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He’s brushed against her once, twice, maybe three times, if he really remembered and bothered to count. But he’s never met her, not officially anyway.
He finds her in the dining hall, a few hours after their victory. He walks in, grabs his tray, and stops as he sees her.
It’s like someone deactivated her. She has a to-go tray in her hands, a few things on it, but doesn’t move as she stares at the drink options. People move around her, giving her space instead of guidance, like she’s some kind of untouchable force they can’t get close to.
He’s already stuck in her orbit and gravitates towards her, his own meal forgotten.
The can of fizzypop is cold, almost too cold to touch as he wordlessly sets it in the corner of her tray. He puts a bottle of water down as well, in case she doesn’t like the soda, and eyes what she has on her tray as she eyes him with equal scrutiny.
Basics. She doesn’t even have a dessert, just some stew and a bowl of steamed vegetables. That’s not right, not in his opinion.
“No dessert?” he questions, raising one dark eyebrow and giving her a lopsided smile.
“Dessert?” she echoes, and he can tell she’s testing the word on her tongue, tasting it and trying to figure out it’s meaning from the syllables.
“Yeah. Cake, pie, cookies, something,” he offers, gesturing to the empty space on her tray.
“What?” she asks, eyebrows furrowing, and he has this sinking realization that she’s never had dessert before. Ever.
He grabs her elbow and tugs her over to the shelves.
He’s fixing this. Now.
“Poe Dameron,” he tells her a few moments later, in the line for puffcakes.
He sees her eyes lights up with realization. “Rey,” she says, after a half-heartbeat of silence.
He grins, grabbing two puffcakes for her and one for him. “I know.”
-
“Where are you sitting?” He balances his tray on one hand, the other holding her cup of ice cream, the scoops teetering precariously.
“Finn,” is her one-word response. And really, he should’ve guessed that.
He nods wordlessly, heading for the door. She follows him to the medbay, and they divide and conquer, trying to find someone who could tell them where Finn is.
Finn’s still in surgery, they’re eventually told by a gleaming 3PO unit who then hurries to a moaning pilot who’d taken debris to the shoulder. So they stand there for a moment, awkwardly holding their trays, before he leads her to a nearby common room.
There are a few officers there, their voices softening to low murmurs as Poe guides her to one of the corner tables. Their trays barely fit on the small surface, and he has to put her ice cream bowl on top of his second can of grape soda to make room for everything else.
They sit in silence, eating quietly until she takes a bite of the puffcake and moans out loud, stuffing the rest into her mouth and getting cream on her nose and chin in the process.
Whatever murmuring was going on behind them stops immediately, and he can hear the soft ‘hiss’ of the door as the officers escape the awkward situation.
He cracks up half a second later, his sip of grape soda burning the back of his throat as he almost chokes on it.
When he’s done laughing, he notices she’s half out of her seat, everything on her tray stacked up and ready to go, her cheeks bright red and head bowed in embarrassment.
“No, no, stop, sit,” he says, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back down. “It’s fine, really, it’s great. You’ve never had one?”
He takes his puffcake and puts it in place of the one she’d just eaten.
She slowly sits back down.
-
He learns she likes puffcakes. Really likes puffcakes. He has to gesture to his own face more than once to let her know she has cream on hers.
She likes chocolate, too, though not as much.
Ice cream’s too cold. Her eyes widen after she takes a bite and she spits it out almost immediately, eyeing the melting treat warily. It would be pretty shocking to someone who’s never had it, he guesses, as he eats the frozen treat she'd pushed towards him.
The fizzypop is spat out as well, and he laughs again at her face as she stares at the can in shock, running her tongue along her teeth to get rid of the bubbling sensation. He explains it to her, and tells her that his own grape soda’s the same, but that doesn’t make her any less wary of it.
He takes the can instead, sipping from it after he finishes his own sodas.
-
He volunteers to take the dishes back to the dining hall. She volunteers to walk with him.
People walk around her, but move towards him. He gets pats on the back, smiles and ‘good job’s and congratulations on a job well done. She gets awed stares and soft smiles and vague nods.
He feels terrible as someone greets him but not her, seemingly avoiding her entirely as they move past.
-
They eat their late evening meal in the medbay.
Finn’s been released, and he hates them for putting the man back in white. Finn belongs in warm colors, deep browns and reds and oranges. He doesn’t belong in black and white. It’s too cold for him, too stark. Too reminding of what he once was.
He’d taken two puffcakes this time, and puts them on her plate once she finishes hers, reveling in the way her face brightens. The light's like a broken bulb - sputtering for a moment, unsure and hesitant before illuminating her already pretty face.
“You know he was a Stormtrooper, right?” he asks as he sets the pastries in front of her.
She takes them gratefully, picking one up and scooping up the cream with a calloused finger, sticking said finger in her mouth. He waits for her response as she sucks the cream off of her skin.
“I know,” she replies, taking another scoop of cream and moaning this time. It seems obscenely loud in the quiet medbay, and he grins at her slight blush as she realizes that sound came from her.
“His number was FN-2187,” Poe explains, taking a sip of his grape soda. “I told him that’s not a name.”
“It’s not,” she agrees.
“He helped me escape,” Poe continues. “Did he help you escape, too?”
Her finger stops halfway to her mouth, and he suddenly feels like he crossed a line. He opens his mouth to apologize when he sees her face.
She doesn’t look hurt, or angry. She looks more contemplative, shocked, even. “… I guess so,” she admits, finally. “But he was more … helping me find something, than helping me escape.”
-
He takes the dishes back on his own this time. The halls are dim, the Resistance headed to bed after an exhausting day - the first of what he’s sure will be many, many more. She wanders off to find the General. In the confusion and celebration, she hadn’t been told where to go to rest.
Without really thinking about it, he offers his bed.
“Room 603,” he tells her. “Just knock, all right?”
She insists that she can crash on the couch in one of the common rooms, promises she can sleep anywhere, and confesses that she slept in the leg of a dead AT-AT walker seemingly all in the same breath.
He insists that she’ll do no such thing, and makes her promise that she’ll find him in the morning if he doesn’t see her tonight.
He waits for hours, listening for a knock on his door, and wakes with dark circles under his eyes and tries to squash the feeling of disappointment when he realizes that she never came.
-
She does find him in the morning, though, in the dining hall, with a cup of coffee in his hands and the remains of breakfast in front of him. He grins when he spots her looking through the crowd for him, and he sees her really smile for the first time when he waves her over.
He has to explain to her on their way to the medbay how no, puffcakes aren’t actually breakfast food, and he’s really sorry that they didn’t have them, all while trying not to laugh.