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The jacket itself is soft from years of use, and carries a heavy weight against his skin. Because of the flesh of his back is still being painstakingly stitched back together, Finn has taken to draping it across his chest and arms, letting it’s comforting texture calm the itch to move, to run. It doesn’t smell artificial: unlike the bleached clinical centres and the barracks where FN-2187 grew into his white helmet, there’s an earthy musk, with a long borne scent of caf and motor oil. Beneath that, there’s the inescapable vastness of the sand still dug into its worn lining, but Finn doesn’t like to think about it.
Because when he thinks about that, he thinks about Rey. Or rather, he thinks about the suspiciously Rey sized hole left in his empty room.
Somehow, the idea of her embarking on a mythical quest with Han Solo’s fluffy trench coat of a partner isn’t the thing that bothers him, though. It’s what he thought originally, but for the first time ever, Finn’s had a lot of time to himself. Really, it’s the idea that Rey has found some greater purpose for herself, and that she’s made the decision to return. Finn doesn’t know when, or how, but he’s been told (by Poe and General Organa and Chewbecca through a variety of unintelligible RAWAAGHRAWGH noises via a transmitter) that once Luke Skywalker is found, Rey will discover her place in the Force, and rejoin the rebellion.
Finn is so proud of her.
And also itching to move, because lying stationary for so long is making his skin feel tight and sweat bead on his brow. It’s something he’s trying to get away from: the idea that he has to be doing something, that he has to have a purpose, although really even when he escaped from Phasma by running into Poe, he just got given a new set of orders, even though eventually he was the one giving the commands.
Also, Finn might be a tiny bit jealous of the lightsabre.
It also hurt like a motherfucker, but he’s tried explaining the feeling of it to people who deign to visit him, and the most he’s gotten is from General Organa, who meets his gaze was a heavy “I know,” with eyes clear behind a wall of grief.
That’s another thing Finn hates thinking about: Solo. Or Mr Solo. Han? He and the General were technically married, so did that make him Solo-Organa? Or was she Organa-Solo? Death didn’t really clear that up.
As he moves to roll over, ignoring the tell tale sting as the thin gown rubs against the blisters along his back, the jacket shifts, so he pulls it up over his nose, letting the leather press against his lips, his chin, the bare skin on his neck. It doesn’t taste as good as it smells, but it blocks some of the galaxy out. He might not understand the force yet, certainly not anything like what he’s been told Rey can do, but he feels something calling to him. He doesn’t know what, though.
“If you’re trying to hide, you’re not doing a very good job of it,” says a cheerful voice from the doorway.
Moving hurts too much, but Finn can recognise the heavy tread and the familiar smell of oil with both eyes shut and his head shoved in a bacta tank. There was a quiet scrape, and then the jacket was pulled back by a hand with roughened knuckles.
“This reminds me of that time you freed me from the First Order,” Poe Dameron says, fiddling with the holo in his lap, his eyes crinkling with amusement.
“Are we spiralling in a death dive towards a desert planet?”
Poe snorts. “You seem to be struggling with some internal issues.”
Finn readjusts the jacket again, trying to ignore the hand resting a steadying weight against his hip. “You sense that with the force?”
“You know I’m about as force-sensitive as an Ewok.”
“I don’t know,” Finn grins. While the Rey sized hole only seems to grow wider with each passing cycle, the Poe shaped presence beside his hospital bed only seems to grow bigger, and more comforting. Finn isn’t really sure how to feel about that yet. “It might explain your flying.”
Poe huffs out a laugh this time, throwing his head back, and Finn swallows at the gentle curve of Poe’s throat. “I’ll have you know that all my moves are natural.”
And because Poe’s a bit of a prick, he throws in an exaggerated wink. Finn chooses to ignore the weird feeling in his stomach. The feeling of anything sexual isn’t exactly alien: Phasma’s face was rarely seen, but her dynamic in the First Order cast a long shadow across the troops, and Finn would be lying if he hadn’t ever thought about it. Ren was too terrifying, and Hux looked too much like a rat to be considering arousing, but Poe wasn’t anything like them. He was kind, and a tiny bit full of himself, and dedicated to the Rebellion to the point where he would die and sort of had died to protect it, and he’s doing weird things to Finn’s perceptions of himself. Namely, Rey. Poe. Rey and Poe, maybe. Both, or neither.
Both, preferably.
There’s a gentle flick on his forehead, and for a minute Poe isn’t wearing grey and black but Finn’s jacket, dust scuffed and bloody and frozen in Kylo Ren’s hold, before the world spins back into place and Finn realises he’s breathing a little odd, and Poe’s threatening to call the Med-Droid if you don’t start getting some oxygen or so help me Force.
“Fine,” Finn wheezes, and it’s always a hundred times easier to breathe without the fucking helmet on his head. He’s never wearing anything like that ever again, he doesn’t care if it kills him. “Good, fine, all fine.”
Poe, relaxing his hold on Finn’s shoulders, the holo now lying neglected on the sheets, looks very sceptical but releases him regardless. There’s trust there, and affection, and Finn couldn’t see his face when he gave Finn his name, taking him from a soldier to a person, but Finn would like to imagine he looked something like this. His stomach flips again.
“You alright?”
“Yeah.” Finn forces himself to sit up, ignoring the twinge of his spine and pushing until he’s resting upright against the pillows. Poe hasn’t sat down again, instead inspecting him curiously, as though searching for the source of the problem. Like, he was checking him out, almost.
Finn’s brain needs to shut the hell up.
Poe gingerly sits down again, picking up the holo but still not turning it on, before rubbing the bridge of his nose. All at once, Finn feels a brief sense of solidarity: Rey might not be around anymore, but Poe was a confidant: someone who had been physically affected by Ren and the First Order first hand. His back starts to sting.
Finn’s brain keeps up its embarrassing internal monologue.
“Do you…” Finn starts, then cuts himself off. He has to swallow several times before speaking again. “Does it still hurt?”
“The crashing part or the mind torture part?”
“Both. Either.”
Poe shrugs with one shoulder, and leans back in his chair. His legs stretch out under the bed. “Rey might be better off to talk to. She’s the only one of us who managed to kick his ass.”
“That’s not why I’m asking,” Finn says, even though he still isn’t quite sure why he brought it up in the first place.
Poe looks curious. “Why are you asking?”
“I…” For a moment Finn wants to act macho, maybe to play up his injury out of some weird desire to impress Poe, to make Poe see that Finn really is important. Although, Finn’s internal monologue points out, Poe must already think that he’s at least relatively important, or why else would he have visited in the first place? “I… my back hurts.”
“Shit,” Poe says, moving to stand up, “I’ll get the –”
“No,” Finn interjects, “I mean… it doesn’t hurt until I think about it. And then I remember it slicing up my back, and feeling helpless, and like I’d failed again. Cold, with all the snow.”
There’s a long pause, during which Poe leans forward a little, maintaining eye contact. He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, before smiling. “It was… bad. But he didn’t kill me, when he could have, and I got out, thanks to you.”
Finn doesn’t bring up the fact that Poe doesn’t refer to Kylo Ren by name.
“Thank you for that, again.” Poe says, his voice quiet.
“Thanks for the blaster lessons,” Finn retorts, desperate to negate the tension in the room.
It works, because Poe laughs again. It’s a great sound. Finn wants to hear more of it.
“You did pretty well on the fly, I’ve gotta say,” says Poe.
“About as well as you did, at least.” Finn replies, his grin toothy.
There’s another laugh, only this one lasts longer and Finn’s stomach finishes its acrobatics routine with a double backflip. It’s different from Rey: they met in a different kind of desperation, before Finn turned his back on her, then came back only for her to save him again. He cares about her, a lot, but he still isn’t sure if she’s interested, and honestly even if she isn’t, Finn doesn’t think he’ll ever stop caring about her. Rey is that sort of a person: someone you can’t help but love. Maybe it’s in return for being forced to live alone on a dustbowl for all those years. With Poe, it’s the weight of his name, and his jacket, and the feeling of white armour being dropped into the sand, and the sucker punch of Rey’s staff, and the tiny orange BB-8 droid.
Poe’s face is suddenly too close, and breathing is hard again.
“Finn?” Poe sounds hesitant, “are you-?”
Finn’s monologue is suddenly in control of his body, because the distance between them vanishes, and Poe’s mouth is soft, and smells a bit like the jacket. He’s frozen, still leaning forward, before seeming to melt and leaning into the kiss, moving so that Finn’s back is pressed against the pillows, with one of Finn’s hands curling up around his neck.
So much better than that one Phasma dream.
Finn isn’t quite sure when they stop, or start, only that when they separate Poe’s eyes are closed and his cheeks are suspiciously red. It suddenly reminds him of Poe strapped down, with blood on his cheeks and his pupils shot, but that image vanishes when, as Finn tightens his grip, a tremble starts under his skin.
“Did,” Poe starts, before clearing his throat, “did the Force tell you to do that?”
Finn can’t hear the Force like Rey, or General Organa, or the supposed powers of Luke Skywalker, so he just leans in again, and brings up his other hand.