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Poe does absolutely everything with a really ridiculous sort of gracefulness; he has this sort of instinct, where he always seems to know how and where to move his body so he looks cool and good no matter what he's doing.
He sits down at the table with Finn and Rey, draping his arms over the back of the chair, and he looks so cool. He says, “Hey,” and that's really cool, too. Finn gets sort of really distracted from his food and smiles at Poe. Poe smiles back; Finn's not sure if he'll ever get used to how that feels. People smiling back at him.
“So it occurred to me that I gotta tell you two something,” Poe says. He picks up a chunk of protein and pops it into his mouth, still grinning. He doesn't seem angry, but Finn's shoulders tense regardless, because I have to tell you something cannot ever be something good. Right? Not that anyone's ever really said that to him, but it sounds bad, because if it was something good he would have just said whatever it is.
Rey's mouth is full of food, so she doesn't say anything, but she does crinkle her brow and shoot Finn a worried look. He catches the look because he is, at the same time, shooting her a worried look. At least he's not the only one worried. “Are we in trouble?” Finn asks, assuming that's probably what Rey would have said if her mouth wasn't full of food. She nods and turns her worried look on Poe.
“No, no, no,” Poe shakes his head and combs a hand through his hair with an awkward half-laugh. “Ahh, no, you two are fine, everything is fine, I just remembered that there's something you two ought to know.”
Finn puts his fork down and props up his chin on his hand, arranges his features in his best approximation of what he imagines a listening carefully and sympathetically kind of facial expression looks like. “Okay,” he says, as seriously as he can manage. Rey makes a garbled muffled noise, because she still has her mouth full of food. Or maybe she's saying something in another language? He really can't tell sometimes. Anyway, she also props up her chin on her hand and raises her eyebrows at Poe.
“Right,” Poe rubs his neck and looks away, hissing in a breath through his teeth. “Ahh. Okay, so-- wow, this is weird. Everybody else already knows, I haven't had to tell anyone in ages. So, basically, I'm gay.”
Finn freezes, and his eyes flick to Rey. He has absolutely no idea what that means. Maybe she knows. She is also looking at him, eyes wide, eyebrows high. He puts his hand on his forehead to shield his face and mouths, WHAT IS GAY? at her.
She shakes her head, eyebrows going even high, eyes even wider, and shrugs her shoulders. Shit. Shit shit shit. He glances back at Poe, who is sitting there waiting for a reaction. He looks sort of nervous. Maybe it's bad? It's something you are, though. Like... an adjective? Then it has to be good, right, because Poe is amazing, and there's clearly nothing wrong with him. Or what if it's a disease, though?
“Uhhh,” he says, eyes darting between Poe and Rey. “That's...” He gives Rey a pleading look, asking for some kind of assistance.
“...Good?” Rey says, her voice way more high-pitched and uncertain than it usually is. She flicks her eyes at Finn and he nods. That seems good. Very supportive.
“Yeah,” he says. “Just, uh-- just, can I ask like, one small question?”
Poe flicks his tongue out over his lips and sort of scrunches up his eyes, but in a very handsome way. “It's not contagious, if that's what you're going to ask,” he says. He sounds annoyed. So it is a disease? Finn looks back at Rey. Maybe he shouldn't ask. He's pretty sure he's supposed to know what it is already. She jerks her chin at him in a way that means he should definitely ask.
“Uhhh,” He rubs the back of his head and takes a deep breath. He might get mad if he asks, and he also might think he's stupid, and both of those would be terrible, but this seems like maybe it's an important thing? So he braces himself and asks, “What is gay?”
“I don't know what that is either,” Rey says very quickly, like if she says it fast it won't be as embarrassing. Poe stares at Finn first, then at Rey, and then he covers his face with his hands and laughs.
Rey looks at Finn, looking panicked. “He's laughing,” she says.
“I see that,” he hisses. “What do we do?”
“Poe, what is gay?” Rey asks loudly.
“Oh, dear,” He inhales sharply and slides his hands down his face. He pats his cheeks and takes a deep breath, to stop himself laughing. “Okay. I'm sorry for laughing. Being gay means you're only attracted to people with the same gender as you.”
This doesn't help much. Finn catches Rey's eye and she looks about as baffled as he feels. Poe seems to pick up on it, because he very patiently says, “So, I'm a man, and I'm only interested in kissing other men, and I'm not interested in kissing girls.”
Rey slumps back in her chair, squinting thoughtfully at the ceiling, leaving him without anyone to exchange baffled looks with. He hates feeling this much out of the loop, and it happens all the time nowadays. He doesn't even know what he doesn't know, either, which is the worst part; people are always surprising him with fresh nonsense that he's never heard of.
Well, while he's asking stupid questions, he might as well continue. “Poe,” he says, and keeps his voice low just in case, “Are you saying that's not normal?”
“That's sort of a loaded question,” Poe says. “But, the gist of it is that, uh, no, most people are not gay.”
Finn bites down on his knuckle and frowns. “Okay,” he says slowly. Poe raises his eyebrows at him, and Finn doesn't know what that means at all. This is kind of a lot of information; a completely new way of sorting people into categories that's apparently super important that he knew absolutely nothing about.
So, if there's only two people he's ever like-liked-- he's not really that sure how you tell the difference between kinds of liking people, but as far as he knows there's two people he's like-liked-- Slip and Poe. And Slip was a man, and Poe is a man, and Finn is a man, so... he's probably gay, too? It seems like maybe he doesn't have enough information to tell, but based off what information he does have, he's gay.
He leans forward and squints at Poe. “Is it bad to be gay?”
Poe pops another chunk of protein into his mouth and sighs. “It's just a way some people are, there's nothing bad or good about it,” he says. Finn keeps squinting at him. That sounds sort of defensive, which implies that maybe the answer is yes? He really ought to find someplace around here to do research. This seems like something that requires quite a bit of reading.
“If it's not bad, why do you need to tell people about it?” Rey stops squinting at the ceiling and squints at Poe instead. “Is it... important?”
“Rey, clearly it's important, otherwise he wouldn't have told us,” Finn says. Rey looks annoyed-- he's getting really good at telling apart her annoyed face and her normal face.
“But gender isn't important,” Rey insists.
“Okay, even I know that gender's important. Sort of,” He doesn't know firsthand about gender being important, because it isn't in the First Order-- everyone has the same clothes and hair and sleeping arrangements-- but he knows it's important in other places, anyway. Including Jakku, he's pretty sure. “Didn't you go to school?”
“No,” Rey says, like that should have been obvious and he's stupid for not knowing that already. Maybe it was obvious and he is stupid for not knowing that already.
“This is really not how I thought this conversation was going to go,” Poe mutters. He shoves two more chunks of protein into his mouth and then stands up. “Come on, you two, you're going to watch some educational children's vids.”
“I'm not a child!” Finn and Rey say at the exact same time, but they both stand up and follow him anyway, because they're always going to follow wherever he tells them to go.