s eyes are serious and bright. “For you,” he answers.
And Poe – he figures he could live off the warmth of that for a long, long time.