Chapter Text
It was really Finn’s first apartment on his own. It was cute, all exposed brick and quaint plaster and antique woodwork and stuff, and he was pretty sure it was objectively cute, but he had nothing to really base his judgement on. He’d never had a place of his own before.
He sort of didn’t believe in it, and sort of kept feeling like it was going to be taken away. The first week, he didn’t really unpack. It was only when Rey came over and started unpacking boxes for him that he joined in.
She was the one that pointed out that he had a back door. She opened it, and they discovered the little porch together. The porch had a roof, and she craned her neck and pointed out that it was clearly a balcony for the upstairs tenant. Finn went tentatively out and stood in the yard and looked up, and could see that there were potted plants and chairs and things up there. He didn’t know anything about his upstairs neighbor, but the potted plants were all in brightly-colored, mismatched little pots, and looked sort of leafy and not decorative, like maybe they were herbs for cooking. There was a garland of what looked like little flower-shaped lights.
“Bet it’s a girl,” Rey said, and went back inside to unpack more boxes. Finn really didn’t have enough things to fill the tiny one-bedroom apartment, and his furniture was all either from charity shops or made out of crates, but at least there were places to sit and his bed was actually made now, instead of the sleeping bag he’d spread out over the mattress.
“You live here,” Rey said, “and it’s yours now, and nobody’s going to take it away.”
“And I won’t have to leave,” Finn said, but he couldn’t really believe it.
But there was no point living on the edge of his seat, so he bought groceries, and during that second week, started teaching himself how to cook. He got himself a folding chair and put it on the porch so he could sit and look at the back yard, but he didn’t know yet how to do that.
He did discover an ashtray with fairly fresh butts in it, which told him what the previous tenant had used this porch for.
Finn settled in, and started to get used to the neighborhood. There were four units in this building, the other two in the front. He caught a couple of glimpses of neighbors; one woman introduced herself as a writer who lived in the front upper unit, and said sweetly that he shouldn’t hesitate to knock on her door if he needed anything. He couldn’t imagine what sort of extremity would move him to do such a thing, but it was sweet of her to offer. The other neighbors, he wasn’t sure of, but there was a strikingly handsome dark-haired man who he saw near the front door a time or two, but never met on the stairs. The man had a really gorgeous jawline and Finn wanted to look at him a lot more, but it was rude to stare, and he was always either on his phone or in conversation with someone and Finn was too shy to call out to him anyway. What would he say?
“You’re getting better,” Rey observed. “You don’t look like you’re expecting to get shot, anymore.”
“I’m catching up to where I am,” Finn said, and showed off some of his new cooking skills. He decided not to tell her about admiring the beautiful man; he wasn’t ready to discuss that aspect of himself with anyone yet, not in this new life.
One morning, about a month after he moved in, he woke gasping from a paralyzing nightmare just before dawn, and went out on the porch to get some air. The smells of the grass and the tree and the traffic grounded him, and he slowly came back to himself, and felt at peace, and as the sky lightened so did his heart. He understood, now, what the porch was for.
He spent a lot more time on the porch after that. Every morning before dawn, he went out and listened as the city woke up. And in the evening, he watched the light fade.
One evening as he slipped back inside and let the door clack shut behind him, he heard a noise. He went back to the door, and looked out, and the noise repeated, a little scratching sound. He looked down, and it was a cat, scratching at the corner of the door.
Bemused, he opened the door, and the cat came in with a cheerful-sounding chirrup, as if she belonged there. “Wait,” he said, stupidly, as if the cat could understand him, “you don’t live here!”
But she came in and jumped up onto his improvised couch, trilling and holding her tail upright, wriggling it in tiny little friendly-looking twitches. She was wearing a collar with a white tag sticking straight out, and he cautiously stepped closer— he really wasn’t familiar with cats— and looked at it. It had one of those QR code things, like you could scan with your phone.
“Huh,” Finn said. “You’re not a stray.”
“Mrrrup,” the cat said, leaning toward him. He thought perhaps she might want him to pet her, so he put out his hand tentatively. She cheerfully mashed her face against his hand, shamelessly using it to pet herself as she pleased, and he kept his hand steady, amused, and let her. She was very soft, and clearly well-cared-for. But she was obviously lost; she didn’t live here.
He petted her, or let her pet herself, for a while, and then went and retrieved his phone. He knew he had one of those scanning apps on his phone, but it took him forever to get it open, because the cat kept mashing herself against his hand.
“Hold still,” he said, and grabbed the tag, and tried to scan it. She was purring, noisily, and kept rubbing against his hands. He couldn’t get her to hold still.
He gave it up as a bad job for the moment, and sat down next to her. She delightedly climbed into his lap, which was alarming— she had sharp claws— but only so she could rub on him more, and after much climbing across his legs in pursuit of his hands, she finally curled herself up and lay in his lap, purring blissfully.
It was so unexpectedly delightful that he sat and petted her for a long time, enjoying how warm and soft and clearly happy she was. He wasn’t familiar with cats, at all; he’d never had anything of his own, really, had never really interacted with animals at all. But he knew from, like, movies and stuff, that it was great to have cats sit on you. So he kept petting her.
Finally she seemed to fall asleep, so he picked up his phone again and scanned the QR code on her tag.
It brought up a screen on his phone with a name and a phone number. No, two names. A photo of the cat, clearly this same cat, and the name “BB”, which apparently was the cat’s. And then under it, the name Poe Dameron, and a phone number with a local area code.
It had to be the cat’s owner’s name. Finn supposed there didn’t really have to be instructions. He hesitated a long time, though, before dialing the number. He didn’t like making phone calls, it made him anxious. But it wasn’t really done to text a stranger like that.
The phone rang twice before a man’s voice said, “Dameron,” and it took Finn a moment to recognize that was the name of the person whose phone it was.
“Oh,” Finn said, and then thought how stupid he must sound. “Uh, hi. Um.”
“Sorry, who is this?” the man said, polite but businesslike.
“I found your cat,” Finn said, stumbling awkwardly over the words. He grimaced: that was a dumb way of putting it. BB woke up, gave Finn a look he thought was perhaps disapproving— maybe she didn’t like how much noise he was making.
“Oh no,” the man said. “Which cat?” He sounded upset. “I didn’t know either one was missing!”
“Uh,” Finn said, “BB?” The cat squeaked, then jumped down from his lap. He felt strangely bereft, as if the world just wasn’t as kind a place with his lap empty.
“Tabby?” the man said. Finn wasn’t sure what that meant. The man was obviously moving, and in a moment he said, “Has to be, I see the other one. Is she— how bad is it?”
“What?” Finn looked at the cat, who was prowling around his apartment as if looking for something, and then it struck him how it had sounded. “Oh! No, she’s— she’s fine, I just— she’s okay. She’s in my— she let herself in my apartment. She’s okay. I’ve been petting her so she’d settle down and let me scan the tag.”
“Oh thank God,” the man said, on a long exhale. “When you said— I thought you meant—”
“No, no,” Finn said, horrified, “I’m so sorry— no. No, I just— she’s just, she’s clearly lost, she was scratching at my door like she thinks she lives here.”
“Thank God,” the man said. “Oh, you really— you really scared me.”
“I’m so sorry,” Finn said. “Oh, I’m so— I didn’t even think about what that sounded like. No, I should’ve said she found me.”
The man laughed. “I’m just glad she’s all right,” he said.
“Has she been missing long?” Finn asked. “Er, oh, right. You said. Can’t have been long.”
“I saw her when I got home from work,” the man said. “She can’t have been gone long.”
“Does she get out a lot?” Finn asked, curious.
“There’s a cat door,” the man said. “She comes and goes as she pleases.” He was moving again. “Hm. I have a suspicion. Did you by chance move in pretty recently?”
“I,” Finn said, at a loss, “why do you ask?”
“Can you do me a favor?” the guy asked. “Go out on your porch.”
“How do you know I have a porch?” Finn asked, and the paranoia spiked suddenly. Had he made a mistake?
“Well,” the man said, and his voice was warm and amused, not at all threatening. “You must live on the first floor, unless she’s really athletic, and I’m just guessing she didn’t come to the front door of your building, not in this neighborhood. She can’t be far from my porch.”
“Okay but,” Finn said, and bit it off. He didn’t need to be paranoid here. He was safe here. He uncurled from his chair and went hesitantly to the door. The cat did not follow him. “I’m looking out at my porch now.”
“Go out on the porch,” the man said.
“Why.” Finn couldn’t help it, he had to be wary. His instincts were too high-key for this new life but he’d earned them the hard way.
“Trust me,” the man said, and there was a sweet note to it, curling upward through it, playful. Finn hadn’t been spoken to like that much in his life.
Finn slowly, carefully pushed the door open, and stepped out onto the porch. “Okay,” he said. The cat squeaked, and followed him delightedly out the door, jumping up onto the chair, and he paused to pet her. “She came out with me,” he said, and the little amusement that gave him helped push away the screaming paranoia.
“Now, look up,” the man said, and Finn realized suddenly that he could hear the man’s voice with both ears, not just his phone.
He looked up, but all he could see was the floor of the deck above him. But he went carefully to the railing, and craned his neck to look up where there was a shadow.
The man was leaning over the railing of the balcony above. “Hi,” he said, hanging up the phone and waving. “Poe Dameron. You must be the new downstairs neighbor.”
Finn laughed in pure astonishment. “How did you know?” he asked.
Poe leaned more comfortably over the railing, and it was then that Finn recognized him, even in the half-dusk: he was the beautiful dark-haired man, and his smile practically sparkled in the dark. “Justin was a smoker,” he said. “Kid that lived down there. BB learned that he’d sit out on his porch every morning and every evening, and she’d go down there and hang out with him, and he’d give her treats and stuff. I said I didn’t mind. She used to go in and hang out in his apartment if he left the door open. They were buddies. She misses him a lot, I think.”
“Aw,” Finn said. “Well. What kind of treats?”
Poe laughed. “You don’t have to feed my cat,” he said. “I promise, no matter what she says, I feed her too.”
Finn slipped his phone into his pocket, since the call was disconnected. “Well,” he said.
“Is she still in your apartment?” Poe asked. “I can come get her, if she’s bothering you.”
“She’s on the chair right here,” Finn said, “she came out with me.” He leaned farther out. “How does she get back up to your place?”
“The tree,” Poe said. “She climbs the tree.”
The yard’s sole tree was an artistically-twisted many-branched thing, and Finn craned his neck. “It’s like. It’s like two meters away from your balcony!”
“I know,” Poe said. “She jumps. It’s fuckin’ crazy, you don’t have to tell me. I didn’t think she’d do it, but she does. She jumps right between the rails, it’s insane. She’s a daredevil.”
“Has she ever fallen?” Finn asked, horrified.
“No,” Poe said, “I don’t think she has, but you know. Cats land on their feet.” He laughed, and gestured back toward the building. “My other cat fell off this balcony once. Artoo. He was fine, but he freaked the fuck out, poor thing. He only comes out on the balcony sometimes, now, to watch the birds, and he doesn’t go near the rails.”
Finn laughed wonderingly. “That’s crazy,” he said. “She just— jumps?”
“Sure does,” Poe said. He leaned over farther, and clicked his tongue. “BB!” he said. “C’mere, BB!”
BB perked up, and jumped off the chair with a little chirrup. Sure enough, she ran over to the tree, climbed it as easily as running on the flat, and disappeared. Poe leaned back against the building, and in a moment BB reappeared, flying through the air, and disappeared through the slats.
“That’s my girl,” Poe said fondly, disappearing in turn as he clearly bent to pet her. Finn could hear her squeak at him. “She’s a good jumper.”
“That’s nuts,” Finn said.
“She’s something else,” Poe said, reappearing. “Hey, I never got your name. You wanna come up here and meet Artoo too?”
It was suddenly too much. “Uh,” Finn said. “No, I— I have homework.”
“Awww. Some other time,” Poe said easily, and his teeth gleamed bright in the gathering dark as he grinned.
“Some other time,” Finn said.
“I didn’t get your name,” Poe reminded him gently.
“Oh,” Finn said. “Right. Finn! Name’s Finn.”
“Finn,” Poe said softly. “I like that. Hey, you have my number now. Call me or text me or whatever, if you need anything or if BB’s bugging you or whatever, okay?”
People were friendly here. It was hard not to be suspicious, but Finn was determined to try. “Okay,” he said.
“I’m really up at all hours,” Poe said, “so like. Don’t hesitate. And if you wanna borrow BB, you just go ahead. Just let her out when you leave, so she can come back to me. There’s a cat door up here, she can always get in or out if she wants.”
“Okay,” Finn said, smiling shyly despite himself. “Maybe I’ll borrow your cat.”
“She’s a face sleeper though,” Poe said. “Gotta warn you. She really likes to snuggle. Artoo gets territorial, drives her off, but that’s all she really wants in life is to sleep on your head. Don’t be alarmed if she tries it.”
Finn laughed at that. “Okay,” he said again.
Twenty minutes later, his phone lit up. If you were just being polite, I won’t bug you any more, but I wanted to let you know I was serious about texting me if you need anything or just want to chat or whatever, Poe’s number wrote.
I wasn’t just being polite, Finn texted back. I will.
Then he sent Rey a text. I think I made a friend, he wrote.