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Finn and Rey are entirely different people.
Finn has a closet sorted by both color and style; Rey prefers to select her clothes off the floor. Finn needs to know every mechanic of a datapad before using it; Rey feels safe without having read the instruction manual to any ship. Finn is gentle and quiet and particular, and Rey is-- sort of a mess, really.
So why does Finn still want her so badly?
He thinks it might be because of how she looks at him. Every time, she has that same expression, that wonder and joy and let’s-talk-forever look that he loves so much. Unbridled emotion.
He thinks it might be because of how she startles and jumps when their hands brush; eyes flicking to his before snapping away, flush rising on her cheeks.
He thinks it might be because he’s almost certain that she likes him.
Certainly, they have all the proper ingredients to make what could be the best relationship he’s ever had.
Privately, Finn thinks about it-- how things would be different.
He thinks about Rey kissing him, about how he knows she would hold him. Her hands would slide up his chest, under his shirt, to trace his muscles. She’d sling an arm around his neck, he thinks, as a hold. Maybe she’d stand on her tiptoes to kiss him.
These silly fantasies, things he thinks about when he’s working on little tasks, evolve.
Finn thinks about Rey taking off his clothes. Rey on top of him. Rey with her hands in his mouth, or-- lower.
(Much lower.)
But when he leaves his room, sees Rey, just sees her passing-- that’s better than any fantasy.
Because the way her eyes glow, the way her hands move, the way she runs and skips and stands-- all of that has him. All of that keeps him wanting her.
He thinks: they’re opposites.
They’re completely different.
“Opposites attract,” General Organa says one day, talking about something completely unrelated.
Finn almost dies.
And then Rey walks by, and his head follows her. Accidentally, like he’s watching a ship go by, or watching leaves flutter in the sun, she’s just so beautiful, he’s so in love.
Generally, it takes him a couple minutes to get his breath back after these encounters.
And still, he’s unsure.
To ask Rey out, to be rejected, that would hurt as much as any pain he’s ever known. She could do it nicely, but still-- there’s something he wants, some kind of experience he is desperate for, something special in the meeting of their aching lips.
He thinks perhaps Rey’s keeping it secret that she likes him.
But why? He’s not intimidating (at least, he doesn’t think so), he’s not the cool one here. He once tripped over a screw that was lying on the ground because Rey wore a new tunic.
(Now, when Rey trips on screws, that is cool right there. He justifies this with the reasoning that she has no dignity anyway, so it’s not like she’s got something to lose, so she looks cool because she doesn’t care about embarrassment. He’s not biased or anything.)
But, assuming she is, that puts the burden of asking her out on Finn.
And he wants to do it, yes, definitely, but what if she says no?
So Finn turns himself inside out and thinks about all the things he could say to Rey if he were to actually work up the courage to talk to her.
“I love you.”
“I’d give you the world.”
“Seeing one inch of your skin feels like having the sun come out from behind a cloud, oh, please, you look so beautiful.”
And he doesn’t say any of them.
Instead, he fabricates.
He comes up with elaborate visions of what their life could be like, where they could live together, how they could say “I love you” in little, silent ways.
All this, and he’s never even told her he likes her.
And what people don’t understand, when he tells them about his problem, is that this isn’t the same at all as getting her out of Starkiller. Starkiller; there was a plan. There was a plan, and he knew she had her own, and he knew they would meet, and he knew she’d be safe.
This; he can’t trust his judgement on.
And if this fails, it’s a door slamming shut on all of his silly, soft daydreams.
So Finn walks with Rey, and he talks to Rey, and he watches Rey put on his jacket to go out when it’s cold on the base. Someone tells him that’s something couples do. His face heats as he says he didn’t know.
But she looks good-- she looks good, he thinks.
She’d look better on him.
And Rey turns and smiles, laughs, says something about how ass-cold it is (she picks up every swear she hears, she’s like a profanity magnet), and he has no idea what that’s supposed to mean but he loves her, he loves her, he loves her, and so he laughs.
He breathes in.
He breathes out.
He meditates, and he thinks of Rey, and he thinks of telling Rey everything.
“I would,” he’d say, “I’d do anything for you.”
But he still spends his time reading garbage romance novels and thinking about Rey and daydreaming about the things he wants in his life that he doesn’t even know if he can have (how many children would they have? What would they name them?) and it drives him to hell and back just to think about how useless all of it is if he doesn’t say something.
All of this brings him to one fall day when they’re all out doing their own things.
Finn is working out battle schematics, Poe is fixing up BB-8, Jess is doing some kind of fall cleaning.
Finn finishes early, because of course he does.
He walks outside into the crisp, clean air and looks around for Rey.
She’s working on a ship.
One of the wings is half-open, wires strung out and waving gently in the wind. Rey’s little hair tails flap a little, too. Finn watches her; looks at her back, gazing at her spine and her muscles and the way her shoulders move under her thin white undershirt.
She has him absolutely hypnotized.
Suddenly, Rey turns around and sees Finn. She wipes her hands on the dirty cloth she’s holding and smiles.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he says. “I have something to tell you.”