Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Look, I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding here - " Rey says, her hand moving up to pause calmingly in front of Poe's face like she already knows how mad he is.

It hovers there, her hand, like a giant burning symbol to let her handle this, to not let his temper get the better of him. Maybe that was how it was going to be now. Arrive at a planet, let a droid announce him as part of her harem, smile, go with it.

"Her harem?" he says instead, his voice sliding into laughter at the end. "Seriously?"

Maybe she was part of his harem, had they ever even thought about that?

"Poe, will you just give us a minute? Please, it's obviously just a little confused."

"Oh well, of course," he says, complete with a bow. "I'll just go wait in your bed chamber. Would you like me to be with or without clothes when you arrive? Should I rub myself in scented oils? Do I need -"

Rey turns her head to stare at him, her eyebrows raised. It's a look she clearly picked up from Leia. He almost hates that she's advanced to Leia-level maturity, it was so much better when they just bickered over piloting and he was only a little bit in love with her instead of all the way in.

"Fine." Let the droid believe he's part of her harem. It wasn't that far off the truth.

"Thanks," she says, her voice soft and her eyes amused.

She reaches out and touches his forearm lightly and he has to make a concerted effort to keep frowning. That's how bad it is.

----

He goes to wait in her bedchamber. Because that's what he was joking about, so that's what he's going to do.

He takes his shirt off.

He practices lounging on the bed and looking unaffected. He practices lounging on the bed and looking very affected. He puts the shirt back on. He checks the time. He wonders why she's not back yet. He thinks about taking his shirt off again.

He thinks about how she looked that one time she wore his shirt, when they'd found that waterfall and she and Finn had had a pushing competition and she'd lost and she hadn't had anything dry to wear and he hadn't meant to offer but then he saw Finn taking off his jacket, and that was that, he had to get in there first.

Finn hadn't spoken to him for the rest of the evening but Rey had sat up in the pilot's chair, his shirt still around her shoulders, her knees pulled up to her chin as she hummed and looked through star maps and -

The door opens.

---

"What are you doing?" Finn says. He's holding a bag that Poe recognises as Rey's, her sandals are clipped onto the corner of it, still swinging.

"Nothing," he says, straightening.

"Were you lounging on Rey's bed?"

Finn looks at him, puzzled, as he settles Rey's bag down against the wall. Then he unslings his own bag from his shoulder, and then he unslings Poe's too, because Finn is good at remembering that kind of thing. Poe's more the get off the ship the moment it lands kind of guy, the 'gotta get in the sights and smells and feel of the new place' kind of guy. Finn's the one that checks out the info on the system and makes a mental list of what he wants to see, where the good places to eat are. He's patient, that's what it is.

That's what Poe's up against. Patience.

Which is great because he has none of that.

"No, I wasn't lounging," he says, because no, he was not. "Why would you have that impression?"

"Okay, sprawling maybe," Finn says, coming closer. He leans against the big left-hand side bedpost that is well, at the left hand side of the foot of the bed. It really is an unnecessarily big bed, now that Poe thinks about it. There are gauzy curtains and a large amount of cushions and at least three different throws. It's plush and a little bit springy. The kind of bed he guesses they give to women they think have entire harem's worth of people to play around with on it.

"Hey, did they uh, announce you when you came in?"

Finn gives him a sideways look. Poe immediately categorises it as suspicious.

"Why," Finn says. "Did they announce you?"

It's wrong to hope that Rey managed to correct the droid and Finn didn't get announced as part of Rey's harem too, but Finn wouldn't be looking suspicious if he'd been announced normally, which means - yeah, he's probably part of the theoretical gaggle too.

"No reason," Poe says, feigning disinterest. "No reason at all."

---

"Will you please stop it," Rey says, five or six hours later.

They're all in the bed because it's their room apparently, all of theirs. Rey refuses to call it her room, even though Poe's pretty sure that's what everyone else outside the room is calling it. And the thing they're meant to be stopping is the cushion wall he and Finn are creating in the centre of the bed.

"What even is the point of it?" Rey says, gesturing at the cushion wall. "You guys live in each other's faces the rest of the time, when we had the heat outage the other week you were literally under the same blanket. Is this because of what that droid said?"

"No," Finn says.

"Definitely not," Poe confirms.

"Right," Rey says, taking hold of two cushions and throwing them off the bed. "If the idea of being part of my harem is that horrible to you, why don't you just go find somewhere else to sleep, okay? It's been a long day and I had to explain how the Force works to six five year olds and I'm not good at explaining it! I don't even know how to do half the things they seem to think I can do! So if you both could just stop being strange and annoying about one droid's mistake, I would really appreciate it."

She takes a deep breath and then sets her chin, tipping it up just a fraction. It's what she does when she's had to use her authority a little more than she's comfortable with. Poe finds it annoyingly ... something. It's the way her brows go a little scrunched, her eyes all serious.

"Why would we want to be part of your harem?" he says reflexively. "You wouldn't ever choose, you'd just pretend you liked us both equally and meanwhile we'd be over here trying to look appealing and you'd be having lifetalks with six year olds and what am I even saying? I don't recognise myself right now."

"I'd be part of your harem," Finn says, with what looks like quite an eager shrug. "I mean obviously as the first to volunteer I should get some special privileges, but if you need us to opt-in before you get to the part where you make us undress and get into bed with you, then this is me opting-in."

Poe's mouth falls open. Rey's cheeks go very red. Finn looks at them both and then blinks three times like he maybe didn't mean to say all that outloud all at once.

"As the second to volunteer," Poe hears himself say, "I should get different privileges of no less than equal weight to Finn's. And I think one of them should be me being allowed to undress you, and him not being allowed, just as an example idea."

Rey looks between them, her face now so red it looks she's spent all day in the sun.

"What?" she says. She gropes out at them with her hands, like she thinks they're holos or projections of her own no-doubt vivid imagination. "You don't have to - I mean, what?"

"Please put us out of our misery," Finn says. "You know, right? You have to know?"

"That we like you," Poe says, to make sure the message gets across.

"You want to be part of my harem?" Rey says, her hands now clutching at one of them each. "All that weirdness is because you want to? Both of you?"

"Well duh," Finn says.

"Kinda obvious, don't you think?" Poe says.

---

So okay, when Poe had imagined their first night together, Finn hadn't exactly been there in his head.

Or maybe he had, a little, round the corner of a pillar, watching them kiss and knowing that he'd lost and Poe had won. And maybe he'd appeared in the morning after part of the vision, coming in to let them know that there was something they had to look at, and maybe in that part of the vision Poe would smile at Finn smugly and sometimes that satisfaction felt like a warm burn inside him and sometimes he would hold Finn's gaze in the vision and waggle his eyebrows in victory and maybe from the outside that sort of thing could perceived to be an enticement, a come-on.

But it was just a pleasant not note-worthy warm burn.

The same pleasant warm burn he felt when they bumped fists after a nice piece of repair work on the Falcon, the same warm burn he felt when Finn caught him the other day when he almost slid off the edge of a pathway after one too many drinks and far too much laughter.

Maybe he doesn't exactly hate the idea of Finn being there. Maybe there's something lurking beneath the constant drive to compete.

Maybe the way Rey's fingers slide Finn's shirt further and further up his chest and the way Finn groans in response is a tiny bit arousing.

"We're actually doing this," Finn says, his voice almost breathless with laughter in a way that Poe doesn't hate either.

"Well, apparently that's what everyone wants," Rey says.

Which includes her. And Poe knows so because they've both been kissed. Thoroughly. With her hands cupping their faces like they really are something special and precious and worth having to her.

Poe laughs and wraps his arms around Rey from behind. It feels natural to kiss the back of her neck and close his eyes as he feels her hair brush against his forehead. It feels like the world coming into focus, like being exactly where he needs to be with exactly who he needs to be there with.

Yes, he definitely wants it. Both of them, whatever. Because they're a team, aren't they? The best at what they do.

---