Poe allowed himself few indulgences. It was a point of pride with him, of honor. Life on the base was considerably shittier than most other places in Republic space and if he could ease that burden for any of the younger recruits—take the exceptionally early and the remarkably late shifts, decline the better rations, keep meticulous records and inventories for every piece of equipment that comes into his squadrons’ hands—he was happy to take the hit and counted his lucky stars that anyone was fool enough to join General Organa’s skeletal fleet, the only people willing to stand against the First Order might that lurked beyond the Borderlands, checked only by their own belief that now was not the time to attack.
When that changed, Poe and those painfully young recruits would be the first to know. They would be, he knew it down to his bones, the first to die. The knowledge of that truth had long ago knit itself into the very fibers of Poe’s muscles, pulsed and bunched and drove his every action since Leia had recruited him out from under his cushy, pointless assignment with the New Republic Navy and exposed him to the precarious reality the people he’d sworn an oath to all pretended would never tip. They still wagered the lives of billions on that bet and Poe, Poe couldn’t be party to that. Not ever. He’d wasted enough time, less than a year in total, doing just that, a fool trusting superiors who were too stupid to feel which way the wind was blowing.
He’d been with her for five years now.
He’d met the first of his few indulgences almost that long ago.
(The other was koyo melons, which sometimes came hand in hand with the first, if he was feeling indulgent himself or managed to find himself within a parsec of Yavin 4, which was often enough to strain Poe’s credulity.)
“You’re thinking way too loud, way too early,” that indulgence mumbled against Poe’s temple. “Didn’t you trade shifts with Pava to avoid waking up at such an ungodly hour?”
“Sorry, Ben,” Poe said, failing to hide the smile in his voice, “old habits. Not all of us can be as young, adventurous, and sleep-disordered as you are.”
Ben snorted and stretched, groaning as the muscles in his back cracked.
“Comparatively young,” Poe amended, dry, hand settling on Ben’s chest as he shifted and squirmed into a suitable position. He counted out the strong, slow beats of Ben’s pulse, his second favorite form of relaxation. “Old age is catching up to you.”
“Old wounds are catching up to me,” Ben insisted, snaking his arm beneath Poe’s neck. “This is just the lucky shots of bounty hunters and local law enforcement staking their claims on my body.”
“Should I be jealous?”
Ben’s arm, longer than any limb truly had a right to be, curled around Poe’s head, pulling him closer so he could press a neat kiss into Poe’s hairline and tease at his curls with clever fingertips. “Only if you’re jealous at the thought of not getting to shoot at me when I’m running away from unfair fights.”
“My fondest dream is shooting at you while you run away.” He turned his head into Ben’s neck and inhaled, biting his lip to keep from laughing at Ben’s wounded gasp of indignation. “How did you guess?”
For a moment, Ben’s free hand lifted to brush across the back of Poe’s, clasping it tight, before moving on to caress Poe’s cheek and lift his chin. It didn’t matter how often they did this—trade lazy touches in the morning—it never failed to revitalize the bits and pieces of Poe that sometimes forgot there was more than the fight. Even so, these moments were so rare for them, Ben being gone so often and for such long stretches of time, refusing to join the Resistance while helping it whenever he could regardless, but all the more important for that rarity.
“I just had a feeling,” Ben said, kissing him on the mouth, his lips soft against Poe’s. Beneath Poe’s palm, Ben’s heart sped up, beating out the same hasty rhythm as his own was now working toward. In this one way, during this one time of day, he was patient and languid and Poe reveled in it. If not for the frigid armistice that would one day boil over into open warfare, he could have gloried in it forever.
Instead, they had today.
And Poe intended to make the most of it.