Chapter Text
Poe narrowed his eyes, fingers tightening around the controls. He deftly piloted his craft around the obstacles in front of him, noting with satisfaction that he was in the lead. Only a few more seconds and his mission would be complete; he could almost taste victory. The final stretch - if he could just hold steady...
A knock came at the door, quiet and almost seeming to realize its mistake. But it was too late.
Poe's concentration was broken; as he turned to glance at the door, a banana peel appeared from nowhere and caused his cart to spiral wildly out of control. The cart lost speed and continued to spin, passed on all sides by the other racers. Poe wrestled with the controller, desperately trying to save his perfect run. No use; the cart sailed gracefully off the edge of the Rainbow Road.
Dropping the controller stiffly, Poe slowly turned to look at the door. His eyes flashed as though he was trying to burn through the steel and the poor knocker on the other side. Woe be to the fool who interrupted Mario Kart Night.
Finn sat quietly on the couch, knowing better than to try to intercept his incensed friend. Poe, who took very little seriously in his day-to-day life, could not be more serious when it came to video games. Though both Finn and Poe had only begun playing a few weeks ago, Finn had quickly learned that to beat Poe at any game was to open oneself up to any number of pranks and means of petty retribution for the next week. After a particularly brutal defeat at Call of Duty (Finn's experience with Stormtrooper battle simulations lent him mad skills when it came to first-person shooters), Poe resorted to communicating not through words but through reassigning Finn to garbage compactor cleanout in the base's computer system for three days. Finn's run-in with an unidentified tentacle quickly convinced him to remove COD from the game lineup.
***
The whole video game business began shortly after Finn had joined the Resistance. Barracks on D'Qar were surprisingly roomy; each suite consisted of one to three bedrooms centered around a small common area. A transfer had left Poe's second bedroom empty, and who better to move in than the Resistance's newest gunner, Finn? The two quickly determined that their common room was lacking a certain level of awesomeness, and so decided to spend their days off trawling Outer Rim planets for cheap finds. Two futons, a food rehydrator, an old viewscreen and sound system, and several beanbags later, the new common room was nearly complete.
However, something was missing. Finn found it one day in a market on a backwater forest planet. "What's a... wih?" he asked the vendor, carefully pulling a beat-up whitish box out of a tub of wires.
"Ah, yes, the Wii," stated the clerk, sagely rubbing her many pairs of hands together. "An ancient relic. Apparently, it can be attached to a viewscreen, and, with these metal discs, provides some sort of entertainment."
"How much?" asked Finn, pulling what appeared to be cases full of the metal discs from the box.
"Forty credits," said the vendor with a gleam in her eye.
"We'll take it for thirty," stated Poe, sauntering over from his inspection of what appeared to be lamps containing lava.
"Sold!" trilled the shopkeeper, opening her arms in a conciliatory gesture. "Enjoy your purchase!"
Poe found a technician to help them wire the Wii up to the viewscreen, and within the first few minutes of creating a character in Skyrim, they fell in love with the world of video games. Finn fought zombies between guard shifts, and Poe could always be found playing with his Sim family after long flights. Mario Kart was undeniably their favorite, though. Each Thursday night, Poe would swipe a pizza from the mess hall and rehydrate it; Finn would clean up the previous week's dirty clothes and gear in preparation for the big night. Sometimes Rey would come, if she could get away from her apprenticeship long enough, and they would eat pizza and play Mario Kart long into the night. It was sacred, this custom. Nobody interrupted Mario Kart Night. Until someone did.
***
Poe stalked over to the door. Finn followed cautiously behind, ready to intervene if Poe tried to throttle their visitor. Poe stopped; turned to Finn. "Find out who it is," he said, crossing his arms and pursing his lips. Finn crossed to the door with an eye on Poe, then turned to look through the peephole. He gasped. "Well?" asked Poe impatiently.
"You're not gonna...well...I guess you'll just have to see," said Finn, opening the door.
A tall, dark haired man stood in the doorway. By all respects, his long black robes and the gleaming hilt of his lightsaber should have inspired terror, intimidation; instead, Kylo Ren couldn't have looked more like a kicked puppy if he tried. Poe's expression immediately shifted from one of rage to slight disgust - he refused to give Ren the pleasure of any sort of reaction. "Um...hi, Ren. Can we do anything for you?" asked Finn, trying to defuse the situation. As a fellow defector, Finn understood Ren's position better than anyone else on the base, although killing Han Solo in cold blood was a little tricky to empathize with. But if General Organa trusted him, then who was Finn to doubt the man's loyalty?
"Well. Yes. As it happens, I was in the area, and I just thought. Ahem." Kylo stammered, seemingly unwilling to divulge the reason for his visit or to step over the threshold. "I, you, I was hoping to ask your advice on a certain... Oh, what's the point. I desperately need your help."
Finn stared in surprise. He had never seen Ren show any sort of emotion other than anger, and yet here he was, not only "desperately" needing advice, but...were those tears in his eyes? Perhaps his pride was stung by admitting he needed help from people who had quite recently been his mortal enemies. Finn kindly guided the taller man into the room and sat him down on the nicer of the two futons, taking a seat opposite on the futon with the suspicious bloodstain. Poe, meanwhile, grumpily slammed the door and moved to hover on Finn's left; arms crossed, eyebrows lowered. Kylo averted his eyes from those of the angry pilot, instead choosing to address his story to the toes of his shiny black boots. "Well?" prompted Finn, curious to learn the reason for the highly irregular situation he now found himself in.
"Okay," began Kylo, speaking carefully in a monotone, as though by paying attention to his manner of speaking he could distance himself from the actual words. "So, as you know, I've been here for about three weeks, and, um, yeah. I'm having a bit of a problem, uh, with... uh, with Rey."
If Poe had been a Wookie, Finn was sure that all his hair would be standing on end. Since they had met, the three young adults - the Jedi-in-training, the star pilot, and the Stormtrooper-turned-gunner - had been inseparable. They considered one another family. For Ren to strut his way into Mario Kart Night, sit himself down in Poe's spot on Poe's futon and complain about his friend was an insult too grievous to bear. Poe unconsciously took a step forward, and, sensing the threat despite his emotional turmoil, Kylo threw up his hand as if to freeze Poe in place with the Force. Realizing his mistake, Kylo dropped his hand with a look of horror on his face. "I'm so sorry. I'm so used to... Anyway." Poe grimaced and backed off to a somewhat safer distance.
"Go on," said Finn. He, unlike Poe, had detected a note of bittersweetness in the way Ren had mentioned their friend, and was dying to know what problem could possibly generate that kind of response from the usually stoic Knight of Ren.
"Well, the thing is, so, you guys know she's not around a lot." Rey's apprenticeship to Luke Skywalker necessitated that she travel to Ahch-To for days at a time, but luckily her role as a mechanic for the Resistance gave her leeway to come back to base. "But whenever she is, uh, around, I can't stop thinking about her," Kylo continued, running a hand through his hair. "I can always feel her presence, and I keep finding myself bumping into her in the halls and stuff and, ugh..." Ren buried his face in his hands, trailing off with a groan.
"Well, I'm sorry, Sith Lord, but we can't help you with all your fancy Force stuff. Why don't you go on back to your Darkness and try and find some answers? Somewhere far away!" Poe spat, turning his attention to determining whether or not the last piece of pizza was still worthy of consumption. He decided it was.
"It's got nothing to do with the Force or any of that stuff," mumbled Kylo through his gloves. "I think... I think I'm in love."
Uproar. Finn, who had been standing up to grab himself a soda, tripped over an end table and went crashing down onto a hibernating BB-8, who woke with an undignified shriek and careened straight into a wall. Poe choked on his pizza and toppled over the back of the futon, landing face-first on the suspicious bloodstain. Hearing the commotion, Kylo looked up from wallowing in self-pity and expensive leather to see what had seemed before like a perfectly nice room descend into anarchy.
"Are you out of your mind?" Finn sat up, wondering if he had heard Ren correctly. "Why don't you go try and date someone who'd like you more? For frick's sake, Chewbacca likes you better than Rey does! And he shot you!"
A flush spread across Kylo's thin face. "I know, I know! I'm doomed. But I can't help it. I need your advice."
"Geez..." groaned Finn, rubbing the bump developing on his forehead where he had hit the floor. "I dunno, man. I don't have a whole lot of experience with dating, but I'd say that your chances with Rey are approximately nil. Maybe you should just try and move on?"
"NO."
Finn and Kylo both jumped at the forceful proclamation, and turned to look at the figure that had uttered it. Poe clumsily raised himself from his prone position on the futon and wiped the remains of his pizza off his face with the back of his hand. He raised himself to his full height and despite his disheveled appearance, he cut an imposing figure. "Ren. I hate you. You're rude, you're actively evil, and your fashion sense is rough at best." Kylo opened his mouth to object, but Poe silenced him with an imperious finger. "And yet. AND YET. I will help you. Yes, in a gesture of goodwill and peacemaking, I will donate to you the services of Poe "Cupid" Dameron."
"Wai-wai-wai-wai-wait." objected Finn, rising off the couch. "Firstly, you said that nickname like it was something to be proud of. Secondly, how the hell are you planning to set Sith-boy here up with sweet, kind, death-grudge-holding Rey?"
"Exactly!" Poe pointed at Finn like he had just discovered the secrets of the Force and began to pace. "Grudge holding! Love isn't about the past or about interests or even about whether or not the two people like each other! It's about basic compatibility of personality! And look at Rey! Sure, she's a paragon of goodness and light à la the Jedi of old, but underneath she's a ball of fire! She's got passion! That grudge holding? Anger! Now, passion, anger, not to mention Force-use and good hairstyle choices? Who's this sound like?"
"Leia?" "Luke Skywalker?" "Admiral Ackbar?"
Poe smacked his forehead. "This is gonna be harder than I thought. YOU, REN, YOU DUMBASS. At the core, you and Rey are the same! And that's why I see it! That's why I ship it! That's why I'm gonna help you."
"Thank you," said Kylo, eyes suspiciously bright again.
"Finn, go to the cafeteria and see if you can't scrounge up anything for us to eat. We'll need the fuel." Poe bounded over to Kylo and pulled him to his feet by the front of his robes. "You, over here." Grabbing a tablet, Poe shoved Kylo onto the sketchy futon (Kylo managed to miss the bloodstain as he fell) and sat down beside him, stylus in hand. "Rey comes back tomorrow. Before then, we're gonna work out a comprehensive plan to woo her. I swear on my honor as a matchmaker, Ren. You two will be together in two months, tops. I believe in you," he added, poking Kylo in the chest with the stylus.
"Alright. I got insta-noodles, blue milk, and several boxes of Space-Scout cookies," Finn said as he strode back into the room and dropped his armload onto the coffee table.
"Jackpot!" Poe grabbed a box of Samoas and continued scrawling notes. "So, Ren. Tell me about yourself."
"There'th not mush to tell," said Kylo with a mouth full of Thin Mints. "What thort of thing do you want?"
"Stuff that Finn and I can use to talk you up in front of Rey. Like, what are you good at? Impressive accomplishments? That stuff."
"Hmm. Well, I'm good at the Force and all that. Don't mean to brag, but I've got pretty mean lightsaber skills. That you've seen. While I was trying to...nevermind."
"Can you shoot? Can you fly?" asked Poe, tapping his nose with the stylus. "Rey loves to fly, and I'm sure we could work something out there."
"Can I fly?" scoffed Kylo, a hint of his usual arrogant self reappearing. "You're talking to Han Solo's...yeah. Don't you worry. I can fly all right."
"Okay then. Force-user extraordinaire, fighting skills beyond compare, can fly..." Poe raised an eyebrow. "...all right, voluminous hair, has an 8-pack, etc. Here you are, Finn." Poe sent a copy of the list to Finn's datapad. "Remember, subtle. Now, for lover boy."
Poe turned quickly before Kylo could react and threw his arm around the other man's shoulders. "The art of flirting," said the pilot dramatically, staring into the middle distance and gesturing with his free hand, "is complex and only mastered after years of training. We've got like two hours. So here are the Dameron school's rules of HOW TO FLIRT. Ready?"
"No."
"All right, here we go. Step one," Poe now picked his datapad back up and began writing as he spoke. "Excuses to talk. I don't care what you're talking about, just let the girl know you know she's there and want to say things to her. The attention is flattering. Fallback topics of conversation: her apprenticeship, the latest battle, the weather. Try to avoid talking about times you've tried to kill her."
Kylo grimaced. "Since that's just about the only type of interaction we've had, that's gonna be a little rough."
"Step two!" continued Poe, ignoring Kylo's protests. "Incidental contact! This is essential if you want to avoid landing yourself in the friend zone. Allow me to demonstrate. Finn!"
"WhuhIwasn'tsleeping!" Finn started and jumped to his feet. "Finn, you be Rey and I'll be Ren," Poe said, positioning Finn in the middle of the room. "You ready? Watch carefully - this is an advanced maneuver." Kylo leaned forward unconsciously, hoping to glean any knowledge he could from Poe's obviously superior experience. "So I'm walking, I'm walking, I walk by Rey, and I JUST brush her hand with mine. I don't mention it. I just keep going."
"Man, Poe, you're a master of this stuff! Where'd you learn all this?" asked Finn, looking at his hand like it had been touched by an angel.
"Well," Poe thrust his chest out and stuck his thumbs in his belt loops. "I don't mean to brag, but I've always been a favorite with the ladies. And the gentlemen. And the non-gendered non-humanoid sentient blobs. Unfortunately. It's all about confidence, boys. Confidence, mystery, and caring about your target. I think that'll tide you over for a bit, Ren. Start with step one for a week or so and then occasionally, oh so occasionally, a slight brush of the arm, a tap on the shoulder instead of calling her name. I guarantee this will work."
"And don't worry, Kylo!" said Finn with a smile. "We'll help you out and plant the seed in Rey's mind. We got you!" Poe threw his arm around Kylo. "We'll be your wingmen, Ren! Your X-wing-men!" The corners of Kylo's mouth turned up ever-so-slightly in what might have been called a smile. "Maybe this wasn't a tragic mistake after all..." he thought as he bode the two men farewell and slipped through the quiet base back to his quarters.