A lot of things weren’t great about Poe’s life right now. The Resistance was in shambles. Leia and he and Finn and Rey and Rose and everyone were barely keeping their militia—could they even call it a militia when it was thirty people and change, if that?—afloat while they skulked about the furthest corners of the Outer Rim in the hopes of keeping ahead of the First Order’s still superior, still pursuing forces. The Resistance could take out a dreadnought and lose every one of their fighting force’s limbs doing it and still it wasn’t enough. Still they were run ragged, burning fumes with nearly every stop they made. Poe never slept more than two hours at a time, his mind winding back to the barrages from the First Order ships he hadn’t been able to defeat himself, had had to watch as more capable leaders took on the hard work of sacrifice. He woke to the repetitious thumping noise, rhythmic and dull, and found himself always momentarily brought back. To the dreadnought’s destruction, to the decimation of his bomber fleet, to their hurried flight to Crait, transport after transport picked off one by one, with him trapped, helpless, behind transparisteel windows.
The worst part, though, the very worst, was having to see Kylo Ren’s smug fucking face every day as he skirted about the Millennium Falcon, cowed, broken of spirit, morose. It was a slap in the face as physical as anything Leia Organa could deliver with the strike of her own palm against his cheek and he nearly gasped every time they happened to cross paths.
It was more often than Poe liked.
He’d never forgive Rey for seeing something in Kylo Ren that he absolutely did not deserve to have glimpsed any longer. The only upside, he supposed, was it was one less enemy they’d have to kill in battle later. Assuming Kylo didn’t fuck them all over in the end.
The Millennium Falcon was not a large ship. And Kylo filled it with the weight of his misguided regret, brought down the moods of everyone around him, because not only was he a selfish prick, but he was an asshole, too, and chose to suffocate everyone with his remorse instead of getting on with his life like the rest of them.
He acted like he was the only one who had regrets. And he might’ve been the biggest fuck-up of them all, but he wasn’t the only one.
For reasons he couldn’t explain—he’d never had a kid, he supposed, and he didn’t know a whole lot about the Force or forgiveness or turns from the light to the dark and back again, that all was way above his paygrade—Kylo Ren was allowed to remain. General Organa demanded that he be useful and that usually meant paying up in intel, but Poe would just as soon toss him out an airlock and have done with it. What good was intel when they didn’t even have a capital ship to fight back wth?
Kylo Ren was a pointless waste of space as far as Poe was concerned.
Which made the fact that he was here, now, in Poe’s quarters just another one of those things about Poe’s life that wasn’t all that great. Call it weakness, call it space madness, call it good, old-fashioned frustration, but he had his fists wound in Kylo’s hair, pulling hard at the hairs at the base of his neck, hard enough to make Kylo hiss and huff and Poe absolutely knew better and did not stop himself.
“I don’t go by Kylo anymore,” he said against Poe’s mouth, the words asking for something that Poe would never, ever give him.
Absolution.
Why the fuck he wanted it from Poe of all people was beyond him, but Poe’d already made this promise to himself: everyone else might forget who Kylo was, what he did, they might see the lightness and the dark as a clear-cut demarcation. Out there, he condescended to call Kylo by his birth name—his respect for General Organa required that much of him—but in here?
In here…
He’d hurt them both with the reminder if he had to.
Poe hadn’t even realized he’d said his name, his real name, the one he chose for himself all those years ago, aloud.
What they were doing? It wasn’t right. But sometimes it felt good enough that Poe might have forgotten if he didn’t force himself to remember at every moment.
Kylo Ren owed him a debt and Poe would get every ounce of blood out of him that he could, even if it was only in the form of lips busted by the bite of Poe’s teeth, by the cut of his words into Kylo Ren’s heart.
Poe yanked the bland, beige shirt Kylo wore out of the blander, brown trousers he wore. The seam tore a little and Kylo scoffed and flushed at the treatment of it. He proved himself better than he used to be, though. The flash of anger he expected Kylo to feel barely materialized, and Poe couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. Maybe it was both; they existed, the pair of them, in the gray shades between good and bad.
He was getting better at pretending he was Ben Solo. But Poe was equally good at pretending he was Poe Dameron, Resistance Hero, the kind of guy who belonged on propaganda posters, who’d earned the right to be respected and looked up to. That kind of self-delusion would prove itself dangerous one day. Poe was sure of that much.
In the meantime, he pushed Kylo up against the bulkhead wall, careful to ensure every inch of him slammed against it from the back of his head down to his thighs. He heard the crack of Kylo’s head and hoped it hurt like hell. He shoved his hand down Kylo’s pants and pressed himself against Kylo’s thigh. In these moments, he never let Kylo touch him and he never, ever let himself come, no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how close he got.
If Kylo could turn to the light, he could learn self-control.
Instead, he wrung seconds, minutes, hours sometimes of gasping pain-pleasure-pain out of Kylo until he finally spilled hot all over himself and sometimes, unfortunately, Poe, too. Against the wall, in a chair, on the floor—never Poe’s inadequate bed though—it didn’t matter. Only the pathetic look of need in Kylo’s eyes, the pleading words in his mouth mattered. It was the best Poe ever felt these days, knowing he could take this from Kylo, that Kylo wanted it from him, came willingly, never quite saying the words anymore—not since that first time they’d gone too far, when Kylo had pushed too far, asked for too much, and Poe had kissed him, had allowed Kylo’s hands on him before he’d returned to his senses and slapped those scarred, hated hands aside.
Poe might be learning self-control, but he was still Poe. And he still lived dangerously.
This was the line he was willing to flirt with.
It worked out enough of his issues that he could get through another day without killing him and that made it worthwhile even if later he laid in bed, alone and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, his insides scraped out from self-loathing as he took himself in hand, hating himself for doing this at all and only receiving the barest scrap of satisfaction in return for all the trouble he put himself through.
It didn’t make him happy though.
There wasn’t anything in the galaxy that would, he thought. Certainly not this.
Certainly not Ben fucking Solo.