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Poe takes a lot of pride in his acting. He’s got range. He does his own stunts. He brings his all, every time. He can cry on command, damn it.
So he can definitely kiss Ben Solo.
Poe makes a show of thumbing through his script, but the words bleed together into fuzzy nonsense before his eyes. He’s not really reading them anyway, too busy with his own thoughts. He just needs something to look at so he doesn’t slip up and start staring openly at his co-star as the crew finishes their final lighting and camera adjustments.
He’s known Ben for years, and known of him for even longer, thanks to their parents being industry friends. They hadn’t met until the one year they’d happened to have shared at Julliard, the circumstances of which they’d long since promised to never reveal to the press. They’ve always got on well enough every time their paths have had reason to cross. This is the first time they’ve ever been cast together.
It’s been hell.
Poe is scowling down at the dialogue floating on the page in front of him when suddenly a shadow falls across the paper. He looks up, and there’s Ben.
“You ready?” he asks.
Ben’s been styled to perfection, his dark hair falling in tantalizing waves over his shoulders. The collar of his costume is left open, exposing the long line of his throat. A prosthetic scar bisects his eyebrow, lending him an infuriatingly dashing appeal that’s at sharp odds with the self-conscious tension he normally holds himself with.
“Yep,” Poe says, jumping to his feet. There’s a two-second span where the uncalculated action brings him almost flush with Ben’s chest, his nose all but touching the hollow of his clavicle before Ben steps back and reinstates a normal distance between them. Poe resists the urge to wince and skirts around him. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go!”
-
The take doesn’t go well. Neither do the next five.
He flubs his lines three more times before Ben finally gets annoyed with him. He waves off the director and pulls Poe aside.
“What’s the problem?” he demands.
“Nothing,” Poe says, because there is no way in hell he’s going to admit on set that he doesn’t want to kiss Ben – Ben’s character, what the fuck. He’s a professional, damn it, and it’s nobody’s problem but Poe’s that he’s been harboring a real life secret flame for the guy for years. (It’s not his fault. The guy is six-foot-something and could probably bench press him. Poe Dameron is only but a man.)
“Then get your act together,” Ben says. “You’re supposed to be better than this.”
Oh, if only that were true.
Poe exhales through his teeth and shoves Ben back toward their places so that can start again. “Shut up. I’m the best there is and you know it.”
Ben casts a critical eye over him, but then the tension breaks and he scoffs. “Untrue, but you’re welcome to try and prove me wrong.”
-
It goes better after that, Ben’s confrontational ass jarring Poe out of his initial funk. They get into the mood, letting the vibe between them build as they shoot barbs back and forth, walking the narrow line between banter and innuendo. It’s going great, all up until the moment Ben has to invade Poe’s space and shove him bodily against the wall.
Poe giggles. It is not remotely in character. Not for him, and not for his character. It’d been fine when they’d blocked things out, but now he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.
The director calls, “Cut!” Ben’s eyebrows are drawn together when she says, “Let’s try that again.”
“Can we break instead?” Ben interrupts, stepping back. His sharp gaze doesn’t leave Poe, and it pins him to the set wall. “I think we need a few minutes.”
The director sighs and checks her watch. “Fine. Take fifteen, and then we’ll reconvene.”
Ben doesn’t say thank you, nor does he give Poe a chance to escape. He takes him by the arm and drags him off-set and towards the trailers.
“What the hell, Ben?!” Poe demands, trying to prise himself free.
“Are you five?” Ben counters. He stops short on the far side of one building, just out of view of the exit they’d just passed through and rounds on Poe. “Can you get it together?”
Poe crosses his arms, half-defensive, mostly defiant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
There’s patches of red on Ben’s cheeks, a sure sign that he’s frustrated and barely restraining it. Poe’s heard he used to have a habit of punching holes into walls, back before he got his shit together and realized how damaging it was to his career; he wonders if he’s about to witness a relapse now.
He isn’t expecting Ben to cut straight through his bullshit.
“Is this about the kiss?”
“What?” Poe manages, feeling his heart leap directly from his chest cavity into his throat.
Ben frowns impatiently. “You didn’t want to block it out yesterday, and today you’re acting like an idiot in there. Usually you just run your mouth if there’s some other issue, but not this one.”
“Uh,” Poe says, left uncharacteristically lost for words.
“We’re professionals, aren’t we?” Ben says, the words needled with sarcasm. “So let’s hear it.”
The condescension bites. Poe shakes off his stupor and reaches for anger. “Get over yourself, Ben. I’m fine, I’m just off today.” He tries to push past him, but Ben isn’t having it.
“Fine,” Ben says, gripping his arm. And then he’s being pulled in, and moreover, he’s being kissed.
Kissing on set, for the sake of acting a part, is typically a rote affair. It’s all cold mechanics, half a mind always on the part he’s trying to convey, rendered doubly impersonal by the critically-eyed audience of creatives and crew all around.
Kissing Ben is nothing like that.
He’s a wildfire barely restrained and made to fit into human form. Ben kisses Poe like he’s trying to set him alight, and hell, it works. Poe responds to the kiss in kind, leaning in and impulsively looping his arms around Ben’s neck, burying his fingers in the inky strands of hair at the back of his neck. If it’s meant to prove a point, it escalates far beyond the initial intention. Poe hardly registers it when his back hits the wall behind him this time, too focused on the sweep of Ben’s tongue in his mouth, the insistent press of his thigh between Poe’s.
They lose all sense of time, pretense and plot thrown to the wind. Poe is completely lost, right up until the moment he hears someone calling out: “Ben? Poe? Fifteen’s up!”
“Shit,” Poe manages, scrambling back. Ben blinks twice, a little stupidly, looking for all the world like he’s just as blindsided by the chemistry between them as Poe.
“We’ve got to get back,” Ben says, rubbing a hand over his mouth. It does nothing to conceal the way his lips have been bitten red and plump.
Poe breathes out, trying to cool the heat coursing through his blood, smoothing his hands down his costume shirt. “Right. Right.”
They look at each other, ignoring the way their names are still being called.
“Problem solved?” Ben asks, after a long moment.
“For now,” Poe says, biting his lip. “Want to hang out in my trailer tonight?”
Ben snorts, and he gives Poe a wry look before turning back towards set. “Mine’s bigger.”
Poe takes a moment to admire the close fit of Ben’s costume to his ass before following after.
“Yeah,” Poe says, mostly to himself. “I bet it is.”
Somehow, Poe suspects the rest of filming is going to be a breeze.