“I didn’t think it would be this overgrown,” Ren said, frowning at the vines that seemed about to rip down the walls of his grandmother’s estate.

“The structure is still sound,” the service droid said, “but maintenance of the estate has been under legal contention since the formation of the Resistance led to Leia Organa’s legal holdings being seized. Since her death, no further action has been taken.”

“I’m aware,” Ren said stiffly. “We’ll want the underbrush cleared. Landscaping. And the dwellings will need to be cleaned.”

“I will provision a corps of maintenance droids,” the service droid said, and walked off before Ren could respond.

Finn couldn’t blame it for ditching them. If someone told him the sheer awkwardness of Ren’s communication had sparked sentience in droids, he’d believe them. He made C3PO look suave.

“Well then,” Rey said with the false cheer Finn swore she’d learned in her weird Jedi training, “in the meantime, I’m sure we can clear enough to camp in. It’ll be just like old times, eh, Finn?”

“It can’t be like being with the Resistance as long as he’s here,” Jannah said.

She was only voicing what the rest of the landing party was thinking, but Finn winced.

“My apologies,” Jannah said, not sounding at all sorry. “Obviously, our Senator needs his body man.”

Ren sighed. “I’m not -”

“Let’s start with the receiving hall,” Jannah said. “That’ll give us a good base to work from.” She walked off exactly like the droid had; the other ’troopers rushed to follow her.

Rey looked between Finn and Ren, said, “You know what, I think they’ll need my help,” and ran off.

Jeez. “Well,” Finn said. “That was…awkward.”

“I offered this land out of convenience,” Ren said stiffly. “We can go elsewhere if you’d prefer.”

Finn sighed. He’d had this discussion with everyone, it felt like - with Jannah three or four times. Each time, his conclusion was the same. “Honestly, I think it’s awkward because we kind of can’t.”

Ren frowned.

“Our backs are against a wall. Naboo’s population is, what, eight billion?”

“Four. Large parts are agrarian.”

“Four billion people’s a lot more than a hundred thousand.” Optimistically; their official numbers were still only seventy thousand. “We’re running out of options. Kef Bir was barely habitable. There isn’t another moon just waiting for the galaxy’s unwanted to show up.” Finn looked around: riotous plant growth, hundreds of acres of rolling hills, and enough outbuildings to make up a whole city greeted him. There was more than enough room for them here.

Taking a convicted war criminal’s informal offer might be foolhardy; in fact, Finn agreed with Jannah that it opened them up to all kinds of problems. But it was the best offer they were likely to see, by a literal country mile.

“Finn?”

“It’s beautiful here,” Finn said, forcing himself not to think about the way Ren talked - how deep his voice got when he said Finn’s name, and how intent he always sounded. “We can live here. We’re unlikely to find anything better.”

“The land may well be poisoned by the dark.”

“The Empire had control of the whole galaxy.” Finn shrugged. “I’m not saying it doesn’t matter - it does, of course. But lots of things are poisoned by the dark. We can work that into the lease terms if you want.”

Like Ren. Like himself, he sometimes worried.

Ren stared at him. They were flooded in sunshine; birds chirped overhead, and bees happily buzzed on the flowers nearby. Somehow, that didn’t seem to matter. Ren might as well have been standing in the middle of a hurricane, he looked that grim. “I don’t understand you,” Ren said.

Finn was definitely not having that conversation. Not now, maybe not ever. Not with the person who’d ordered his reconditioning. “You don’t need to. You just need to keep me from getting killed.”

“Understanding why you choose to put yourself in danger so frequently would help with that.”

The mood shifted; Finn almost laughed. “Maybe so, but hopefully no one’s going to try to kill me on Naboo. Come on, let’s go see what the others found.”

For a moment he thought Ren might object. His hand - ungloved, which really should’ve tipped Finn off to the whole Force conduit thing - twitched, and he looked at Finn like -

Finn wasn’t sure. Or he refused to think about it. Or both.

“Fine,” Ren said abruptly, and strode past Finn, stomping the tall grass down as he made for the main building.

Finn was going to take Jedi training from Rey just to be able to pull patience out of the air. “A little help right now would be great,” he muttered to the ever-eddying currents of the Force.

It didn’t answer, of course. He took one more deep, calming breath of warm spring air, shook out his shoulders, and followed.

After seeing the rampant overgrowth, Kylo had entertained the possibility that the retreat might need to be torn down entirely. He had no direct access to the Organa accounts yet, but funds could be arranged; the logistics of doing so occupied several hours of his time as the others flitted to and fro, until Finn said, “It’ll be a good place for us.”

Kylo blinked and focused on him, frowning. “I beg your pardon?”

“Were you really not listening? You’ve been following me around for hours.”

As if he hadn’t perfected the art of appearing alert while living inside his own thoughts long ago. “No.”

Finn sighed, loudly enough that his breath caressed Kylo’s cheek. “We have some work to do. Stuff here is really overgrown, and there are a few cabins that we’ll need to rebuild. But overall, it looks good. We can live here.”

Oh. So Kylo wouldn’t need to transfer millions of credits through a complex web of shell companies after all. Unless… “Your citizens don’t have the expertise required to rebuild all of this.”

“Not all of us, but most do, or can learn. We’re a handy bunch.”

They had been programmed to be, he meant. Kylo crossed his arms. “You’ll need funding. Equipment. Consultants.”

“Galactic regulations -”

“Require inspection, even for buildings housing sentient nonpersons.”

“Are you being an asshole on purpose?”

“Excuse me?”

He watched Finn grit his teeth, the muscles in his jaw shifting in a way that made Kylo want to reach out and touch, study their movement under Finn’s skin. “We already know the odds are bad. We already discussed how to deal with them. But -”

“The estate has an endowment,” Kylo lied. “I’ll see to it that your office receives details on how to use the funds for restoration.”

Finn stared at Kylo. Kylo stared back. He tried not to show anything he was feeling: not the rage, not the hope, not the strange, skin-itching unrest.

“I can tell you’re lying,” Finn said finally.

“The Force -”

“Body language, not the Force.” Finn shrugged. “We all had to get pretty good at reading you.”

Kylo stiffened his posture, ready to - react. However he needed to.

“But I’m not sure what you’re lying about, to be honest. Not intent to give us the money. Not the estate, exactly.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Also a lie.” Kylo watched in gross fascination as Finn smiled, an awkward little twist of his lips that made Kylo want to reach out and touch him. “I was actually hoping for your input on one thing, though. The main resort has a suite that I think was your grandmother’s.”

“Ah.”

“We can look at it later, if you want.”

Kylo recognized this variety of pity. Finn likely thought he was being merciful. “We’re both here now.”

Finn didn’t bother trying to hide his skepticism, but he led Kylo to the suite anyway. They passed numerous ’troopers on the way in, all of whom flinched away from Kylo. It was an indictment of the First Order’s training that they didn’t seem to think of the obvious: he had no power now; he could not crush their throats with anything other than his own two hands. They should have the situational awareness to recognize that he was no longer a threat to them.

“They’re going to be afraid for awhile,” Finn said. “It’s not about training or whatever. It’s about trauma.”

He hadn’t said anything. He slanted Finn what he hoped was an inscrutable look.

“It’s really obvious when you’re starting in on the defensive First Order brainwashing crap. It was, even before all this.”

Kylo found it remarkable that Finn could describe, with seemingly no irony at all, a revolution, the destruction of several civilizations, and his own very personal rebellion as ‘all this’. “I’m here to make sure no one tries to assassinate you. I don’t care about anything else.”

“You care about that? Huh.”

“Just take me to the suite.”

Finn consented to that, at least. The rooms were even more run-down than the other parts of the resort Kylo had seen; the luxurious wall hangings had torn, the mosaic floor had become overgrown with moss. Naboo had always been too alive for Kylo’s tastes, full of bugs that might sting you and plants that could give you a rash. All of that was on display in what was, unmistakably, Padme Amidala’s inner sanctum.

He studied the holopad on the writing desk with all the detachment he could summon. “Have it cleaned out and repaired, like the others. It’s suitable for any number of uses, including its original purpose.”

“You think I should move into your grandmother’s rooms? Seriously?”

For a moment he closed his eyes and let Finn’s incredulity, free of pity or care, wash over him like a balm. “It would be suitable.”

“For so many reasons, no.”

“Where will you live, then?”

“I -”

Hadn’t thought about it. Kylo was well aware. “It’s foolish to imagine you won’t have to set yourself apart from them.”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t you?”

“I’m a ’trooper. We’re all - no, I’m not doing this. Don’t project your hierarchy onto me. It has nothing to do with what we’re trying to do here.”

So many possible responses to that little outburst, and of course none of them would convince Finn of his wrongheadedness. Kylo considered his options, then bowed his head. “Of course.”

Finn didn’t respond. When Kylo’s patience ran out, he lifted his head again to see Finn staring at him, clearly incredulous. Angry, even.

A sting of awareness darted down Kylo’s spine. He set his jaw, kept his gaze locked to Finn’s, and said, “What.”

“You’re being a real dick about this.”

“I’m paid to protect you, not coddle your delusions.”

“You -!” But then he caught on, of course. He narrowed his eyes and stabbed a finger in Kylo’s direction. “No. You are not doing this with me. I’m a Senator, not a Princess. I’m not your mother and I’m definitely not your grandmother, okay? These rooms are going to be Jannah’s, or they’ll be converted to collective use, but first we’re going to remove your family’s artifacts. There are crates over there. Get to work.”

Kylo wished, as devoutly as he’d ever dreamed of succeeding Snoke or stealing Rey away from his uncle, that he could leave Naboo, leave the galaxy, and start anew somewhere no one had ever heard of the Skywalkers. At least then he could build his own notoriety.

Instead, he followed Finn’s directions, and said nothing more in the bargain.

“I think I’m going crazy.”

Rey didn’t even look up from her porridge. “Oh? How shocking. I don’t imagine it has anything to do with your bodyguard.”

“How’d you know?”

She shot him a look. “Dyad.”

“I haven’t touched him since we got to Naboo!” A horrible thought. “Oh no, has he been touching me when I’m asleep? Rey, you have to tell me if -”

“No, fuck’s sake, Finn. No.” She took a huge bite of porridge, her cheeks poking out like a porg’s. “But the last time I felt him, it was all over the place. You could barely even feel the dark side with all that going on.”

Somehow, that was even worse. “You’re trying to tell me I’m, what - fixing his evil for him?”

“No, I think he just has a crush on you.”

Finn was long since accustomed to hearing ridiculous things, so he didn’t fall out of his chair. Barely. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Sure.”

He tried and failed not to think about it later, when he was alone in the outbuilding he’d claimed for himself, Ren stationed across the hall. At least the walls here were thick and mostly intact. Dyad, Rey said in his mind. Ugh, ugh, he didn’t want to think about it. What could Kylo possibly be thinking about him that was anything other than disastrously bad news?

Finn knew Kylo - wanted him. But Kylo was evil. His Knights of Ren had been a whole evil clubhouse, and Palpatine had been pulling all their strings. Kylo probably thought sex was the same thing as dominance. He’d try to choke Finn, or sneer at him and try to hold him down. Finn would have to use their connection to force him to be gentle, to make him behave.

Oh no.

But it was too late: the image snagged in his mind, Kylo stretched out on Finn’s bed in Coruscant, holding Finn down with carefully calibrated gentleness. Proving to Finn that he could be trusted, kissing his way down Finn’s body and holding him down as he took Finn’s cock in his mouth.

In the present, alone on Naboo, Finn was hard. He pressed a hand against himself and screwed his eyes shut. This was so wrong for so many reasons - but -

It would be for Finn, the restraint. Kylo wasn’t naturally patient or nice, but for Finn he’d try. Republic technology kept the Force from him; Finn would touch his face and feel their connection roar to life, tell him to be gentle as he took Finn in his mouth. He’d hold Finn close, pin him to the bed to anchor him when it got to be too much.

Finn let out a ragged breath, then another, and pushed his pants down to wrap a hand around his dick. He thought of Kylo asking to leave the room, bowing his head, standing behind Finn and waiting for a command in the Senate. He thought of Kylo touching him - kissing him, like Finn had been so scared he might. Fucking him, begging Finn to tell him it was okay, that he was making Finn feel good. Coming inside of Finn and clinging to him, the Force spiraling inside both of them.

Fuck.

He came just like that, his mind full of dirty images of Kylo. It was beyond ridiculous. Inexcusable, even. His heart was still pounding from exertion when the shame set in. What if Kylo had heard him? Only a thin door separated them. What if he could smell the fact that Finn had just jerked off thinking about him?

It was a ridiculous thought, but it haunted him all night and into the morning, when he left his room to find Kylo sitting on the couch, wearing -

“Is that a dress?” Finn blurted out, in lieu of the thoughts ripping through his mind like blaster fire: I jerked off thinking about you! I want you to fuck me! You’re a war criminal!

Kylo raised his eyebrows and stood up. It wasn’t a dress. He was wearing a long tunic and pants, not that different from what he wore any day, except this time the darkest color on him was a deep purple belt. Everything else was white or tan.

“Jannah requested my assistance with structural renovations.”

Finn’s mouth moved faster than his brain, fueled by shame. “She knows you’re better at destroying stuff than building it, right?”

If the blow landed, Kylo didn’t show it. “I told her I’d follow directions.”

He might as well have pulled it right out of Finn’s head. Finn wished he knew more curse words. “Right, well…I think I’m due to help with figuring out logistics. Sanitation, food.”

“You’re good at that.”

A fact Kylo knew because he’d participated in the meetings resulting in assigning his group to janitorial duties. Right. “So you think it’s safe for us to be separated?”

Kylo raised his eyebrows and didn’t answer.

“I mean, legally you’re my bodyguard. And you’ve been a stickler for the rules.” All the ones that benefited him, anyway.

“It’s common for Senators to be less closely guarded among their intimates. Do you think any of the ’troopers want to kill you?”

“Of course not!”

“There you go,” Kylo said. He paused, looking away from Finn. “One thing that could cause trouble is me being seen as…relaxed. Your constituents hate me.”

“Justifiably.”

“Just so,” Kylo said. “Nevertheless.”

Nevertheless, if they saw Kylo loafing around, if they somehow intuited Finn’s feelings, they’d be hurt and angry. He was right; Finn hated how right he was. “Fine. I’ll check in this evening, then.”

For a second, there was something really weird between them. Kylo looked like he wanted to reach out; Finn’s fingers itched to push him away. Then he nodded and left without another word.

Finn didn’t watch his shoulders or the movement of his thighs. He didn’t.

Losing his connection to the Force had felt like losing an organ; most days, Kylo could hardly think around how weak he was, how stupid he felt. But looking at Finn this morning, he didn’t need the Force to tell him that something had happened.

Finn wouldn’t meet his gaze. He jumped when Kylo stepped closer to him. He had stuttered when they arranged to meet for dinner. There was only one possible explanation: being around his compatriots had reminded Finn of Kylo’s violent past, and he was trying to think of a strategy for amassing enough political capital to have Kylo executed and replaced by another bodyguard, likely Rey Skywalker herself. Or little Rose Tico, or Poe Dameron. They’d probably get married, too, and the romance of such a union would sway the entire Republic to the stormtroopers’ cause. Kylo was truly the only obstacle between Finn and a lifetime of galaxy-wide adulation.

He would not move out of the way.

It went beyond being determined to cling to life. He was the last of Vader’s descendants. He owed it to his family, loath him in death though they might, to finish out this assignment.

“I’m not going to bow to your preferences, you know,” Kylo told Finn at dinner. He’d spent a long day lifting boards for Jannah, who seemed to find his exhaustion amusing. He wouldn’t have felt charitable towards the smallest youngling, much less Finn.

Finn snorted into his soup. “Excuse me, what? I don’t have - I’m not - who said anything about preferences!”

“It’s as obvious as your stormtrooper training.” Kylo picked up his fork. “We don’t need to discuss it. Just be aware that my answer is no; if you try to force me, you’ll have to opt for assassination.”

Finn had the nerve to scowl. “Who said anything about force? What is wrong with you?”

“I believe you have access to records detailing exactly that.” Kylo had lost his appetite. He picked up his tray. “I’ll be outside. Notify me when you leave.”

“I wasn’t - what exactly are you thinking -”

If he had to continue to have this conversation, he suspected he’d go mad. He ignored Finn’s spluttering attempts at diplomacy and took up his position outside the dining room.

The room itself contained barely-faded opulence; it had been sealed thoroughly prior to evacuation of the resort. The hallway was another story. Water had leaked in over the years, so the floors were musty and soft in places; the decorative wallpaper, deliberately old-fashioned in style and materials, peeled egregiously, especially near the ceiling. It would take thousands of credits just to repair this short stretch, especially since the estate, residential rather than tourist now, couldn’t be relied upon to recoup cost.

Jannah had discussed that today. Not with Kylo himself, of course; he’d been reduced to something between furniture and draft mule, and no one had talked to him except to tell him where to put things. But she’d discussed it with a few of her little ’trooper lieutenants. It was nothing Kylo hadn’t inferred from Finn’s business: the ’troopers had few marketable skills outside violence, and were aiming for subsistence farming before trying to scale up into being something of a civilization.

It was a ridiculous goal. Yes, they’d been trained for violence above all; yes, they were by and large a pitiable group of malcontents, with trauma issues, chronic physical health problems, and neuroses an entire fleet of med-droids wouldn’t be able to cure. They were also a comprehensively educated, physically exceptional, intelligent group of people. It seemed obvious to Kylo that a careful program of societal development and community care would enable them to operate a thriving city-state within the decade; they had the technical expertise to allow for urban growth, and this corner of Naboo was ripe for tourism even before you counted the people who’d come just to gawk at Trooper City. By rejecting the impositions of the Empire, they were also rejecting their own wealthy future.

He’d tried to express a bit of that to Jannah. She’d given him the most poisonous look he’d ever seen on someone not sworn to the dark side. “That’s not what any of us want, including Finn.”

“You want to doom your people to a life of dull toil?”

“I want my people to be able to do what they want, and that’s not programming holopads or building speeders or letting rich people gawk at them.”

He’d wanted to ask her if she’d thought of her own persuasive abilities. How could she be sure she wasn’t swaying ‘her people’ into declaring goals that aligned with her own? But given Finn’s obvious antipathy towards him, self-preservation dictated that he not antagonize Jannah.

“Of course. My apologies,” he’d said, gritting his teeth all the while. Her flat look in return didn’t seem to indicate forgiveness, but as long as she didn’t take her grievances to Finn, Kylo didn’t care.

Now, he surveyed the hallway and considered, yet again, the stormtroopers’ goals. He’d come to no useful conclusions by the time Finn joined him.

“I’m leaving,” Finn said, short enough to be rude. Kylo didn’t point that out, only nodded and led the way back to his - their - rooms.

Finn shut himself in the bedroom right away. Kylo lay down on his own cot, too short for him by several inches. His ankles dangling down made the thought of sexual arousal almost comical - almost. He was still angry about Finn, infuriated by the stubbornness of every single ’trooper on Naboo, and all that anger transmuted into arousal as easily as if he still had access to the dark side.

He fucked his own hand quickly, efficiently. He thought of Finn as he came; how could he not? But it didn’t mean anything. Proximity wreaked havoc on the mind.

It didn’t mean anything.

Everything would be fine, probably, if only Finn could stop thinking about Kylo Ren.

He had so much to do, was the thing. The resort, nice as it was, needed changes everywhere, and he only had a short amount of time before he had to go back to Coruscant with a whole new set of demands for ’trooper support. Now that they’d settled somewhere permanent again, the compounding trauma of Kef Bir being attacked and all their shared history resulted in more problems, too - physical fights, bitter disputes, and emotionally troubled people that Jannah frantically tried to reach before -

“Three suicides,” Jannah said. “We had two the entire time on Kef Bir. I hate this.”

Finn did, too. And beyond that, he hated that despite all of that - the sheer agony of loss - he still thought of Kylo Ren. Not in the normal way, either, the way you’d think about your annoying bodyguard who took his job too seriously and was also a reviled war criminal. No, Finn was falling asleep in agony over his failure to protect his siblings, and then dreaming about being fucked by the person who’d architected their pain.

What was wrong with him? Was this the dark side? He desperately wanted to ask Rey, but thinking of what she’d do with that information -

Dyad, said Rey’s voice in his head yet again. There were no good options there; she’d revile him or sympathize with him, and either way, Finn wouldn’t find any peace.

“No,” he said one night, as dream-Kylo pressed big, warm fingers against his jaw.

The dream wavered. “No?”

“This is wrong. You’re evil.”

“I regret what I did and only want to please you, with my dick, which is enormous,” dream-Kylo said.

Letting Jannah talk him into joining the ’trooper romance reading club had been a terrible idea. “I’m waking up now,” Finn said, and opened his eyes into darkness.

This part of Naboo was louder than he’d expected. They had some very loud bugs, plus nocturnal birds, plus the patrol droids. He breathed into that not-quite-silence, feeling electric down to his toes, desperate for everything he couldn’t have. The worst part was that dream-Kylo had been wrong and Finn knew it; when he closed his eyes and wrapped his hand around his cock, he thought of real Kylo, who’d be awkward and scowl through it, who wouldn’t be able to take a compliment, who’d probably whine if Finn laughed at him.

He wanted that Kylo, who was two doors away and impossible to have. Finn fucked his hand as quickly as he could, closing his eyes against the shame that washed over him as soon as his orgasm faded.

He was still thinking about how badly he wanted to fuck Kylo Ren - or, more specifically, how to stop wanting to fuck Kylo Ren quite so badly - when he ran into Khajee.

Literally.

“Oops,” she said, spilling an armful of hurricane ties everywhere.

“Auuughghgh,” Finn said. He leaped to grab some of them. “I mean, oops, sorry, are you okay?”

“Are you okay?” She squinted at him. “You look weird.”

“I’m fine, I’m totally fine, nothing to see here - I mean! No worries. All good. Oh, hey, look, some of them bounced over here. What are we even gonna use these for, anyway?”

She gave him an I see right through you look, but said, “Some of the structures are really old, and Jannah wants them reinforced. If someone attacks -”

Like on Kef Bir. Right. “Oh. Cool. Uh, you need help?”

“Oh, does the great Stormtrooper Senator want to help little old me?” She laughed at the appalled look on his face. “Of course. This way.”

It was still hard for Finn to believe that they could stay here, doubly so when he did hands-on work to fix the estate up. Sure, it needed tons of work, but the estate itself had massive sun-filled meadows, still-functioning aquaponic greenhouses, and endless faded decorations that reminded Finn that it had been owned by a princess.

Kylo’s grandmother. They were here on Kylo Ren’s sufferance. Even hammering in hardware to keep roofs from being blown off by the next big storm, Finn couldn’t stop thinking about Kylo.

“I’m thinking we’ll start by setting up a mechanic’s shop - you know, there’s a town nearby with no mechanics at all? They have to travel almost a full day just to get a tractor fixed. We’ll be helpful there, and then we can look at farming, too.”

“It’s a good plan.” Finn had only been peripherally involved in it, which made him feel - well. He had a different job; he was supposed to represent his people in the Senate. But sometimes he worried he’d wake up one day and not know any of them at all.

“Hey, there you go again. You gotta tell me what you’re stressing about, Finn. You look like someone stole your helmet.”

Finn winced.

“Sorry. Bad choice of words - but seriously, what’s up?”

“Oh…you know. Stuff.”

Khajee gave him an unimpressed look.

“Worried about the upcoming session. About, um, my bodyguard. And…stuff.”

“He’s not what I thought he’d be,” Khajee said.

“What were you expecting?”

“Well, I was repair staff on the Finalizer for awhile.” Finn’s face must have betrayed his horror, because she snorted and said, “Yeah, exactly. But he’s different, don’t you think? I heard he might’ve been - cured - by not being able to access the dark side anymore.”

“He’s still a huge asshole,” Finn said. That, at least, he could be honest about.

“I mean, sure, but everyone knows this was Padmé Amidala’s estate.” Khajee shrugged. “None of us owe him anything, obviously, so you don’t have to like him. I don’t! But it’s nice he knows he owes us, at least.”

Finn didn’t answer at first, trying to figure out what he could possibly say. The silence lapsed into something natural that didn’t demand a response; birds chirped and insects buzzed above them as they finished the first cabin and moved on to the next one.

“I hope this helps,” Finn said as they set the droids up for cleaning the cabins.

“The ties, or -”

“Everything. Having a place to stay.” Finn shrugged. “I mean, it seems really weird, doesn’t it? It’s nothing like the barracks.”

“Oh, right, I always forget you didn’t actually spend that much time on Kef Bir.” She must have seen Finn’s flinch, because she rushed to add, “Because you were busy being our advocate! I know! I just meant - it was kind of like the less nice version of this. No duracrete in sight, just whatever we could find on the moon itself. Some foraged pieces of the Death Star, even, which in retrospect is seriously creepy.”

It had been creepy at the time, but Finn didn’t think either of them needed to have that conversation. “Right. And you can still tell these were luxury accommodations.”

“Real beds,” Khajee said with satisfaction. “Not to mention the ’freshers. Did you see -”

“Finn! Finn!” Another ’trooper careened to a stop in front of them, her speeder’s brakes wailing with the effort. “Jannah’s trapped on the east side of the property - hurry!”

“Go,” Khajee said immediately. Finn jumped on the back of the speeder, heart pounding.

What did they think he could do? “How’s she trapped? Who did it? Is it someone -”

“Not First Order. Structural damage. A wall fell, they were trying to repair it - one of the cabins, they didn’t realize the foundation wasn’t sound - she’s okay, it’s her leg, but she’s bleeding and we need to get her help before it gets worse.”

“Floor it,” Finn said, and the ’trooper did.

It only took a few minutes to get to the other side of the property. Finn ran towards the building, obvious with its sloping roof and rubble that had previously been walls. It wasn’t until he was close enough to cough at the dust the collapse had kicked up that he realized the hand sticking out of the rubble wasn’t Jannah’s at all. It was pale, huge, and unmistakably one of Kylo’s. “What -”

“He didn’t do anything,” Jannah shouted from inside the structure. “I told him to make himself useful and try to get me unstuck. And hurry, please, my femur is -”

“The broken bone has pierced the skin,” Kylo said in his flat voice. “Finn. Take my hand.”

Despite himself, Finn looked around. No fewer than thirty ’troopers were crammed into the clearing, holding onto each other, clearly terrified for Jannah. And Finn -

Finn knew they’d be terrified of him, once he did this. But he had no choice, really, if he wanted to be able to look himself in the eye tomorrow. He stepped forward and grabbed Kylo’s hand, opening them both to the Force.

For a moment, Naboo itself disappeared. All of Finn’s half-formed longings, his nighttime embarrassments, his wariness of the Senate and his desperate need to belong coalesced into a wave of emotion that he couldn’t hope to keep from Kylo. He received anger in return, sharp and clear, mixed with muddy terror and a searing-hot need.

Kylo had wanted to touch him to get at the Force. Finn knew that now. But apparently, getting at the Force made him hard, wanting. Violent, just as it always had, but also hungry.

No. They needed to focus. Finn pulled Kylo’s power into himself. The knowledge of what they needed to do sat at the front of his mind. He couldn’t have held the roof up while shifting the walls on his own; it required control and experience he didn’t have. But Kylo handed that over like it didn’t matter, lacing his fingers around Finn’s hand and showing him how to take their power and push.

It only took a minute, maybe less. They only held the rocks up long enough to let Jannah and Kylo exit the structure, after which Finn - still clutching Kylo’s hand in full view of an ever-growing crowd - carefully lowered the remnants of the building.

He couldn’t let go of Kylo’s hand, he realized, because Kylo was using their power to support Jannah. Her leg was, indeed, seriously injured, and Kylo was using their power to suppress her pain, too. Her eyes were out of focus, her pupils enormous, her face twisted in a half-forgotten rictus of agony.

“Make a hole!” he shouted. “Move, move, we need to get to the clinic now!”

Fortunately, even the greenest of their bunch had emergency training. They completed evac with no further incident, walking the hundred yards to the makeshift clinic, sweating into each other’s hands as they carefully lowered Jannah onto a cot.

After that, it was up to the droids. They were a decade out of date, but Jannah’s injury didn’t require the latest and greatest tech. They had her leg set and immersed in bacta before it occurred to Finn that he really, very much did not need to be holding Kylo’s hand anymore.

He dropped it immediately, feeling like he’d just discovered bugs crawling all over him. “I - thank you.”

“No need.”

“It wouldn’t have occurred to me to hold her up like that.”

How did it occur to you, he didn’t say, but Kylo guessed the direction of his thoughts anyway. “My previous position required me to be conscious of others’ bodies.”

“So you could choke them into compliance.”

“More or less.”

“Well, still. I’m glad you were there.”

“I don’t think she will be,” Kylo said quietly, watching Jannah shift and scowl in her drug-induced sleep.

“She will.” She wouldn’t be grateful; Jannah was their leader because she refused to grant anyone who’d enabled their mistreatment legitimacy. But she was also truly their leader: she’d recognized Kylo’s usefulness even before Finn had. “Anyway - I’ll watch over her. If you want to, uh, clean up.”

“I’m your bodyguard.”

“I know, but I think I’m safe here. You were right about that.”

“I meant that next time you want me to leave, you should just order me to.” Kylo bowed his head, looking stiff and awkward, like a taxidermied bird that had died mid-squawk. He left before Finn could find words for him, or even figure out how annoyed he was. Medium? A lot? He was exhausted. It was impossible to say.

One of the droids brought him some caf, which he drank gratefully. He propped his feet up on a faded silk storage bench and waited for Jannah to wake up.

“…should have just gone back to your room, you idiot.”

Finn blinked and dragged himself back to waking. Jannah was glaring at him. Her leg looked good as new, and the bacta tank was nowhere to be seen. Whoops. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” She sat up, closing her eyes against what Finn assumed was a wave of exhaustion. “Apparently we should have droids inspect all the buildings before we go inside them, though. Your bodyguard explained that to me while I bled out on the floor.”

“Kriff, Jannah, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I think he was trying to distract me. It kind of worked.” She sighed, staring at the ceiling. “And he was right. It should’ve occurred to me. So many things…what the fuck are we even doing here, Finn?”

It was a question that had started in the back of Finn’s mind as a whisper and now dogged his every nightmare. He shook his head, his throat closing up.

“I know.” She closed her eyes. “I just…there’s so much and I never - that was the second cave-in I’ve been part of in two months. How am I supposed to - how does anyone trust me to know what to do? When I’m just - an idiot, a fucking -”

When she started crying, he didn’t give himself time to think. He reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it fiercely. “You’re not an idiot. Jannah. You’re not.”

“Tabloids disagree.”

“They think we signed up for this. Fuck them and the bandwidth they’re wasting. You’re doing your best, we all are. No one here wants anyone else leading them and you know it. Do you really think we, of all people, can’t tell what a good leader looks like?”

She didn’t open her eyes. “Laying it on a little thick, Senator Finn.”

“If I were lying, why would I even be here?”

There were a few obvious answers, ranging in cruelty: you care about your career, or I know your bodyguard’s secret, or even you are too weak to admit it’s not what you want. But none of them were true - or at least, Finn wouldn’t let himself be blackmailed over Kylo, not really. Jannah had to know that, didn’t she?

She sighed into the tense silence. “I don’t want you to be right. I want to be a failure. Then at least I could quit.”

He’d never been good at comforting people. When Slip had cried after being beaten by Phasma, Finn had offered to knock him out until he felt better. Still, he knew exactly what the last several months had cost Jannah; he knew he needed to try, at least, to help her. “Rey would say you won’t feel any better if you quit.”

Jannah snorted. “Rey’s too optimistic.”

She sounded fond, so Finn smiled. “Yeah, I know. But she’s not wrong, in this case.”

“We can’t all be Skywalker heirs.”

“But we can be someone. We can start something.” Finn thought back to the General: a legend, rich and famous and reviled by the New Republic for seeing the truth they’d been so determined to deny. “Even if it ends badly. We have to try.”

“Thanks. That’s very cheerful.”

He jostled her arm. “Well, I can get Rey to come in if you want cheerful.”

“Ugh. No thanks. Not yet, anyway. I need to shower - to get myself together before I deal with the Jedi.”

There was something weird there, something stilted in the way Jannah said get myself together. “Has Rey been rude to you?” It was hard to imagine, but -

“No, no, definitely not. I just feel - don’t you? - she’s a Jedi, she’s famous. A legend. I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of her.”

Finn had been an idiot in front of Rey since the moment he’d met her, so he couldn’t really relate, but it didn’t seem worth pressing at that moment in time. Instead, he said, “Anyway, next time you get stuck in a landslide or what have you - call for Rey. She won’t have to hold Kylo Ren’s hand to get you out.”

Jannah snorted. “Right, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Jannah! Oh thank the Force, you’re all right!” Rey raced past Finn and threw herself into a hug - and Jannah, to Finn’s shock, returned it gladly.

Apparently, the Force really was with the Jedi. Finn could tell when he was becoming a third wheel. “Okie doke, I’m going to go shower. Um, glad your leg’s okay.”

They both waved, and Rey stole his chair. He was going to give her so much shit for that - later, when Jannah wasn’t smiling at her like she’d hung a moon.

The only upside of having such a shitty couple days was that Finn felt no guilt at all about barricading himself in his room.

First he had a nice, long cry. Then he spent some time in the ’fresher, making himself feel a little less like it was the third week of a Resistance deep cover campaign. Then and only then did he lie in bed, close his eyes, and let himself think about the overwhelming rush of desire that he’d felt when he grabbed Kylo’s hand.

It was wrong and he knew it. They were in a desperate position, more precarious than they’d been since the ceasefire. That Finn had the time and inclination to think about Kylo Ren, who’d killed so many people - a monster who wasn’t even really sorry for his crimes - that he was able to think about him sexually at all, that he wanted him -

Unforgivable.

Yet still you want it, whispered part of him. And he did. He couldn’t lie to himself when the Force had presented his desire so clearly - when he’d given in to it, opened up to it.

Fuck. Fuck. Opened up to it.

Kylo would do anything to keep his access to the Force, that much Finn was sure of. He thought back to before he’d realized what was happening, when Kylo had sniffed him. It had been so ridiculous, but now, lying in bed, his dick in his hand, all he could think of was the focus on Kylo’s face when he’d done it. What would it be like to have that focus on him, on all of him? To feel Kylo’s desire through the Force, to cling to him - to come on his fingers, with his satisfaction and need and obedience winding through the Force, all Finn’s for the taking?

He wanted it. He wanted it so badly that he came just from the rush of daring to imagine it, need overtaking him like a ship going into hyperspace.

Was this the dark side? It felt like it might be. He cleaned off his hand and screwed his eyes shut, trying to breathe through the panic threatening to break free of his ribcage.

He was in so, so, so much trouble.

Kylo heard the too-loud moan first, then focused enough to hear quieter, frantic movement. He’d already had himself in hand, needing to feel something other than the thin veil of rage that descended when he thought of all the power denied to him by the New Republic’s sentence. He came listening to Finn’s groans, imagining what Finn would be willing to give him if he opened up that paper-thin door, dropped to his knees, and took.