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“He’s not going to hear you,” they tell him as he sits, hunched over Finn’s bed in a chair that is too small and too hard for his liking. “All we can do is wait.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Poe replies.
They roll their eyes at him and never stay long enough to try and convince him otherwise. Poe watches Finn’s sleeping face and hopes that he’s at least dreaming well.
He comes back every time he has a spare moment, determined not to miss the instant Finn’s eyes finally open. Sometimes, after particularly bad days, he slips his hand under Finn’s, which is still warm and far too soft for a hand that has grown accustomed to holding a weapon. The brown jacket that Poe wears every day doesn’t smell of Finn anymore, but whenever things get to be too much, it makes him think of a former Stormtrooper with stars for eyes and a smile too wide for his face.
Bryn, the young doctor who’s been assigned to Finn, usually sits next to Poe under the guise of monitoring Finn’s vital signs. Several weeks pass without so much as a change in the way Finn breathes before she speaks to him for the first time.
“Commander,” she says, eyes fixed on Finn’s body temperature.
“Doctor,” he replies, eyes fixed on Finn’s sleeping face.
“I can’t tell you when he’ll wake up.”
“Oh,” Poe says. “I know.”
A long pause.
“I’m sorry, commander.”
“That’s okay.”
He sees Bryn every day for the next month. Eventually, she brings a more comfortable chair from the lounge in for him and he brings her food when he knows she’s had a long shift. He likes her because she’s from the Outer Rim too. She likes him because she doesn’t need to take night shifts as long as he’s around to sit by Finn and wait for him to wake up. Poe watches her at work and thinks of Yavin 4, and of the millions of special souls in the millions of galaxies not traveled.
Rey checks in every so often through holographic message. She seems crestfallen every time Poe tells her that no, Finn isn’t awake yet, but he might wake up soon. Every time he sees her, the creases between her eyebrows are deeper and her stance is straighter, prouder. Poe catches her smiling in a rare moment of joy and thinks of the years of hardship on Jakku, of waiting for a family that might never return, of the years of hardship that are to come for her.
Weeks pass as Finn slumbers and Poe wishes he wouldn’t. General Organa sees him leaving the infirmary every so often and when he greets her, she smiles at him with a special kind of sadness in her eyes. She looks exactly like pride, like wisdom, like grace under pressure. Poe sees her and thinks of Han Solo, and wonders how it must feel to love and be loved, so completely and so deeply.
More than anything, he thinks of Finn. He thinks of how lucky he is to have met someone so beautiful, of how much Finn has suffered and endured, of how deeply Poe could love him if given the chance.
They see him – the doctor, the general, the lost girl from Jakku – and wonder how long it will be before he gives up.
Poe doesn't give up. He can't let himself give up. Finn wouldn't, he tells himself.
Finn sleeps for four months and Poe falls apart every day that he returns to see Finn’s eyes closed.
He waits and he waits and he waits and truly, it seems like a cruel trick of fate that he isn't there on the day that something finally changes and Bryn leaps from her seat in surprise.
One chilly afternoon as Poe is dirtying his hands in motor oil, he hears a familiar voice.
“Commander Dameron!”
He turns to see Bryn, face flushed and lips cracked, running towards him, still in her uniform, clipboard in hand.
“Doctor?” he asks, wiping his hands on a nearby rag. “What is it?”
“Finn,” is the only thing she needs to say before Poe’s body goes numb. The spare part clutched in his hands clatters to the ground as he races to the entrance of the X-Wing bay, heedless of anything but the blinding hope and the oh, God, please let him be okay, please, God –
Poe flies past several confused infirmary workers and barrels into Finn’s ward, heart and head pounding. He stops in the doorway, heart in his throat.
Finn isn’t moving and for a second, Poe is frozen with fear, but suddenly there’s a weak voice that makes Poe’s knees buckle.
“Poe Dameron,” Finn rasps, lips barely moving. “Best pilot of the Resistance.”
“Finn,” Poe says, and the emotion in his voice is so thick that it makes Finn laugh – a small, barely-there laugh that makes Poe smile, too, as he tumbles through space to fall to his knees at Finn’s bedside.
“Finn, god, finally.”
“Rey,” Finn breathes, struggling to keep his eyes open. “Where’s – is she okay?”
“Rey’s fine,” Poe whispers, hands reaching out to touch Finn’s face, his shoulders, anything he can reach. “You’re fine.”
“Missed me?”
“Oh, buddy,” Poe mumbles, feeling tears of sheer relief prick at his eyes, and clutches Finn tightly, terrified he might leave him again. “You have no idea.”