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There was a screech of metal as the ship careened through the trees, multiple panels sparking and smoking from the shock of repeated impact. BB-8 screamed in protest from where it had bolted itself to the side of the ship, but when the modified tandem X-Wing slid to a final stop on the jungle floor, there was a long, painful silence.
“Rey?” Poe coughed and ripped his helmet free, wiping at his throbbing temple. His fingers came away wet with blood. There was no response from his co-pilot. “ Force. ”
He scrambled with the buckles holding him in place, smacking the release on the final one with increasing desperation when it wouldn’t give; finally, it set him free, and he was leaning out of his seat and grabbing her shoulder a second later. “Rey?”
Her face was pale in the light filtering through the starviewer, and she didn’t respond to the second call of her name. Poe cursed more creatively in Yavini, heart in his throat, and not from the crash landing this time. He began to fumble with her restraints, needing to pull her free from the wreckage as quickly as possible. “Rey, you better not be dead, Finn will karking murder me if you’re dead—”
[ Beep! Bloop-beep-blo-oo! ]
“Right. And Beebee-Ate will help get rid of the body.” Poe succeeded in pulling Rey free of her seat and, with BB-8’s help, got the exit cleared and opened. For the next few minutes, he ignored the screaming pain in his side, no doubt from broken ribs, so that he could drag Rey out of the X-Wing and to relative safety in the cover of the jungle.
After propping her up against a tree, Poe unclipped Rey’s helmet and pulled it off her before putting a hand to her temple. Poe bit back a shout of relief when she stirred and groaned. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused before she seemed to notice Poe hovering over her.
“Hey there, Jedi.” Later, he might regret how much fondness and relief colored his voice, but he couldn’t summon the energy to care at the moment, not when she was squinting up at him and frowning. In fact, he was so relieved that he didn’t notice what his hand was doing: still resting against her face, cupping her freckled cheek delicately the way he always dreamed of doing. “Hey.”
Rey groaned again and wrinkled her nose. “What happened?”
“Bad guys showed up right as we took off, remember? Blocked us from hitting atmo, and you decided it wasn’t safe to enter Hyperspace so close to a settlement. We outpaced them for a while, but the second ion engine blew, and it was a pretty mad scramble after that to stay airborne. You did a good job, Jedi, but not even you can outrun gravity.”
She made a rude noise, as though in disagreement, and her fingers brushed against his wrist, finding the sliver of skin not covered by his flightsuit. Poe’s heart, still in his throat, picked up the pace. “That was … a lot of words, flyboy. You’re saying we crashed?”
“We crashed,” he confirmed, and Rey squeezed her eyes shut and grumbled, her fingers sliding to grip his wrist more tightly. Poe laughed affectionately. “So much for your record.”
“My record?” Rey cracked an eye open to look at him quizzically.
“Y’know. You said you never crashed anything you flew, first time we met.”
“Ugh.” Rey released his wrist and swatted his hand away. “I can’t believe you’d bring that up right now!”
Poe immediately felt the consequence of his misstep, and he stumbled back to sit on the hard-packed dirt, an apology in his mouth. “Kriff, Rey, I didn’t mean to—”
“We had just met, and you - you were trying to be all Mr. Best Pilot Of All Time! And then you tried to insinuate you could fly the Falcon better than me—”
“—Whoa, whoa, whoa, all I did was ask to fly the Falcon—”
“—So excuse me for not being perfect, for not knowing what to do when twenty-five blasted First Order ships chase us down on a dinky little moon I’ve never been to!” She leaned forward, away from the tree, small, thin finger jabbing against his sternum, and Poe shrank down, wondering if the ringing in his head was from the crash or the increasing panic of insulting the most powerful person in the galaxy.
“I’m sorry.” He meant it. “I was trying—failing—to be funny, lighten the mood a bit. I thought you were dead when we landed, Rey, you don’t know what that would—how much I—”
[ BEEP! ]
“Why should he stop, Beebee?” Rey called out curiously to the droid, her eyes fixed on Poe’s face.
The droid muttered something mutinously that Poe barely caught, and he frowned at the ornery unit. “No reason, he was just employing a filter I programmed into him a few months ago.”
“What filter?” Rey wasn’t scowling up at him in anger anymore, at least.
“Uh.” Poe rubbed his neck and ducked his head. “The Make-Sure-Poe-Dameron-Doesn’t-Put-His-Foot-in-His-Mouth-And-Ruin-Everything Filter. The general especially seemed to think it necessary.”
“The general?” Rey shook her head and rubbed her head, frowning as though the action caused her pain (and it probably did, given the egg-shaped, purple lump forming on her forehead). “No, she values your input, I know she does.”
“That’s not the kind of foot-in-mouth mistake I’m talking about,” Poe mumbled, but he was spared from further agony by the crackle of their comms. He was slightly faster to answer, and accepted the incoming transmission. “Commander Dameron speaking. Code: Alpha-Brentaal-Alpha.”
“Hello, Commander. Are you two in one piece?” The dry voice of Leia Organa came through clearly despite the static. “We have a very concerned Wookiee and former Stormtrooper here who’d like to know.”
“We’re okay, General.” Poe smiled at Rey and sat back tiredly. “Can’t say the same for our ship, though.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, ma’am. Seems I lost control of it, and we hit the ground pretty hard. The Dameron Special.”
Rey stared at him in shock, but he pretended not to notice, or to notice the heat that was creeping up his neck.
“You’re lucky I like you, and that I didn’t like that ship,” Leia snorted. “We’ll send a rescue squad if you’ll ping us your coordinates. Should be with you in an hour or so.”
“Thanks, General. See you soon.” Poe clicked the comms off and met Rey’s incredulous stare. “What?”
“Why did you say you’d crashed the ship?” Rey asked, her frown making a crease form between her eyebrows; Poe wanted to slip his forefinger along the line and smooth it away. He ignored the impulse, as he often did.
“Because.” Poe shrugged good-naturedly. “Wouldn’t do if the Resistance learned their best pilot was in the habit of crashing things. Better if they think the guy who always crashes did it.”
Rey frowned at him, but didn’t say anything. A more peaceful silence than before fell over them, wrapping them up in a bubble of thoughtful peace that Poe thought might just come from the Jedi in front of him. They sat with their backs to trees across from each other, their legs stretched out and feet almost meeting in the middle.
“...Poe?”
She spoke at long last, maybe a quarter of an hour into their wait.
“Yeah, Sunshine?” He used the nickname she often swatted him for, the one he’d given her in genuine affection months ago on a sun-drenched exoplanet, the one that was often in his mouth when he practiced a confession in the mirror of the ‘fresher every morning.
“We’ll probably have to fly the Falcon for a while, right? Until we get a new tandem?”
“That’s right.” Poe shrugged again and smiled at her, their boots brushing together for a second, long enough to make him blush.
“Right.” Rey nodded and studied him, a strange combination of bold and shy that was entirely Rey. Their boots brushed together again, but Rey didn’t pull away this time. “...Maybe you can fly it?”
His smile stretched across his face slower and brighter than Yavin rising on a clear summer’s day. “I’d like that, Sunshine. I’d really like that.”
“Good.” Her ears were pink where they peeked out from her tangled, sweat-dampened hair, and Poe thought he’d never seen anything prettier. “...Yeah. Good.”
They grew silent again, both of them smiling but not saying anything about it.
Best crash ever, Poe thought, only wincing slightly as he shifted and his ribs twinged. Best. Crash. Ever.