The rain outside had already lulled him back to sleep three times. This time, he opened his eyes determined to actually wake up. He was rewarded by Kylo nuzzling the back of his neck.

"Not time to get up yet," Kylo mumbled, kissing his ear.

Finn sighed. He had a whole to-do list...but the bed was so soft, and Kylo was so warm behind him. Warm and hard, rocking his hips into Finn's ass, slowly but steadily. It felt familiar, perfect.

"Maybe a little while longer," Finn said, and turned over.

Finn woke with a start. Silently, of course; he still hadn't shaken fifteen years of trooper training. Next to him, Kylo shifted a little in his sleep, mumbling something unintelligible and scowling into the moon's permanent twilight.

He could tell from the way his heart was pounding that he wouldn't get back to sleep, so he slipped out of the tent as quietly as he could. It was a nicer model, modestly climate controlled and with automated doors. There was enough room for three normal size troopers, which meant Kylo almost never bumped Finn in his sleep. And on top of that, they had enough ration bars for a three-month stay, plus emergency hydration kits, plus a year's worth of nutri-gel. They were likely to be rescued long before they ran out of emergency food, leaving aside the edible plants and animals. It had been four days, and Finn was pretty sure they were going to be fine.

Except for the minor detail of how he might go legitimately crazy before then.

Kylo wasn't being annoying. It actually would've been less terrible if he had been. When Kylo was being annoying, all of Finn's other concerns receded in the distance. As it was, though, Kylo had spent the last four days carefully attending to Finn's needs, often keeping a downright respectful distance, speaking up to be helpful occasionally but mostly just taking care of their camp and leaving Finn alone. It was awful; it was the worst. It made Finn want things he couldn't have, like for Kylo to be a whole different, less awful person.

"Someone lived here a long time ago," Kylo said on the fifth day, while they ate some local greens and legumes that Finn had gathered while Kylo communed with the Dark Side.

(Did that count as aiding and abetting? Stuff like that was why Finn didn't want to dream of him at all, even if he was fake-Kylo in the dream.)

Finn spent a long time chewing his legumes before he answered. "Well, it's clearly habitable. So that makes sense."

"No. Not just some random bantha traders. Force users lived here."

Finn, who'd spent the better part of a full week doing his best to ignore the fluctuations in Kylo's moods and power, shook his head. "I don't feel anything."

"Because you're closing yourself off from me, and by extension the rest of the Force."

"That's a little self-centered, don't you think?"

"Do you think I can't tell?" Kylo snapped. He sounded like an entitled new recruit just then, full of anger and the conviction that he was right. "You think I haven't noticed when you touch me so closely, when your life force mingles with mine as you seek information? Open yourself up and you'll feel the same things I feel. Hell, based on what Calrissian told you, maybe you'll feel even more. I don't care: I just want you to stop being so kriffing stupid."

"You're the worst. I'd rather share this tent with a Hutt," Finn said, but he closed his eyes anyway for want of better options, expanding his senses to encompass Kylo, the moon, and the Force itself, moving around them in enigmatic oddness.

It came over him all at once, like a wave when his squadron landed next to the ocean. He felt the force, and Kylo's anger — his hope, his rage, all mixed up and toxic as ever. And then he felt history, and love, power that had come from sentient beings soaked into the otherwise dead rocks and earth around them.

Someone, something, had lived here. But they'd done more than that. This wasn't a Jedi or Sith signature, eons-old power damaged by distance or pain. This was watchfulness, hope, care. The keeping of a tradition that Finn had touched, once or twice, with Lando.

"The Guardians," he found himself saying. "They were here."

Kylo frowned. "Guardians."

It wasn't a request for more information. Actually, Finn thought Kylo might be trying to hide that he had no idea who the Guardians were. But Finn's weird affection for Kylo won out over his desire to be right, and he said, "Yeah. The Guardians of the Whills. Lando was — is — one; that's what he was teaching me. I can feel them here. Old energy, old — impressions." Spirits, he didn't say. "They're watching us now."

Kylo looked around like he might suddenly be able to see a bunch of judgmental ghosts. He scowled, and Finn — appalled with himself the whole time — felt a weird wave of sympathy pass over him. "They don't mean us any harm."

"You mean they don't mean you any harm," Kylo snapped.

Finn was poised to object, but — actually, that was true; the Force bent around him, recognizing his training and skills. It didn't reject Kylo, exactly, but Finn got a distinct impression of sorrow and pain. It, they, wanted Kylo to be something different from who he was. Something better.

Get in line, Finn thought.

"They know you matter to me," Finn said. When Kylo's expression contorted in disbelief, he hastily added, "I mean that you're — I mean — it would suck if you died, after all this. Before you even got back to your mom. Plus, then I'd have to tell everybody I messed up and got you killed."

"What part of me killing my father makes you think I care?" Kylo said coolly.

But Finn knew the answer to that, as surely as he felt the Force hum beneath his skin. "The part where you haven't killed me yet. The part where you haven't tried to stop the Resistance."

Kylo scowled. "I nearly shot my mother out of the sky."

"Close isn't a bullseye," Finn told Kylo, Phasma's admonishment echoing in his ears. "Look, this was a moon the Guardians of the Whills inhabited: fine. So we'll listen to our instincts. But it's safe and I'm tired, so let's just eat dinner and rest, okay?"

He didn't really expect Kylo to agree, and was vaguely shocked when Kylo scowled but said, "Fine, whatever."

That night, another dream wrapped itself around him.

*"I like when you tell me what to do," Kylo said.

*They were lounging together on a hill they'd seen earlier in the day. A fresh, clean breeze blew over them, and Finn twirled a purple flower between his fingers. Despite knowing it was a dream, he felt utterly, perfectly relaxed.

*Except: "Ha. Nice one."

*"No, really." Even if Finn hadn't instinctively known this was a dream, Kylo's behavior would've alerted him to it. He sounded warm and genuine, and he rolled closer to Finn before saying, "It's easier. Everything is so confusing right now, with Snoke dead and me...reconsidering things. It's easier when I have someone to follow."

*Finn turned the idea over in his mind. "So you're saying I'm kind of like your replacement Snoke."

*"What? No!"

*"Someone to follow —"

"I don't — I never thought of Snoke likethat.*"

*Finn watched Kylo turn bright red and thought of the kisses in the other dreams, the relatively easy affection. How embarrassing, that his subconscious produced this as a relaxing fantasy. "Right. Well. Still, it's kind of weird."

*"But you like it," Kylo said. He spoke so quietly, staring at Finn with odd light in his eyes. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't; you're too powerful for me to hold you. I think part of you knows that."

*And his subconscious also wanted him to think this was, what, some kind of magic Force dream? He really needed to talk to a doctor when they got back to headquarters. But even here, in his own dream, he could see the Force moving around himself and Kylo. Everything else might be fake, but that was real. Ish.

*"Maybe I do," he finally said. "But you're just a projection of my hopes, so I guess 'know' is the wrong word, huh?"

Kylo stared at him for a long moment, looking more like the Kylo who actually existed in real life: stubborn, annoyed. Finally, he exhaled, nostrils flaring. "Whatever you say."

The dream spun on, golden sunlight and warm breezes lulling Finn into a kind of sleep-within-sleep. The next day, feeling nervy about the crap his brain had served him, he decided to strike out from camp a bit. "We need more food, and ideally a backup water source," he said. "And of course we'll want to find as many potential shelters as possible."

"We'll be off this moon before any of that matters."

"Hopefully," Finn said. Or I might just space myself, he didn't add. "I'll be back before sunset."

"I'll find you if you aren't."

He thought Kylo meant it in a nice way. Well, he didn't look like he was trying to threaten Finn, anyway. But Finn still flinched a little, and then Kylo scowled, like there was no possible reason for Finn to feel like the former leader of the Knights of Ren was threatening him.

Ugh. He was going to go crazy if they were stuck here for long.

Luckily, the moon was densely populated by both flora and fauna. None of it was big enough or poisonous enough to be a real threat, but having to stomp through thick vines and clear away dense underbrush did stop him from dwelling on Kylo's weirdness as much as he wanted to.

Of course, the fact that he was using the wilderness as a distraction also meant that it took him embarrassingly long to realize it wasn't wilderness, exactly. He was walking through ancient ruins.

The plants were the first giveaway. Sure, they were overgrown, but they were overgrown with purpose. The areas they tangled over the most vociferously were, in fact, paths the plants handily concealed. Were meant to conceal, Finn suspected.

He felt the Force nudging at him. Of course he did; learning to feel that, to know what it meant, was half of what Lando'd tried to teach him. So he followed it.

The woods were old, older than he'd have thought possible for a forest on a moon. He felt ancient lives pressing down on him as he moved through the undergrowth. The further in he went, the more it felt alive, watching and thinking and waiting. He pushed the plants aside, careful not to damage them too badly. His arms got tired; the deeper he went, the more the daylight faded. Eventually, just as he'd started to wonder if he should turn back in spite of the silent urging of the Force, the woody vines and tall bushes gave way.

He'd expected something a little more exciting than what he saw: a mound of dirt around the base of a huge tree. The tree might have once been majestic and impressive, but right then it just looked kind of — sad. Drooping, faded leaves.

But the Force contracted around him, practically humming with interest. "All right, I can take a hint," he muttered. He moved closer to the tree, looking for some kind of hole in the mound of dirt, an entrance or a door or something.

He wasn't expecting the tree to sigh, leaves shivering against each other. He wasn't expecting the branches of the tree to part, revealing an entrance that came up to Finn's shoulder, gnarled roots with dark red earth packed around them.

He walked inside. Or he tried to. The entrance wasn't an entrance, exactly; the tree hadn't been protecting an actual structure. Instead, he saw curving ledges crammed with carved figurines, vases, tablets. Some of them were stone, like an ancient Core World tablet. Others were porcelain, even ferrocrete, sometimes painted and sometimes plain.

All the hair on the back of his neck stood up. What the kriffing hell was he looking at, exactly?

But he already knew. He reached out, only feeling half in control of his own actions, and touched one of the tablets.

The earth shivered, and Finn gave in to the Force.

What had they guarded?

I'm a guardian, Lando had told him.

What had the Guardians known?

You will be too.

The answer lay here, in the same light and connection Finn had felt back with Lando. It was different on this moon, tempered yet somehow even stronger. The inhabitants of this moon had possessed such power that it lived on even now, when the moon had been empty for millennia.

But it wasn't power, exactly. Finn felt the whispered objection as he tried to understand what moved around and inside him. Not power. What had Lando said? Understanding. They guarded understanding. They guarded the Force, and in doing so, they understood it. They lived it.

And so they had never quite died. The power didn't weaken; it shifted, changed. It sank into the earth, grew trees and birthed animals. All around him were thousands of souls, beings of the Force who had shed their bodies but had never lost their lives.

He drifted. It didn't occur to him to wonder how much time had passed. There was too much to explore, to feel, inside himself and all around. The Force had things to teach him, about the universe and about himself. He felt time in the changing of his own cells, the wind shaking ancient trees. Hours and minutes were meaningless in comparison.

And then he heard Kylo shouting, and felt a horrible panic crash into him like a speeder piloted by a drunk second-year 'trooper kid. He came back into his body all at once, feeling Kylo's huge hands on his arms, shaking him until he could practically feel his brain rattling in his skull.

"Augh," he said.

"I thought you were dead!"

"I don't — I told you I'd be back!"

"You said you'd bring food! Two days ago!"

"...oh," Finn said weakly.

Kylo made a furious noise that sounded a little like a bantha mid-beating, and kissed him.

Honestly, so much of Finn's life would be simpler if it had felt bad, the way it should've. If Kylo was worse at kissing — well, no, he was pretty bad. If Finn didn't want it so badly, if Kylo's desire and fear and need weren't absolutely pouring out of him. If the Force didn't wrap around them like so much incorporeal approval.

If, if, if.

Finn did enjoy it for a moment. Or several moments. Kylo had him practically bent over backward, holding him up so he didn't fall. Arousal shot through him, wrapped around him; he felt like he might explode if Kylo didn't keep touching him.

But then he remembered who he was, who Kylo was, and most importantly, that Kylo had pushed him away. That he didn't want this when he wasn't freaking out.

"Wait. No. Stop."

Kylo jumped away from Finn as suddenly as he'd kissed him. Which of course meant that he dropped Finn onto the ground.

"Ow." He glared up at Kylo, whose face was now bright red as his too-familiar anger turned the Force dark around him.

"You were gone," Kylo said through clenched teeth, "for two days. I thought you'd died."

"That would've solved a lot of problems for you, huh?"

"You imbecile. You ungrateful, idiotic, foolish, waste of talent piece of —"

"Yeah, okay, I'm going back to camp," Finn said, and went to grab his bag.

It had several leaves on it, like it'd been sitting there awhile. Kylo was telling the truth, most likely; he had no reason to lie. How could it have been two days?

"What were you even doing here, anyway?"

Finn had sort of hoped Kylo would go ahead of him, but of course he fell into step next to Finn, even though the undergrowth was barely diminished from the two of them going through it. Vines tangled around them in a way that was almost romantic, or would've been romantic if Kylo hadn't been such a jackass.

"Hey! I asked you a question."

"Guess you didn't want to leave time for me to think, huh?"

"Come on," Kylo said. He probably thought he sounded threatening. Really it sounded like a whine.

"I followed the path."

"There's no path!"

It was on the edge of Finn's tongue to call Kylo an idiot, to say that of course there was a path: just look around. But then he actually looked around, at the tangled forest they were walking through.

There wasn't a path. Or at least, there wasn't a path when the Force didn't feel like creating one.

"Whatever," he said, and forged forward.

"Tell me what you learned," Kylo said, his feet tripping over Finn's heels.

"Why should I?"

"I'm worried about you."

The Force surged around them as Finn's heart twisted. Kylo was lying, of course, omitting the most important truth. "You're worried about what I know. Compared to you."

Yes, whispered the perversion of the Force that lurked around Kylo. "Of course not," Kylo said out loud, sounding awfully offended for a literal murderer.

The lie came easily. "Don't worry. I didn't really learn anything."

"You're lying."

He had no right to sound so betrayed. Finn shook his head. "No, I'm not. It was just history you've probably heard before. It's not like I had a great education with the First Order."

"You are glowing," Kylo hissed. They were close to the camp now, and Finn walked a little faster, feeling uncomfortably like he was running away.

"That's just the lack of a 'fresher, it's not —"

He felt Kylo's intention but didn't have enough time to react to it. Invisible hands caught him squarely across the middle, slamming him back against the thick trunk of an ancient tree.

He felt the Force even here, slowly wending through the tree's branches. It was nothing compared to the double-time beat of his heart, the old ingrained fear that screamed at him to run away from this nightmare in front of him.

"Tell me," Kylo hissed. He looked frantic, his eyes searching Finn's face like he could pull Finn's secrets out.

Rey had told Finn about her time with the First Order. Finn had been briefed plenty as a 'trooper. He knew what Kylo could do if he wanted to.

Somehow, that was almost comforting. Kylo wasn't being the absolute worst version of himself. He wasn't forcing Finn. Though, that was definitely arousal against Finn's leg, and the longer he went without speaking, the more Kylo's color rose.

What must it be like, for these ugly feelings to be a source of power? Finn hoped he never found out.

"I found information left by the Guardians."

Kylo sneered. "Calrissian's cult?"

"Your uncle's faith. Yeah."

"And yours now too, I suppose."

Finn shrugged.

Kylo's skin was so hot. He looked so red Finn was a little worried that he was about to pass out, but that was nothing compared to the panic-arousal that shot through Finn when Kylo licked his lips and said, very quietly, "Tell me what you learned. Finn."

It wasn't like Finn thought he was Finn to Kylo. He wasn't stupid. Kylo might be sort-of-reforming, but at the end of the day, Finn was absolutely sure that he was still FN-2187 to Kylo, a baffling conundrum who'd served a few useful roles. Not a person. Not someone to hold, to kiss, to relax in dreams with.

Not someone at all, really.

"I learned how the Force sustains life," he said, barely more than a whisper. "I learned how the Guardians learned how to cheat death. And I learned why a lot of them died anyway."

Kylo's breath caught. It was obvious with the way they were standing: his chest pressing against Finn's, his fingers biting into Finn's skin. This close, Finn thought he understood the appeal of the dark power Kylo drew around him. It felt warm, almost comforting. It reminded Finn of those achingly tender, laughably unrealistic dreams he'd been trying not to have.

Kylo's words were a whisper of breath against Finn's cheek. "Do you know what the Dark would do for immortality?"

"Kill. Maim. Torture. I know how you guys work."

"You don't know much about them at all," Kylo said.

The Force hung between them, inside them, shimmering and full. Waiting. Finn's heart beat faster and faster, frantic and terrible evidence of what Kylo could do to him.

And then Kylo stepped away. The terrible pressure of nearly-touching was replaced by a cool glance, a disapproving set of the shoulders. "Keep your secrets," Kylo said, and started walking again.

Yeah, Finn thought, suddenly tired. That had always been the plan.

As inconvenient as being stranded had been before, now it was driving him literally, legitimately crazy.

Three days had passed since his adventure in the woods. The Force hadn't popped out from behind a rock to lecture Finn on the pros and cons of immortality, or whatever would've happened in a slightly more melodramatic universe. In fact, very little had changed — and that was what freaked Finn out.

It meant that the General and Lando and even Kylo were right: the power he had, the power he'd tried to deny, was real and already shaped him. He couldn't consider who he was without it, because he'd always been who he was now, and the Force had always been with him.

And he couldn't even talk to anyone about it! He definitely wasn't going to try to have this conversation with Kylo.

So during the day he surveyed the area around them, using their lone droid to go where the terrain got ugly or otherwise inhospitable. At night, he slept alone, and dreamed of a world where he and Kylo could talk without arguing, and without Kylo being such a massive jerk.

They were still very much stranded. The next Resistance patrols that would make it to this part of the galaxy were still months off. Neither of them had any luck repairing their communications systems. It drove Finn crazy that the best thing to do really was to stay healthy and wait.

Rey, he thought every night, staring up at the endless stars. Come get me, Rey. I'm losing it down here.

The sky stayed silent. And then, after a month of boredom and avoiding Kylo, it started to get colder.

The moon wasn't exactly a stable environment. Okay, fine, it supported life: it was stable enough. But night came quicker than most planets, and the weather changed in the blink of an eye. One day, Finn was gathering edible fruit from a shrub a few miles from their camp, and the next day that selfsame shrub had withered and the air smelled like snow.

"We should both stay in camp," Kylo said when Finn told him. "I can feel the sun drawing further from us. You'll die of exposure soon on one of your monkish rambles."

Finn hadn't gone back to the Guardian temple — or whatever it was — and Kylo knew it. "Trying to get a rise out of me when we're both confined to camp, real smart."

"I'm not trying," Kylo said with a sly look.

Finn scowled and fought down his irritation. It was just — weird. It was really weird, the power he could feel winding around Kylo, reaching out for Finn. If he didn't know any better he'd call it affection, but obviously it couldn't be that.

"We've got enough heat packs to last a few years, anyway," Kylo said. "We'll have to ensure the tent stays up, be careful about returning to it to sleep. But it'll be fine."

He looked over at Finn again, one of those sidelong glances that made Finn really aware of how long his eyelashes were and also how stupid his face was.

"Yeah," he said. "It'll be fine. I'm going to go, uh, secure the camp."

They had their packs, two emergency hammocks, and a tiny pile of spongey edible plants that tasted really gross and that they hadn't been able to bring themselves to eat yet. There was nothing to secure. Kylo didn't say that — didn't say anything. He silently watched Finn, his power an uncertain cloud around him, occasionally sweeping out towards Finn but never quite managing to touch him.

They did have enough heat packs. But one only lasted for six hours, and he and Kylo had gotten used to sleeping for eight or more, since there was nothing better to do. Finn was also exhausted, deep down in his bones, and he never mentioned it to Kylo — well, okay, he never mentioned it to the Kylo in reality. He'd admitted it in dreams. But he suspected Kylo, the real Kylo, was tired too.

All of that was a way of saying that the first night it snowed, as silence blanketed the world outside their tent, Finn woke up shivering and too tired to process that he needed to grab another heat pack. Instead, he moved towards the other source of warmth in the tent: Kylo, lying only a few feet away, an easy distance to cross even half-asleep.

Kylo grumbled a little; Finn ignored it. Kylo put an arm around his waist and it almost, perversely, felt like when he'd been in the barracks, close out of necessity but enjoying the company all the same. Finn sighed and closed his eyes again as his shivering subsided. He was asleep moments later, and he didn't dream.

He woke up aware of everything: Kylo's cock against his leg, Kylo's lips against his temple. The hot thrilling humiliation of having snuggled with Kylo instead of getting another heat pack.

And, of course, the burning truth of how badly he wanted this, paralyzing him.

"Good morning," Kylo said quietly.

That slight movement was enough to send a hot rush of need down Finn's spine. He closed his eyes against it, but stayed where he was: facing Kylo in a weird kind of half-hug, Kylo draped over him.

"Tonight," Kylo said, "I'll be sure to keep the heat packs closer to us."

"Sure," Finn croaked.

And still neither of them moved.

It was just so warm, Finn thought desperately. Warm and safe and here, this close to Kylo, the Force lurking around him felt almost normal. Almost affectionate. Almost like it wasn't a horrific perversion of the power that sustained them all.

"You should use what you've learned here," Kylo said quietly. His thumb twitched against Finn's back, then moved more surely, stroking him just a little.

Finn closed his eyes and desperately tried to focus on anything else. Like — "You mean how to forage for gross berries?"

"The secrets of your Guardians." Soft breath against his temple, fingers pressing into his spine. "Immortality, Finn."

Picking him up and throwing him in the snow couldn't have served as a better corrective. Finn rolled away and hopped to his feet. "What the — no! That's not the point!"

Kylo propped himself up on an elbow and looked up at Finn. "Isn't it?"

"Of course not."

"You know it's not. That's not what the Force is for, that's not what I have it for, it's not —"

"You don't have the Force at all. You're merely remarkably strong in it." Kylo cocked his head. "Why not use it to live forever?"

"Because! Drop it, okay?"

"Oh, relax. I'm not going to steal your secrets. But if I knew how to sustain my life everlasting —"

Finn stomped out into the snow and headed down one of their established paths.

Kylo just didn't get it, was the problem. Yeah, sure, the Guardians of the Whills had taught him about immortality. And they'd set it aside. They'd used what they'd learned to heal, to teach, to make the Force everlasting among sentients. Using it to extend their own lives would've been a horrible betrayal, and they were smart enough to know it.

Kylo, on the other hand, wasn't. The worst part was that Finn felt a little shocked by that, slightly betrayed, as though he'd started to believe that Kylo really was getting less terrible.

"Stupid," he muttered to himself, surveying the landscape.

This snow acted like all other snow Finn had ever encountered. It was quiet, most of the wildlife gone to wherever they weathered storms. The branches of the trees sagged from the weight of the snow, and it crunched underfoot as Finn wandered further from camp.

Then he saw them: berries. Bright red, shiny, wet from having melted snow around them. When Finn reached out to touch them, he felt warmth, life.

It wasn't the strangest flora he'd ever encountered. He pulled out his scanner and confirmed that they didn't have any toxic compounds, then picked all of them — two whole pounds, according to the scanner — to take back to camp.

"Here, I got us lunch," Finn said, dumping the berries on the floor of the tent. "Or dinner, maybe? I got us something."

"How kind of you," Kylo said, voice heavy with sarcasm. "Why aren't they covered in snow?"

"They're warm." Finn picked one up and tossed it to Kylo.

Kylo made a face. "How do you know they're not decaying?"

"I don't. But they're not toxic; I checked."

He watched as Kylo took a very careful bite. Bright pink juice dribbled down his chin, inducing Finn to think about licking it off, or about smearing it into his skin. He had to look away, bending down to grab another fruit and trying it for himself.

He'd thought it would be sour or bitter — winter fruit often was. But instead it tasted...

"This is wonderful," Kylo said, voice throatier than usual.

"It's sweet," Finn agreed, and took another bite.

There was something in the taste of it, an echo of familiarity that made Finn eat one, two, then three of the fruits as he tried to figure out what was so familiar about it. He was halfway through the fourth when he realized Kylo had been doing the same thing — and that he'd sat down at some point without realizing, and that he was dizzy.

"Uh oh," he said.

Kylo looked up at him. His face was flushed; he was breathing a little too heavily. "Let me see your scanner," he said, his words slurring a little. Finn passed it to him.

Kylo scanned the remaining fruit, blinked, frowned, and turned it around to show to Finn. For a second Finn didn't know what he was trying to show him. It was just the scanner, with a big green check mark to indicate safety for human consumption. And -

Oh. Oh. At the bottom of the screen, small and easy to ignore, was a yellow warning sign and the text: May be intoxicating to humans. Consult local guides.

"I'm going to send Explorer Enterprises a very serious letter about user experience," Finn said. His tongue felt too big; it tripped over his mouth. "As soon as I get a holopad. Maybe! Intoxicating! Big green check!"

"We're drunk," Kylo said in agreement, setting the scanner down.

That was what he'd been tasting. Finn felt like an idiot. "I'm sorry."

"You didn't know. I wouldn't have, either, except." Kylo laughed a little bleakly. "I almost asked to suck you off just now."

Finn's whole drunk brain screeched to a halt. "Um."

"Obviously something is wrong. Obviously." Kylo sank his head into his hands.

Finn took a few deep breaths and tried to arrange his thoughts, finding he couldn't. At some point his normal defenses had dropped without him noticing; he felt Kylo's arousal and embarrassment and pain, reaching out towards Finn and then recoiling, over and over. And.

Well. He wanted.

"You know I'd say yes."

Kylo glared at him with bloodshot eyes. "You're drunk."

"So are you."

"You wouldn't want this if you were sober."

"I'm not the one who ran away last time."

Kylo kept glaring, reaching down and taking another huge bite of fruit.

Finn watched as it swept through him. He closed his eyes, dropped the rest of the fruit from his shaking hands, leaning back against the tent. "I'm so tired of this," he said, sounding half broken.

Finn took another bite of fruit, too. If either of them stopped — well, he didn't really want to rediscover logic, right now. "Yeah, I am too."

Kylo, eyes still closed, tilted his head up towards the ceiling. "Kiss me, then."

Every bit of sense he still had screamed at Finn to leave the tent, to remove himself from this clearly dangerous situation. Instead, he crossed the short distance separating them, kneeling between Kylo's own ridiculously long legs, and kissed him.

It felt like a foregone conclusion. They'd only kissed once before, but this felt achingly familiar anyway. Kylo's hands landed on Finn's ass, guiding him closer, pulling him down into Kylo's lap. It should've felt stupid or degrading, but instead the feeling of yes, this, exactly this, filled Finn and stole his breath away. Kylo gasped into the kiss, changed the angle a little so that he was craning his neck back, practically pleading with Finn to kiss him harder, more, faster —

"I still want to suck you off," Kylo whispered when they pulled apart.

Lightning striking him couldn't have had a stronger effect. "Are you serious?"

"You already know I am."

Finn did. They were too close right now for him to hold Kylo's emotions at a distance. The fruit was strong enough to make them stupid, not pervert what they wanted.

He couldn't think of anything else to say. He had no defense against this, honestly stated and desperately wanted. "Yes," he said. "Yes." He moved to lie down, pulling Kylo with him, kissing him as Kylo worked to rid them both of clothes. The Force cushioned them, keeping Finn from feeling the cold of the tent's floor or the harshness of the metal against the back of his head. It was Kylo, Finn thought, it had to be — only he could feel it around them, and he knew that to be a lie. It was them. They moved together, shaping the Force to their needs even as Kylo finally got his mouth on Finn's cock.

For a moment the world seemed to spin into unreality. This felt like one of his awful, wonderful dreams, even as he tangled his hand in Kylo's hair and confirmed that it was very real.

Kylo's breath came in unsteady bursts against his hip. He didn't know what he was doing, that much was obvious. Finn stroked his hair as he licked Finn's cock, sucked it a little too lightly, pulled off to kiss Finn's thighs and run his hands over Finn's legs and stomach. He was huge, which Finn had already known but relearned from a new angle. His fingers were — Finn wanted them. He wanted all of Kylo, really, with a stubborn acuteness that surprised him even as Kylo sucked him down again, deeper, determination etched into his expression.

"Oh, oh," Finn said. He could barely think, much less care about how stupid he must sound. The Force surrounded him, holding him close where Kylo couldn't reach, caressing him even as Kylo bobbed his head. He looked filthy down there, his mouth bright red, flushed from forehead to waist. He looked up at Finn with undisguised desperation as Finn moved his hips just a bit — then harder when Kylo groaned and sank further down on him, like he'd been waiting for Finn to fuck his mouth.

He came with a groan, all over Kylo's cheeks and jaw. He kissed Kylo, mess and all, while Kylo fucked his hand. It was messy, stupid, faster than it should've been. It felt like most of what Finn had ever wanted.

"Don't leave," Kylo mumbled into his shoulder when Finn moved to get up.

"Our sleeping bags are just a few feet away."

"Still." Kylo clutched Finn to him and kissed his shoulder with almost unbearable tenderness. "Stay."

So Finn stayed. And he woke up hours later like he had that morning, clinging to Kylo pathetically. This time, though, his head was pounding from the berries, and he sort of thought he might die, just a little.

"Oh, kriff," he said. "Why did we — what did we —"

"You know the answers to both those questions," Kylo said, sounding even more First-Order-stick-up-the-ass than usual.

"I meant metaphorically. You wouldn't understand."

"Wouldn't I?" Lazy sarcasm now, but when Finn turned on the tent's lights, he saw Kylo wince. Good: Finn wasn't the only hungover one.

"Well, you haven't been having stupid dreams."

Finn recognized his mistake even as the words left his mouth. Kylo narrowed his eyes and said, "What kind of stupid dreams."

"Nothing." An obvious lie. "None of your business, anyway."

Kylo raised his eyebrows. "You realize, do you not, that Force users sharing dreams is a broadly known phenomenon?"

"Are you trying to say rolling around in the sunlight and being stupid, lazy boyfriends is how you dream about being with me?" Finn shook his head. "Come on, I know how to spot a lie better than that."

"Oh, I'm lying, am I? When I say I told you my secrets? That I remember kissing you, wanting you, laughing with you, fucking you?"

He had to have been. It was probably a lucky guess, that his vague not-really-details matched Finn's memory. There was no way Finn had been using the Force to make out with Kylo in dreams. He wasn't even going to let himself think about it being possible. "You lie about everything else. Why not that?"

He wasn't expecting Kylo to recoil like he'd been slapped. He clenched his jaw, breathing heavily, and around him Finn felt in the Force.

"I suppose I can't force you to see otherwise," Kylo said coldly. He waved his hand, and a long black cloak flew across the room to him. Once dressed, he left the tent without another word.

At first Finn thought the sound of a ship landing was just a really weird, overly specific hallucination. But then he heard Kylo saying coldly, "You will release the exploratory ancillary ship into my care, or I'll release your head from your shoulders. Your choice."

"Kylo!" he shouted, struggling into his pants. "We're being rescued, what is wrong with you? Don't just — oh, hey, Rose."

He'd run out of the ship without a shirt on, a fact that he was now hyper-aware of. "It's great to see you again," he added lamely, when no one else said anything.

"Hi, Finn. Hi, Finn's, um, chest." Rose eyed Kylo suspiciously. "Don't cut my head off, please."

"Give me what I want, and I won't have to."

Rose sighed. "Your dossier is so tragically accurate."

"Excuse me?"

"You're not going to behead me. Especially not in front of Finn." Rose crossed her arms. "If I give you the ancillary ship, you'll just go back to the First Order with it."

"He wouldn't!" Finn said, at the same time Kylo said, "And how is that any of your business?"

"Well, I'm a member of the Resistance. You could say it's actually my main business, stopping people like you from doing —"

"Stuff like that?" Kylo said with the beginnings of a smirk.

In response, Rose crossed her arms and glared.

"I will hurt you," Kylo told her. He spoke quietly, evenly, like he thought he was being reasonable. "I don't want to, but I will, if you don't give me a ship."

"I'm not going to enable you getting back to the First Order."

It occurred to Finn, way later than it should've, that he should probably be doing something. He reached out to Kylo with the Force, trying to figure out his intentions — and then recoiled. All he felt was anger.

"Let him go," he found himself saying.

Rose blinked. "Excuse me?"

But he knew it was the correct thing to say. "He wants to leave; let him. He won't go back to the First Order."

"You seem really sure of that, considering he's a literal evil Sith-guy."

"The Knights of Ren aren't Sith," Kylo said in that dumb pedant voice of his.

"Oh, excuse me, I just figured you were, what with the murder and hatred and everything." Rose shook her head. "Finn, I don't think we should let him go."

"He's been traveling with me for months." Kind of an awful thing to realize, really. It had been so long, and they were much closer than they should be, even forgetting what they'd just done. "If he were going to defect, I think he would've done it already."

"He didn't have a second ship."

"We were chased by a First Order assassin. He didn't join her. He tried to kill her."

Rose glanced around at the wreckage, only partially cleared away, and then at Finn. "Tried?"

Ah. "I finished it."

He half expected her to be shocked. Instead she only nodded, then returned her focus to Kylo. "The ship has a tracking device."

"I'm aware."

"If you disable it, we'll find you anyway. And stop you."

"Yes, my mother is known to be ruthless with regards to her fanatical Resistance. Do you have any other admonishments for me, or am I free to go?"

Rose shot Finn a look heavy with meaning. It was Finn's call. Right. Okay.

"Give him the ship."

The Force jumped between him and Kylo, burned. He couldn't even begin to say what Kylo was thinking just then. He only knew that this was the right choice. Kylo wasn't going back to the First Order. He might fly the ship straight into a dying sun, but the First Order would never get their hands on it.

"Finn," Kylo said in a low voice.

There was something there — more anger, maybe. Finn did his best to ignore it. "Rose?"

"Yeah, okay." She pulled out a keychip. "Here you go. Second panel on the right."

Kylo didn't so much as glance at Finn. He didn't look through the ship for any other supplies, either. Saber at his waist, he walked over to the panel, extracted the ship, and flew off, all while Finn stood there like an idiot.

Without him there, the Force felt faded, wrong. How much of what he'd learned had depended on Kylo being near?

"Wow," Rose said when Kylo broke atmosphere.

"What?"

"You look like someone just died."

He glanced at the sky again, in spite of himself. "I'm a little worried someone just did."

"I don't know, he survived Snoke. I think he can probably survive, uh, whatever this is."

Finn blinked at Rose, who was looking at him with significance, like she wanted him to know she knew something. Which was — oh no. Finn still wasn't wearing a shirt. "This isn't what this looks like."

"I promise, I don't want to know." She made a face. "But still. He'll be fine, okay? We should go back to the Resistance."

"Thanks for the rescue, by the way. How'd you even know we were down here?"

"Rey. She said she felt you in the Force."

That lightened Finn's mood enough for the next hour or so, as he packed up the camp and got ready to leave. Kylo hadn't left anything out; Finn hadn't realized how little he'd had, how much he'd kept to himself. Would he be okay wherever he was going?

Did Finn even care?

"It's okay if you're having feelings about your, um, Force companion, going evil," Rose said.

She was trying to be nice. Finn reminded himself of that so he didn't break down crying, or yell at her that Kylo wasn't going to go evil. "He's my friend. I think. Well, he sucks. But he's not going evil."

"Again," Rose said with the Resistance's dark irony.

"Again," Finn confirmed.

They sped through the black in silence, Rose shooting Finn worried glances, Finn trying to pull it together before he had to report to the General.