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Poe’s not too sure what to think of you.
Not in a bad way, it’s not like he hates you or anything. In the months since you’ve joined the Black Squadron, you’ve never given him a reason to dislike you. You’re a stellar pilot and you get along well with everyone; he’s basically never had reason to complain.
He’s just not sure what to think. You’ve always been a bit of an enigma. He remembers seeing you on your first day, flight-suit zipped all the way up and not a hair out of place as General Organa introduced you to him and the rest of the squadron. Those first few weeks, you were quiet. Answering his orders with a nod of your head and a ‘yes, Black Leader’. Talking politely with the other pilots or standing still during briefings, shoulders set back and expression impassive.
A month after you joined though, Snap had made a comment about how all the extra practice runs Poe had been making them go on were making dating practically impossible. Poe had just been about to snark back when you had snorted, grinning at Snap as you said something about how “the less free time you have, the better for the poor girls you subject to that disaster you call flirting.”
Snap’s jaw had dropped and Karé and Jess had broken into howling laughter. Your lips had split into an even wider grin, some of your hair falling into your face as you shook your head. And all Poe could do was stare at you.
So maybe you did have some bite in you.
He thinks that’s one of the things he likes about you. That even though you don’t necessarily show it all the time, you’re more than capable of putting people in their places.
Poe caught himself thinking about that moment, later in bed when he had nothing to do but stare at his ceiling and listen to the noises of BB-8 whirring around as he got ready to dock for the night. The smile on your face, how you had ducked your head at Karé and Jess’s laughter.
No, he groans, turning on his side and calling a 'goodnight’ out to BB-8 as he smushes his face into his pillow. You can’t think about them like that.
So why was he finding it increasingly harder to not?
The two of you were in a middle of a war, and he was your commanding officer. He couldn’t risk fucking with the squadron just because he couldn’t get your smile off of his mind-
“Poe.”
Your voice snaps him out of his thoughts as he looks up from the plans laid out on the table, meeting your tired eyes. The team got called in early, an emergency mission to Dantooine. Earlier than most of them were used to.
You smile softly at him- fuck- holding out a cup of caf. His eyes flicker away from you momentarily, noticing how the rest of the squadron all nurse cups of their own. Jess is taking very enthusiastic gulps from hers, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Figured we’d all need this to get through today,” you shrug.
“Thank you,” he nods as he takes the cup, wishing he had something better to say.
But you take it in stride, reaching into your pocket and producing some sugar packets. “I don’t know how everyone takes it, so I just got a bunch of sugar-”
“- black,” he cuts you off. “I take it black.”
“Black,” you nod, and then that smile- similar to the one you wore when you teased Snap- flashes on your lips, and he sees your eyes flit to the patch- the emblem of the Black Squadron- emblazoned on the chest pocket of his flight-suit. “Fitting, I guess.”
And despite the way his heart is pounding in his chest and his eyes burn with lack of sleep, the joke makes him laugh, nodding and taking a sip from the cup. The caf warms him up instantly; though maybe that’s just you. “Yeah, I guess. Thank you, Captain.”
“Anytime, Commander.”
+++
One by one, they tried. One by one, they failed.
Snap had been first, walking up to Poe and telling him that the rest of the team were going for drinks. The subtle implication of an invitation was there, but Poe had ignored it. Said he’d come another time. Karé was less subtle about it, and ended up rolling her eyes in frustration when Poe once again declined. Jessika had been somewhat nicer, calling him a ‘nerfherder’ but not before telling him they’d be there all night if he changed his mind.
When he heard someone walking into the hangar, he knew it was you. Didn’t even have to look up from the- admittedly unnecessary- repairs he was doing on the wing of his X. “I’m not in the mood for spotchka.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not here for drinks.” He can hear you sigh when he still doesn’t turn around. “They’re just worried about you.”
Today had been a shit-show. One big mess. The Empire had gotten the upper hand this round, and Poe hadn’t been taking it too well.
You had almost been shot down. Would have been, if Jess didn’t notice the TIE-fighter on your tail at the last moment. He could barely look at you when they got back, his mind flashing with the thought of what would have happened-
“Nothing to be worried about,” he shrugs. “I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
“You’re not fine now, that’s why we’re worried.”
He drops his wrench then, turning to look at you. You smile, and he notices the caf in your hands that you hold out to him. “Black.”
“Black,” he nods, taking it with a grateful nod. His eyes lock onto you as he tips the cup back, taking a deep gulp. He feels the buzz almost instantaneously. “You’re not here to get me to sleep?”
“Nah,” you shake your head. “I get it, today wasn’t a good one. Besides, there are much less healthier coping mechanisms than mechanical work.” You bite your lip, looking down as you lean against the side of his ship. “It’s not your fault, you know? The shit today? You couldn’t have prevented it.”
“It’s my job to-“
“- to be our leader. To help us do our job and get us home safe. You did that today,” you shrug as though it’s the simplest thing in the world, and maybe it is. “If we blamed you every time the First Order decided to be bastards, you’d have gotten demoted months ago.”
He laughs, and your words- your presence in general- feel like they lift some of the gloom that’s settled over his shoulders. “You should become our go-to pep talker. Fuckin’ natural.”
“Is this you telling me it worked?” You grin, rolling your eyes when he shrugs and makes a ‘so-and-so’ gesture with his hand. “I’ll leave you to wrap up here, just wanted to give you the caf.”
Poe nods, and it’s only when you’re at the door that he finds the ability to use his voice again. “Cap?” You pause, one hand on the doorframe as you look over your shoulder. “Thanks.”
And it’s your smile that gets him. That soft fucking smile, that looks exactly like what he imagines the poets had in mind when they wrote those cheesy sonnets about roses and summer days.
“Anytime, Commander.”
+++
“You look dead on your feet.”
You roll your eyes but accept the hand he offers to help you up when you push the rolling platform you’re lying on out from under your X-wing. “Wow, Dameron,” you huff, sidestepping him and rifling through your toolbox before producing a socket spinner. “You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”
“I’ll focus on making you feel special later, my main concern right now is making sure you don’t fall asleep standing up.” It’s a late night and he can’t help the deja-vu that passes over him when he thinks about the last time the two of you were alone in the hangar, when he was the one working and you were the one chiding him over his obvious exhaustion.
You look as though you haven’t slept in days, and he’s certain he’s only doing a subpar job at hiding his concern.
“Cap,” he sighs, deftly lifting the socket spinner from your hands and rotating it between his fingers, holding it above his head when you make a grab for it. The glare you shoot him would have been threatening if you didn’t look like you were about to collapse. “Go to bed.”
“Poe the sooner you give me that spinner, the sooner I can finish up and go to bed.”
“Or, I keep the spinner, you go to bed, and you can get it back in the morning.”
He doesn’t know why he’s pushing this so much. More so with you than he’s probably done with other members of the squadron. Then again: Snap knew his limits, Jess valued her sleep, and you had to have a death wish to try to pull Karé away from her ship. You… you were just stubborn, stubborn as a mule but not intimidating enough for him to back off. Even if you had been, he doubts that he would have.
“I don’t need sleep,” you argue. “I just need a couple hours, some caf, and my spinner-”
“- alright,” he shrugs, dropping the spinner unceremoniously into your toolbox and taking your hand. “Caf it is then.”
“That’s… not what I meant,” you argue as he tugs you out of the hangar.
“Either you get your ass to bed, or we get some caffeine in you now because I seriously doubt you can keep going for a couple hours at this rate.”
“Your lack of faith in me is heartbreaking, Commander,” you gasp dramatically and Poe grins.
“I have plenty of faith in you, Cap,” you roll your eyes at him, and he bites back the jab of pride- more like vindication- when you stop struggling and walk alongside him, turning your face to the side to rub at your eyes as if you don’t want him to see. “But even you have your limits.”
You laugh abruptly, giving him the largest eye-roll he thinks he’s ever seen. “When I want advice about knowing my limits, you definitely won’t be the person I go to, Poe.”
Poe. It’s just his fucking name, but when you say it, for some reason- “And why’s that?” He coughs, holding the cantina door open for you.
“I’m sorry, who was it that thought they could take out all of the turbolasers on a Star Destroyer all by themselves?-”
“- Point noted,” he shakes his head as you laugh. “How do you take your caf?”
You raise an eyebrow at him as the two of you reach the machine. “I can make my own, Poe.”
“Well, entertain me. For future reference.”
“You plan on making this a regular occurrence?”
“Well, as of now I do owe you two cups of caf, so yeah.”
You scoff, shaking your head. “Two sugars.” He grabs the cafs before following you to one of the empty round tables that cover the cantina floor. The two of you sit across from each other and for a while, quiet passes over you both; filled by the noises of your cups clinking when you place them back on the table, of the soft conversations going on around you.
He doesn’t even realize he’s staring until your eyes meet his over the rim of your cup. “Why are you staring at me?”
“Am I not allowed to look at my coworker?”
You’re not stupid. Or blind. Which is why he’s not surprised when you give him a deadpan stare, gesturing vaguely at his face. “Not like that.”
“My apologies, then.” Poe looks off and takes a long drink from his caf- he’s not even sure why he got one for himself- but the silence doesn’t last for long. “Where are you from?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Call it professional curiosity,” He doesn’t miss the way you mutter ‘bastard’ under your breath as you snort, setting your drink down.
“Corellia.”
“Is it nice there?”
You just shrug. “Nice enough.”
“You got any friends back home? Partners?”
There’s a teasing shine in your eyes when you answer. “A couple,” you shrug, grinning at the way he rolls his eyes at the vague answer. “I assume these questions are of a purely professional concern?”
“Purely.”
You both know better.
“What about you then?” You set your cup down, resting your chin in the palm of your hand and spinning the interrogation back on him.
“I grew up on Yavin.”
“Friends? Partners?” you mock his question and he shakes his head, opening his mouth to answer-
“Poe!” You both jump, and he looks over his shoulder to see Snap, Jess, and Karé making their way over, each holding their own cups of caf. Standing up, he offers his seat to Jess and takes the one right by you, draping his arm over the back of your chair. “Thought we’d find you two here,” Snap huffs, dropping into his seat with the grace of a zombie. “Didn’t think to extend the invitation to the rest of us?”
You just shrug, your lips parted into a smile over the rim of your cup. “I was coerced by this one,” you giggle, nudging Poe in the ribs and he scoffs. The conversation’s quickly turned to a discussion of the next mission- and a placing of bets on who would shoot down the most TIE’s- and no one notices when Poe leans towards you.
“A couple,” he whispers, his lips ghosting against the shell of your ear.
The way you purse your lips to bite back a grin really lowers his resolve to not kiss you.
+++
“Shouldn’t we be trying to…“ you trail off as Poe offers you his hand, pulling you the rest of the way up the ladder. Your foot snags on one of the rungs but he loops an arm around you before you fall. “Thanks. Shouldn’t we be trying to get some sleep?”
It’s warm outside- honestly, when is it not on Yavin- and you’ve both shed your heavy flight-suits in favor of t-shirts and trousers as you climb onto the roof of the hangar. It’s also almost midnight, meaning that the only light is from the stars and the dim lights inside the hangar.
“Trust me,” Poe shakes his head, letting go of you when you catch your footing. “No one sleeps the night before a big mission. If you try now, you’ll just lie in bed wound up for hours, it’s insufferable.”
“So you’d rather we just go in sleep-deprived and cranky?”
“Honey,” he sighs, the nickname- one he’s not too sure when he began using- passing through his lips with ease. “You think I’m an amateur?”
When you only raise an eyebrow, he reaches behind him and picks something up, and you laugh. “Wow, you really came prepared.”
“That’s my motto,” he shrugs, passing you one of the cups of caf- which he’ll never admit he rushed to the cafeteria to get before bringing you up here- and taking a sip from the other. The two of you sit on the edge of the roof. “Now we’ll be sleep-deprived, but we won’t be cranky.”
“When you die, there’s gonna be a line out the door of people that want to study your brain, Dameron,” you laugh, wrinkling your nose as you take a sip of the caf. “You forgot the sugar.”
He grins wickedly, turning his eyes forward as he takes another sip of his drink. “Not like you need any,” he shrugs nonchalantly, “you’re already sweet enough.”
He tries not to feel too proud of the grin he sees cross your lips in the corner of his vision.
+++
This is stupid.
You’re probably asleep by now. The sun had set hours ago, hours which Poe spent pacing the floor of his quarters, torn between going to bed or going to talk to you. He had a fucking debate going on in his mind, one side screaming at him that forcing you to talk to him wasn’t going to fix anything, the other side screaming that he wouldn’t be able to get any sleep until he fixed this.
Eventually, BB-8 made the final verdict for him, rolling against Poe’s legs and pushing him towards the door. So here he stood, outside your quarters, one hand raised and ready to knock, and the other holding a cup of caf.
You were probably asleep. Even if you weren’t, you probably wouldn’t open the door for him-
“Poe?” He damn near almost drops the drink as he spins around, meeting your unimpressed stare. Your arms are folded over your chest, one eyebrow arched as you consider him, take in his appearance and his humble offering of caf.
Fuck, he’s never seen you look at him like that. Angry, upset. But under all of that- there was still the softness that you’ve always looked at him with. It’s faint, like one of those pictures you can only really make out when you’re squinting, but it’s there.
Its presence is enough to make him speak up.
“I-” Okay, it was enough to make him speak up, but when it was time to actually articulate a proper response, he was apparently on his own. Your brows furrow, watching him expectantly, and the apology he had poised on his lips- which he had been mulling over and rewording ever since he began the walk to your quarters- is quickly forgotten. “I remembered the sugar this time.” He gestures towards the jacket pocket of his flight-suit, where he had stuffed a handful of them.
Your face doesn’t change for a moment, and he’s scrambling to pull together any apology he can think of to do some damage control when you reach forward and gently pick two sugar packets from his pocket. “You’re an idiot,” you scoff, but he doesn’t miss the momentary upward turn of your lips as you pop the lid off the cup and pour the sugar in before taking it from him.
“I know,” he swallows, wetting his lips nervously as you take a small sip from your drink- and then a longer one when you determine it’s to your liking. “I’m sorry for what I pulled out there tonight. It was stupid, you were right.”
What he had pulled was a rather risky maneuver that you had warned him was too dangerous- and as usual, you had been right. He had almost gotten shot down, would have gotten shot down if you hadn’t tailed him and taken down the TIE-fighters on his six. And while he had been successful in his original intention- taking down a firing tower that was making your jobs especially hard- the icy glare you had affixed him with when you were both back on solid ground made him wonder if it was worth it.
“It’s fine,” you push past him gently to walk inside of your quarters- and his stomach churns with the idea of leaving things like that- but you don’t close the door behind you. You leave it open and walk inside, taking another sip of your drink as you pull your shoes off.
And thankfully, he’s not a complete idiot when it comes to taking hints.
“I just-” you huff, scooting over to make room for him as he sits next to you on your bed. Kicking your other shoe off, you look up at him, and Poe catches on to how your eyes flicker away quickly, the way you bite your lip- a nervous habit. “I’d ask you to not do anything that idiotic again, but that’s probably asking for a lot.”
“At least one of us knows our limits,” he can’t help the small chuckle that leaves his lips when he hears your soft laugh. “You’re welcome, by the way. That was the last cup in the machine.”
“Well if you bought me caf expecting a thank you, maybe I’ll hold off on forgiving you just yet.”
“Wait, that’s not what I-”
“- I’m kidding,” you snort, laughing when he rolls his eyes and grumbles something under his breath.
He didn’t come here expecting a thank you. He didn’t even expect you to let him inside. And you prove to be more than he expected for the third time that night when you lean forward, your fingers tugging softly at the collar of his flight-suit, to press a kiss at his cheek. “Thank you for the caf, Commander,” your tone is teasing, and Poe quickly tries to conceal his shock- he hopes that you can’t hear how fast his heart is beating- as you turn away to take another sip of your drink. “Even if it was reparations for your own stupidity.”
“Way to kick a man when he’s down, Cap.”
“Someone has to keep that big head of yours from floating off,” you laugh. You hold the cup out to him, and Poe looks between you and it in confusion. “Want a taste? You said this was the last cup.”
He’s never been a religious man. He’s never gotten on his knees and prayed, and he was certainly not the type to place too much faith in a god of any kind. But in that moment, Poe’s certain there must be some kind of higher power possessing him, because even though there’s a voice in his head screaming danger, abandon all hope, turn back now, stop, he can’t stop himself from leaning in, catching the way that your eyes widen before he’s pressing his lips to yours.
It’s not long before you’re kissing him back- which is good, because if he had held his breath for any longer he’s sure he would have turned purple- quickly putting your cup down as your hands make their way into his hair. And the moment he feels you lean into him, his heart does a flip and he slots his lips over yours, finally allowing himself to kiss you the way he’s been yearning to for what feels like eons. You taste like coffee and sugar and something he can’t quite pin down, and it only makes him kiss you harder in search of it.
“Not- exactly what I- meant- but okay,” you laugh, trying to speak between kisses.
“I stand by my previous statement,” he grins as he pulls back, catching sight of your furrowed brow as he cups your face, thumb brushing over your cheekbone. “You take your caf too sweet.”
+++
“Where’s Jess?” You ask, nodding towards Snap and Karé as you enter the hangar.
Snap just shrugs. “Probably still getting ready,” Karé answers. “Where’s Poe?”
You don’t miss the pointed look she shoots you, but you pretend to ignore it. “Beats me.”
And speaking of the devil, Poe walks in with a tray of cafs. Snap and Karé grin and thank him as he hands them theirs, but when he gets to you, he slips you two sugar packets and presses a kiss to your forehead. “Thanks, Commander,” you grin, and you can feel his lips do the same against your skin.
“Anytime, Cap.” Another kiss before he walks off.
Snap looks between you and Poe in disbelief, and Karé rolls her eyes. “Beats me, huh?” She teases, nudging you with her hip, and you just shrug- doing nothing to conceal your smile- before following Poe.
Jessika’s zipping up her flight-suit as she runs in, but her movements slow to a halt as she takes in Snap’s wide-eyed stare. Following his eyes to you and Poe, she arches an eyebrow. “Did I miss something?”