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Beep. Beep.
Poe hated that sound.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
But he hated the idea of the awful sound stopping even more.
It had been almost two weeks since Starkiller Base had been destroyed. Two weeks since Poe had led his fighters into battle and saved the last dregs of the Resistance army.
Two weeks since Finn had fallen into a coma.
When the base had been destroyed, Poe had cheered with his fellow pilots. They returned to base with hearts full of joy, ready to celebrate their victory over the First Order, and at first that’s what they did.
There had been mostly radio silence between the different prongs of the resistance attack. As a result, the only thing anyone knew for certain was that the overall objective of the mission had been achieved. Details about who lived and who died were yet to be discovered. But in the wake of such a resounding victory, surely fate had continued to smile upon them.
Poe was at base when the Millennium Falcon landed. He surged forward to the front of the crowd, BB-8 close behind, ready to share in the victory with his friends. The bay of the ship opened and instead of being met with the cocky smirk of the notorious ex-smuggler, or the blindingly earnest smile of his new friend, Poe was met with pain.
The first thing he saw was a sobbing Wookie carrying an unconscious Finn in his arms, bellowing for medical attention. The elated tones of the crowd quickly transformed into frantic calls as they scrambled into action. Poe surged forward to take his friend from Chewbacca. He needed to ascertain for himself that Finn was merely unconscious and not dead. Poe was soon able to find a pulse, and he dug his hands into the back of the oh-so-familiar jacket in relief.
Poe quickly stopped breathing as that hand came away sticky with blood. While the wound itself was not bleeding profusely, Poe’s hands had aggravated the injury and fresh blood had begun to flow.
Poe screamed louder for the medic and was met with a cart. He quickly loaded Finn onto the vehicle in front of them and climbed in behind him, never losing physical contact with the other man. As they sped towards the nearest medbay, Poe did not notice the crying General holding the rescued girl, nor the absence of the fourth person who should have been with them. All of his attention was focused on the dying man in front of him, a man he hadn’t even known existed a week ago.
“What seems to be the problem? I don’t see any wounds.” A medic was asking him as she pulled gloves on, situating herself next to Poe. “He fought hard, but his fight’s not over yet. We’re going to help him through this, Sir.”
“Of course,” Poe nodded. He knew the time to wallow would come later. “Flip him over, it looks like he was stabbed in the back.”
With a grunt Poe helped the small medic turned the large man onto his stomach to see the intensity of his wound. They both winced in pain when the saw the large gash laying the former stormtrooper’s spine open before them.
“That’s no stab,” The medic said reaching back into her bag, recovering quicker than Poe. “Thankfully it was a lightsaber. It cauterized the majority of the wound to keep him from bleeding out, but that’s still a lot of damage for one person to take. He’s not out of the woods yet.” She pulled out a pair of scissors and reach down to start cutting the clothes away from the injured area.
“No,” Poe said, his arm jerking forward to stop her. “Please, not the jacket.”
He couldn’t say anything more than that. There was no way that Poe would be able to articulate into words what that jacket meant. It was an opportunity at a new beginning, and the start of a sense of belonging. It was hope and acceptance and friendship. It was a physical representation of what the two men had gone through together.
And it just looked so damn good on Finn.
Luckily the medic was able to see some of what Poe was trying to convey in his eyes and simply nodded her head. She put the scissors away and began to take the jacket off of the unconscious man before her, Poe scrambling to help. By the time they had gotten the jacket off of Finn, they had reached the med bay. Poe was left standing outside of the operating theater, facing the closed doors holding nothing but an old, torn jacket.
The surgery took hours to complete, but eventually Finn stabilized. They expected Finn to have some difficulty walking at first because of the severity of the injury to his spinal cord, but with physical therapy he should eventually be able to make a full recovery. Finn received his own room as they waited for him to wake up. According to the doctors, it could be hours, days, or never again: it was up to Finn now.
Beep. Beep.
In the coming days, Poe did not leave Finn’s side, much to the concern of BB-8. Poe would only leave the room to use the restroom, sleeping in the chair next to the bed and having his meals brought to him. General Ordagna came to see him to get his briefing. Poe thought she would try to talk him into leaving the hospital room, but one look into the older woman’s eyes and he knew she understood. He was not the only one suffering.
He did leave once, and only once. Clutching the soft, worn leather jacket had become a comfort for Poe. But every time his fingers dug too far and reached the open gash that had led to this situation, Poe would begin to unravel just a little bit more. Tears fell from his eyes as he listened to that horrible, awful sound.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
So he wandered the halls of base searching for what he needed. He found the tailor who worked on the X-wing pilots’ uniforms. The old man was more than happy to give the younger man a needle, thread, and fabric when asked.
So Poe settled down once more in his chair. He lovingly stroked the supple leather beneath his fingers as he got his supplies in order. If he couldn’t fix the man in front of him, he could at least work to repair the jacket that meant so much to the two of them.
Beep. Beep.
After many struggles and torn stitches, finger pricks and curses, Poe was done. He admired his handiwork with a smirk, proud of what he had accomplished. He packed up the leftover thread and fabric to return to the old tailor and then settled in for a nap. He was emotionally exhausted. The newly restored jacket was the perfect pillow, and Poe went to sleep inhaling the scent of the man who had saved him, but who he was helpless to save now.
Beep.
“Wh-where am I?”
Poe stirred. Recently he had been unable to sleep well, but this nap had been his first good sleep in days and he was reluctant to leave it so soon.
“P-Poe?”
Poe felt a slight nudge of his hand and opened his eyes to the most incredible sight he’d ever seen in his life: Finn was awake.
“Hey, what’re you doing?” Finn asked, confused. “What happened? Did we win?”
“Finn!” Poe exclaimed jumping up to hug the newly conscious man. “You’ve been out for days. Your back was sliced open. We won! Rey’s out looking for Skywalker now, everything’s going to be alright.”
“Thank, God,” Finn smiled, blushing a bit as Poe detangled himself from his arms. “But what are you doing here?”
“Oh well I, I wanted to make sure you were ok,” Poe said, looking down away from Finn’s too sincere eyes and seeing the fixed jacket. “And I wanted to make sure you got this.”
Poe reached down and picked up the jacket, swiping a thumb across the buttery surface one last time before handing it to Finn.
Finn burst into a smile as bright as the sun as he took the jacket and unfolded it. His smile only got brighter as he took in the extent of the repairs that Poe had made.
The once beautiful and smooth jacket was now anything but that. There was a large ragged red patch encompassing the majority of the back. Thick jagged black stitched connected the two pieces of the jacket, clearly done by hands that had never held a needle before. While the jacket would no longer be called beautiful, it was sturdy and would do the job it was designed to do. It would survive.
“It’s perfect,” Finns smiled, lower the jacket into his lap and looking over at the sheepishly grinning Poe. “Are you sure you don’t want it back?”
“Nah,” Poe said, his grin turning into a smirk. “It looks good on you.”
beepbeepbeepbeepbeep
Finn blushed and the beeping of the heart rate monitor became a little faster as his heart rate sped up.
Maybe, Poe thought as his smirk grew a little, looking at the embarrassed Finn. The beeping isn’t so bad after all.