"You could still change your mind," Kylo Ren said. His voice echoed in the empty room. "You could give up this silly quest and rule by my side, forever."

"Wow," Finn said, pausing the holovid. "You really weren't kidding."

"He won't stop," Rey said. "He's been in that cell for three weeks, and every few days he gets all jumped up on the dark side and says something like this. Did you know, there was an entire band of junkers back on Jakku that could take no for an answer better than he can? It's disgusting."

"Yeah, even Phasma respected my boundaries better than this." Finn shook his head. "You're sure he's not a danger with the Force, though?"

"Not so long as he's kept locked up."

Finn looked over at the holovid again. Kylo Ren stared back at him, eyes feverish with fanaticism. Kind of ironic that the mask had been the less creepy option. "I'll take your shifts," he said.

"Finn! Really? I don't want to - I was just venting, you don't have to. You'll be more vulnerable."

"Because I'm not a Jedi? Psh. I have years of experience dealing with his temper tantrums. I'll be fine." Finn looked over at Rey again, nudged her shoulder. "Plus, you're my friend. Friends help each other out."

Rey must be really tired of the guy, because that was all it took. "Oh, fine. Thank you, Finn. Really. And, um, watch out. He's taken to kicking."

Finn's stomach did a terrible half-swoop. "Great," he said weakly, and went to request an updated duty roster.

-

"You," Kylo snarled.

"Me," Finn said.

"How could those pathetic lackeys of sentiment possibly think you could hold me?"

"The cell's holding you." Finn nodded at Kylo's handcuffs and the Force-dampening material lining the walls. "I'm just, what's the term - babysitting."

Kylo snarled. Finn sat down at the observation desk, and waited.

-

Two hours later, Kylo said, "Do you really think people like you would be healthy and happy in the Old Republic? Would you thrive in a swamp of lawbreaking and poverty?"

"Um, probably not," Finn said. "But you know that's better than being abducted and forced to murder people, right?"

Kylo didn't answer.

-

On day two of Finn's new babysitting gig, Kylo said, "What do you know of the Force?"

"Powers the universe, or it's not real, depending on who you ask."

"What do you think, FN-2187?"

"I think I'm going to smack you if you call me that again."

-

Day four: "If you don't know of the Force -"

"I never said I didn't -"

"What guided you when you defected?"

Finn was suddenly very glad he'd had years of practicing stoicism. "Friendship. A solid sense of right and wrong. Not wanting to kill entire villages."

"What if an entire village was full of First Order acolytes? What if I planned to take every child and turn them into a Knight of Ren?"

"You're in a cell, so fortunately I don't have to worry about that."

"You have a solipsistic view of morality, matched by cowardice."

"No," Finn said. "I just know what's important, and that's not killing innocent people."

-

On day six, Kylo asked him about what was apparently a popular holodrama, which was how Finn learned about both mainstream holodramas and Kylo Ren's attachment to them. The entire Resistance base knew the latter by the end of his shift.

-

Day eight: "If you could find out who your parents were, would you go to them?"

"Trick question," Finn said. "When they take us away, they either reprogram the parents or kill them. I don't have a family to go back to."

Kylo didn't talk after that; it was only after Finn had finished his shift that he realized Kylo might have thought his parents had just volunteered to have their son stolen.

-

Day fourteen: "What are you doing?" Finn said, putting a hand on his blaster.

Kylo didn't open his eyes. "Meditating, Finn. What does it look like?"

"It looks like you're trying to use the Force."

"The cell stops that, but it can't make the Force disappear. You really ought to get some basic lessons on -"

"How the Force works? No thanks." As far as Finn could tell, the risk he'd be turned into a complete monster was way higher than he was comfortable with. "I know enough."

"Like my father." Kylo opened his eyes, looking directly at Finn.

And -

There was a moment: brief, fragile, profoundly embarrassing. Finn might not want to know how the Force worked, but he knew enough to recognize when it pulled him. For a single breath, he and Kylo were connected, and he sensed -

Something -

Weird.

Kylo smiled, just a little. "I felt you from down the hallway."

"That's weird," Finn told him, and retreated to the relatively safety of the observation desk.

-

Day twenty, and the thing was, Kylo didn't try to tempt him to the dark side even a single time.

"You can stop waiting," Kylo said. "I have better things to do than try to convince a lost cause."

"That's an odd way of saying 'defector'."

"You can't see the good for yourself, who am I to try and convince you?"

"That's such a lie," Finn said. "And it's not a good one, because it's not believable. You're realizing you were wrong, aren't you?"

Silence.

-

Finn had always known that Kylo wouldn't be imprisoned forever. But, he had to admit to himself, knowing that intellectually was different from being confronted with the reality of Kylo Ren walking freely around the Resistance base.

Okay, mostly freely: he still had on a device that muted his powers, and he was still heavily monitored. But still, he was out and about, and talking to people, which Finn knew about because those same people kept stopping Finn at meals, in hallways, and in the locker rooms to tell him they couldn't believe he'd put up with this guy for an entire month, wasn't he awful?

And Finn, who had indeed put up with Kylo for a month and found him awful, but who was also a loyal friend, would say, "You should talk to Rey. She's the real hero here; she brought him back!"

At which point the person would invariably give him a look, say "Okay," kind of strangely and slowly, and leave him alone.

Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He flagged Rey down in the hallway and said, "So, what's the deal with Kylo Ren?"

She gave him the same weird look everyone else had been giving him. "Maybe you should tell me."

"People keep acting like I'm a war hero for talking to him. You're the one who dragged him here and locked him up! All the credit should be going to you!"

She smiled. "Finn, that's so sweet."

"Thank you, but that's not why I said it. I feel like there's a joke going on behind my back. I'd like to know what it is." He took a deep breath. "And it seems like you know, so: what's going on?"

"Well," Rey said. "It's just...he appears to, um. I suppose he...and you...well, you know, we still have that odd Force thing - and just the other day, I was doing saberstaff drills, and suddenly he was in front of me -"

"Whoa, Rey, if you and he have a thing I don't need to know about it -"

"Ew! No! It's only that he told me you'd told him that I'd been practicing, and then he said that you thought more of the Resistance should train more hand-to-hand, in the case of ground fights and infiltration missions, and honestly, Finn, it was very weird. And he's been like that with everyone."

"Force-interrupting?"

"No, talking about you. Telling them things you say."

"We really didn't talk that much." Well, they'd talked every day. But - "It's not like there was much else to do."

Rey made a face then, with wide eyes and a speculative mien that Finn did not like at all. "Huh."

"What? What are you thinking?"

"Ohhhh, nothing."

But Rey hadn't been among normal people for long enough to have learned how to lie. "You're plotting something, it's all over your face. What is it?"

"I swear, it's nothing!"

She was lying, that was obvious, but it was equally obvious that she wouldn't tell him what she was thinking. And, Finn reminded himself, he wouldn't want anyone to push him. "Well, tell me when you're ready," he said instead.

Rey made a face of equal parts gratefulness and chagrin, and they dropped the topic entirely.

But it turned out that Finn didn't need Rey to tell him. The next time he went to hang out in the commons, a random tech he passed giggled, and two people stopped talking - like they'd just been discussing him. He sat down and pulled out his holopad, opening a book on deep space mining, and Tish Gelroth from engineering said, "I guess we should all brace ourselves for Solo swooning over how well-read his crush is."

Finn tightened his grip on his holopad as everyone else laughed.

"Hey, Finn," Tish said, "do you think he'll get a jacket like yours, too? Bet the pilots would have a problem with that."

She didn't mean any harm by it, Finn told himself. "I don't think so. He's just acclimating, and I was the only living face he saw for like a month. Maybe you should hang out with him, Tish, I bet he's dying to learn about on-board water circulators."

He'd hoped that would be enough to end it, but for some reason Tish just laughed harder. "Yeah, sure, I'll do that."

-

Kylo Ren did not have a crush on him.

There was no way. He just didn't.

For starters, Finn felt very strongly that if you were both over the age of twelve and had spent most of your time being really really evil, it shouldn't be called a 'crush'. But also, he didn't have any kind of attachment or affection, either. It wasn't like Finn wanted the First Order to attack them, but he couldn't help but think that the Resistance had too much time on their hands if multiple people were spreading a rumor that Kylo had a crush on him.

A crush. A crush! It just sounded so ridiculous, not even worth thinking about. But he did, actually, keep thinking about it. He couldn't stop. Had Kylo had someone before he'd gone all murder-dark-side? Or was he just fixated on Finn because the only other person he'd spent much time with vocally (and understandably: Finn was 100% in Rey's corner, here) despised him?

That had to be it. It was like when a tiny baby chick imprinted on you, if the chick was a super ugly bird whose wings were also knives and who screeched at you when you tried to feed it. But thinking of that made Finn feel the tiniest bit fond, so he shut it down as viciously as he could.

There was no crush, there was no ugly bird, there was just a jackass who may or may not decide to do the right thing and stop breaking his mom's heart. That was it.

-

The rest of the Resistance was not convinced.

"I mean, okay," Rose said. "He did tell me about how you think dejarik originated with the Jedi, and how surprising that is since Jedi are super lame - but then he said you think Jedi are cool, and maybe you might be right."

She then pinned him with an I Know What You're Up To look, and Finn had to clear his throat and change the subject. "The hyperdrive recapture initiative, how's it going?"

Rose perked up instantly. "Great, actually. I've got this whole set of tests - and we're working on a way to actually redirect the energy right away, no processing needed, with these regenerative cells - let me show you!"

It was hours of science after that, and Finn left for dinner happy and content. That lasted exactly as long as it took him to get to the cafeteria and hear Kylo saying, "- says that you have to consider that they were all taken as children, and there's hardly any coming back from that, it's inhumane and wrong; he says that the Resistance's biggest issue is they still see them as target practice, or cannon fodder, not people."

This wasn't a joke. Finn had said that, those exact words. He'd been almost crying when he said them, too, and Kylo's face had gone all quiet and weird, and then they hadn't talked for hours.

He rounded the corner, anger building in him, ready to tell Kylo off. But Kylo was standing in front of a group of pilots, looking at all of them with a poisonous expression, and Finn...

Stopped.

"He's a good guy," Poe said. "You could tell him that, you know, Ben. That would solve a lot of your problems. Most of them."

"I'm on parole for the rest of my life, and my Master in the dark plans to drain my blood over a thousand years to feed his own power," Kylo said.

"Fair enough." Poe clapped him on the shoulder. "But you could at least go out with a smile on your face, know what I'm saying?"

"Hey!" Finn said from the doorway.

"That's our cue, guys," Poe said brightly. The pilots all filed out, one after the other, giving Finn looks of -

Pity. That was pity, and Finn hated it, and Kylo, and for a brief and horrible second, himself.

He grabbed Kylo's arm and hustled him over to a semi-private spot in the hallway, right outside the canteen. "You shouldn't have told them that stuff."

Kylo looked at him with mild interest, like Finn might regard a droid model he hadn't seen before. "No?"

"I try not to make a thing out of it."

"I don't see why."

"I'm sure you don't," Finn snapped before he could help himself. "Oh, look, I'm Kylo Ren, I'm so evil and important, blah blah blah."

"Are you ashamed?"

"Of being abducted? Abused?"

Kylo inclined his head.

It was less of a nod and more of a wannabe-regal permission to continue. Finn hated it. "Of course not."

"Then why -"

"I haven't told anyone any of that stuff," Finn said. "Okay? Not Poe, not Rey, definitely not all the pilots. I do my best not to talk about it. I really don't spend hours discussing it like I did -"

He couldn't say it. His voice died in his throat, his head pounded with horrible intensity. He just - couldn't - say it.

"With me," Kylo finished, his voice quietly awful.

"Well," Finn said. "Yes."

Kylo looked away. "He meant to goad me, I assume."

"Goad you?"

"About having spoken with you. About you, in general."

And - it made sense. But somehow it hadn't quite occurred to Finn that other members of the Resistance would think Kylo was flat-out lying. "So, what, you told them private stuff about me to prove a point? You realize that's really awful, right?"

"No, they -" Kylo huffed a breath. Like a horse, Finn thought meanly. "One of them, I didn't recognize him, he said the - my mother - was going too easy on the ground troops. And we - they - should deploy more effective weapons against the stormtroopers."

Finn felt the roof of his mouth go dry. "One of the pilots said that?"

"Poe told him to take a hike," Kylo said. "But then I just. Talked. I couldn't help it." He made another face, so that instead of just sounding like a horse, he also looked like one. A constipated horse. "If I'd known you were coming, I would have just left."

"Thanks. That's really great, makes me feel awesome."

"I had assumed you would prefer it."

"I'd prefer you were less annoying and also that I'd never had a single heart to heart with you out of boredom," Finn said. "But we can't always get what we -"

Kylo stepped forward, lifted a hand to cup Finn's jaw, lowered his head. Want hovered in the air, unvocalized but tangible.

"No," Kylo said, very quietly. "We can't."

Finn had so, so many chances to stop him. He'd been trained in combat literally his whole life; he could've dodged a single kiss. But he didn't. He stood there, burning with need, aching and dizzy and desperate for more than just that touch against his face, right until Kylo's lips came down on his.

Some distant part of him registered that Kylo was clumsy, unpracticed or out of practice. But Finn felt like a starving man, and logic completely deserted him. He kissed back, hard and eager, tugging Kylo's hair and stepping back so he could lean against a wall. That way, he could focus entirely on kissing Kylo, a horrible thought that Finn suddenly didn't care about denying. It was so good like this, with Kylo's large hand on his hip, the tiny noises he was making, the way he gasped when Finn arched his back and pressed their hips together.

"You're still a jackass," Finn said. "And -" Kylo bit his neck and he gasped, whatever he'd been about to say disappearing from his mind.

"And?"

"Shut up," Finn said. "Just - here." He pulled Kylo up, touched his hair - tugged - watched Kylo's eyes fall close, his mouth part just a little.

It was good. Unbelievably good, embarrassingly good. So good, in fact, that Finn didn't hear the footsteps.

"Oh my kriffing stars," Rey said.

Finn tried to spring away from Kylo. He succeeded in hitting his head against the wall he was plastered against. "Ow! I mean - Rey! And...oh. Um."

"Hello again, Finn," said Luke Skywalker, hero of the Resistance, legendary Jedi, and uncle to the guy Finn had just been dry-humping.

"I really thought he was just trying to scam us all," Rey said faintly. "If I wanted to convince everyone I was with the Resistance, I'd talk about you all the time, too."

"Well," Finn said, and then fell silent.

It was Luke who smiled a bit and said, "Many bets will be lost today. A few won, though."

"Uncle!"

Rey, too, made a pained face. "He owes Leia credits now," she told Finn.

"Gross," Finn said. "And rude, also."

"I apologize," said Luke, who didn't look at all sorry. Or particularly wise, for that matter.

"I need to go talk to BB-8," Rey said suddenly, looking a bit panicked. "For. Reasons. About things! Thank you, goodbye."

She abandoned them with impressive speed. Luke was a little slower, ambling off like he had all the time in the world. The end result was that the mood was thoroughly killed by the time they were alone again.

"Well," Finn said.

"If you have sex with me I'll tell everyone you're the best I ever had," Kylo blurted out.

"Wow. Well, first of all, I think everyone will know I'm the only you've ever had."

"Does that mean you'll -"

"No!" Finn said. Then he thought of Kylo's long, thick fingers, of his easy strength and, fine, the times he'd talked to him and felt like he might actually be getting somewhere. "Ugh. Probably."

Kylo made a really embarrassing, desperate noise, and hauled Finn in for another kiss.

-

Eventually they had to get out of the hallway, and of the two of them, Finn had a nicer room. "Since I'm not a very recent former traitor, and all," Finn told Kylo as the door slid shut behind them.

"Shut up. Wait, no, don't." He gave Finn one of the looks that, Finn realized with a jolt, he'd become very familiar with: intense and focused entirely on Finn, hot despite being also kind of off-putting. "I want to hear what you think about this."

He dropped to his knees.

"There's a bed right there," Finn said. "And you've never even - oh." The last came out as a breathy moan, because Kylo had pulled his pants down and was nuzzling Finn, somehow affectionate and really dirty at the same time.

"I did some research." Kylo kissed his thigh, and Finn's head spun just a little.

Research. Research was good. The way Kylo laughed when Finn told him to keep going, that was better. The stupid noises he made when Finn returned the favor, like he hadn't expected it or didn't think Finn would want to, were the best of all.

Eventually, Kylo got them both over to the bed. Finn would normally protest being nudged along by the Force, but he was too noodle-legged to do anything but burrow into his blankets when Kylo dropped him onto the mattress. For a second, Finn thought he might leave, and he had to crush the little wisp of disappointment and loneliness that wound through him.

Then Kylo huffed an annoyed breath and lay down next to him, and Finn had to acknowledge the warm, happy feeling that suffused him. Ugh.

"This was nice," Finn said. "We should do it again."

"I can feel everything you're feeling, you know that, right?"

"So you know I'm telling the truth."

And he'd know how conflicted Finn felt about it, how he didn't really recognize the feelings of attachment and affection, even though he knew what they were.

"Yes, I do," Kylo said. He maneuvered himself with surprising grace, fitting his body around Finn's, curling into the negative space Finn left in his too-large, too-luxurious, military-issue bed.

"They act like stormtroopers don't need any space to sleep," Kylo said into his shoulder.

Wow, apparently Finn really didn't have much privacy in his head right now. "Yeah. I'd know."

A huff. "I meant. It's wrong."

"Yep."

"And we'll fight it."

"We?"

"I hope you don't think I'd have sex with the enemy," Kylo said stiffly.

"Uh, Rey showed me footage of your dark side seduction attempts. You absolutely would."

Fascinating, Finn thought. Apparently Kylo's blush extended all the way down his forearms.

"You should talk to my mother about the privacy thing," Kylo said. "Later. Not right now."

Why would he try to talk to her right then? Oh, right. Kylo wanted to keep cuddling. Ugh, Finn thought, closing his eyes against the strength of his own confusion.

But - it was nice. And the warmth stayed in him, a soft, living thing.

He ended up falling asleep just like that.

-

He didn't get a chance to seek the General out: she found him the very next day. "Finn! Let's talk. Oh, look, my office."

No one ran away from the General, Finn reminded himself. Well, no one on the Resistance's side, anyway. And even if they did, Finn wouldn't have been one of them anymore, so he followed Leia into her office.

"Multiple people have told me I shouldn't demand to know if my son is blackmailing you," the General said, folding her hands together and pinning Finn with a commanding glare.

It took Finn a minute to realize this was her method of asking anyway. "Oh. Um, he's not."

"Really."

"Yes, really."

"And you're not doing this because you feel sorry for him?"

"What? No! Of course not!"

But there was no 'of course' about it, or there hadn't been in Finn's mind until a few days ago. Kylo Ren really was pathetic; Finn had reminded himself of that every day.

Reminded. Because, maybe, he'd kept forgetting; maybe he had seen, and wanted, something else.

He sighed and finally let the truth out into the open. "General, honestly, this is really embarrassing, but I'm doing - what I'm doing - of my own free will. Because I want to. That's all."

She didn't answer for long enough that Finn finally had to look up. The General was watching him with a slight smile. Finn's heart flip-flopped in his chest.

"That's good to hear," she finally said. "For both of you, I mean."

"Yeah, it's - great." He swallowed. "Speaking of. He actually told me I should find you." He explained the lack of privacy, omitting every penis-related detail.

Even with the omission, by the time he finished, the General's eyebrows were practically in her hairline. "Well, well. You should come back here tomorrow, same time; apparently I'll need to teach you to get your shields up. Ben was never too good at shutting out people he cared about."

"Thanks," Finn said. "I think?"

"Hmm." The General patted his hand. "You can go now. I know you have all kinds of things to do. And don't worry; we don't need to discuss my son again. Not until I find out from base gossip that he's been asking people what you'll think of the ring he bought, anyway."

Finn stared at the General, who he suddenly realized was possibly the most evil person on their tiny base. "Um, thank you."

Her laughter followed him out.

-

It didn't take Kylo buying him a ring for the gossip to be brutal. The sex didn't quite make it worth it, but some awful, ridiculous combination of the sex, the rest of the base's bafflement, and BB-8's ongoing concern that Kylo was holding him prisoner kind of did.

Finn figured that was probably pretty demented of him. Luckily, the First Order discovered their base barely a month after Rey and Luke had caught them outside the cafeteria.

"Finn says I ought to capture you," Kylo told Hux as Finn fought off the half-battalion of stormtroopers that Hux had brought with him. "He thinks it'll be fun to watch the General humiliate you."

"Why do you think I give even half a damn about some upstart stormtrooper's opinion of me?" Hux said.

"I don't," Kylo said, at the same time Poe threw a neutron net over Hux's head and whooped in victory.

"Finn says teamwork is important," Kylo informed a furiously howling Hux.

Finn gave himself a moment to preen. Then he went off to let the General know about their guests.