“Okay, I do feel the need to point out that we are gathered here to discuss the disappearance of someone who fully sucks, who we all hate,” Rose said.

“Well,” Finn said.

“You tolerate everyone; you don’t count.”

“I mean, I’ve also spent the most time with him.”

“Is that an argument in your favor? Huh,” Poe said.

“I do know that,” Finn told Rose. “And you can leave if you want. You guys too,” he told Poe and Rey. “But he’s technically my employee, and he’s still your dyad or whatever you call it.”

“Definitely not my anything,” Rey said. “The Force connected us. That’s as far as I’ll go. And I can feel him, actually. He’s alive, but I don’t think he’s nearby.”

“Can you talk to him?” Poe said. “Get a bead on it that way?”

Rey shook her head. “He’s still got the implant in. I assume someone’s worked out that taking it out will cause things to go very badly for them. It can’t kill my general awareness of him, but anything else is beyond me. Or him.”

Finn felt nauseated thinking of the sheer number of potential Kylo Ren kidnappers. “Okay. So. There’s no way someone magically disappeared him out of these rooms. There’s a clue we’re missing, something security didn’t catch. For my money, we start there.”

“You got it,” Poe said. “I’ll snoop around his room.”

“I’ll review flight records,” Rose said.

“I’m going to pace the hallway and try to get the Force to show me what happened here,” Rey said.

They all paused.

“I swear, it’ll be useful. Hopefully.”

“The fuckin’ Force,” Poe said, and they disbanded to search.

The problem was that it could be anyone. The results of the inquiry were public. Kylo had ruined so many people’s lives that every time Finn thought about it, he found himself wondering if he should even be trying to find him. For all he knew, Kylo would reappear announcing he was signing over some newly discovered First Order blood money to Finn. Or he’d show up able to access the Force again, and rip Finn’s head off.

But he couldn’t make himself believe that, so he kept searching.

“He’s been living like a monk,” Poe said after Finn’s third review of the still-empty security footage. “I was kind of hoping I’d find a smoking gun, some kind of blackmail note or something. There’s nothing. You?”

“The footage has to have been tampered with.” In the security footage, Kylo went into his room. No one entered or exited until Finn himself appeared on tape. “But no, I didn’t find anything.”

Rose and Rey came back soon after, reporting the same results. “It’s like he just vanished. There are no irregularities anywhere,” Rose said. “Flight manifests look normal - and it’s a slow week for freight, too, so there weren’t even that many to review.”

“What next?” Rey asked, looking at Finn like she expected him to pull missing-persons expertise out of his ass.

No. That was unfair; he was just upset, apparently more than he’d realized. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking on the last word.

“Oh no,” Rose said, “Oh no, Finn, please don’t cry.”

“Over Kylo Ren,” Poe said in the same tone you might use to say ‘food poisoning’ or ‘Emperor Palpatine sex tape’.

“I know,” Finn said. He wasn’t crying. He was just kind of snuffly. “Look, I know, okay? But I feel responsible, and I’m - he’s -”

“Hey. It’s all right.” Rey patted his back. “We’re going to find him, Finn, I promise.”

“How?”

“Well.” Her tone got weird. Finn turned to see her wrinkling her nose, staring at his apartment door. “Um, you might want to go see what someone just left outside.”

They ran, of course, but whoever’d dropped the letter disappeared: the hallway was completely empty. The package was a letter on foreign-looking paper, folded three times. It demanded a sum of money almost exactly equal to the value of the Organa estate.

“Holy shit, someone’s got a lot of nerve,” Poe said. “Obviously you’re not going to pay it.”

“Of course not,” Finn said. There was something at the edge of his awareness, like how it felt when he persuaded people sometimes. “But -”

“But?” Rose said.

Finn handed the letter to Rey. “Does this feel weird to you?”

She frowned, running her hand over the paper. “A bit. Can’t say why.”

“Can you tell where it came from?” Poe said. “Or who wrote it?”

Rey passed the paper back to Finn, who closed his eyes. “Not really.” But there was something there, an impression or an echo. A pull, almost, like the spite and hatred was a physical rope. Finn closed his eyes and followed it.

A digital message could be traced by tech experts; it was harder, but not impossible, to feel the impression of a person or a place from electrical signals. Paper, though. This paper had traveled a long way, and it might be made of dead things, but it was still made: of an earth, somewhere, and not quite returned to the Force yet.

“Naboo,” Finn said, opening his eyes. Rey, Rose, and Poe stared at him with matching expressions of consternation. “Whoever wrote this note. They wrote it in Naboo.”

“Is Kylo trying to ransom himself?” Poe said.

Rey shook her head. “He signed the fortune over; why would he try to steal it back? Besides, it’s not just his grandmother who’s from Naboo.”

Shit. “The ’troopers. You don’t think -”

“I think whoever wrote this knows exactly how to retain leverage over you.”

“Guess we’d better go, then,” Finn said. As one, they headed for the hangar.

Jurtel Hux was a real piece of shit.

They didn’t know for sure that it was him, not yet. What locals said was that they’d noticed a ginger First Order loyalist moving into an ancient manor home in the area, and rumor was he had a bad-tempered man locked up in the great hall.

“That rumor spread in under a week?” Rey said.

The bartender shrugged. “Listen, lady, there’s nothing to do around here. He sticks out the remainder of his lease and we’ll still be talking about him two, three hundred years from now.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Rose said as they all huddled around their (traditional, apparently locally-made) wine jugs at a corner table. “Why would Jurtel Hux try to ransom Kylo? He’s rich.”

“Some of these assholes can never be rich enough,” Poe said.

“That might be it, but he’s threatened me before.” Finn shook his head. “I think this is about me. Us. The ’troopers.”

“Why does he think kidnapping Kylo will be enough to make you pay a huge ransom?”

“I doubt he’s thinking much at all. He just wants revenge.”

“Well, he picked the wrong group to try it on,” Rey said.

“Did he?” Poe asked, studying his wine jug like it might answer back. “There’s only four of us. Obviously Skywalker over here -”

Rey stuck her tongue out.

“- counts for at least four or five normal people, but still, we’re outnumbered.”

Rose glanced at Finn, who shook his head. “I’m not gonna ask ’troopers to help me bust Kylo Ren out of captivity. For that matter, Rose, if you want to stay behind -”

“And let everyone else risk their lives for that crusty old asshole? No, if you guys are going to be stupid then I’m going to at least try to help you.”

Finn looked at Rey. “Dyad,” she said, shrugging.

“I just want to see him cry on you when we grab him,” Poe said, tipping his jug in Finn’s direction before tilting his head back to finish it off.

Well, then. Finn felt responsible for rescuing Kylo, and his friends apparently felt responsible for him. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too hard to get everyone out in once piece.

“I’m not trying to be inflammatory,” Poe shouted, “but we are absolutely all going to die.”

The four of them were stuck in an antechamber at the manor Jurtel was renting. Apparently he’d never really thought Finn would pay the ransom, and in the few weeks he’d occupied the mansion, he’d managed to rig it with a disgusting array of booby traps. Rey had been drugged, rendering her control of the Force almost totally inert, before they’d even made it to this room. Now, they dodged blaster bolts from rigged weapons in the walls, flying blades launched by unseen machinery, and spitting acid from a creature in the rafters that Poe had already wasted two blasters trying to kill.

Fuck, fuck. “You guys should go. Run, okay? While you still can.”

“Not without you!”

“We have no idea where Kylo is,” Finn said, “and that’s kind of beside the point right now! Jurtel wants me. You can still get out - he’ll focus on me, but -”

“He’ll focus on you,” Rey said. “Finn. Finn! Listen to me. They’re observing us. You can - if they’re watching, you can compel them to stop. You might even be able to force them to take you to Kylo. You weren’t drugged, they don’t know about you.”

Well, they’d know now, if she was right and they were watching. But she really was drugged, barely able to stand, so Finn couldn’t blame her.

“Finn,” Poe said, having obviously come to the same conclusion.

“I know,” Finn said, and closed his eyes.

It was still so hard to feel the Force without Kylo touching him. He knew that was mostly training, his own suspicion of the Force impacting his willingness to access it, but that didn’t make it any easier to find it now. If only he had Kylo - but that was the whole point of this little suicide mission. Focus, he told himself, and reached deep down, to that place that had changed forever when he’d seen Slip die.

“Stop the bombardment,” he said. His voice echoed throughout the room, shaking the stone walls.

The blasters stopped firing. Finn thought the monster above them might’ve stopped moving too, but he couldn’t spare the attention to look. The Force had a grip on him - he had a grip on the Force - if he paused for even a moment he’d lose it, and the attack would begin again.

“Take us to the prisoner,” he said, and a droid appeared from a newly opened door.

They followed it through the doorway and down a flight of stairs barely twenty feet away. At the bottom was a row of ancient holding cells. In the first cell on the right sat Kylo Ren, bruised but very much alive.

Finn’s focus broke, and the Force abandoned him.

“Oh shit,” Poe said, “it stinks down here. Do you think - hey, hey, hey!”

Poe was quick on the draw. The droid Finn had been compelling - the droid he’d lost control over - fell to the ground, circuits radiating electricity, before it could finish its attempt to kill Finn. “Thanks,” Finn said, and then: “Shit. More’ll be coming. Kylo?”

“I’ve refused to play along with your pathetic hallucinatory drugs three times now,” Kylo informed him. “What makes you think this time will be any different?”

Shit. “Kylo,” Finn said, running over to the bars of his cell and stretching one arm through, “I’m not a hallucination, okay? I need you to come over here and grab my hand, or we are very much going to be killed by Jurtel Hux’s mercenaries.”

“Fuck off,” Kylo said.

“Hey! Don’t talk to Finn that way!” Rose lobbed a pebble with deadly accuracy, sending it straight through the bars and against Kylo’s temple.

He went down, and for a second Finn felt the breath catch in his throat. But then he was up again, eyes wide, silent and staring at Finn.

“Believe me now?” Finn said.

“Finn,” Kylo said, and lurched across the cell, grabbing Finn’s hand in his own.

The flare of pain Kylo felt at the contact, the cuts on his hands and under his nails, traveled through Finn’s own synapses. He hissed in sympathy, shared the power to heal. We need to get you out of here, he said, and his body thrummed with Kylo’s agreement.

He’d thought Kylo would seize power. He invited Kylo to seize it, as best as he could. But what he got back wasn’t aggression or even that odd, enveloping feeling he’d gotten the last time Kylo used his power. Instead, he felt…

He felt.

Kylo stood in front of him. Finn knew that, could see the big stupid bulk of him inches away. But between them, in the force, Kylo wasn’t standing at all. He was kneeling, offering himself - his power, and the body it used - to Finn.

Finn had handled dozens of weapons in the Resistance, and dozens more as a ’trooper. He’d never come close to a weapon as powerful as Kylo, offering himself up without reservation for whatever Finn needed him to do.

Fuck. “Let’s go.”

Kylo nodded and bent the bars of his cell, stepping out.

“Holy porg dessert,” Poe said when he spotted them holding hands. “Finn -”

“Run now! Questions later!”

There was an army amassing upstairs. Finn could feel them. Even with his and Kylo’s power in the Force, they might not make it out alive. But at least now they had a chance: Kylo put a hand against the side of Rey’s head, and Rey straightened up and nodded, jawline firming. She was back at full strength. Finn could feel her now, less dimly. Dyad.

Right. Here we go, he told Kylo, and got an impression back: bowing, almost. Telling him to lead the way.

So Finn did.

Kylo wanted to kill everyone they saw, but he wasn’t trying to influence Finn to do so. It sent a shiver down Finn’s spine to feel the bloodthirsty darkness in the back of his mind, like a barely-leashed guard dog. But the simile held true: Kylo wouldn’t do it unless Finn told him to, and Finn wasn’t going to order any deaths today.

Of course, that didn’t mean he was going to endanger his friends. Kylo flanked Finn as they fought their way out, trying to stop as many people as they could without giving them aneurysms or breaking their necks - but Finn felt deaths in the Force all the same, from his and everyone else’s actions.

Finn and Kylo’s power roared together, and combined with Rey’s, their escape was only a matter of time. As they neared the end of the manor’s drive, fifteen guards ran towards them. Rey lifted her hand, and Finn lifted his. Rocks flew up into the air; lightning crashed down from the sky.

The guards fled and the day was theirs.

Rose and Poe cheered the whole way back to the ’trooper estate. Poe had produced a flask and they were toasting to everything, everyone, even Kylo. Finn’s ears were ringing; he felt like he’d been hit over the head one too many times. Rey toasted Rose and Poe but kept a little quiet.

She had good reason to. Finn hadn’t let go of Kylo’s hand yet. They sat side by side in the ground shuttle, and Kylo’s big fingers were squashed between Finn’s hand and his thigh. He was sweaty, clammy.

He was probably, Finn thought, having an argument with Rey in his own head. Could Finn eavesdrop if he wanted to? He really didn’t want to, and in fact didn’t even want to think of it, but it seemed relevant, at least for some stuff.

Stuff like what would happen if he kept thinking about Kylo’s thighs, his still bruised-up torso, the sheer mass and power of him. Yikes.

They took the shuttle directly to Finn’s little house on the edge of the compound, bypassing everyone who’d think to ask them questions like ‘is that blood on your collar’ and ‘hey, why isn’t Kylo Ren wearing a shirt’. Kylo and Finn jumped out of the transport in unison, Finn’s hand still a loose band around Kylo’s wrist. They were the last out, closing a ragged circle of exhausted people.

“Guest quarters are near here,” Rey said. She glanced between Finn and Kylo. “Do you need any help healing?”

“I’m fine,” Kylo said stiffly.

“Yeah, and you’re welcome,” Poe said. He met Finn’s eyes. “You all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Ooookay,” Rose said. “Anyway, we’re gonna walk across that field. Sound probably travels pretty well till we’re halfway across or so. Bye!”

Finn waved, unable to say anything else through the sheer burn of embarrassment. What did they think was going to happen?

“They think I’m going to fuck you,” Kylo said, very quietly. “They’re wrong, of course.”

“I - you don’t -”

“I’d let you fuck me,” Kylo said, “as I’m sure you can feel, connected as we are.”

“I really, really can’t.”

“But you wouldn’t, would you? Because I’m in your power. I’m your employee, and there’s nothing I could do - not even begging - to convince you otherwise.” A slight pause. “I’ve thought of begging. Have you?”

“I’m about to beg you to stop talking,” Finn said. He felt - insane. Completely insane. Kylo was the one who’d been kidnapped. How did he even have the energy to be like this right now? “Kylo, I don’t…I’m really tired.”

“You don’t need to bother with rejection. I provided you with one already.”

Finn pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. It didn’t help with the throbbing behind his eyes. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying, exactly?”

“Can’t you tell? In the Force?”

“Apparently we’re not very good at that part yet,” Kylo said, so stiffly Finn knew he was embarrassed even before he saw the sunset-pink flush flooding his entire chest.

“Or maybe you’re saving all your feelings for Rey - hey!”

Kylo kept walking. Finn could just let go of Kylo’s hand; it still lay in his own, relaxed and trusting. But then he’d be even more confused, probably, so he rushed to keep up.

Inside, Kylo wiped his feet off on the mat and marched them all the way to the back of the house, into Finn’s bedroom. It had an old fashioned luxury shower in the corner, enclosed with sparkling glass and sloping stone floors. Totally open to the room, in other words, which suggested the kind of hedonism that Finn could barely think about.

“Please don’t go anywhere,” Kylo said, leading Finn to the bed. Before Finn could ask what was going on, Kylo slid his hand out of Finn’s and took his clothes off.

The sudden cold aloneness was about as unwelcoming as Finn had thought it would be, and worse: there was Kylo’s dick, half-hard and swinging between his legs as he walked towards the shower.

“What is happening,” Finn asked the ceiling beams.

“I’m showering, and then I’m going to beg you. Like I said.” Kylo turned the water on.

Finn felt like he was underwater, and very unlikely to find his bearings any time soon. “Okay, you can’t just say that! What the - Kylo, what is going on!”

He wasn’t exactly surprised when Kylo didn’t answer, but he was angry. He kept staring at the ceiling - kept looking anywhere other than at Kylo, buck-ass naked and only thirty feet away.

That plan didn’t work out very well once Kylo was done showering, though. Technically, when he approached Finn again, he was wearing a towel that hid everything interesting. He was also wet and looked even stupider than usual, the hair plastered to his head accentuating his weird-shaped nose, his clumsy lips. Finn wanted to touch him everywhere, and Finn wanted to disappear from the planet.

Kylo knelt on the floor in front of Finn, and Finn bucked his hips on the bed, almost falling off in his effort to get away.

“Wait, please,” Kylo said, voice very low, and grabbed both Finn’s hands in his.

The Force rushed in between them. It filled Finn’s head with static, with dread, with feelings from Kylo he couldn’t even begin to look at. “I don’t -” Finn tugged his hands, but Kylo’s grip was too strong to easily break free. “Kylo, knock it off. This isn’t funny.”

“It’s not a joke, nor is it…whatever you’re imagining.” At least Kylo was still able to sound like a disdainful asshole. “You came to get me.”

“Because I’m responsible for you, and -”

“Because you wanted to. You didn’t want me dead.” Kylo tilted his head, looking up at Finn with unfathomable eyes. “And when I offered myself to you, you took it. Me.”

“I didn’t take you. I didn’t agree to some weird sex thing just because I was trying to get us out of Jurtel Hux’s shitty rented manor house!”

Kylo sighed, like Finn was being slow or deliberately stupid. And of course, this whole time Finn had been ignoring the connection between them, but now he couldn’t resist. He opened himself up to the feelings Kylo was offering - shoving at him, really, every bit as rude as that description implied.

It felt like being submerged in a pool without knowing how deep it was. There was a depth of feeling Finn hadn’t known to anticipate, living right alongside hatred and terror. The dark side, sure: Kylo had never really abandoned it. But he wasn’t consumed by it, either. Instead, he was consumed…

Well. Finn closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and making himself articulate it. The dark side wasn’t consuming Kylo, because he was consumed by Finn.

“This is really messed up,” he said out loud.

“Only if you permit it to be.”

“That’s -”

“Don’t say ‘Sith logic’, please. It’s bad enough that I can hear you thinking it.”

Finn opened his eyes so Kylo could see that he was rolling them. “Fine, what if I just said ‘dumbass logic’? You’re not - you can’t give yourself to me.”

“Why? Don’t you want it?”

There was no way Kylo meant that the way it sounded. Finn was just going crazy, which the last hour had made very obvious.

“But you have. Thought about it. I haven’t given up so much of my power that I can’t tell that.”

Fuck it. “Why did you give this estate to us?”

Kylo’s eyes narrowed. Finn felt a rush of something in the Force, panic or arousal. Kylo’s hands tightened again around Finn’s, his skin too warm. “It was an expedient way to secure the loyalty I required.”

“But you were surprised when we came looking for you.”

“I wasn’t confident in my machinations until then.”

Machinations. When the Kylo in his head might as well have been a smelly, pissed-off cat tucked under his arm.

“That’s an insulting comparison, Finn.”

“Get out of my head then, Kylo.”

Another flex of Kylo’s fingers. “Why did you accept the estate?”

“We needed a place to live.” And he had hoped, in some way, that it meant Kylo was changing.

“I can’t.”

“Everyone can change.”

“Whatever conscience lived in Ben Solo, whatever generous inclination towards the universe and the sentients that inhabit it, that’s all gone now. They were right to leash me, Finn. You should know that, if…”

Kylo went bright red and clenched his mouth shut, but of course it was too late. With their connection, Finn could feel exactly what Kylo wanted from him, hot and vague at the same time, enough to make Finn feel unhinged.

But there was something Kylo had just said that needed more attention. “You said they were right to leash you. The Kylo Ren the Senate condemned wouldn’t have said that.”

Another flash of need. Kylo was still kneeling. His knees didn’t hurt; as far as Finn could tell, he felt perfectly comfortable there. Finn watched as Kylo flicked his eyes to Finn’s knees and then back up to his face. “Maybe I’m manipulating you.”

“Maybe,” Finn agreed, and leaned down to kiss him.

Kylo was tall enough that it wasn’t much of a lean, thankfully. They met in the middle, in the space above Finn’s thighs. Kylo was still an awkward kisser - had never, the knowledge rushed between them, kissed anyone but Finn. His skin felt like it was on fire; when Finn licked at his lower lip, his hands went limp, sliding up Finn’s forearms to keep skin-to-skin contact even as Finn gripped his elbows and dug his nails into Kylo’s arms.

“Come up here,” Finn said. The image flashed in both their minds, Finn’s dick in Kylo’s mouth, Kylo absorbed - consumed. Finn shook with how badly Kylo wanted it. “You can have that,” he managed to say. “But I just - first - I need. Come up here.”

Kylo stretched out on Finn’s bed was worse, in most ways, than Kylo on his knees. Finn had thought it would be better, that his submission would be less obvious. No. Kylo lay supine beneath him, wide-eyed and watchful, a hand against Finn’s bicep ensuring that Finn could feel how much he wanted this, how much he needed to be directed.

By Finn. Who had never done much before either, hand stuff and then, late in the Resistance when they were all worried they might die, a few disastrous threesomes.

“Threesomes,” Kylo said, his voice sounding like air knocking against a hollow tin can.

“What, like you wouldn’t if you could,” Finn said, and kissed Kylo again.

This, at least, he understood. Kylo’s lips were soft, his rush of need thrilling. He wiggled until he was beneath Finn, a bit, bare ankle hooked around Finn’s own. He touched Finn so carefully, but he wasn’t gentle. Finn wasn’t sure he really knew how to be gentle.

He felt Kylo’s annoyance in the Force, the full-body flash of a sense memory: healing Rey so carefully, almost dying from it.

“Yeah, I know all about your heroics,” Finn said. “But that’s not really the point here, is it? You want something else.”

“You,” Kylo said.

“Not quite.”

It wasn’t. Kylo couldn’t say it out loud. He got brick red and Finn felt Kylo’s arousal flag a little, the truth of what he was too much for him to bear. Finn kissed him again and fed it back into the Force: I know, it’s okay, I know, I’ve got you.

Because the need thrumming through them both was about more than just sex. Kylo needed someone to hold him back. He needed that implant in his arm. He didn’t want it - would have killed himself with it, if he hadn’t been fished out of prison and stuck guarding Finn.

And now, somehow, this was exactly where he wanted to be and what he wanted to be doing. Yielding. Guided.

“That’s fucked up,” Finn told him.

“Yes,” Kylo said, and kissed Finn again, better this time.

When Finn pushed Kylo all the way back and straddled his hips, Kylo didn’t stop him. His hands landed on Finn’s thighs, huge and electrifying. Finn shivered all the way down to his toes at how it felt: uncomfortably stretched, and the knowledge leaping between them of how far he could take it, what they could do together.

“Not yet, you maniac,” Finn said when he had enough breath to speak again. “I’m not - I don’t even think I know how.”

But there was one thing he knew how to do. He leaned forward and kissed Kylo’s chest, feeling Kylo’s furtive enjoyment at how he looked rapidly transform into almost uncontrollable arousal. He licked Kylo’s nipple and felt the effects rip through both their bodies. He was hard now, leaking onto Kylo’s stomach, and Kylo was desperate. Close to begging, so close that he didn’t care how much Finn knew.

In fact he pushed the thoughts onto Finn: Finn was beautiful, powerful, amazing; better than anyone or -thing Kylo had ever hoped to touch like this. Finn was gorgeous and kind and perfect in the images Kylo showed him, and of course he had to know better, being able to see into Finn’s thoughts the way he could. But he didn’t care. He’d pushed himself over the precipice under Snoke, uncontrollable. Now he took what control he had and leashed himself, leaving all that bottomless devotion directed at Finn. A bomb handed to Finn, on a timer but not defused.

And, ultimately, it worked. Finn had to face that, right here, biting at Kylo’s hips: he liked knowing that Kylo had placed himself in Finn’s power. He liked knowing he could keep both of them safe. That Kylo was his.

“Please,” Kylo whispered, and Finn wrapped his hand around Kylo’s dick and licked him, strong and steady like he already knew Kylo wanted.

The shock of contact ripped through them both. Finn found himself sucking Kylo off and fucking the mattress all on his own, arousal magnifying in an endless spiral until Kylo was close, so close -

“Too close,” Kylo gasped, and pulled Finn off. “I want, I need -”

For a moment they broke contact. Less than a second: Finn sat up so he didn’t fall, and Kylo’s arms fell back as Finn’s movements jostled his over-sensitized cock, and then Finn was alone with the Force in a newly quiet universe.

Kylo hissed and reached out, but didn’t touch.

Right. To Kylo, this was power, and he wanted Finn to give him that power now. Finn met him, twined their fingers together.

“What do you want?” he said. “Maybe we should, uh, talk about it.”

“Ugh,” Kylo said. “I want. Lie down?”

Those barely counted as words, by Finn’s estimation, but he went along with it. Kylo moved quickly, awkwardly, like a brand new droid with a warranty-triggering malfunction. “If this is bad, you can just kick me, or tell me to stop or kill me,” he said, and then.

Well.

Finn knew he liked being touched. He knew he liked being taken care of, even bullied a little. During those Resistance threesomes, he’d been out of his body at times: terrified, obviously, but also just floating on the power of not having to make many decisions for himself or anyone else. Now, Kylo took his huge hands and pinned Finn’s hips to the bed. Then he took Finn in his mouth, all at once, feeling hard and hot and desperate, so turned on by it that Finn almost came right then and there.

One hand stayed on him, splayed over his hip and his stomach, but the other hand became warmth at his hip, then his thigh, then a shivering-delicate presence down past his balls, pressing against and not quite into him.

“Kylo,” he said, like it’d been ripped out of him.

Kylo pulled off. “I wanted to kill them, before you came to rescue me. I wanted to kill all of them, and the moment I touched you I could have,” he said, and still his finger rubbed against Finn’s hole, like this was some kind of sex talk. Was it?

No. Not quite. Finn caught up a little too late, the Force hindering more than it was helping. Kylo wanted Finn to know all the bad stuff before Finn told him yes, sure, fuck me, because Kylo thought that being fucked was some kind of final violation, an intimacy beyond all others.

You’re so fucking stupid, Finn told him through the Force. I already knew. Kylo had been the monster in Finn’s nightmares for longer than he’d been anything else, and that would be true for so many more years.

Shame, thick and oily, suspended itself between them.

Finn didn’t roll his eyes and he didn’t throw all his feelings into the Force, though both were tempting. Instead, he said, “Give me some credit, okay? The dignity of knowing what I’m getting into, at least, unless you think I’m stupid.”

“I don’t.”

“Then if I tell you I want you to keep going.” He tilted his hips, pressing against the blunt pressure of Kylo’s finger. “I really do mean it.”

He felt the fluttering of Kylo’s intention, butterfly-light against Finn’s own heart. The power that hummed between them also spiraled out from them. Finn was in his bed in Naboo, and he was in the blackness of space, the dirt of a distant planet, the minds of a billion billion sentients.

“Yes,” Kylo said.

He was right here, with Kylo’s warm hand pressing him down, and a newly-lubricated finger pressing inside him.

“Did you search my room?”

I heard you thinking about it, Kylo told him, and thrust a little roughly.

Finn gasped, his legs falling open of their own volition. He said, “It’d be easier,” and moved to roll.

“No,” Kylo said, and Finn felt his body lifting off the bed.

It felt obscene, and according to Kylo looked obscene, too. Finn half wanted to protest - fine, yes, the Force was everywhere all the time, including during sex, but this felt wrong - but then Kylo pressed another finger in, inexorable, a little too much pressure but also not nearly enough, and Finn was surrounded, incapable of focusing on anything except how badly he wanted more.

Kylo leaned down, making a satisfied noise, and kissed Finn’s inner thigh. It sent a wave of awareness through him, curling his toes with how badly he wanted more. Kylo’s skin was fever-hot, a little rough as he rubbed his chin against Finn’s skin. His tongue dragged up and down Finn’s cock, bright red lips and slick spit. Finn felt the air around him firm up a little harder as Kylo began to thrust his fingers.

And it was too much, really, the mirror image of arousal, the way he could feel how hungry Kylo was when he looked down at Finn. Being split wide open, so turned on it almost hurt, desperate for more -

He lost awareness of everything except Kylo’s hands and the space, still too vast, between the two of them.

“More,” he said, moving his hips.

So Kylo gave it to him. He was slick and hot when he pressed inside, and when Finn moaned and said, “Harder, come on, I know you can feel it,” he obeyed. His body arched over Finn’s, a parenthesis, boxing Finn in. Somehow, Finn didn’t mind it - wanted more of it, he found himself thinking. The thought triggered a wave of need from Kylo, which in turn made Finn desperate for more, until they were kissing as Kylo fucked him, wet and messy.

“Fuck, fuck, please, fuck, please,” he said - no. He wasn’t saying it, Kylo was, but it rattled his bones and lodged itself in his soul. Yes. Please, because Kylo wanted…

Finn reached up and grabbed Kylo’s hair. Tugged.

The Force lit up between them, and Kylo hissed, “Yes.”

So Finn kept at it, kissing Kylo and biting his mouth, tugging his hair. Saying sharply, “Harder, don’t stop,” and “Touch me, come on,” and “You feel so good, you feel perfect,” until Kylo finally made him come.

Being able to feel the way he felt, to see what Kylo saw as Finn fell apart beneath him - it was more than Finn had ever experienced, more than he’d have said he could bear. He almost blacked out from it, floating in the connection between them, even as Kylo’s desperation peaked and he started fucking Finn again.

His rhythm was off, uneven. He was so desperate. Finn kissed him and said, “Come on, Kylo. Show me what you can do.”

And that was it. Kylo came with a low moan, his hips stuttering between them, filling Finn with his come.

The Force glowed between them, an endless ebb and flow of emotion and sensation. Finn was Kylo; he was the universe; he was himself, sweaty and exhausted and happier than he’d ever anticipated being.

“Finn,” Kylo said, dropping his head to kiss him again.

Kylo was going to say something stupid. Finn could sense it. He said, “Tomorrow. Or - later.” When he wasn’t so Force-drunk.

“Whenever you want. Whatever you want. That’s -” In the Force, a wave of feeling, desire and submission and love. “That’s all I wanted to say. That this, I’m. Yours.”

It was exactly the fraught confession Finn hadn’t wanted. He should’ve been annoyed, but instead he felt a ridiculous wave of tenderness. He was really stuck with Kylo now. Kriff, they were going to have so many arguments.

“Me too,” Finn said. Though not in the same way, obviously, an observation Kylo felt in the Force and agreed with. “Now go to sleep.” He yawned, unable to repress it any longer, cracking his own jaw.

In the end, he fell asleep with Kylo sprawled all over him. Kylo had too much limb and gave off way, way too much heat; he was a restless sleeper, twitching and mumbling. After decades of sleeping in shitty bunks, Finn had learned to love being picky about when and how he slept. Objectively, being squashed beneath a massive asshole who drooled on Finn’s own pillow was bottom-tier.

He fell asleep almost as quickly as Kylo had, and slept an unbelievably peaceful ten hours.

Finn was kind of worried about what might happen if he stopped touching Kylo. He woke up before Kylo did, still pinned under his stupidly long arm, and stared at the ceiling, doing his best to stay still. If he rolled away right now to go to the bathroom, would Kylo wake up? Would he be mad? Did he feel entitled to this now?

I’m yours, he’d said, but what did that mean?

“Mrhmm,” Kylo said. He yawned and stretched - and rolled away. “G’morning.”

Finn hadn’t realized how cold it was, to be alone in the Force. He flexed his hands and didn’t reach out. “Good morning.”

“It’ll be okay.”

No sense in pretending Kylo hadn’t picked up on his thoughts. “Will it?”

There was no way Kylo fell back asleep that quickly. No fucking way. But Finn waited a good five minutes, and before he was able to protest or call Kylo a coward - or try to get out of bed and put the whole thing out of his mind - Kylo started snoring.

Asleep. Ha. Right.

Finn did eventually get out of bed; Kylo kept sleeping, or fake-sleeping. He put some clothes on and went to the restaurant nearest his little house, situated at the edge of one of the public throughways between the Amidala estate and the nearest city. He bought some caf and an assortment of legume dishes, sat down, and started to eat.

“For the record, next time, you should tell Kylo to give me a heads up.”

“Auuughghgh,” Finn said, and flung beans all over himself.

He looked up to see Rey biting her lip. “Whoops. Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Why do I care? I don’t.” He flicked beans off himself as a cleanup droid rolled over. “Also, um, sorry. How much can you…feel?”

“Enough,” Rey said. When Finn looked back up, her expression was more than a little grossed out. “Actually, okay. More than enough. Finn, are you really sure about this?”

He knew this was the first of many questions on the topic. He had to keep his cool, because everyone else would be even more blunt, and they weren’t even wrong. He knew. But it still rankled, and he heard his own peevishness when he said, “Yeah, Rey, I promise, I’m sure. I did not hop in bed with noted dark lord Kylo Ren without thinking about it first.”

“I’m not going to apologize for worrying about you. Either of you, really. May I sit?”

“Of course you can sit.”

So Rey did. She had her own caf and a sad little tube of protein compound; she’d never gotten into food as a thing with meaning beyond nutrition, but then, neither had Jannah. They were definitely a match made in heaven. Finn, on the other hand, loved a legume.

“I’m kind of scared shitless. I think,” Finn said, before he could chicken out of this too.

Rey raised her eyebrows and slurped her protein paste. “Yeah?”

“What happens when I take the Force away from him? When he’s being all - you know, evil? What if he tries to kill me?”

“He’d go back to prison, which we know he doesn’t want.”

“If you care about someone, sometimes you’ll risk prison.”

“Not generally to kill them, though.”

Finn stared at her, hoping that communicated the Kylo of it all.

Rey sighed. “Yes. I see your point. Well, for what it’s worth, I haven’t really gotten the impression he wants to do that. Obviously, or else I’d be killing him myself. I’m your friend, not his, no matter what the dyad thinks.”

“Can the dyad think?”

Rey’s mouth twisted. “If it could, I doubt we’d be bonded.”

Right. Rey, at least, hadn’t chosen this particular attachment. “I really want to think he won’t hurt me.”

“Sounds like a conversation you might need to have with him.”

“Yeah, no shit. But with everything, I just kind of. Haven’t.”

Rey took another swig of protein paste and looked around. She’d picked up some bad habits from all her Jedi training, in Finn’s opinion. She clearly wanted him to look around, too. And damn it, it worked: after an awkward moment, Finn cast his gaze around at the restaurant, the road, the blue sky and rolling hills.

“It’s really beautiful here,” Rey said.

“Yeah. But.”

“Kylo,” Rey agreed. “I mean, you need to talk to him. But Finn, you should probably consider. I mean. Um. Well, ah, you know…right? Tell me you get what I’m trying to say.”

“You’re making less than no sense right now,” Finn said without hesitation.

It was kind of morbidly fascinating to see Rey turn bright red, then dark purple, like her embarrassment was so deep it might be bruising. “You don’t want to be used. Because you were, right, you were a weapon, and you never wanted to be one. It was awful and painful.”

“Yeah, I mean. Everyone’s heard my testimony.”

“Yes! Exactly. So.” Another protein paste slurp. The tube was depleted now; Rey set it down on the table. “The thing is, that’s not the case with Kylo. He’s well aware of what he can do. He hates what he’s done. I’m not saying he’d sign up for an implant if you took it from him now, but he…agrees…that he needs to be restrained. And -” She screwed up her face. “He likes it’s you doing it. You see? He chose this. He wants it. But it’s disgusting to think about, so please, you should really have this conversation with him and not me.”

And Finn…

He’d thought about it before, but knowing that Rey had picked up the same thing changed things. Finn had already half convinced himself it was a stupid sex thing, but Rey wouldn’t be talking about it if that were the case.

He looked around again. Blue sky. Birds. A guy back in his house who liked him, maybe. Wanted to be kept by him, definitely.

Weird. Fucked up. But something, maybe, that he could work with.

“All right,” he said. “Thanks.”

Rey gave him a relieved smile and sipped her caf.

“So about your whole thing with Jannah,” Finn said, and laughed when she spat her drink across the table.

In the end, he just kind of blurted it out.

It had been a week since they’d rescued Kylo, and in that time they hadn’t really done anything differently. Kylo was still following Finn around, a dour shadow making his shoulder blades itch. Finn was still occasionally looping him into conversations or giving him orders, but was mostly just ignoring him.

Finn couldn’t speak for the rest of it. The ‘frantically jerking off every night’ part. He certainly was, and every time he thought of Kylo. Maybe Kylo’d managed to forget it all.

Well, okay, no. Kylo definitely still cared about reaching the Force. But while Finn occasionally saw his hand flex if he stepped too close, Kylo didn’t turn those wordless little motions into action. He watched Finn, and his breath caught if Finn brushed by him, and that was the end of it. Until.

It had been a long day even by Senate standards, featuring a rapid round of votes and then a debate on mineral rights forfeited by First Order operatives that went into the small hours of the morning. Finn felt like he’d been dunked in water and then wrung out. All he wanted was sleep, and Kylo was standing in the middle of his - their? - living room, one hand behind his back, frowning at Finn.

“I was unaware of your itinerary until tomorrow. Traveling to Jakku without a full security detail is foolish.”

“I’ll have you, and once I’m on Jakku I’ll have a bunch of Jedi-in-training, you, and Rey. I think I’ll be okay.”

“Jedi-in-training aren’t known for their restraint, and I am powerless, as you know.”

“You have a blaster, and if things get really bad you can just hold my hand and help me kill people.”

He watched Kylo’s flinch - and his greedy glance towards Finn’s hand, like he couldn’t help but imagine it. “You can ask, you know.”

“Can I.”

“Yeah,” Finn said, and took a step forward. Kylo stood his ground.

“I won’t go to Jakku without more people if you really don’t want me to. But I think it would be fine, which implies I trust you, and I know you hate that. Still.” He reached out and caught Kylo’s hand. It was so warm. The feeling of the Force opening between them had finally become familiar, kind of, at least enough that he didn’t feel like he was being pushed over by it.

“You shouldn’t.”

“Yeah,” Finn said, and kissed him.

He’d meant for it to be a conversation, but that became less necessary as they kept kissing. Kylo was - intense, needy, overwhelming. Something, someone, Finn still didn’t want to care about, but he couldn’t deny that he did. And Kylo in the Force was a revelation. He yielded over and over, and Finn let him. Enjoyed it.

Held on to his hand, still, as Kylo dropped to his knees.

He sucked Finn’s dick right there in the living room, and then Finn dragged him in to the bedroom and said, “Stay,” pushing Kylo down on the bed. He jerked Kylo off, kissing his neck, sucking on it until bruises bloomed along the meat of his shoulder. Kylo gasped and moaned, and feeling bloomed between them.

It took maybe half an hour, overall. It was one of the better half hours of Finn’s life.

“Stay,” Finn said again, flinging a leg over Kylo and closing his eyes.

“All right,” Kylo said, very quietly.

The message from Jannah came the next day: they’d discovered a massive cache of Old Republic-era speeders in an abandoned garage, and they needed mechanics.

“Senate’s in recess,” Finn told Kylo, unable to hide his glee, “which means I get to go do something fun.”

“What happened to Jakku?”

“Rey can bring her baby Jedi to Naboo. Say yes.”

They were still touching, sides pressed together. Finn already knew what Kylo was going to say, but he still savored the slight eye roll, the way a corner of Kylo’s mouth just barely twitched up. “Yes.”

“Hell yeah,” Finn said, and kissed him.

Everyone was pretty grossed out by him holding hands with Kylo, but the gossip didn’t stay exciting for long. Rey arrived a day after Finn did, and she kissed Jannah in full view of thirty ’troopers.

“Not a word,” Jannah said to Finn, “or you’ll learn how accurate my knife-throwing skills are.”

Finn mimed locking up his mouth and throwing the key. Rey was laughing enough for both of them, anyway.