Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 They’re kissing just like normal, Poe having pulled Rey into his quarters and up against his wall, when something switches. Poe can feel it, feels it rip through his veins as sure as anything, when Rey’s breath hitches and her hips surge into his. She’s searching something he doubts she can even name, but it doesn’t stop her from tipping her head back and groaning real pretty, her throat exposed by the action; Poe takes full advantage of the position to suck a bruising kiss into a spot that has her bitten back groan transforming into a full on moan.

“That’s right,” he just about purrs. He nuzzles the mark he made, and his hands float tentatively up her toned stomach, exposed by her rucked up shirt. “Fuck, Sunshine, do you want me, too?”

“Want…you?” She manages to eek out, and Poe sighs, pulls away from where he’d been licking at the hollow of her collarbone, something that made her squirm and make adorable squeaking noises, but he needs her to be lucid if he has to spell this part out for her. He forgets that his sweetheart has so much less experience than he does – she makes up for everything in enthusiasm and bravado, always willing to try new things.

“Do you want me to make love to you?” Poe murmurs, grabbing her hand from where it’s fisted into his shirt, and bringing it to his lips. “Do you want me to carry you to that mattress, open you up,  kiss you ‘til you’re begging for my cock?”

Rey blinks, and shit, yeah, that was a little dirty for a virgin who had only seen his penis once (in the communal ‘fresher, and she’d turned bright red and turned around so fast he was worried she’d tip over). But then she clarifies, her voice not quite shaking so much as shaken – “You want to fuck?”

Poe winces but nods. “Uh yeah, I guess you could say that? But it wouldn’t just be fucking.”

“I know that.” Rey scoffs and doesn’t push him away, merely looks down while looking distant. “I’m not… I’m not ready.”

“Kriff,” Poe backs up entirely, moves his hand from where it has been stirring patterns over her hip to her arm. “Sorry, sorry! We can go back to kissing! If you want.”

“Thanks, Poe.” Rey smiles at him. “If I had to … make love … it would definitely be you because  I do love you. I’m just not ready to have children yet, not in the middle of the war.”

“I’m sorry?” Poe blinks at her politely, and Rey frowns at him and sighs.

“Just like a man!” She says, but the words sound weird in her mouth, like they’re someone else’s words, and she’s just borrowing them. “Sex means babies, Poe.”

“S-sometimes,” he splutters. “But that’s not … I’m not ready for babies either, Rey.”

“But you’ve had a lot of sex?” Rey says almost like a question, even though he’s been nothing but forthcoming about his past sexual experiences.

“Yes?”

“So you’ve had a lot of babies?” Rey finishes tentatively. Poe’s eyes might bug out of his head. “I figured you…just supported all of them. Which is nice of you! But it’s why I never let you share your rations with me because you…have to share with your babies, yes?”

“I don’t have any babies,” Poe says slowly, understanding dawning on him. “At least, I kriffing hope not. The shot they give us in Medical is pretty effective. Like 100% effective.”

“The shot?” Rey makes a face, and Poe taps her on the nose, which gets her smiling again.

“The birth control shot,” Poe laughs. “They give it to all the non-offspring-producing life forms in the Resistance. It messes with our hormones less to just…uh, turn our guys off?” It was like karking sexual education back on Yavin all over again. “ So we can have sex with no babies.”

“But…why would you do that?” Rey asks, looking mystified. “Sex is about babies. It’s only to make babies. Unkar told me I didn’t have time to waste on raising a pack of brats, and I should avoid men because they only want one thing, and that thing leads to babies.”

Ohhhh, fuck.

“Sex can be used to make babies,” Poe says, now fully pulled away from her. He sits on the bed and pats the thin mattress next to him. Rey crosses the room and settles down, and he takes her hand while he continues to explain. “But usually people have sex because it feels really, really good if you’re doing it right.”

“Really?” Rey makes an incredibly cute face, one he’d find distracting if this conversation weren’t so important.

“Really, really,” Poe says softly. “I’m sorry no one’s ever explained that to you before. Sex is supposed to make you feel good, and if you want, it can help you feel close to the person you’re sharing it with. That’s,” he clears his throat and rubs his neck. He’s rarely this open about his actual feelings. “That’s what I’d want, with you. I’d want to feel close to you because I love you, and I want you near.” She’s clearly still doubtful, so he adds, “And if you don’t believe me, there are videos that can explain it. Not – not holo-porn, but that might, um…no, but like ‘knowing your body’ vids, and I’m sure Rose or – or Leia could talk to you, or even Jess, I know she’s silly sometimes but she wouldn’t be silly about that, she could definitely explain things to you, and –”

“What if I want you to?” Rey asks, brow furrowed. Poe freezes with his mouth open. “What if I want you to show me?”

“Um.” Hadn’t he just asked if she wanted him to fuck her into the mattress? That seemed like a pretty glaring hells yes to her question.

To be fair, he asked that before he knew his girlfriend thought sex was limited to procreation.

He can’t say no to Rey, not when she bites her lip and looks at him with those big eyes, and she is an adult, and a lot smarter than him, so –

“Show me,” becomes their new mantra.

“Show me,” she pants as he whispers to her how pretty her tits are, the first time her tunic comes off – it’s that night, the night she confesses she thinks sex is just to have babies – and he uses his fingers to play with them, and he whispers that he wants to use his mouth, and she nods enthusiastically, her eyes curious until they’re closed, her head thrown back on the pillow while her slender fingers thread through his hair.

“I wanna make you come just like this one day,” Poe says as he kisses the underside of her breast, his hand toying with her opposite nipple. Rey makes a high-pitched noise, a good one if the heat radiating from her core is any sign, and Poe kisses her abdomen for a while he makes good use of his fingers, used to the finesse of piloting, now stroking and teasing her breasts while her hips move of their own volition under his stomach.

It’s a successful venture, one that she asks for a repeat of the following night, and this time, she gets his shirt off too – she works her tongue around one of his nipples, and he hisses because it does feel good, but, “Doesn’t feel as good for me,” he explains, voice rough. “Maybe in the middle of sex, it’d be enough, to, you know—”

Rey cocks her head at him, and right, she wouldn’t know – “It helps me orgasm sometimes,” he says. “Have you ever-“

She’s shaking her head, and Poe’s staring, suddenly aware that he's hard, and then she whispers, “show me,” and yeah, he’s fucked, so he reverently takes her tunic off again – she skipped the breast band, tonight, and he’s harder now somehow, at the thought of her choosing to skip it because she knew he’d be here – and he asks for permission before dipping a hand into her leggings. He brushes past her thatch of curls, kissing the underside of her jaw, and uses his middle finger to stroke along her slit.

“You’re so wet,” he marvels, enjoying the feel of it under the pad of his finger. Rey looks embarrassed, her hand going to his wrist, but he shakes his head quickly. “No! No – it’s, uh – it’s good. More than good. Incredible.”

“Yeah?” Rey smiles shyly, and then gasps softly as he rolls his finger around her clit softly. “Oh! -O—oh, do that again, p-please—” and he shouldn’t feel this pleased, but he does, because Rey’s squeaking and nodding, her cheeks getting more and more pink. He doesn’t finger her, doesn’t push a finger past that tight ring of muscle, just whispers to her how good she feels, “so soft, so warm, so wet for me, you feel so good, sweetheart, you’re gonna feel so good on my cock, let me make you feel good,” and when her breathing accelerates, one of her hands gripping the sheets, the other gripping the back of his shirt as if afraid he’d pull away or stop (like he could stop at this point), and Poe kisses her as well as he can when she’s got her mouth open, and he swallows her moans, before pulling back to whisper, “ I love you, so kriffing—” and he’s hovering over her, so he gets to experience how her body tenses, he gets to witness her pleasure washing over her face, the way it twists up, prettier than a fucking picture, her eyes almost questioning how good it must feel, and Poe strokes her gently through it while trying to gauge when too much is too much.

Sure enough, weak fingers grasp at his wrist, and Poe gives one last pass along her lips, collecting wetness. He makes a bit of a show, licking them clean with his tongue, wrapping his lips around his fingers and then pulling them out so a red-faced Rey can see how he’s sucked her cum off his fingers, and she whimpers one last time.

“I love you, and that was amazing, and you’re amazing,” he says, smiling at her fondly. He lies down next to her and wraps an arm around her, but then Rey’s scooting close to him, her hands and mouth frantic.

“I want to do that to you!” She demands. “Show me! show me show me showmeshowmeshowme,” and he does.

Chapter Text

“Poe?” Rey pops her chin on her hands, which are folded on the platform he’s lying on while he tries to fix something on the underbelly of his bird.

“Yeah, Sunshine?” Poe jams the spanner into place in frustration, a good amount of sparks shooting up, dangerously near his face. “Kriff!”

He sits up, wiping the grease and sweat from his face to find Rey smiling at him, holding her hand out. He puts his in hers without thinking, and she presses her lips to the shiny burn he just gave himself, on the pad of his thumb. “Thanks.” She smiles at him sweetly, and he moves to cup her cheek gently. “What’d you need, sweetheart?

“Just saw a holo-vid.” Rey blinks up at him, her eyes wide and a little...hard to tell, really.

“Oh, yeah?” Poe starts digging through his toolbox, looking for a better wrench than the spanner he was using to just smack things about randomly. “With who?”

“Jess.” Rey taps her fingers against the metal of the platform he’s sitting on, and Poe scoots forward to let his legs swing off the side. Rey takes to tracing a pattern on the side of his calf, and he pretends that doesn’t distract him, but there’s a reason he put down the tools and is now just focusing on her.

“Yeah?” It warms his heart in a more-than-it-should kinda way to know that his friends and fellow pilots have taken Rey in as one of their own. After a lifetime alone in the desert, Poe wants nothing but the best for Rey, wants her to be surrounded by nothing by love. “What was it about?”

Now her face turns bright pink - and Poe lifts his eyebrows at that. “Nothin’. Never mind.” Rey buries her face in her hands and doesn’t look up until Poe tugs gently on one of her buns.

“Really, sweetheart?” Poe slides his fingers through her hair when her eyes peek out to find his. “You came all this way to talk to me about it. What was it about?”

“It was-” Rey lets out her breath in one go, and Poe smiles in what he hopes is a winning-charming-ultra-suave way, and not in a get-smacked-by-an-irate-partner kind of way. “One of those holos.”

“One of” - something clicks in Poe’s brain, probably audibly - “Oh. You don’t say.” Rey nods, still bright pink, and Poe frowns a little bit. “Did Jess give you any kinda heads up, that it was a -” he flounders on the word, but Rey doesn’t have the same problem.

“Porn?” Poe’s chest tightens, whether or not he wants it to. “Uh-huh. Well, I sort of asked her to play it.”

“You asked her to...”

“Mhm.” Rey links her fingers together and studies them carefully, avoiding his gaze again. “Considering you wouldn’t...you know.”

“I wouldn’t what?” Poe flips through his memories desperately, trying to think of something he wouldn’t do over the last two months of them exploring things, going at their own pace, trying out different ways to make Rey’s breath hitch. He lands on a memory pretty quickly, one from three days ago. “It wasn’t-”

“It was.” Rey’s ears are red now, but she doesn’t look up at him. “I figured because you wouldn’t show me how it could fit, then...”

“I don’t see how this whole thing could fit in my mouth,” Rey had said matter-of-factly, once he’d explained what a blow job was to her. She’d held his cock in her hand appraisingly, while Poe stared at the ceiling and tried not to lose control just from the simple fact that Rey had his cock in her hand. But, when she’d asked him to “show me?” he’d said no, unwilling to do anything of the sort as an experiment.

“And?” His voice cracks harder than it did when he hit puberty at fourteen, and his dad had spent three days talking to him about the birds and the dacs. 

“And I don’t see why she wanted him to...choke her.” Rey’s face is beet red now, and Poe squirms uncomfortably on the platform. “It didn’t look like it felt very nice.”

“Yep.” Poe bangs his head against the railing of the platform. “Yep, that’s why I didn’t want to show you. It’s not - it’s not exactly pleasant to - to fit the whole thing in your mouth” - and yes, Poe’s speaking from experience, both as a giver and a receiver, and yes, Rey knows that Poe’s been with all kinds of lifeforms, not really bothered by what kind of genitals a being has as long as they’re consenting and interesting and nice - “And I definitely didn’t want that to be your first...you know.”

“Blow job.” Rey nods now, more scientific interest than erotic curiosity, and Poe writhes and suffers while hoping she can’t tell that he’s burning alive. “Yes, well - Jess thought I might like to see a less - violent? - kind of blow job, so we watched a different holo-vid after that, and I liked that one a lot.”

“You did?” There’s that damn crack again.

“Yes.” Her smile is sharp and dangerous now, the pink slightly fading from her cheeks, lingering around her ears and neck, and Poe thinks his uniform must be too small, or the hangar a couple hundred degrees too warm. “I really did.”

“Oh.” 

“I’m sure you have plenty of ideas of how to make it...nice for both of us.”

I’m dead. I tinkered too hard with Black Leader, just like Rose is always warning me about, and I exploded the ship and now I’m dead. Rest in peace, Dameron. “I’m - I do.” 

“Yeah?” Rey holds her hand out to him, and he takes it again without thinking, his heart pounding in his ears. “Show me?”

He slams his forehead into the railing in his haste to get to the floor, and Rey giggles until he kisses her, kisses her hard enough to get an approving whoop from a nearby cadet, and a get a room, Commander! from Snap. Then, they’re tearing down the hall, and Poe’s more than willing to dive into a closet, but the smile Rey offers him is just nervous enough to remind him that she deserves better, she deserves slow, and sweet, and good, and his bed, so they stumble a little further - Poe curses and punches the access panel to his room, unable to remember the code after living here on this godsdamned base for over a year, and Rey giggles before typing in the code for him.

They fall into the room together after the doors hiss open, and Poe’s moaning, his hips tipping forward without sense or control, tipping forward and seeking more warm, more soft, more Rey - and then she takes him to the bunk, and asks him one last time, “Show me?” with a shy smile on her beautiful face.

He unbuckles his pants slowly, staring at the way her bottom lip is caught between her teeth, lets his pants hit the floor,the belt clanging against the floor in a way that has him groaning and growing harder. He can hear the way it makes Rey’s breath catch, and he tries not to get too caught up on that, but she looks so pretty, staring at him, staring at the way his briefs are tented, and he knows what she sounds like when she’s warm and open around his fingers, knows what she sounds like when he works her towards a finish - but she’s not here for that, and she steps forward boldly to tug on the waistband of his briefs. 

“Please?” She whispers, her eyes alight with a hunger he wouldn’t see in the mess. He nods, lets his boxers slide down his hips, and Rey gasps again, her hand moving to the dark curls that spring up around the base. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, please, oh gods-” Poe tilts his head back, his hands shaking as they grasp her bicep, her side, and Rey strokes him a few times. 

“Remember what you were going to show me?” Rey teases him, and Poe nods, shuffling backwards to the bunk, his pants and briefs still bunched up around his ankles. He sits on the edge of the bed, more than willing to scoot all the way back, to lie down so she has room to sit next to him, but Rey sinks to her knees in front of him, and puts her hands on his thighs.

The muscles quiver and jump under her warm palms, and Poe can’t help the small groan of anticipation that spills out from his throat. 

“I only saw the two vids,” Rey reminds him, leaning forward, her eyes locked on his. In doing so, her soft cheek bumps against the head of his cock, and Poe wants to come right then and there at the sight of this, but he tries to fight off the pleasure building in the base of his cock. “So you’ll have to guide me.”

“Yeah?” Poe threads his fingers through her hair, scratching at her scalp slightly. “I don’t think there’s anything you could do that I wouldn’t like, sweetheart.”

She smiles at him before licking the head tentatively, and Poe doesn’t have to fake the gasp of pleasure. Rey suckles him next, her nose scrunching up slightly at the taste - acrid, Poe knows, again from experience, and he wants to apologize - and then she slides down more, taking in a few inches of his shaft, and hollows her cheeks. The pressure is enough to have his toes curl, and Poe hisses, trying not to buck his hips up into the slick, wet heat of Rey’s mouth. “Fucking hells-”

Rey coughs a little bit and pulls off, and Poe feels like his face must go grey from how much that worries him. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologizes. “Gods, are you-”

“I’m fine.” Rey swats a hand at him like he’s a pesky bug, and not her boyfriend - and oh Maker, he might just actually come from thinking about himself in that way anyway - “Honestly.” She dives back in, and within minutes, Poe has a feeling that he’d tell her anything - launch codes, state secrets, his plan to propose to her (no, no, don’t think about that right now). 

“Oh, gods, I’m going to - to-” He lingers at the cusp for a few seconds, holding back from giving in, wanting to tell her - “Sweetheart, please stop, I’m gonna come - I’m gonna-”

She pulls back, a little confused, and Poe wraps his hand around his shaft and pumps a few times before coming violently, staring into Rey’s face, studying the quirk of her brow, the way her pink, perfect mouth is slightly swollen, the brightness of her eyes - he spills out over his hand, more than a bit splashing onto his shirt, which they hadn’t removed in their haste, and his hip. 

“Why did you tell me to  stop?” Rey asks, a little bit of worry in her expression.

“I just - I didn’t want to show you how bad humanoid-male jizz tastes,” Poe mumbles, too knackered to be embarrassed of the slang.

“Oh.” Rey’s smile becomes a little teasing. “And you’d know-”

“Because I know.” Poe rolls his eyes before tugging his shirt over his head. “Pest.”

Rey giggles, unrepentant, and wiggles up onto the mattress next to him. Poe uses his shirt to wipe his hands and hip clean before groaning and lying back, tugging Rey in to his side. He kisses her happily, stroking hair out of her face, while Rey looks at him smugly. 

“Did I do it right?” She asks, grinning broadly enough to tell him that she’s fairly confident in her performance already.

“Hmmm.” He pretends to think about it anyway, until her sharp little finger digs into his side, and he yelps in protest. “Hey!” Rey rubs her nose against his jaw, and Poe sighs, rubbing his hand along the knobs of her spine. “Yes, it was perfect. Give me a few seconds, and I’ll return the favor.”

“You’ll-” Rey pauses in rubbing her nose against him, and he can feel her thinking.

“You didn’t think I never learned how to use my mouth, did you?” Poe pulls back to grin at her with sleepy, lust-filled eyes. She looks good enough to eat, so he tells her precisely that.

“Oh.” Rey turns even redder. “...Show me?”

“With pleasure.” 

He works his way down her body, peeling back layers and layers and kissing each inch of skin he reveals, laving his tongue around scars and freckles, tasting the salt and metal edge that Rey’s always had. 

When he pulls her leggings clear and murmurs to her exactly what he wants to do - want to lick your cunt, suck your clit, finger you ‘til you come for me, and then do it all over again - Rey gasps out a “Please” before he dives in, eagerly showing her everything he promised, and then some.

“Did I do it right?” He asks her, nuzzling against her sweaty hipbone, while Rey gasps and blinks up at the ceiling, her small hands opening and closing uselessly as she scrambles to say something snarky back to him. Eventually, her pretty mouth snaps shut, and she nods, clearly at a loss for words. Poe grins to himself and works his way back up to hold her when her hands reach out and grab for him.

“Love you so much,” he whispers as she dozes off in his arms. Rey mumbles back the same, her fingers tracing a line along his forearm until they slacken, a sign that she’s finally asleep. 

“Love you ‘til the day I die,” Poe says into the quiet of their bunk, Rey’s even, peaceful breath his only response.

***

“I’m fine, can I go now?” Poe buttons his shirt one-handed, even as the droid chatters at him anxiously. BB-8 is taking the side of the ancient 2-1B who’s scolding Poe and encouraging him to stay overnight in the MedBay. “I’m fine, okay?” 

He tilts to the side, and he desperately tries not to groan from the pain that lances up his side, a side effect of the blaster bolt he caught from Kylee Rune and Hugs - it’s a thing, he’s sticking to it - and their best Stormtrooper buddies. Poe is a hundred and ten percent done with today, thanks, and he’d much rather be in his quarters, holding his sweetheart.

His sweetheart - Poe eyes the doors warily, where Rey had stood before the 2-1B had shooed her away (another reason not to like the droid, or the MedBay) at Kalonia’s orders. 

Poe had been forced into Bacta for a few hours, and had been forced to take meds that would have been much better suited for someone who needed them a lot more than him. All he got was shot a few times, a broken bone in his right arm - why was everyone so worked up? He was able to pilot his own damn bird back to base, and he’d only passed out the one time, in Rey’s arms, when he fell out of his cockpit.

Yeah. So, that might not have looked too good.

Poe sighs and decides not to put his jacket on, not over the grazed ribs and cast that’s wrapped around his arm. He shoves the 2-1B good-naturedly, gesturing at himself, standing on his own two feet, and the droid huffs irately, sharing a sympathetic look with BB-8. “Yeah, yeah.” Poe groans a little as he walks towards the door. “Thanks, pal.”

“You are quite welcome, Commander.”

BB-8 trills a happy thanks as well, and then rolls along at Poe’s side down the hallway. A couple pilots lift their hands in greetings, a couple cheers and grins thrown his way. He’d come back about six hours after the agreed upon time, maybe because he’d had to pull over on an asteroid and wait out the First Order ship tailing him, throw them off his scent so he didn’t lead them back to base (so he didn’t have a repeat of Raddus, and Crait, and every life lost because of his foolhardiness). 

Poe’s exhausted, and tuned-up, which is not a great combination for his anxiety, so it’s with great relief that he punches in the code to his door, and slips into his rooms. 

He had been hoping to see Rey, sure, but nothing prepares him for the sight of her standing in the middle of the quarters they definitely share now (no official move just yet, but she’s slept here 18 out of the last 20 nights, not that he’s counting, not that he smiles to himself at the thought of eighteen nights with Rey), wringing her hands together, her face paler than the moon he’d hid near today. 

“Sunshine?” Poe blinks and walks forward, and Rey eyes him, and then the door behind him, and then back to him, trembling visibly the whole time. “What’s wron-”

“Don’t ask me what’s wrong.” Her laugh is a little hysterical, and she blinks back actual tears; Poe feels like he fell a thousand feet with no parachute. “Don’t - you can’t stand there and ask me what’s wrong - not when - not after-”

“I’m fine,” Poe protests for the ten zillionth time that day, but Rey surges forward, and he holds his arms out for her; she takes a lot of care to slot herself in carefully, avoiding the cast on his arm, kissing his cheek above the bruise on his jaw, the bruise he’d earned when slamming his head against his cockpit, punching into Hyperspace before putting his helmet on, like a damned rookie. 

“Hey,” he whispers, as she dots kisses along the unbruised parts of his face. “Hey, sweetheart, I’m here. I’m fine.”

“I heard you,” Rey chokes out against his neck, and he feels hot tears spill out against his skin. His throat closes up slightly as his own tears surface, pulled forth by the very thought of his sweetheart upset. “Over the comms.”

“Yeah?” Poe rubs his hands along her arms tenderly. “Good, I wanted you to hear-”

“You wanted me to hear you saying goodbye to me?” Rey sobs angrily and pushes away from him, dashing a hand across her eyes. “You wanted - you thought that would make it better?”

Poe stares at her, regret pooling in his gut, hot and thick and undeniable. “I didn’t mean to - I just - “ wanted you to have some closure if I died, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t like the thought of Rey, screaming for someone to come back, someone who’d abandoned her; he knows Rey, knows she’s the kind of person who’ll swear up and down she won’t wait for anyone, but he knows she’s waited decades for someone she barely knew in the past. He and Rey are in so deep, he has no doubts that without some kind of closure, she’d stagger on, waiting for him to come back somehow, and that’s the last thing he wants (the main reason he hasn’t proposed to her, the fact that he’s a fighter pilot, and they have shorter life expectancies than a drebbin in a rancor den). 

She doesn’t wait for him to finish his statement, at least, and instead swoops back in, petting her hands anxiously over the front of his chest and his arms. Poe leans in to kiss her cheek, her forehead as she does so, and they both pretend they can’t hear the other’s breath hitching into sobs. “Hey,” Poe whispers against her hairline. “I’m okay, I’m here. I’m with you, I came back, I’m here.”

Rey nods, and they tumble backwards a little more, her hands still urgent on him, and Poe’s starting to pick up on her urgency. His hands trace their own path along her forearms, the sinew of her muscle, the strength of her shoulders. His fingers slip along her delicate collarbone, dipping down to trace the freckles that stand out on her soft, barely tanned skin, and he chases the trail with his lips. “I’m fine,” he promises into her neck, as he drags his nose up, towards the corner of her jaw, which he kisses gently, a hint of tongue teasing the sensitive skin. Her breath hitches for a different reason, and fondness and lust and love tangle for dominance in his gut as her hands grasp his arms. 

“Hey,” - he kisses her cheek again, and then the corner of her mouth, leaving his forehead to rest against hers as he looks into her beautiful eyes, trying not to focus on the fact that for a solid six hours today, he’d convinced himself he’d never see these eyes again, or hold her beautiful body, or meet with her beautiful soul - “I’m fine, sweetheart, honest.”

“Show me.” It staggers out of her, ragged and exhausted, and nothing like the commands and requests of the last few months.

“What?” Poe steps in closer to her, nuzzling against her sweetly. “I am showing you. I’m right here, Sunshine.”

“No.” Rey’s breath hitches one last time before her brows lower in a stubborn line. She tugs on his shirt, the one still stained in blood - they both ignore that fact - and slips her hands against his abdomen. “Show. Me.”

“I don’t know if-” His concern is cut short when Rey makes an angry, wounded noise and steps back, tugging her tunic over her head and throwing it far away from herself. 

She stands there in the half-light of their bunk, and Poe’s chest hurts - and not from the blast grazes along his ribs, or the lingering anxiety of being trapped under the enemy’s gaze for so long, but from how kriffing beautiful and perfect Rey is. He can see every scar and freckle littering her torso, the tension of her stomach muscles, the subtle feminine curve she’s fought hard to gain after starving for so long, the jagged mark left on her body by a punk in a stupid karking helmet - 

Rey’s beautiful, and his chest hurts from it, and he loves her so much more than he’s ever loved anything. It’s why it’s hard for him to think of a reason why not when she holds her hand out to him, doe eyes wide and trusting, and whispers, “Show me?”

“There’s a thousand ways I can show you that I’m fine,” Poe reminds her softly, taking her hand and walking forward so she doesn’t misinterpret this caution as rejection. “I can do push-ups, or run a few laps for you, or stand on my head and recite the first few articles of the New Republic’s constitution.”

“I know.” Rey smiles, and that makes him feel a whole kriffing lot better. “But - you know what I’m asking, right?”

“Yes.” Poe nods, unable to move his eyes from her face, even when she’s standing half-naked, just a few inches from him. “And I’m making sure this is what you want.”

“You’re the only thing I want,” Rey says, and it’s not bold, and it’s not cocky, and it’s not seductive. It’s just honest, and that’s the thing that breaks him.

Tears slide out from his eyes when he nods, and he stands there, lets Rey unbutton his shirt carefully and slide it off of him carefully, and his eyes flutter shut when her lips work across his chest. “I’m fine,” he reminds her, when he hears the soft, hurt noise she makes when she discovers the bruising and burns along his ribs. “I’m fine.”

She fumbles with the drawstring of his pants, and he helps her push them down. Rey doesn’t grab for his cock, which is half-hard despite the strange push and pull of near-grief that pulses through him, carrying with it the reminder that if he had died today, he never would have held her again, seen her again, told her that he - “I love you,” he says, when he helps push her leggings down, when she presses her bare chest against his and kisses his jaw with sharp, nervous kisses, when she tugs on his curls and walks backwards until her knees hit the bunk. “I love you so much.”

I know, she’s said before. Love you too, laserbrain, is a popular one.

“Show me,” Rey says tonight, lying back on their mattress and holding her hand out to him once more. 

Poe nods and kneels at her feet, trying not to wince as he leans forward - and it’s easier than before with how badly he wants to be near to her coursing through his veins, better than any painkiller - and kisses along her hipbone. Rey tugs at his hair once more, and he looks up, his hands stroking along the inside of her thighs. “N-not like that,” she says, beckoning him up towards her. Poe goes, easily, because how could he not, and then he’s hovering over her, checking her expression for any sign of doubt or regret.

“I’m fine,” he says one last time, maybe more for his own benefit this time, maybe to stop the splintering he feels in his chest as he ducks his head down and kisses her chest and neck a few more times to hide his face from her, if only for a moment. “I’m here.”

“Show me.” Rey arches her back, tilting her hips into his, and Poe sinks down with a groan, fully surrendered now - her hand guides his cock to her waiting heat, and she pushes up until the head of his cock is notched inside her. 

“Kriff,” he’s only really able to pant that one word for a few seconds because gods, now he knows what Rey feels like around him, and it’s like every star in the galaxy is blazing at once. “Are you - are you sure?” He asks one last time, kissing her nose and then her lips. “Because-”

“I will never be more sure of anything or anyone,” Rey answers, looping her arms around his neck and pulling him down for a proper kiss. “Only you, Dameron.”

Poe nods into the kiss, letting his hips stutter forward until he’s a decent amount of the way in, and Rey sighs and makes soft, pretty noises in her throat. He chases those too with his lips, his fingers trembling as he skates down her sides. Poe doesn’t move, wanting to give her time to adjust to his cock inside her, trying to give himself time to adjust to how hot and wet and tight her cunt is around him.

“Are you gonna start showing me any time soon?” Rey huffs impatiently, and Poe laughs for the first time in hours. 

“Yeah, I’ll show you.” Poe smiles as he kisses her again, tracing the inside of her pretty bottom lip with his tongue. “Let me show you how much I love you, Sunshine.”

And he does.