Finn was meditating, guiding his thoughts away from distractions (Kylo, the bad sandwich he'd had in the cafeteria, whether or not the gunner on Pava's ship hated him) and towards feeling the Force, when the Force sort of -

Hit him.

Not hard. Just a little. But it definitely felt like a slap, and when Finn had recovered enough to figure out what was going on, he lurched right into panic.

If it was an attack, he'd need to be on a gunner, so he raced to the shipyard. Everyone he passed gave him weird looks, and he found he couldn't talk, even to yell 'sound the alarm!' or whatever people yelled in emergency situations like that; if it wasn't with the First Order, if there wasn't a specific button to hit and code to yell, then Finn really had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

But it turned out that he didn't need to know what to do. He understood as soon as he got to the shipyard. The General, Poe, Rey, Luke, and Kylo stood ringed around two figures on the ground. He knew what - who - they were as soon as he saw the smooth white armor. It was Rey who turned and said, "Finn. Finn, it's okay."

He stopped shouting, and realized he'd been shouting.

"Leia deactivated them," Rey was saying. "They're safe, it's okay."

"Do you even know what that means? Rey, I felt -"

"So did I," she rushed to say, "but Finn, they're asking for you. They heard about the kill switch. I don't know how - I don't know why the Force - but they did. They are."

"This is Finn," Poe said. He was still looking at both stormtroopers with unblinking, unwavering calm. "Say hello, kids."

Both stormtroopers, sans helmets, looked at Finn. Relief and disappointment wrenched through him in equal measure: they didn't recognize him. "Squadron?"

"HJ," they said in unison.

He'd never have even come close to working with them. Which led him to ask, "How do you know about me, exactly?"

The stormtroopers exchanged a shifty, all too familiar look. "Well," one of them said, "you're a pretty high priority fugitive."

"Why are you here?" Poe said. "Who sent you here? What's to stop us from killing you right now? Think through your answers very carefully."

Finn half expected the General to protest the veiled threat, but she stayed silent. It was Kylo who said, "You'll get nothing from them that way."

"You'd know."

"That's right, I would," Kylo said. "Leave them with Finn. He'll get what we need."

The two stormtroopers not-looked at Kylo so hard Finn thought their eyes might fall right out of their heads. Finally, Poe said, "All right, let's go." On their way out, Rey grabbed Finn's hand and squeezed, whispering, "It'll be all right."

They did, in fact, leave Finn alone with the two - well, alone except for the many cameras and the deactivated droids that Finn could see half-hidden in an alcove at the far end of the room. Close enough. He pulled up a chair and sat across from the HJs, saying, "You can get chairs too, if you want."

"We're fine here," said the slightly older-looking one.

Finn looked at them both kneeling. The plates of armor over the knee joints were designed for slight discomfort: never enough to be dangerous, but never enough to let you really rest, either. "Suit yourselves. Any plans to answer Poe's questions?"

"Poe Dameron," said the younger one. "Hero of the Resistance."

"Traitor to the Republic, to you," Finn said, "unless that kill switch worked really, really quickly. How'd you know about it?"

"It actually does work quickly." The younger one tilted her head. "We thought you'd know that already."

As attempts at misdirection went, it was a good one; Finn couldn't help but think of how it hadn't done anything to him at all. It also filled him with fear of what the First Order knew about him, how he'd managed to escape, what might be wrong in his brain - or what the Force had done for him - or -

He took a few deep breaths, guiding his thinking back to where he wanted it. This was the General's most valuable lesson so far, even if she hadn't meant it to be used for his weird First Order related meltdowns. "You didn't answer my question."

The HJs looked at each other again. Finn had no idea what unspoken communication was passing between them, but seeing it even from the outside made his heart clench.

"Laura's been calling us," one of them said.

Finn said, "Who's -"

The General burst into the room. Finn's stomach flopped over when he saw how furious she looked. "That's enough," she said to the two stormtroopers. "I don't know what game you think you're playing, or who you really are -"

"We're HJs!" one of them said. "We told you!"

"Nameless, faceless, you really think I believe the kill switch can change that much? You had no way to send her a message. She has no communication with the outside world. You cannot lie to me, do you understand? You will not take him back."

She thought they were here to take Kylo back? But -

"He is the only person I've ever even tried to train. You can't have him. The First Order cannot have him."

It occurred to Finn that the General was talking about him, not her son, and also that the air had gone very still, almost as though it had gained physical weight. The General held them all, he realized, with a grip so precise he could barely feel it.

For a moment, her earlier words echoed through the air, shivering Finn's bones: I'm his daughter. She'd really meant it.

"You don't know everything about us," one of the stormtroopers said. His face had gone bloodless, but he squared his shoulders and looked the General dead in the eye anyway. "Laura's got a communicator. Just a single signal, but we pick up on it, we know to look for it. It's alpha-zeta-gamma, the distress code."

The one command didn't know about. Yeah, they weren't lying. Finn had heard of it; everyone had.

He felt cold down to his bones. "They're telling the truth."

The General's lips thinned. "Bring Laura here," she said into a communicator.

Once their first stormtrooper prisoner arrived, the General launched into several hours of furious recriminations, interrogation, and argument. She never even mentioned sending them back to the First Order, which was all that kept Finn calm; he wasn't really afraid for them, not yet, but he walked the knife's edge of fear for all those ours, constantly aware that he might have to step in between her and them.

Eventually, she put both stormtroopers, and Laura, under house arrest. "Not because you did anything wrong - well, you two did nothing wrong." She gave Laura a long glare. "But we need to ensure you're not under hostile surveillance, and that you're ready to be part of the Resistance in truth."

"I'd hope I've proven myself," Laura said.

The General's voice could have doubled for Jakku dunes. "If you hadn't been taking advantage of a secret communicator, I'd agree."

"We can build an army," Laura said. "You don't really want me to hold back from that."

The General looked at Finn then, for some reason. He said, "An army would be nice. But mass desertions...we both know how that would go."

"They can't send their dog after us anymore."

It took him a minute to realize she meant Kylo. "Well, I - yes, but still."

"Very eloquent," said Kylo's cold voice from the doorway. "General Organa, I'd like to borrow your chief interrogator for a moment."

"My son means you," the General said to Finn. "Go ahead; I'll finish up here."

The HJs didn't exactly look excited by the prospect, but Finn wasn't worried about them anymore in a real sense; he left them and followed Kylo out to the observation room.

He wasn't at all, in any way, ready for Kylo to say, "They were lying. They can feel you in the Force."

"Um. Excuse me?"

"The Force," Kylo said with exaggerated patience. "The power that flows through the universe, guiding our lives and through which our power -"

"Okay, first of all." Finn swallowed past his suddenly-hammering heart ."It's not our power. Second of all, I don't - what do you mean? They can feel me? That doesn't make any sense."

"Stormtroopers are selected for talent; the First Order has repeatedly failed to understand that such selection implies talent with the Force, in its raw, untrained form." Kylo said it all impatiently, like he knew and didn't care that this stuff could still shock Finn to his core. "You are, obviously, at the extreme end of the spectrum, but the First Order has widely publicized your image and the Force, the Light, clearly has plans for you. Of course they can feel you."

He said it all with contempt, like the Light having plans for someone was akin to, oh, being caught trying to marry a sarlacc. "Well," Finn said, and then realized he had no argument, and was in fact terrified by the idea of the Force targeting him for anything at all.

Kylo said, "I can go back in there and make them stop. I can render you utterly unimportant. They'll be so distracted, it won't occur to them to question why you're not there anymore."

Finn rolled his eyes. "Okay, sure. I get it, you're scarier than me. I'm pretty sure I can handle it."

Kylo didn't say anything, but his cheeks went a little red - and it occurred to Finn that, in a very narcissistic and awkward way, Kylo had been offering his help.

Right. "I mean, thank you," Finn said. "But I'm mostly just tired."

"Let's go back to your room, then," Kylo said. Before Finn could point out that he could get to his room under his own power, thanks, Kylo had already started stalking down the hall.

He looked ridiculous, objectively. Finn wasn't deep enough in - whatever this was - that he couldn't admit that. But he also looked kind of good.

Finn was in so much trouble, even before you got to the whole Force, stormtroopers, weird communication stuff. He followed Kylo anyway; at that particular point in time, he felt too tired to do anything else.

-

Somehow - possibly through a self-protecting delusion - it hadn't occurred to him that anyone would think he was the guy to keep an eye on the new defectors. And yet, that was what his room computer informed him his job was; he was supposed to show them the ropes, train them, and assess them for pilot and mechanic skills, those being the two most understaffed positions right now.

"I'm not surprised," Poe said when Finn mentioned his new assignment at breakfast. "You're good at talking to people, and you know the lay of the land well enough to judge their loyalty."

"They've been brainwashed soldiers since they were kids! No one can judge their loyalty. They probably don't even know it."

Poe gave Finn one of his annoyingly measured looks and said, "You really think that, huh?"

In his heart, no. In his gut...also no. But Finn scowled anyway. "I think it's impossible to know. I'm not the same as all stormtroopers. We have identical armor, but we're still -"

"People," Poe said. "I know. Only you're not, legally, to the First Order. Right?"

It was a little more complicated than that, or so Finn had been taught, but in essence - "Right."

"I'd do anything to escape that, if I knew for even a second that other people lived differently - that I didn't have to be like that." Poe shrugged, the easy, fluid movement of the always-free. "Maybe that's how they feel, too."

Rey had a different take on it. "Well, you're the logical choice, right? You're their rallying point."

"Come again?"

"Their -" She made a face. "Like a flag, or an Old Republic figure, you know. You're the First Order's most wanted stormtrooper! If they harbor even a hint of rebelliousness, I assume you're an absolute idol to them, because you got out first."

"I don't want to guard people as an idol," Finn groused.

But she had a point. He met them both in the cafeteria; they sat alone in a corner, facing both entryways, as they'd been trained. "HJs," he said, sitting down across from them. "You were trained to specialize in surveillance."

"That's correct," said the taller one.

"It's also in our file already, which I know you've read." The shorter one glared at Finn. "Let's just cut the bullshit, okay? What's our sentence?"

"Your - sentence?"

"We know all this is an illusion." The shorter one waved to the cafeteria. "We know you're here to drag us back to the cell, manipulate us into being your spies. Just give me the terms already."

It occurred to Finn that he really should've expected this. They'd all been trained like this, taught that if they were captured by any of the numerous treasonous factions within the fallen Empire, they'd be tortured and compelled to turn traitor.

Somehow, remembering all that didn't fix the sudden ill feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Right," he said. "Well, that's not what's happening here. The General wants you as pilots or mechanics, ideally, though there are other positions. Probably not intelligence, though, at least not right away. Sorry."

The taller one tilted their head, looking at Finn with watery eyes. "As a pilot, I could shoot your soldiers down. As a mechanic, I could sabotage the General's own ship. What makes you think espionage is the only area in which I could damage your cause?"

"Our cause, remember?" Finn said. "And I think it's actually a logistics thing: the First Order knows your faces, and they'll be looking for a pair of HJs. I know you think you can fit into civilian life, but trust me, it's hard."

Neither of the HJs looked convinced. Finn sighed. Rey's theory was losing its shine by the minute; there was no way these two idolized him in any way. "Look, if you're not interested, you're free to leave. You guys aren't prisoners. But we really do need mechanics."

It was the shorter one who said, "Fine. We'll try it. Right, Galaran?"

Galaran nodded. Finn said, "I don't know your name," nodding at the shorter one.

"You can call me a girl," the shorter one said. "Don't make that face, I can see you wondering. And I'm not sure I won't go to the Outer Rim still. Call me Calla."

Finn spent the rest of the day showing the two of them around. And - it was fine, really; he thought they were both going to agree to stay. But they kept referencing the training, the reconditioning, kept talking about the First Order like it was all a joke, and every time they looked at Finn - to include him, because he should've had the same experiences - he felt sick.

He couldn't think of it. His mind slid away when he tried.

Later, during his lesson with the General, he tried to explain. She listened as he laid it all out, then as he babbled helplessly, trying and failing and trying again to explain how crazy thinking about the First Order made him feel.

"I apologize if this is an inappropriate suggestion," she said as he wound down, "but have you discussed this with my son?"

For one absolutely hysterical moment, Finn thought this was her attempt at matchmaking. He barked a hysterical laugh - and then his brain connected the dots. "You mean he'd know my case history."

"I think it's likely, yes."

Finn tried to fit his thoughts around 'that's nonsensical' in a way that he could say to the General. "I'm not sure that's true," he said slowly. "I mean - there are a lot of stormtroopers, and he'd have had no reason to look at my file specifically."

"Until you defected."

"That was a year ago."

He'd never really noticed how sharp the General's gaze was. He had to fight the urge to squirm as she said, "My son is a fool, and in many ways no longer my son at all, but I can guarantee he won't have forgotten your biographical details."

If he thought about what that meant, he'd probably lose it. So instead, he said, "Right. Sure. I mean, yes. I'll ask him."

"Good. Now, let's discuss persuasion."

He did his best not to think about Kylo after that, and was so successful that when he literally ran into Kylo after his shift was over, his stomach did a stupid little swoop. "Augh," he said. Kylo had reached out to grab him; now his fingers slid from Finn's biceps. Finn didn't quite manage to suppress a shiver. "Sorry."

"Are you?"

Finn should've just brushed it off, rolled his eyes and gone back to his room. But impulse took over. "Do you practice that tone? The smirky, dramatic stuff? You must, right? You sound ridiculous."

Kylo gave him a flat look.

"Your mom thinks you know all about me." Oh, no. Stop talking, Finn told himself.

No, said the part of him that'd gotten him in this whole mess to begin with. "The other stormtroopers are fine talking about their pasts. Me, if I try to think about it, it's like my whole brain is seizing up. What's up with that?"

Kylo's face turned a deep, dull red. "I'm not sure why the General thinks I'd know anything about that."

"She thinks you remember looking me up after I defected."

Kylo didn't need to furiously deny it for Finn to know the General had been right, but he did so anyway, for several minutes. After he wound down, Finn said, "It's fine. I didn't expect you to tell me anything."

"There's nothing to tell," Kylo snapped.

They were standing too close together. "Right," Finn said, and took two steps back. "I'm going to go, now."

He thought that was the end of it, but of course it wasn't. That night, for the first time since he'd left Arkanis, Kylo showed up in his dream.

At first, Finn almost didn't notice him. On Araknis, his room had had an enormous hydro 'fresher, with floor to ceiling tile and a beautiful pool to float around in. He hadn't spent much time in there, since he'd been busy and way too tense to relax. Now, though, he could sit on the inexplicably warm tile and feel the water against his face. It felt lovely.

Then the darkness in the corner of the 'fresher resolved itself into Kylo. "How long have you been here?"

Kylo's gaze flicked down to Finn's waist, where a pair of shorts had appeared at some point. "Not long."

"And it's actually you?"

Kylo gave him a look that somehow, despite his nudity, made it seem like he was wearing a turtleneck. "You give me considerable cause to question my mother's pedagogical skills."

"Your mother?"

It took Kylo a minute to register what Finn was pointing out. He scowled. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do. So do you. That's the weird part." Finn sighed and settled against the warm tile. Dream logic was so hard to get used to; this wasn't his real body and he'd experience absolutely none of the muscle-relaxing effects of the water once he woke up, but sitting there still felt like a balm to his exhaustion.

"It's a real dream," Kylo said abruptly, sounding oddly furious. "I'm not a figment of your imagination - stop doing that."

Finn paused midway through a stretch. "Doing what?"

Kylo looked away, focusing on the wall next to him. "Showing off."

Time slowed just then, in a perfectly dreamlike way. For a moment Finn didn't breathe, and in that same moment his heart hammered in his throat, and he wanted to cross the room and reach out more than he wanted almost anything.

Thankfully, his subconscious didn't try to oblige him. He stayed several feet from Kylo as he said, "You should try stretching; maybe it would help your mood."

Kylo's nostrils flared and he didn't respond.

Finn should've stopped it then, he knew, but something in the way Kylo kept glancing at him - furtive, intense looks, like Finn was the one to be ashamed of, which was so ridiculous Finn almost thought he must be imagining it - something in those looks made him keep going. "Or maybe you'd want a massage, instead."

"Oh, are you offering?"

"You missed the chance to make that part of my training. I'm just observing, based on your behavior: you need something to make you relax."

"Or someone?"

"Pretty sure you wouldn't like me forcing you to do anything."

"Be a little less sure."

He said it so lightly. None of this was really real, Finn had to keep reminding himself of that, because the way he said it - the way he looked at Finn -

Finn had only ever had quiet and rushed moments in the FN barracks, and then that one terrible, wonderful dream with Kylo. It felt incredibly unfair: every time he thought of sex with Kylo, a combination of disgust and confused libido made it impossible to focus on anything else.

Case in point, the bathroom had faded around them. Now they stood in a dream replica of one of the Resistance's many anonymous training rooms, with soft walls and springy floors.

Kylo looked Finn up and down, a spark of interest in his expression. Finn's heart started pounding even before Kylo walked over and summoned a staff with a flick of his fingers.

"Are you game?"

"It's my dream, you said." Finn held out his hand. He and the General hadn't worked on this kind of Force manipulation at all; in reality, it wouldn't work. But this was a dream, so the staff flew into his hand with a satisfying thunk. "Of course I am."

Kylo's expression lit up again, a hundred times more open and intent than Finn had ever seen him outside these dreams. "Let's go, then."

He attacked before Finn had a chance to say anything else. Finn got his defense up, then rebounded with rapid taps to Kylo's knuckles. The dream made time fade in and out around them.

When he got under Kylo's guard, knocking his staff away, the whole world shifted: he ended up on the floor with Kylo under him. He barely had a moment to appreciate the feeling before Kylo bared his teeth and reached up to grapple.

He was strong, but Finn had more practice: Kylo only gained an edge once, and it took just a minute for Finn to get it back, hitting Kylo in the solar plexus and rolling them with his thighs. He was gasping with effort when he pinned Kylo's wrists, their faces just a few inches apart, and -

It felt inevitable then. The training room faded around them. The mat that Finn's knees had been digging into became something much softer. Finn leaned in, closing his eyes. He could feel Kylo's pulse fluttering under his thumb.

He woke up all in one go. It felt like falling down a flight of stairs he hadn't realized was there. His heart pounded like it might escape, and he was perfectly, achingly hard.

"Sixteen pounds of bantha shit," he told the ceiling.

"Sixteen pounds of bantha shit cannot be ordered outside of Core Planet jurisdiction, Finn," his room computer said.

Finn knew the Resistance's habit of buying repurposed commercial AIs was economical and all, but right now he didn't exactly appreciate it. "Computer, forget I said that, and also -" He looked down at himself and grimaced. "Take a break."

"Commencing fifteen-minute privacy window," the computer said, and went silent.

The embarrassment of it all didn't quite stop him from thinking about that desperate look in Kylo's eyes, and how he might look if Finn slept with him again. Maybe he'd beg; maybe he'd scream. Finn wanted that so much, wanted it with an intensity he felt certain must reverberate through the Force. He didn't want to want it, but that didn't stop him now, desperately jerking himself off and thinking only of Kylo: his long fingers, his strong arms, his desperate desire for Finn, his overwhelming neediness.

Finn came into his own hand silently, eyes closed, knowing he was absolutely fucked.

-

Okay, fine. He was definitely fucked, yes. He'd spent the whole day thinking about the almost-kiss, barely able to repress it when he'd met with Galaran and Calla. But maybe it was just libido. He was a young guy, and between all the running and the fighting and the terrible life experiences, he hadn't had a ton of time to explore his sexuality. Maybe this whole thing with Kylo was just a terrible, ill-advised explosion of libido that could've wound up directed at virtually anyone else.

Maybe, he thought, watching Poe tell his ridiculous story about almost dying from swamp microbot bites. But then, why was he focused on Kylo? He was friends with all the pilots! He was a gunner! There were so many smart, attractive, good people that he was around almost every day. Instead of getting a terrible crush on any of them, he was stuck focusing on a guy who was currently sitting alone in a dark corner, glaring at his dumplings.

Why? Why?

"Finn, you okay?"

Finn blinked and refocused on Poe. "Yup. So, swamp microbots?"

"Swap micronaughts," Poe said. "They're a pest on sixteen Outer Rim planets. You should just go talk to him."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't," Poe said. He glanced down the table. Most of the other pilots were distracted by Rey's semi-unethical Force coin tricks. "Listen, I think you could do better than Ben -"

"I know I could do better than Kylo."

"Good, that means you haven't totally lost it. But you also don't want to, right?"

"I don't know what I want," Finn said. "The doctor told me I'd experience a second adolescence, as a trauma thing. Is this it?"

"I did not, at any point in time, want to kiss Ben Organa as a teenager," Poe said. "Among other things, his personality was just awful, even before he went evil."

Finn hunched his shoulders. "Well, good for you. Congratulations. I'll find you a medal."

"I already have some." Poe's smirk was devastatingly attractive. Think about kissing him instead, Finn told himself, but of course it didn't work.

"Look, maybe I do," Finn said. "But I'm hoping it's just temporary insanity."

"Sure. But you're both pretty sensitive people, so just be careful, okay?"

"He's not going to hurt me!" Probably.

"Physically, sure. But if you get your heart broken, it'll throw your aim off. I need my gunner: be careful with your feelings." Poe clapped his shoulder and stood with his tray.

Finn spent an embarrassing amount of time trying not to think about Kylo after that, so much so that when his dream faded into a comfortable furnished living room that featured Kylo reclining on a sofa, he turned around and left.

Of course, walking out the door took him right back into the room. "Ugh," he said. The firelight was glinting on Kylo's abs in a way that was definitely not realistic.

"You could try pulling Dameron into your dream instead. I'm sure he'd come willingly."

Finn's head swam at the way he made that sound like a double entendre. "I'm not - he wouldn't come." Bad word choice. "Anyway, I'm not entirely in control of this, in case you hadn't noticed."

Kylo looked away. The dull red that Finn had started to think was an inherent part of his complexion was back.

Finn examined the room instead. It didn't look anything like anywhere on the Resistance base, or the various places he'd stayed in since joining the Resistance. The walls were blue, the floors shining wood, the furniture soft and comfortable-looking.

"I enjoyed last night."

Finn let out a slow breath. "You're still there, huh."

"I'm not sure I could leave."

That sent a horrible bolt of unpleasant feeling through Finn.

"Relax. I don't mean it like that. I mean I haven't tried."

Something about the way Kylo said it was just - unbearable, really. He sounded irritated, which shouldn't have been attractive, but was. He also sounded focused, and that definitely pulled Finn in.

Literally: he took several steps forward. Kylo sat up on the couch, watching Finn approach. When he was close enough to touch, Kylo licked his lips and reached for Finn's loose pants.

He was already getting hard, yet he shied away.

"Have you ever done this before?" he blurted out. "Except for - with me, here?"

Kylo scowled. That was an answer in itself, Finn thought. "Let's - let's go somewhere."

The room faded. Kylo was once again in his customary black. They sat at a restaurant Finn had never seen before, and Kylo ordered a series of fantastical dishes that Finn had never heard of but his subconscious apparently knew how to make. "We're bleeding together," Kylo said, halfway through a meat dish.

Finn blinked. "Excuse me?"

"The food. I've had it; you haven't. I have some level of control here." Kylo looked around. "It's fascinating. My former Master would have loved it."

Something dark slithered in the back of Finn's mind. He shuddered. "Yeah, I'm not planning on introducing him to it."

"I can't imagine why you'd have such a detailed dreamworld," Kylo continued, "unless, I suppose, it's an escape mechanism, a way of denying the mental duties of a stormtrooper."

"Mental duties. That's a nice way to put it."

"I was euphemistic for your sake."

A crack appeared in the wall next to their table, racing up to the ceiling. Kylo touched a bony finger to it. "Hm," he said.

They ate in silence after that. Finn kept having to fight the urge to ask stupid questions, the kind of first-date conversation starters you'd hear in an Inner Rim sitcom. Kylo apparently wasn't capable of feeling self-conscious; he just stared at Finn for the whole meal and didn't say much of anything.

It was nice. Okay, no, it was kind of weird and uncomfortable, but it was also peaceful. Finn woke up without his usual panic or panicked arousal, and he fell asleep again soon after.

He didn't have the dreams every night. It would've been too distracting, when he had to get Calla started with fighter pilot training and find someone who could teach Galaran droid mechanics. He hadn't seen it coming, but he'd become a pretty busy guy; the General noted, with amusement, that he fell asleep on two separate occasions when he was supposed to be feeling the emotions of people half a planet away.

"It's fine," she'd said when he'd tried to offer a mortified apology. "I remember being young and overextending myself, too."

Her overextension had been literally legendary work, and Finn couldn't help but think that his own plodding efforts to master the Force didn't really compare. But he knew exactly what she'd say if he tried to tell her that.

The dreams, though. They were almost more distracting because they weren't sexual. Oh, Finn definitely wanted to reach out and touch Kylo, but they both kept their hands to themselves. The result was that as they traded landscapes and random stories and half-hearted barbs, they sort of became...friends.

"You can't possibly think that," Kylo said one night.

Finn laughed, delight sparkling through him. "I really do, though."

"He was her teacher!"

"Like, years before the vid starts."

"He went evil!"

"You went evil," Finn pointed out. Kylo didn't quite flinch. He was getting better at that.

"It's different. This is fiction. She's powerful in the Force, but he has a deeper knowledge, and greater potential to hurt her."

Finn lay back on the sun-warmed grass. He hadn't asked Kylo where this meadow came from, in his dreams or his memories; Kylo hadn't volunteered the information. It was beautiful, though, and too detailed to be wholly fabricated. "Sure, but I still think they should date."

Kylo spluttered again, hopelessly indignant. Finn smiled, keeping his eyes closed.

A blade of grass tickled the pad of his foot. He moved a little, restless, and found his ankle pressing against Kylo's.

Much like he'd gotten used to people referencing his past, he didn't pull away at Finn's light touch. And it was nice, and comfortable; Finn found his attention drifting, the dream slowly changing around him. There was something at the edge of his awareness, a glint of change that he wanted to chase down - the Force, maybe, like the General had taught him to watch for -

"Finn," Kylo said abruptly. "Hey, Finn."

"Mmm?"

Kylo kissed him. The glint disappeared; Finn's head spun, so pleasantly that he kissed back, chasing more of the feeling.

It didn't go any further than that, and by the time Finn woke up, he'd forgotten about that bit of probably-the-Force entirely.

-

So: his guard was down.

So: he didn't think he had any real reason to be wary.

So: he'd been free for just long enough to get sloppy.

He dreamed of a dark room with a wide bed in the middle. Kylo lay on the bed, watching Finn with half-closed eyes. Kylo didn't say anything; he reached out and drew Finn in for a kiss.

Finn kissed back, gasping when Kylo dug his nails into Finn's neck almost hard enough to break the skin. "Kylo, what -"

"Is this what they'll do?" Kylo said. "The others? They have more to throw off, of course, but I imagine eventually they'll want to pretend to be like the rest of us, too."

"I - what?"

"The stormtroopers." Kylo pulled back, a mocking expression on his face. Finn felt his stomach fall; he realized he couldn't move. "The reconditioning: you think you just shrugged it off, don't you? It would have cracked your mind open, you little fool."

Kylo's face was wrong. Finn couldn't quite focus on it anymore; his gaze kept sliding away. He couldn't move, he realized again. He couldn't even open his mouth to ask Kylo to stop.

"Idiot," sneered the thing that couldn't be Kylo. "Foolish, callow traitor. They'll die screaming, knowing that you lied to them, that you betrayed them."

But he didn't. He left, he couldn't shoot the villagers; he ran and he joined the Resistance. This was just a nightmare, and if he focused hard enough he could wake up -

Remember.

The halls of a Star Destroyer seemed enormous to FN-2187. He had been instructed in his new name for three weeks. Today he was meant to go to the remembrance chamber, where They told him that he would get to say goodbye to his moms. It would be the last time, They said, because his service was very glorious and essential, and he had to commit to it fully.

He crept up on the chamber because he saw the flashing light and became afraid. He watched as the other FNs walked in, one after another, the shiny white pods closing around them. He watched as they walked out, faces blank, holding newly issued blasters.

No one's moms were in there. FN-2187 ran.

He knew that They would know if he didn't go. So he forgot. He forgot so hard that he forgot he'd ever forgotten. He balled it up and stuffed into the most distant part of his mind he could. His moms' names were gone for good; They had made sure of that. This, he would just hide. Hide, hide, hide, hide like he'd tried to hide from the stormtroopers who'd pulled him out of the pantry, hide like They had told him he must not. It was the only thing he could do, and so he did it with all the excellence that would later mark him for team leadership.

Remember, hissed the voice in Finn's head, and he screamed.

-

He woke up crying, huge heaving sobs that shook his whole body, alerting him to the fact that his wrists were bound to his medical cot.

Panic made him tug against them, opening his mouth to yell - but then BB-8 whistled furiously and zapped him, and he realized he was safe. Ish.

He wasn't captured, at any rate, but there was yelling outside. It was only when BB-8 rolled over to the door and opened it that he identified the voices.

"- can't, unless you've calmed the hell down, Ben, which you clearly haven't -"

"Don't call me that! Let me see him! You don't understand -"

"The General understands plenty, including that this is your fault, you jackass, now -"

Kylo let out a snarl and marched into Finn's room. His eyes darted from Finn's face to his bound wrists and then back again, expression collapsing into relief. "You're here."

"I can't move," Finn said. "Which, by the way, was not great to wake up to."

"We had to do that," Poe said from the doorway, rubbing the arm Kylo had punched on his way in. "You were trying to scratch your eyes out. Uh, literally."

He'd been dreaming of...something. He couldn't quite pull it up -

"No," Kylo said urgently, grabbing Finn's shoulder. "No, Finn, you have to remember."

Remember. He shuddered, tears springing to his eyes again. It came back suddenly this time, like drops of water vaporizing over a fire. "I hid. I...I ran. Something found me."

"So it seems," Poe said. "Tell him the rest, Ben."

But Finn didn't need to be told; he was, after all, the person who'd been fooled to begin with. He looked between Kylo and Poe and thought of the malevolent presence in his dream. It was obvious now. "That was Snoke."

Kylo nodded.

There was something in his expression - guilt, maybe, or shame. "And you knew I was at risk."

It was only half a guess; he didn't feel any surprise when Kylo nodded again, just exhaustion. He turned his face away from both of them, focusing on the far wall.

"You should leave," he said.

He heard Poe take a step forward. "Finn, buddy -"

"Now, please," he said.

BB-8 released his wrist cuffs. Kylo and Poe let themselves out silently.

He slept again, restlessly but without dreams. He woke up with a hole in the pit of his stomach. Food and a careful debriefing by an anonymous Resistance doctor didn't help. They'd given him a cell much like Kylo's, reinforced against the Force, entirely devoid of anything he might use to hurt himself or someone else. He wanted to shout that he'd done nothing wrong, that they should let him out, but he remembered the bits of manipulation and knew they were right to keep him in there.

How had Kylo known? No: why hadn't he said anything? Because he was a coward, obviously. Because Finn had been really dumb to ever think he could become trustworthy.

On the second day, his door slid open to admit the General. Finn, who'd been staring at nothing and trying to work out exactly where in the guts of a Star Destroyer that reconditioning room had been, scrambled to his feet. "General -"

"Sit." She waved a hand at him and followed her own direction, settling on some of the cushions they'd provided him with. "You've had quite the week, it seems."

"That's a bit of an understatement."

She smiled wryly. "No, an understatement would be to say my son was a bit foolish."

Finn winced.

"He did know. You remember that?"

"I wish I didn't."

"In his extremely sparse defense, he wasn't sure, and Snoke can hide himself very well." The General's expression tightened. He'd have hidden himself from her, Finn realized. That was how he'd gotten Kylo to begin with. "We've spoken about it; hopefully it won't happen again."

"I'm not...I don't understand how he found me. Why he found me." And how he'd known about the secret that Finn hadn't even let himself keep.

"How? Proximity to my son. I'm sorry."

'Proximity' was, at least, a delicate way of putting it.

"The why is a bit more complicated." She sighed. "Ben pulled you out of the dream. He told me what he saw."

Oh, no.

"You were never reconditioned."

No.

He couldn't quite hide his flinch. He expected the General to leave, or call in some sort of reinforcement. Instead, he felt the Force around him, an impossibly thick blanket of reassurance where before it had been bottomless malevolence. "It's okay," the General said. "We've suspected something like this for a while, Finn. We never brought it up because, frankly, you seemed very convinced that you'd gone through the process. We didn't want to dredge up anything...difficult."

Finn laughed, hollow.

"You don't need to talk about it right now." She reached out and offered her palms. When Finn returned the gesture, she squeezed his hands, comfort emanating from her in waves. "We care very much about you being safe," she said. "The rest will come with time."

He slept a little better that night, but when he woke, he was still in a cage. Doctors came to see him, and the General, and they were all really nice and comforting - but when he asked, they all three confirmed that he was still stuck in the cell until they'd figured out what was wrong with him.

Okay, fine: "Confirmed that you are free of external influence, and can safely be left unobserved." Same thing.

It shouldn't have been a relief when his door slid open on the third day and Kylo came in. He was still mad at Kylo, and it wasn't a grudge he had to work particularly hard to maintain; just laying eyes on him was enough to cause a prick of fury to rush through Finn. Some of it must have shown on his face, because Kylo said, "I won't leave unless they drag me out."

"What, that determined to apologize?"

"Of course not."

It felt perversely comforting to hear the snappish tone in Kylo's voice, objective proof that he wasn't lying to try and make Finn feel better. "Well, good, because I wouldn't accept it."

"I don't owe you an apology," Kylo said. "I did what I thought was appropriate with the information I had: telling you that Snoke was attempting to brainwash you wouldn't have gone well."

He had experience with that particular kind of attempted intervention, and there was no reason for Finn to think he wasn't right. He could argue - it would certainly be a distraction - but Kylo wasn't going to budge.

Comforting, still. Weird, stupid, but there it was. "Fine," he said. "Then why are you here?"

Kylo's expression went through a series of contortions that Finn couldn't help but watch, fascinated. Finally, he settled on a scowl, accentuated by the usual blotchy flush. He held up the board game wordlessly.

It was one of the ones Finn would've been more familiar with if he hadn't grown up a stormtrooper, popular on the core planets with nostalgic young adults and pre-teens. Finn knew how to play it; he'd learned as part of his espionage training.

It looked utterly incongruous, bizarre and almost grotesque, in Kylo's hand. Finn tried to think of Kylo playing it while sitting in the bridge on a star destroyer. Nope.

"Do you even know the rules?" Finn said as Kylo set the game up.

"Sure."

It turned out he was a liar: he made everything up, except when he consulted the rules printed on the back of the box in a way he apparently thought was too stealthy for Finn to notice. When Finn said, "You can't move in a vector like that, you don't have the blue chip," Kylo snapped, "Well, I'm so glad your lifetime of tragic soldiering prepared you for this." When Finn pointed out that he couldn't cross into advance-space without six yellow cards, Kylo threw his pilot piece across the room.

It was like playing with a really annoying toddler - and Finn, he realized after an hour or so, was loving every minute of it. Nothing he could say to Kylo would be worse than what had already passed between them, and Kylo deserved to be hassled, anyway. He didn't have to watch his verbiage or pretend to feel cheerful. He could say, "Wow, you're being such a dick right now," without any qualifiers at all.

Hours after lunch, Finn finally got his pilot piece into the 7-dimension: the game was over. Finn whooped in victory as Kylo scowled.

"Hey, I'll let you win next time, how about that?" Finn said, laughing when Kylo made a face. "Or not, I guess."

Kylo stared at Finn, unblinking, for as long as it took for Finn to wonder if he was having a seizure or suddenly controlled by Snoke. He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, and Kylo shook himself and turned away.

"Tomorrow," he said, and left without a backward glance.

-

But the next day, he didn't return alone. Galaran and Calla both trailed behind him, wearing identical scowls.

"Did you take them prisoner?" Finn said, dismayed. "Kylo, you can't do that."

"I didn't," Kylo snapped. "I told them you were imprisoned and if they wanted to see you they'd have to come with me."

"That sounds like blackmail," Finn said. "You could ask me next time, and I could give them a message, instead."

Kylo huffed a non-answer and left the cell. Finn, devoid of distractions, had no choice but to deal with them.

Once, he'd seen a poorly dammed river break free, rushing wildly towards their encampment. This felt a bit like that. Shame filled him, too strong to be ignored, too potent to be denied. He had never been like them. Not even close. He'd never had to break free of the mental conditioning; he had no idea what it was like to be them, never had. He was just - what? A coward, maybe. Someone who wasn't even a tenth of who he'd thought he was. The two of them staring at him were proof of that.

"I'm sorry," Calla said.

He blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Kylo told us what happened," Galaran said. "Oh, and by the way: Kylo Ren? Seriously? We're gonna talk about that when you're feeling better."

"I didn't - I don't - what happened?"

"Shouldn't you know that?" Galaran said.

"I mean, what did he tell you happened. He can't be trusted."

"We know that," Calla said. "He told us that you hid from them. And how when you escaped, you had these huge mental walls in your mind. It sounds terrifying, and really difficult. But you're doing better now?"

Finn looked between them, and then at the door, suspecting a trick - though he had no idea what the trick might be. When no one came in, and neither Galaran nor Calla spoke, he made himself say, "I'm not like you, I guess. I was never - re-educated. I hid." Like a coward.

"Yeah, dude," Calla said. "That's seriously messed up! You're hardcore."

"What?"

"And then Snoke almost killing you because your mind was already under so much strain?" Calla shook her head. "We're going to cover the recruiting duties for awhile, don't worry. But when you're better, we want the whole story."

"There are a few more HJs who'll be here soon," Galaran said. "And we can get the others with the kill switch."

Which was all really touching, but Finn didn't quite get how they'd moved on to planning for mass stormtrooper defection without discussing his obvious lies. "That's cool, but doesn't it bother you guys?"

"That you used the Force to hide from the First Order? Um, no," Calla said. "Even Kylo says you'd've basically had to go crazy to hide the truth from him. That's kind of badass, dude. But you should rest now; the General's making sure there are people available for intake stuff."

Finn wanted to object. He wanted to say that all of that was technically true but morally wrong, that Kylo was using his long training in the Dark Side to recast Finn's lies as heroism. But he was so tired, and Calla and Galaran had all kinds of ideas for retraining the other HJs as mechanics and including mechanic support staff on longer missions, and he actually did have input on those - ideas for how to present them, and what kind of arguments other members of the Resistance might raise.

In the end, they didn't talk much more about Kylo at all, and Kylo didn't come back to gloat or apologize. It frustrated Finn in an odd, obscure way. He wanted to call Kylo out on his lies, but he was too tired to even seriously consider it. He fell asleep almost right after Galaran and Calla left.

He shouldn't have discounted the dreams.

The moment he opened his eyes and saw Kylo sitting in the starlit meadow, he stumbled backwards. "No, no, this isn't safe -"

"Relax," Kylo said. "Or don't: it won't matter either way. We're safe."

"How can you say that? Why didn't you warn me before?"

"I didn't - " Kylo huffed, visibly annoyed. "I didn't want to talk to Skywalker about it, or anyone really."

"So you endangered me because you didn't want to talk to your own uncle?"

"Of course not. I thought the likelihood that my worst fears for you were real - I thought that likelihood was low. I was wrong; I apologize. I spoke with Skywalker while you were asleep. We're protected here now."

"Well, congrats on getting it right a little late, I guess," Finn said, and turned his attention to the night sky.

His dreams, even the true-ish ones, tended to have a hazy quality to them. This sky was perfectly clear and overlaid with maroon webbing, like someone had tossed a very loosely woven net over the horizon. "That's you?"

"That's me."

The image of Kylo's power surrounding him was - more appealing than it should have been. Finn shook his head. "So, why are you here? What would happen if you weren't?"

"There might be less energy to attract Snoke." Kylo raised a shoulder. "Then again, maybe you'd pull Rey in, or Skywalker."

"You should really stop calling him that. He's your uncle!"

"He's my former Master, and a person I do my best not to speak to. That's all."

Frustration sparked over Finn. "You're so - ugh, never mind." He flopped down on the grass and stared at the stars, trying to ignore Kylo altogether.

Easier said than done, when Kylo's magic lit the sky, and Kylo stood just a few arms' lengths away. He kept thinking of their dreams before, the way he'd never pulled anyone else in, regardless of what Kylo thought was likely or reasonable. Rey would be fun to hang out with; the General would be very embarrassing to even see. But he'd just - never. It was like the Force didn't want to provide him with a conduit to see anyone but Kylo, banging them together like a child might make dolls kiss.

Ugh.

"I can feel you thinking," Kylo said. "I'd rather you not."

"Tough luck. This is my dream, and I want to think."

"Could you at least think about something else?"

Something in Kylo's tone made Finn crane his neck and look at him. The too-bright stars showed his embarrassment in terrifying detail. "Oh, wow."

"I don't enjoy being thought of that way," Kylo gritted out.

"What way? Oh." He was suddenly too distracted to care about repeating himself. Kylo had projected his thoughts, and where Finn had been picturing two dolls kissing, Kylo -

Kylo wasn't.

Finn swallowed hard, looked away. He wouldn't think about Kylo shirtless, desperate, clutching Finn's shoulders or kneeling in front of him, or -

"Finn!"

"Sorry, sorry, sorry." Just don't think about it! Finn told himself. But then he looked over at Kylo and thought of it again.

Apparently, his near-death experience had changed him. It was really difficult now, much more than it had been, to do this platonic dream dating thing. Now, he just wanted - he wanted -

"Snoke was hiding your thoughts from me before, to an extent," Kylo said. "That doesn't seem to be true anymore."

Great. So even the nice nights, the normal ones where he and Kylo had spent time together, had been fake. What if half of them hadn't even been Kylo? What if he'd been lied to for much longer than he realized? What if -

"Finn. Stop that."

Finn would love to, but he had no touchstone for when truth had become manipulation, and it made panic rise in him with inexorable power.

"Oh, for -" Kylo huffed an impatient breath and moved closer, loosely taking Finn's hands. "Those dreams were real."

Finn stared at Kylo's hands, then raised his head and looked Kylo in the eye. There was nothing of Snoke there, but he did look - awkward. Unhappy.

Not like someone Finn should lean in and kiss, no matter how much he wanted to, or how much he could sense Kylo wanted him to.

No sooner had he thought it than Kylo dropped his wrists, hopping to his feet again. "I should probably leave."

"I'll miss you," Finn said, because he was an idiot.

"You're not," Kylo said. "I mean, I will too, but I can't - ah, Force." And he disappeared.

The meadow stayed, though, the maroon net in the sky holding steady. It meant he was safe, Kylo had said, and Finn was so very tired. He lay under the stars for a long time, drifting, until the dream faded and he could sleep deeply.

-

He had missed most of the stuff that, according to the pilots, made you good at being an adult. He'd never gotten drunk on any birthday, he'd never sexually propositioned a Wookiee, and he'd never dumped or been dumped. But still, he had friends, he knew when things were off. And with Kylo specifically, there were a whole host of reasons why things were really, incredibly, galactically off.

So he made up his mind: he was going to talk to Kylo, in person, not in a dream. They needed to figure out what was going on, resolve it and move on with their lives. Hopefully separately; Finn couldn't imagine that Kylo would go, 'you're right, I'm wildly in love with you, let's get married and raise bantha calves for their leathers'. And even if Kylo did, it wasn't like Finn would take him up on it, or would want to.

Obviously.

So Finn waited. He got discharged from observation and returned to his routines, which didn't include Kylo since they were both free of the dark side. He looked for Kylo at meal times, but he was either on a different shift rotation or actively avoiding eating in the mess hall. He wasn't in the common areas, either, or the training grounds, or working with Rey and Luke. Finn looked for him for five days, and he didn't see him anywhere.

Drastic measures were clearly called for. He got Kylo's room number from Poe and set aside a couple hours to sort things out. Or stake out Kylo's bedroom, in a friendly and conflict-resolving way.

On his way to Kylo's room, he stopped for a piece of offworlder bread, the weird travel food studded with sweet and salty nutrient bits. He was chewing it and going over what exactly he'd say to Kylo when the alarm sounded.

"All pilots report to position. Repeat: all pilots report to position."

Two hours later, all thoughts of Kylo had fled his mind. He'd just been part of a six-plane escort to the ground. The Resistance had captured a transport ship full of five hundred HJ class stormtroopers - or more accurately, a ship full of 500 HJ class stormtroopers had defected, seemingly of their own volition, after passing the kill switch from one soldier to the next.

"You're on red alert," the General told him, pulling him into the command room. "I'm sorry, Finn, but this supersedes everything else."

He had the sudden, moderately humiliating sense that she knew about his Kylo plans, which hardly seemed to matter compared to everything else. "Of course. Anything you need."

She smiled, looking tired. "You'll regret that. Step one is convincing everyone else not to kill these kids on sight."

And then the debates began.

-

Finn told himself, over and over, that democracy was hard, that it was worth it to fight for others' voices, and that a lot of people in the Republic just didn't understand what they were debating when they talked about stormtroopers' minds and histories.

He told himself that he couldn't walk onto the floor and just start punching people, and he knew it was true, but he wanted to. He wanted to so badly that sometimes he could feel the Force bending itself around his barely contained desire.

Apparently he wasn't the only one who could feel it. On the third day of debates, Kylo let himself into Finn's room, ignored Finn telling him to get out, and said, "You're going to sabotage the hearing if you don't control yourself."

It didn't occur to Finn that he could be talking about anything but Finn's not-quite-directed rage. "It's none of your business."

"It's everyone's business, especially people who support the personhood amendment," Kylo shot back. "Which I do, unfortunately."

"What do you mean, unfortunately!"

Kylo stared at Finn with something that Finn thought might border on contempt. "It's politically unpopular."

"So was blowing up a bunch of planets, and that didn't stop you."

Kylo flinched, and Finn felt - something. A crack in his defenses, so tiny he almost didn't notice it. But he acted on instinct, pressing in with the Force. "You feel bad," he said, feeling his anger rise, "and sure, you were under Snoke's control, but now it's all forgiven, right? Oh, no, it's just that no one can touch you, because you're General Organa's son. None of the stormtroopers have that. We don't even - I don't even know who my parents were. You seriously think I care how you feel about the optics of your support? We were tortured! They deserve freedom!"

When he finished, breathing heavily and clenching and unclenching his fists, Kylo said, "I'm aware." And the crack sealed: Finn felt himself kicked out of Kylo's mind. "I'm not talking about how it looks. I'm talking about the possibility that a 'yes' vote will be voided when it's discovered a stormtrooper used the Force to interfere with the democratic process."

"I wouldn't."

"You wouldn't, knowingly," Kylo said. "That's a pretty big difference."

"And, what, you'll teach me?"

"I already offered; I know you won't accept that. No. Spend more time with General Organa, or just keep out of the debates. The vote must not be jeopardized, even by perception."

"I couldn't compel a majority to do anything. You have to know that." That would be a huge amount of effort and power, way beyond anything the General had taught him.

Kylo gave him a flat look. "Maybe."

A denial would have been a lot better for Finn's piece of mind. He kicked Kylo out after that; Kylo must have realized he was too much of a mess to be a threat, since he went without arguing. Poe's shift wouldn't end for another several hours, but Rey was available - and had possibly cheated a little with the Force, because he ran into her as soon as he left his room.

"Finn, how are you doing?" she said, all gentle concern and slightly too-keen understanding.

"Let's get drunk," Finn said, grabbing her hand.

The base had shortages of almost everything thanks to the HJs, including hygiene products and fresh food - but they still had plenty of alcohol. Finn had some of the moonshine in his glass, topped off with some fizzy, sugary thing from Mon Cala that didn't quite cut the harshness of the liquor. "We should really get the droids to figure out how to make smoother stuff," Finn said.

"I did suggest that," Rey said, "but Poe acted like I'd stabbed him. It's a matter of pride in Human enterprise, as I understand it."

"I'd trade pride for something palatable."

"You're drinking it, though."

"Yep," Finn said grimly, and downed his entire drink in one go.

It wasn't a good choice, and he knew it. He knew it when he sat down, he knew it when he got up to refill his glass four times, he knew it when he made Rey get him a drink when the room spun too much for him to do it himself. Rey tolerated it with a look that Finn disliked: pity mixed with worry, like Finn might go do something really stupid.

"The thing is," Finn said, "I wish I could."

"I don't blame you."

"I do. It's wrong. I know it's wrong." A horrible idea occurred to him. "Do you think this is because I can't stop kissing Kylo? Can you transmit - bad person-ness? Sexually?"

"I hope not. And I don't think so. Um, it's a bit disgusting to think about, though."

"Sorry, sorry." Finn's drink was empty. When had that happened? He stood to get more, because Rey was nice and not a waiter, but when he stood the room spun. "Oh no," he said, and stumbled.

Rey had nice shoulders. "You have nice shoulders," Finn told her as she helped him down the hallway. "Strong. They're so nice. You're so nice."

"Not as nice as Kylo Ren's, I imagine."

"Shoulders." He did have big ones. He was stronger than Finn would've assumed, given how much he loved throwing people around with the Force. Finn sighed. Kylo could throw him around with the Force, if he wanted. Finn was in so much trouble.

"Finn? What in the world - Rey. Ah."

"I thought about you," Finn told Kylo, who was suddenly in the hallway, "and now you're here."

"Yes, well." Kylo glanced between them. Maybe if Finn was sober he'd be able to tell what he was thinking. Maybe if he was sober - maybe -

He fell asleep for a bit, and when he woke up again, he was lying in bed. "I gave you a sober-up pill," Kylo said.

"Rey?"

"Left, because you had a nightmare."

That didn't sound like her.

"And I told her I'd take care of it. Or you, I guess."

Oh no. Rey was trying to give them privacy. Finn screwed up his face and did his best not to cry again.

"I hope you realize how pathetic you look right now."

"I hope you realize I'm going to be sober enough to kick your ass soon." But not yet. The terrible maudlin feeling that Finn could ignore most of the time still lurked near the surface of his mind, like the glimpse of a sea serpent's tail.

"It's grief."

Kylo said it quietly enough, and Finn was still drunk enough, that it didn't quite sink in for a few seconds.

"I don't have much to grieve."

"Bullshit."

Finn drank some water and avoided Kylo's gaze. It wasn't - he didn't want to talk about it; he didn't need to talk about it. He was just very tired, that was all.

"I'm sure the doctors have told you it's all right to grieve."

They had, over and over. Finn had never known how to explain that any grief he might feel lived deeply buried beneath layers of blame and anger, at himself and everyone else. He didn't know how to deal with grief he could barely feel most of the time.

"I'd like to sleep," Finn said. "That's all."

"Sure. Fresher?"

"Are you offering to bathe me?"

He watched in hazy fascination as Kylo's eyes bugged out, his skin shiny, his lips pressed together. "No!"

"Then -"

"I'll go." He stood up so quickly he knocked his chair over. "You're fine, clearly, so -"

"Wait."

He didn't expect Kylo to freeze halfway to the door, his spine held stiffly, like he was waiting for further instruction.

"I..." How to ask? How to make it sound like a normal thing, a calm request, and not a screamingly obvious departure from a norm?

But someone had taught Kylo pity. He turned and sat back down, tilted his head at Finn, and said, "Go on, then. I'll wait."

He slid under the sheets in his too-small bed, hunching his shoulders to try to give Kylo room. Kylo huffed and threw an arm over him, sniffing like he wasn't sure Finn had been sober enough to actually get clean. "I brushed my teeth and everything," Finn said.

"So I noticed." Kylo's lips moved against his shoulder; warm breath wafted over his skin when Kylo sighed. "You should go to sleep."

"Think it'll be better when I wake up?"

"Probably not." Rough fingertips drummed against his ribs.

Finn wanted, suddenly, to stay in this moment, awful as it was. He struggled to hold on to the feeling, the knowledge sinking into his bones that someone was here, he wasn't alone, he had - a person. He was a person.

But it slipped from his grasp. He fell asleep, warm and safe.

-

He woke several hours later from dreamless sleep to find himself alone.