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Christmas Parades were usually things that were only ever a good idea in theory. Yavin County’s was no exception. Scheduled a few weeks before the snow was about to fall, a week after Thanksgiving, what would have been snow was a freezing drizzle that wasn’t quite enough to call off the performance altogether.
Poe Dameron was the drum major for the Yavin County band, and also happened to be madly in love with the man who lived across town in a little bungalow whose eyes shone like the lights they put in the trees and whose skin was as dark and smooth as a river at four in the morning. The man’s name was Finn, and Poe and he had driven in so that Finn could watch the absolute train wreck that this parade was going to be, and to watch Poe strut about in his tight black pants, red boots, black jacket with red spaulders and silver trim all-covering.
The rain was coming down in force now, but soon the police cars and the color guard were on their way down the street. Poe raised his arm, counted off, and they began some cheesy song from the sixties. They marched. Poe’s pulse fluttered in his chest because what Finn didn’t know was that Poe had something planned just for Finn that he hadn’t covered with anyone. Leia Organa, the band director who had put Poe in his position for the entire county’s pick-up band, trusted him to play proper Christmas music. He would get to it, for he had promised that he would, in fact, play a rousing rendition of Deck the Halls, but there was something that he had to do first.
The tubas were having a hard time. When your lips were soaked and your mouthpiece was soaked, it was hard to get a decent sound. The trombones fared a little better, and the trumpets, of course, managed quite well, if you asked them yourself.
But as the two minute and forty one second song came to an end, Poe turned neatly on his toe, around the curb and the horse dung that was already on the street, and caught sight of Finn sitting next to one of the streetlights. It cast an orange glow over the crowd and if Poe had any sense, he’d be ashamed of how fast he could find Poe in a sea of humanity. But Finn was a beat that he couldn’t shake, a tune in his head that was stuck, swirling and rising only to fall again into a low rumble that shook Poe to his very core. Despite the twirl of his baton, his heart pounded double time.
The snares were clipping away, keeping everyone and step, and Poe raised his arm to count off…
One, two, three, four…
The tuba was soft, as it should be, and the trumpets hit their chord a little off, but the trombones went to town as they should have. This was a classic, and the crowd loved it every time. But what they didn’t count on was Poe opening his mouth to sing along.
”You’re just too good to be true. Can’t take my eyes off of you…” The rain was ardently falling as if it intended to blind, but Poe let the feather on his hat fall into his face in the soggy weather and grinned as the rain splashed his face. Some of the older people in the crowd sang along, swaying their grandchildren on their laps and clapping their hands. Some children screamed as their grandfathers held their wrists, but other cackled in the rain, sharing massive grins with the drum major. The children who were old enough to sing along to songs stared somewhat blankly. Their parents hadn’t shone them such things, and but they could dance, and that’s what they did.
When Poe hit the second verse, he found Finn again. They were the perfect distance apart, and Poe stared until Finn finally caught his eye and stopped chatting with the people next to him. A half-smile was frozen on his face when their eyes met, and Finn broke into a massive grin.
It was Poe’s favorite thing about him. Finn had been broken so many times, and it was at his worst that Poe had found him, staring out over the bridge, hands pressed into the concrete overlooking the railway as the two AM train rolled through on its way to bigger cities with prettier lights and taller buildings.
That had been a warm summer evening, gorgeous by all counts, but the hurricane in Finn’s soul was impervious to all of the lights and the winking stars and crescent moon that made the tracks shine like flashes of trout in a stream.
Poe found Finn with tears in his eyes, chest heaving with the weight of the terrors that only showed themselves at night: self-doubt, worthlessness, and the anxiety of losing the sun and being dominated by the harsh realities of night.
It wasn’t really that Poe was out looking for anything. A sleepless night that ended at a bar resulted in Poe heading back over the bridge. It wasn’t even the most direct route to his apartment on the rough part of town, but it was well lit and Poe had always been a little cautious about these things.
It was just a little too warm for Poe to be wearing his jacket. He knew his armpits were sweating under the leather and that the small of his back was moist with perspiration. He’d turned the corner to go up onto the bridge, and he saw Finn there, on his side of the bridge, gripping the concrete with all the strength his fingers could muster.
Poe’s senses went on high alert and he picked up the pace a little. Many people did not view their little down as a happy place, and what Poe saw wasn’t uncommon. He knew from personal experience that it didn’t usually end well. When Poe saw Finn climb up onto the concrete, stumbling a little and ironically sticking out his arms to steady himself, Poe rushed forward. He ran, worn sneakers pounding on the pavement, heart thudding in his chest so hard that he was certain it would have beaten right out of him. And the alcohol in his bloodstream disappeared as he started the incline of the bridge. His curls bounced against his neck and forehead and ears, and his eyes were as panicked as someone who had lost too many people to whatever Finn was feeling.
It wasn’t until he was roughly ten yards away and this man, this gorgeous, breathing, living man who had forgotten what he had to lose was leaning forward, arms outstretched as the train below him bellowed a warning, that Finn righted himself and turned. Poe had just gotten to him and reached out his had, wrapping thick, capable fingers around a muscled forearm and tugging. Finn had put up no resistance as he fell boneless onto Poe, and they breathed each other’s air when they could finally draw breath.
Finn started into Poe’s eyes, dark, shiny, freshly cooled obsidian scanning broken glass on a beach at sunset, and Finn’s hands gripped Poe’s jacket tighter before he collapsed in a mess of tears and sobs and shaking. All Poe could do was straighten him, rub his back, throw his jacket over the poor man’s shoulders, and whisper into his ear that it would all be okay.
Now, Finn was smiling, his face breaking into a grin that Poe swore made everyone around him sit up a little straighter and watch what Finn was watching. He was watching his love march down the street, voice blaring over the rain, costume sticking to his boxy features, and brilliant face breaking through the dark clouds and darker autumn night.
As the horns blared their reveille, there was a collective gasp from the crowd as Poe sloshed through the rain that was really coming down in harsh, cold droves. Half an inch had accumulated already, and Poe’s gloved hand, soggy and warm, wrapped around Finn’s and dragged him out into the parade.
Finn didn’t have the time to utter a protest before Poe was in his face, eyes blazing with the fires that love and passion spread across the whole body, each nerve sparking warm and excited as Finn’s hand tightened around his.
I love you baby…! Poe’s breath had a hint of mint to it and he sang through giggles and Finn was about to die of embarrassment. Poe had the audacity to twirl the man before Finn finally broke back into his massive grin. The same grin that Poe had kissed for the first time months after the event on the bridge. And now, a year or so later, they danced and sang together on the rain as the band played on. Their feet were soaked, and together they marched down the street, singing Christmas carols as Poe kept time. Soon, the rain stopped, but the clouds’ pregnancy made it evident that they weren’t though with the citizens of Yavin County.
But the rain didn’t start back up half an hour later when the parade was over. It didn’t start when Poe snuck into a closing convenience store to change back into his jeans and black shirt. It did start, however, when Finn and Poe started back to the diner where they shared post-parade meals. It started with abandon, only giving a few moments’ notice of a drizzle before the torrents fell from the sky, hard and fast and blinding like it had been when Poe was singing.
It would be a record-breaking night with this rain. The downpour would last until eight o’clock the next evening, but for the two men in that town that night, the it was as if the rain stopped and a warm breeze cleared the night. Finn pressed Poe against the brick wall of the diner. There was no specific moment when their lips crashed together, tongue and teeth scraping against each other. It was a bruising kiss, partly revenge for the utter terror that Finn had felt, and partly the self-confident assurance that Poe loved him more than the wretched cold he was going to get later.
“Poe. Poe Dameron.” Finn broke away for air and rested their foreheads together It wasn’t as if Poe had much of a choice to move, pressed up against the wall like that, curls plastered to his forehead and arousal pooling in his stomach. “Poe. I didn’t have time for it, but I wanted to...to ask you…” Finn pressed a quick kiss to Poe’s lips, the taste of him mingling with the taste of rain.
“Will you...I mean, if you wanted to. I know it’s only been a year, but--” Finn was muttering into the rain, and it was so loud that Poe had to tilt Finn’s chin up with his finger, taking the man’s measure.
“What’s the matter, babe?”
Finn took a step back, filling his lungs with wet air. One more kiss, this time desperate but chaste, and Finn squared his shoulders.
“Poe, will you marry me?”
The Latino stared at him for a long while, amazed at the question just posed to him. The tenderness in Finn’s eyes and the way he could see them going red with the urgency of tears as the silence wore on compelled him to speak, his mouth falling open, but into more of a grin than something prepared for words. The smallest chuckle fell from his lips.
They had come so far from the bridge, from getting Finn the help he needed, to the first kiss they had shared in the diner that Poe was pressed up against. Even through the rough patches when Finn called Poe, sobbing into the phone that he couldn’t do it, couldn’t keep it up any longer, and Poe had wordlessly come over, he had held Finn close and promised to never let him go.
Now they were here. Finn smiled as if the world could only suit him well. Poe had loved him for ages, and now he could do it for all the ages he had left.
“Finn, I--” Any other words were impossible to get out. It was that feeling you get when your wildest dreams have been fulfilled. It was the feeling at the top of a roller coaster right before you were going to plummet the next God-knows-how-many feet, swearing that your face was going to hit the ground and your insides would leave your body. That feeling prompted a yes in the form of, “There’s nothing I’d rather do.”
But both men were shivering at that point, so they didn’t bother with a kiss. Poe was bone-tired. His half-lidded eyes fluttered shut and he rested his temple against Finn’s shoulder. Finn laced their fingers together and pulled Poe out of the alley. They stepped into the diner together, soaking wet and dripping onto the green linoleum. They may have been cold and wet, the coffee may have been weak, and the rain outside might have broken records, but Finn and Poe were together, Finn’s soul was calm, their eyes bright and their hair messed, ready to take on any clear or stormy night.