Ben was staring up at the sky when Poe found him, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, face half-hidden by a collar of dark fur and thick wool, hood pulled over his forehead. It reminded Poe of what Hoth might have been like except instead of white, everything was graded in shades of ash and coal, dark to match the prevailing environment. The requisitions teams worked hard to ensure the Resistance had everything it needed in order to conduct their missions safely wherever they went. Sometimes they didn’t have the funds necessary to do the job to the extent that they wanted, but this time, they managed just fine.
Only a small patch of Ben’s pale face was visible through the winter gear they’d been loaded down with. When they were getting ready for it, Poe’d had half a mind to scoff, but he was smart enough to keep his thoughts to himself. And all the better, because even though this was a desert, black sand stretching for miles, buffered on all sides by equally black mountains and constant darkness at this time of year, it was cold as a Wampa’s back paw and the only thing stopping him from suggesting he and Ben huddle for warmth was the dark, cozy coats, lined trousers, socks, gloves, collars, hats, and insulated boots that Reqs had loaded them down with.
Talk about embarrassing, though fun to think about anyway.
Just imagining the look on Ben’s face was enough to put a smile on his face. Probably a bad idea, though; there was a perfectly good chance that it would freeze there.
“I’m sure you’ve seen stars before,” Poe said, coming up beside him. His breath puffed white into the air before him. A few moons offered enough light to see by, bright white and distant. Craning his neck, he scanned the heavens. It was beautiful, sure, but Ben was the kind of guy who kept his nose to the ground. The guy just wasn’t a dreamer anymore and he didn’t search the sky for anything except an extraction point and it sure as hell wasn’t time for that, though Poe was rather more looking forward to going home than usual, too. “What’s so special about these ones?”
“What?” Ben asked, like he hadn’t been listening. Perhaps he hadn’t been. Ben did have a habit of tuning Poe out when he thought it convenient to him. But there was nothing to do on this cold ball of black ice and Ben had realized that up until this point and tended to pay more attention to Poe than usual as a result. It was why this stargazing felt a little weirder than normal. He turned to face Poe and squinted at him, eyebrow raised. When he lowered his scarf and pulled the fur aside, Poe could see that his cheeks and lips were red and chapped. It made Ben look young, younger even than he’d looked back when he was actually young.
Poe pointed at the sky. “What gives, man?”
“What else is there to do out here?” His boots scuffed at the ground and he scoffed, derisive. “We’re wasting our time. Who knows what the First Order could be getting up to while we just sit out here and do nothing?”
“Probably General Organa,” Poe pointed out. “She tends to stay on top of these things, believe it or not. And she had reasons to think something is going on out here. It’s our job to find out. Unless you’ve got a problem with that?”
“I’ve got a problem hiding on a nameless rock in the middle of nowhere, yeah.”
“Yeah, well. What are you gonna do about it? Brood? Stare at the sky and curse it until you get what you want? We’re done in a few weeks anyway. The chances of the galaxy falling apart around us in that time are pretty slim. Even I’m not that full of myself. And you shouldn’t be either.” Poe’s coat brushed against Ben’s as he knocked into him, pushing at his shoulder to maybe knock a bit of sense into him. Of all the asinine things a person could do with their time, whining about a mission was one of the worst. There were so much better things to whine about. Like how fucking cold it was. At least they could do something about that.
“I wasn’t brooding,” Ben insisted, vehemently so.
“Okay, then. What was it?”
With a frown, Ben huffed and looked away, crossing his arms and doing his best impression of a puffed-up, disgruntled bird. “It’s stupid. Nothing really.”
Well, that certainly didn’t make Poe less intrigued, he could say that for nothing. But he also knew if he said anything now, Ben would clam up and never speak to him again about it. Poe hated being patient, but sometimes he had to be in order to get what he wanted. His time in the Resistance had taught him that lesson well and Ben only reinforced it every single time they interacted with one another. Such a pain in the ass, he was.
It was probably good for Poe, but he didn’t have to like it.
So Poe just stared at him, eyes wide, and bit the inside of his cheek to keep from opening his mouth. Maybe he’d spill sometime before the sun came back. Which would be years from now if their intel was correct about the place. Unless Poe dragged his ass to the other side of the planet.
Yeah, now he was just imagining nonsense in order to fill the time between now and the eternity later when Ben would just say what he meant. His foot tried to escape Poe’s determination to wait Ben out and tapped out a couple of impatient beats in the cold, creaking sand, but fate or luck held and Ben didn’t hear it. Poe tried to cover the sound anyway with a cough, and with the shifting of his weight back and forth.
It seemed to work. And after a few minutes, Ben released a breath and tilted his head back, eyes closed. “Today is midwinter back home,” he said. “Mom and dad used to celebrate it.” He scrubbed at his face with his gloved hand. “They took me to the parties that Chancellor Mothma and Senator Vicly used to throw anyway.”
It took Poe a long moment to realize Ben meant Chandrila. He so rarely talked about it. Made it easy to forget he was born there and partly raised there. It was so different from Poe’s childhood, where Yavin 4 seemed to infect his every memory. He couldn’t talk about himself without a little bit of it seeping through. Ben kept himself so closed off that he could’ve been from anywhere or from nowhere, springing forth fully formed from the galactic void. Though Poe didn’t say it, he wondered how fun a party thrown by your mother’s political friends could have been for a child.
“It was nice,” Ben said, then, “surprisingly enough. There were other kids who would come and they always made sure there was something for us to do or see. Fireworks or holo-illusionists or whatever.”
Good, Poe thought, though he didn’t say this either. Still sounded kind of lonely though; he wasn’t sure how much Ben would appreciate hearing that. “Sounds nice.”
“I always thought about how one day I would be old enough to go with my parents and actually spend time with them,” he continued. Now Poe wished he had expressed the thought. Ben might have appreciated hearing it. Though he also could’ve just gotten mad at Poe for expressing it in words.
It was even odds at this point how Ben would react.
“Though I’m not sure why I was so focused on that,” Ben added, wry. “All they talked about was work and someone got to the point of yelling and decided they were going to lead a revolution against the Centrists who kept stopping the forward progress of civilization. Heavy shit for a holiday party. Kind of ridiculous, too, given how drunk and rowdy they got.”
Poe’s mouth twitched. He could imagine just how rowdy the people Leia and Han called friends could be. Politicians were some of the most over the top people Poe’d ever met. It wasn’t a stretch to think some of them could get delusions of grandeur while they were enjoying themselves just a little too much. Poe kind of wanted to be there, just travel back in time to experience it for himself, maybe keep Ben company in the process. For whatever good that might have done for him.
Probably not much. Maybe not any at all.
“You just wanted to get drunk and rowdy, too,” Poe teased. He remembered his parents’ parties. Nobody threatened revolution, but the adults all got to drink and each and every kid resented being stuck with juice, even if it was sweeter than usual, tasty and special in its own way, and they spent the rest of the year looking forward to getting to have it. It brought a smile to his face to think about it and now he had the urge to find some spiced koyo juice to drink. Good luck getting it. Definitely wasn’t midwinter back home and it’d been more than a few years than his dad had gone through the trouble of making it. Without any kids around, there hadn’t been a point.
“I just wanted to be an adult, I think,” Ben answered.
Poe suspected that wasn’t quite the truth, but he wasn’t about to call Ben on it. “You’re an adult now,” Poe pointed out. “And Snap sent along a bottle of shitty moonshine.”
Ben’s nose wrinkled, but he didn’t shoot down the idea immediately.
“And you kind of did help stage a revolution against the Centrists who kept stopping the forward progress of civilization,” Poe said. “You want to relive those parties, now you’ve got the time. Keep that old midwinter tradition alive.”
“Mon Mothma would be proud, I’m sure.” Though his voice was drier than the frigid air around them, he still wasn’t saying no. “Senator Vicly definitely would.”
“So what do you say?”
“I’m not getting drunk out here. That’s what I’m saying.” But a small smile pulled at his mouth. “But I’ll maybe have a shot or two.”
“Good man,” Poe said, relief flooding through him that he managed to do something to pull Ben out of his mood, even if it wasn’t quite in the way he expected.
Might not have been huddling together for warmth, but it was still something. Poe could life with that.