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“Finn’s awake.”
You rub your eyes and glance at the aluminum analog clock on your dresser—12:45, it reads in blinking red letters—and you watch the rhythmic rise-and-fall of Poe’s chest as he stands in your doorway, strangely alert, as the part of your brain that’s capable of actually processing information struggles to catch up with the rest of your body.
“What?” you ask, yawning.
“Finn. It’s Finn, he woke up,” Poe repeats. There’s a wide, delighted grin spreading across his face, exposing a row of slightly uneven, perfectly white teeth, like he can’t believe what he’s saying, even if he knows it to be true—
You blink, realization sinking in.
“Oh. Oh my god.”
You sit up and you swing your legs over the side of your bed, briefly contemplating getting dressed or at least making yourself look somewhat presentable, searching in the dark for a headband as Poe takes your hand on the way out of your room, your fingers catching in the tangled ends of your hair. You sneak a glance at his tousled bedhead and wrinkled grey t-shirt as he pulls you towards the med bay, footsteps echoing hollowly around the empty corridor, and decide that it probably doesn’t matter.
It takes nearly ten minutes—less than that, really— to get from the living quarters all the way to the med wing, even when running, though it feels like longer. You stumble past the stainless steel double doors of the infirmary, past rows and rows of narrow, neatly-made white cots, into a smaller section of the wards—
“Finn!” you say breathlessly.
Finn looks up. “[Name]? Poe?” he says, confusion, shock and then delight flickering across his face in quick succession.
He’s wearing a ridiculous blue-and-white checkered hospital gown and he’s sipping on a grey pouch labeled juice concentrate in big black letters—the kind that you dimly remember drinking as a toddler—and that somehow just manages to make the entire situation ten times less serious, which, considering you’re both in your pajamas and Poe’s disheveled hair vaguely resembles the likeness of Cloud City, isn’t that difficult to begin with.
You giggle—or snort, you can’t really tell at this point— and then you’re clinging to Poe’s upper arm as you dissolve into contagious fits of relieved, happy laughter, Finn is smiling stupidly and getting up to hug you both even though he probably shouldn’t be, and everything—for the moment, at least—is wonderfully, reassuringly normal.
“Welcome back,” Poe says, grinning.
And then he leans forward and he kisses Finn on the forehead —and sure, it could be a friendly gesture, yeah— but the ensuing silence is tense, charged, the way that they’re looking at each other is reminiscent of every crappy romance movie you’d ever seen.
You both end up reaching for his free hand at the same time.
Finn laughs it off.
When you and Poe leave the infirmary, your hands are still wound together.
You don’t mention any of it.
It’s kind of—
Complicated.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Finn isn’t allowed to leave the hospital for a month following his recovery.
There’s a lot of boring stuff like special diets and reform programs and rehabilitation therapy to make up for the obviously negative side effects of being comatose for nearly three weeks, but he manages to remain almost strangely upbeat about it all, which is—good. He chats with the nurses and sticks rigidly to the two week diet plan and doesn’t even complain that he’s still being forced to wear that ridiculous hospital gown, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s itching to leave.
“Hey, Finn,” you call, pushing past the heavy metal door into the gym where he’s been spending most of his time.
“Oh—hey,” he grits out, pulling himself up over the hanging bar bolted to the wall. His threadbare, military-issued grey t-shirt is damp with sweat and clinging in a really frustrating way to the shifting muscles in his shoulders and upper back— because yeah, of course, the guy that your stupidly attractive best friend is currently crushing on justhappens to also be really hot.
“You really sure you should be pushing yourself that hard?” you ask, watching his biceps bunch and strain and the tight tense line of his ridiculously broad shoulders as he moves up past the bar again. “You might break the stitches.”
Finn drops back down to the floor with a quiet grunt followed by a sharp exhale; he rolls his shoulders experimentally and shakes his head. “Nah, the stitches are gone. I don’t know what they did, but it’s nearly all healed up. Guess I’m lucky, huh?”
He takes a sip of water from a plain blue sports bottle resting on the nearby bench press.
“Did it scar?” you ask, curious.
“I—uh, I don’t know,” Finn says, “You want to see?”
You prop your elbows up on a piece of exercise equipment whose purpose you aren’t entirely sure of.
“Um. Sure,” you say, less nonchalantly than you intended.
He turns his back towards you and then he pulls his shirt off with that one-arm-over-the-back thing that you’ve never understood the mechanics of, and—
Yeah. There’s a scar.
Raw and raised and waxy, it runs in a jagged line from just beneath his shoulder blades to the left side of his lower back, edges crude and puckered. It looks painful. You notice that first.
The second thing you notice is that Finn is undoubtedly flexing.
“You’re showing off,” you say, aiming for teasing and likely landing somewhere in the “flirting” zone.
Finn’s answering laugh is soft and warm. “Yeah, a little bit,” he says, shifting his shoulders.
He’s not much taller than you, but there’s a solidness to his body that makes you feel strangely small in comparison, and it’s not something you should be thinking about or examining in any amount of detail but it’s sort of hard not to when his entire body tenses up as you barely brush the tips of your fingers over the scar.
You adjust the collar of your shirt and curl your toes into the thin commercial-grade carpet and try to ignore how uncomfortably warm the air suddenly feels.
“You can touch it, if you want,” Finn assures you, quickly adding, “I mean—it doesn’t hurt or anything.”
“Oh. Okay,” you reply softly, suddenly blanking on what to say and how to say it and maybe just how to fix the uncomfortable awful mess you’d gotten yourself into, except that suddenly Finn turns a little to look back at you and your hand is resting lightly on the corded muscles of his right shoulder, just beside the scar, and his eyes are soft and his skin is almost strangely warm—
“Guys?”
The door’s rusty hinges squeal as Poe pushes it open. His eyes rake up and down Finn’s bare torso, lingering for maybe a second or two longer than absolutely necessary, and he blinks, he opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then opens it again–
“Are you—In the middle of something?” he asks blankly. “Because I can just—“
“No! No.” You say quickly. “I just wanted to see. His scar, I mean.”
Poe visibly relaxes, carding his fingers through his hair.
“Let me see,” he says, moving closer, hand hovering above the waxy pink surface of the scar—and he has a matching one on his forearm, you notice, it’s new and red-raw, roughly the size of your fist. You want to ask him where he got it, but you don’t. Instead, you place your hand on top of his and move it down, until Poe’s open palm is flat against Finn’s shoulder blade, right where the scar begins.
Poe’s breathing falters.
You don’t mention it.
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt,” Finn says, voice slightly softer.
Poe nods slowly, moving his hand down, following the path of the scar down his spine. “Good. Yeah. That’s—good.”
He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth.
Finn swallows.
And then—
And then the alarm for first-shift lunch break is echoing shrilly through the room and you, Finn and Poe are jerking apart like you’ve been electrocuted, Poe is murmuring an awkward excuse involving and x-wing and a faulty motivator that needs rewiring, Finn is saying something about having to go back to the infirmary and then walking away as quickly as he can without flat-out running, and you—
You get the feeling that something very important has changed.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“So—you and Finn, you’re not—exclusive, or anything, right?” Poe asks a little too casually, leaning down from the top of the x-wing to grab one of the wrenches from the tool cart, his smudged protective goggles in imminent danger of falling off of his face.
You wiggle out from beneath the belly of the ship with half of a broken calcinator still held in one hand, tapping your fingers—which, unfortunately, are once again covered in engine grease— against the cold aluminum. “What? We—We’re not even in a relationship, or, whatever. We’re friends. That’s it. We’re all just—friends.”
The broken calcinator lands with an echoing, tinny crash in the recycling container, and you slide back underneath the ship.
“Right,” Poe says. “That’s— good.”
You hike up an eyebrow and poke your head back out to make vaguely threatening squinty eye contact with Poe, who still manages to look unfairly attractive even dressed in a wrinkled, threadbare white t-shirt and covered in breaker fluid.
“Why is that ‘good’?” you say, tone slightly accusatory, reaching up to swap your wrench for a hydrospanner.
You’re not sure if you’re supposed to see Poe’s small, crooked grin.
“Dunno,” he says, pulling himself back up to the top of the x-wing. “It just is.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It starts when Poe decides to celebrate Finn’s release from the hospital.
Unsurprisingly, everything pretty much goes to shit from there on.
By the time you realize it probably wasn’t a good idea, it’s nearly twelve o’ clock and you’re standing in the middle of Poe’s living room doing the deep space equivalent of Jello shots, because anything involving the words “celebration” and “Poe Dameron” also tends to involve the word “alcohol”, too. And while the almost drunk and judgmentally-impaired part of you is getting increasingly distracted by the fact that your two best friends both happen to be stupid-hot, the still-functioning part of your brain manages to recognize that things are going to get really fucking complicated.
The radio in the corner is on, blasting some ridiculous overly-synthesized pop music, and Poe is sauntering over to you with his stupidly crooked half-smile and the first two buttons of his dark-purple oxford undone and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and that, alone, is completely and totally unfair. And Finn is there too, of course, having somehow magically moved from the couch in the time you were distracted by Poe’s—well—everything.
“May I have this dance?” Finn asks, mock-serious, hand outstretched, the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Beat me to it,” Poe replies, grinning—you’re not sure if he’s talking about you or Finn, but you’re pretty certain that it doesn’t matter at this point, because, honestly, you’d all spent the last few days skirting around the fact that you’re all trapped in a weird love-triangle-thing and you’re kind of getting sick of it. You flash a cheeky smile, holding up your forgotten Jello shot and squeezing it into your mouth; you don’t look away from him as you swallow and you can’t quite help your victorious smirk when his answering laugh is low and a little hoarse.
“Aww, Poe’s gonna be left out,” you say, giggling, as Finn takes your hand and spins you around gently; you’re light-headed and slightly off balance from the effects of the alcohol and he grabs your elbow to keep you from falling, palm callused and warm and rough against your skin.
He doesn’t let you go.
“I think we can figure something out,” Poe says, chest grazing your shoulder, and you have never been so close to both of them before and you’re suddenly wondering what the hell is going on because Poe’s voice doesn’t usually sound like that, it’s not usually so low and husky and challenging—
“What are you—“ you start to say, but then you break off into a surprised shriek as Poe grabs your hand and Finn turns your shoulders, spinning you around, the music nearly drowning out the sound of your laughter. You’re getting dizzy, almost faint, as they keep twisting you, faster and faster and faster, until the lights and their faces blur together into something warm and hazy and you’re leaning back against Poe’s chest and remembering, distantly, that you’re kind of drunk and kind of off balance and when you grab one of their arms to steady yourself—
You stumble.
You’re too dizzy, your center of balance too out-of-sorts for you to be able to catch yourself, and you fall, bringing both Finn and Poe down with you, the next few moments becoming a suffocating blur of laughter and body heat and the smell of aftershave. The rough surface of Poe’s thin carpet is digging into your back and you can taste tequila and watermelon Jello in your mouth and the music still coming from the radio in the corner is building into a dull crescendo in the background, but you don’t notice any of those things. The details just seem to blur, become unimportant and inconsequential, because there is a strong arm around your waist and a smiling face buried in the crook of your neck and you feel warm and safe and protected, and somehow that matters more.
Your laughter begins to subside.
The following moment of oddly profound silence seems to drag on into minutes and hours and maybe even entire lifetimes.
Finn props himself up on his elbow, and Poe, half of his body held up above yours, glances at him, glances at you, and the space between your bodies suddenly feels cold and empty. And the silence—it weighs on you, heavy and thick and pressing, the result of nearly two months of unresolved tension culminating into something completely terrifying and completely impossible and completely yours, just the three of you, it’s the final moments before the jump or the fall or the step that none of you have ever been brave enough to take—
Poe takes it for both of you.
Of course he does.
He looks at you, and there’s something about his eyes or his expression or his infuriatingly attractive habit of biting his lower lip that makes your skin flush with something slow and meticulous and scorching because he’s very obviously halfway-drunk and he very obviously wants you, and that—
And that—
It makes you want to pause, to try and figure out what the fuck you’d managed to get yourself into, but the moment isn’t long enough, there’s not enough time for the thought to properly stabilize. He leans forward and his eyes flutter closed and your eyes map out the curve of his cheekbone and the faint shadow of stubble along his jawline and then he’s kissing you and his movements have this slow sure intensity to them that you’ve never seen before, a focused deliberation that makes your heartbeat skip and stall and stutter and your stomach clench around something warm and good.
Poe pulls back a few inches— less than that, probably— and you wonder, briefly, what he’s doing, you wonder if he even knows what he’s doing, as he looks at you and then looks at Finn and hesitates for all of three seconds before he leans in and cups Finn’s jaw, tilts his head up, looks at him with an expression that’s strangely serious and also strangely fragile—
You’re not entirely sure who kisses who first.
You don’t even think that it matters.
There’s a strange energy to the next few moments.
“Everyone’s okay with this, yeah?” Poe says, voice uncharacteristically low, almost raspy, as he exhales and leans his weight on his palm.
“Yeah. Yes, I’m—yeah,” Finn says, after a moment, slightly breathless. “Can I—I mean, should I—“
He hesitates, and looks at you, visibly steeling himself for something that you haven’t quite figured out yet.
And then—
He exhales. He licks his lips. He looks at you and leans forward and hesitates for far too many seconds, like he’s uncertain or unsure, and it feels like—it feels like you’reobserving the next few moments from a viewpoint that isn’t your own, as you close the remaining distance and allow him to tilt his head down, brushing his lips over yours, slowly, carefully, catching his shaky breath and your answering sigh—
He curls his arm around your waist.
He whispers something fervent and unintelligible against your lips–
And then he’s pulling you closer and he’s kissing you again, hard, slightly clumsy and slightly uncertain, and it occurs to you for the first time that maybe he’s never done this before as he groans into your mouth, the sound reverberating through your chest, broken and low. You’re acutely aware of the calluses on his palms scratching over your bare skin where the back of your shirt has hitched up, the half-murmured curse from Poe in the background and the sensation of your brain, already half-drowned in alcohol, giving up and giving in and completely relinquishing your ability to apply rational thought to the situation with a fizzle and a pop and a short burst of buzzing radio static—
Finn stops kissing you for a fraction of a second and Poe takes the opportunity to slant his lips over yours and then you’re tipping your head back and his fingers are winding in your hair, digging into your skull and holding you in place as he coaxes your mouth open and runs his tongue over your teeth— he tastes sweet and tangy, like lime and tequila, and you wonder, distantly, how much he’d had to drink. More than you? Less? Did it even matter?
You bury your face in the crook of Poe’s neck and decide that it doesn’t matter, not really, as he kisses Finn over your shoulder, pulling you closer and then rocking his hips forward, his cock a half-hard line between your thighs—and you nearly gasp at the white-hot coil of blistering awareness that erupts in the pit of your stomach in response, gut clenching around something warm and slow and dirty—
“Bedroom,” Poe says, voice hoarse and slightly frantic.
You stand up, and you hesitate for a minute, or a fraction of a minute, or maybe even less than that.
And then Poe’s mouth is descending over yours again, soft and slow, and he’s backing you up against the wall next to his bedroom door and every rational thought about what you’re doing, the ramifications and the consequences and the undeniable way that the relationship between the three of you is going to change disappears like dew in the sunlight, drying up and evaporating and completely ceasing to matter.
He pulls back.
He looks at you and he looks at Finn, expression scorching—
He pushes the door shut.
And—
Things change, after that.
You peel off Finn’s t-shirt and press your mouth to the center of his chest, and his hands are hesitating over the button of your jeans like he’s asking permission, uncertain and unsure, as Poe slips his hands beneath your shirt and pulls it up over your head—it takes him two tries to figure out the clasp of your bra, and you would laugh, maybe, except that Finn’s kissing you again and gasping softly into your mouth as your palm flattens against his abdomen, moving down over the front of his jeans—
“Fuck,” Poe murmurs, disbelieving; his fingers are already working open the buttons on his oxford one by one, and you’re acutely aware of him kicking off his jeans, too, guiding you back towards the bed with his hands on your hips, and he’s leaning over and rummaging in the top drawer of his dresser for condoms before you even have a chance to ask.
Finn swallows audibly.
Your pulse races faster.
He tugs off his pants, and his boxers, he climbs onto the bed—
The next few minutes are surprisingly slow.
Finn’s hands find your waist and Poe runs his fingers down your spine, mouth grazing the shell of your ear, voice hoarse and low as he checks one last time—everyone’s good, okay, just making sure—and you grind your hips into Finn’s, shivering when his cock brushes your clit, and then he’s slanting his mouth over yours and pushing his hips forward, closer—
He goes still. He stops kissing you. He shudders and he gasps out oh against your lips and his fingers dig into your skin, and then there’s a moment of silence, of stillness, that feels inevitable and inescapable and painfully, perfectly real—
“Can I—“ Poe is asking, voice hoarse, brittle, mouth lingering on your neck, over your pulse point, feeling your heartbeat speed up and your breathing falter as Finn rocks forward, moans something intelligible against the curve of your collarbone.
You nod instead of answering, uncertain if you can even trust your voice because it’s already difficult enough to think or speak or even remember what the hell your name is—
He goes slow.
And the feeling—it’s odd, at first, in the very beginning, and he rocks forwards once, twice, a third time, and you instinctively grind down, you gasp and shudder and Poe goes still for a moment, allows you to adjust to the feeling of being full and filled and you force your mouth open, releasing a broken moan—
“Fuck,” Poe is saying, voice low and scratchy and deep, “Fuck, Finn, I can feel you—“ and then he’s leaning over your shoulder, his hand cupping Finn’s jaw and his nails digging into his skin as he drags him down into a kiss that’s all teeth and tongue and want—
They start to move.
Slowly, at first, an uneven irregular rhythm, and you can feel them, both of them, every inch rough and thick and perfect, and it feels so good that you shiver and cry out and bite down on the tensed line of muscle at the base of Finn’s neck, the faint sound of skin hitting skin as he drives his hips up filthy and obscene and loud in the half-dark silence of Poe’s dormitory.
“Yeah, sweetheart, just like that,” Poe urges as he rocks forward—up—yes—and you roll your hips, feel the muscles in your thighs tense and tighten and ache, a sheen of sweat settling over your skin as the heat between your bodies becomes too much and not enough and nothing like you had expected—
And still Poe keeps talking, words slurred and heavy against your neck as you duck your head and press your face into Finn’s shoulder—Feels good, (Name), doesn’t it? I want you to tell me, I want you to tell us, c’mon—
“Poe,” you say, shuddering, as his breath swirls over your skin and elicits a shiver and a desperate attempt to breathe, just—just breathe— “Finn—“
“Yeah, yeah—I know,” Finn gasps, and then he shifts and the angle changes and—oh yes like that please—and then he’s brushing something inside of you that makes you gasp and shudder and clutch at his shoulders, using him as leverage to keep going, the slow slide of your bodies filthy and obscene— maybe, you think, you’d be embarrassed if there was enough left of you to care—
“Poe—(Name)—oh—oh, god, I can’t—“ Finn says, and he sounds wrecked, like he’d forgotten how to breathe, like everything is too good and too much and he isn’t going to last, no, not as his hips stutter and his fingers scrunch into your skin and his breathing becomes ragged, uneven, but he still forces the words out anyway.
And you grind down, you moan and shudder and savor the feeling of fullness and friction and then he’s hitting something inside of you that makes your skin feel inflamed, unstable, and you don’t—and you can’t—
Because neither of them have stopped moving, no, harder and faster and deeper, it’s good and then it’s too good and then it’s too much, you’re gasping out a broken series of syllables that might have been their names or might not have been, but you don’t know and you don’t care, because the heat from their bodies is suddenly suffocating and you know with crippling certainty that you are going to collapse, you are going to break and come apart into a thousand million pieces—
And the wave—it crests, it crashes—
“Finn,” you say, soft and quiet, “Poe, I—oh my god—“
And the muscles in Finn’s back go tense and tight and his hips give one last stuttering rock, Poe lets out one last satisfied groan and shudders, sucks a bruise into the side of your neck—
And it’s over.
The silence that falls after is surprisingly comfortable.
“I don’t want to move,” you declare. “Not yet.”
“I can do that,” Finn says, resting his chin on your head. “I’m okay with not moving.”
Poe flings an arm over the both of you.
“Good,” you reply.