Chapter Text
Poe wades out into the sea of bodies that work in Galactic City like the flow of a tide; a rushing rapid of intelligent life that creates eddies and whorls on the ground level, that soars in levels above in tightly controlled patterns of traffic. At this hour, it's so thick he can't see the sky in the small spaces where he might expect it.
Galactic City never gets cold, not down here on the street. There's too much alive, too much churning activity. It's only in the high reaches of the towers and the dark underground where the chill sets in. Poe carries his coat on his shoulders, knowing he's going miles up; to the top of the Hutt-owned towers where the air is so thin you can only breath it inside the glass boxes.
He's heard stories that some of those places, some with ties back to the syndicates that first got their paws in as contractors to build and rebuild Galactic City, some of them have trap doors up top there. There was a debate whether you suffocated before you hit the ground - or some terminally solid thing on the way to the ground, which no one had seen in centuries on Coruscant - and Poe doesn't ever want to know a solid answer.
He does know it'll be cold up there; icicle frigid in attitude if not temperature. But he has a part of a map and the tenacity to find the rest, he thinks. His reputation depends on it.
He goes where the signs take him, a big foreboding tower that stretches up further than his eyes can see, hanging faded and tattered banners in austere colors down at street level. It's some old regalia that makes Poe wary on an instinctive level.
The door doesn't yield to his touch, and Poe sees no one else approach it as he falls back and waits, at least not down here. High above, there may be a secondary entrance, above the Soot Line where everything began to sparkle and shine, the dirty face of the city scrubbed clean to Republic standards. Of course, it was all external.
He circles the whole block it sits on, and thinks the building is stone under all that grime; or the facade is anyway.
Something in the doors is keyed to individuals, and Poe isn't on the list yet.
"Well," he tells himself, looking up at one flapping and faded banner, trying to put his finger on what the circular symbol emblazoned in red reminds him of. "Maybe I was wrong about the Hutts."
-
It takes him a long evening and a late night in the bars before someone will even whisper First Order, and then Poe knows he's wrong about what's happened to Lor San Tekka; that he's been wrong since his first assumption and that something is moving under the skin of his city. An invader, a parasite. Something insidious and dark and foul.
He hits the wall then; a name, and nothing else. He'll have to get in.
Poe's no lightweight, but he's sat through four bars drinking slow, and when he stumbles out past midnight onto the curb and sees that the rush and press of bodies has thinned as much as it ever has in his spinning and wavering vision he figures he'd best eat something solid, best tamp down the worst of his hangover now. It's not inexperience - he has been cruel to himself enough times in the past to keep his resolve as he steps up cautiously over the single raise into Dex's Diner.
He keeps his lean casual - Poe's not so drunk as he has been when he's made it his mission, his job, but the counter keeps him steady as he bellies up to it.
"Look what the Loth-Cat dragged in," Hermione drawls, as she leans over the well-scrubbed counter. "What can I do for you, detective Dameron? I hope you're hungry, it's a quiet night for me."
He can see she's telling the truth - down the counter there's only two or three other customers.
"Bar's ain't closed yet," Poe says. "It'll pick up."
"Hey," she says brightly. "Order big anyway, just in case. You look like you've had a big dose of what greasy food fixes."
Poe guesses he has. "Caf, to start."
"What else'll it be? Sic-Six Cake maybe?"
"What's the special?"
She leans a little further over the counter and grins at him. "Pretty special."
"I'll take that," Poe says, supposing it doesn't matter. Either the food will arrive and his hunger will wake up no matter what it is - or he'll eat the side of toast and take the rest home in a doggy bag politely before throwing it out.
"You got it," she says, making a note, and pouring him a cup of hot caf before heading off to give his order to the kitchen droids.
Poe looks around and thinks Dex might be proud of it these days - the Diner is almost respectable in a way; an institution here in CoCo town that draws in any number of down and out patrons over the course of a day.
"You smell like you've been taking your time this evening," his neighbor on the left observes - and Poe hadn't seen him come in. Hadn't been aware that anyone had taken the seat next to him at all. When he turns his head he sees an older fellow, flushed pink even under his warm brown skin. Poe doesn't know him, but he knows the smell of whiskey curling off him.
"You too," Poe says. "Or maybe not taking your time."
The stranger shrugs a little. "We're both looking for something, I think. As for me, I have the beginning of an answer, having followed you."
Poe goes cold under his shirt, and turns more fully to face the stranger.
"What had you sniffing around that building earlier?" the man asks, in an airy tone as if it were a game or a philosophical topic for speculation. "A strange place for a detective to be - or, not so strange."
"What do you know about it?" Poe asks.
Any answer he might give is interrupted by the arrival of his plate of food, and Poe looks down at it and feels his stomach churn over in protest. The plate is covered in gray, pepper-flecked gravy and beneath it some larger islands swim between lumps he can't identify.
"Thanks, Hermione," Poe says, before his throat closes up fully. She flashes him a smile that suggests he might actually like whatever it was she's set in front of him, if he could stand to try it.
When she's gone off to handle her other patrons, the stranger suggests, "Buy me a meal and I might have some answers for you."
Poe shoves the plate over, and watches the stranger tuck in eagerly.
"Are you with the Coruscant police?" the stranger asks.
"Independent," Poe says, warding off the heavy, pepper-scent by pulling down a long gulp of black coffee. It’s the only answer that applies to his current situation.
"Well, that's why you don't know better. The First Order has ties back to the old Imperials," the man tells Poe, in an undertone. "For now, they're keeping quiet about it. Buying space and silence from the officials in the city, you see."
He pauses, using his fork to section off a piece of one of the larger islands and revealing it to be a golden-brown biscuit.
"I'm looking for somebody," Poe says. "I have reason to believe he had something to do with that building."
"Well," the stranger says, pausing to chew. "You'll get yourself killed if you keep looking too interested, and then no one will go looking for you, my friend. No one goes in who isn't invited in."
Poe's not sure he likes the sound of any of that, but he's not going to give up.
"But," the stranger reveals cheerfully, as if he hadn't just outlined a very real possibility of murder. "I know someone who came out."
-
He makes it to the indicated place fortified on two ryll-enhanced painkillers and four hours of sleep. Gravity feels like it's singled him out, tying on weights at his shoulders and impacting his bones, but his head is relatively clear. He hadn’t skipped his morning jog, just floated through it until his back was slick and wet, then showered up, suited up, and come back out onto the case.
This building is shorter, wedged below the soot-line between two of the 'scrapers, a space-between-spaces that usually housed the desperate for short periods of time. Once, in ages past, it had been an alleyway. With the most recent population boom these had been annexed; some well-meaning senator got tired of seeing trampled bodies in the streets and created an initiative.
The resulting project left the homeless with individual, windowless cubes to live in. Initially, they had been furnished but years had passed. Furniture had been damaged, broken, burned for warmth, sold.
What’s left is a hollow shell. No one bothers to lock their doors - there's nothing that can't be stolen anyway, and nothing of value. No one leaves anything that could be sold for Spice. No one stays long.
Someone has spray painted SINHAVEN in red glow-paint over the door and Poe gets an idea of the transactions that happen here before he pushes the door open. Inside, the smell of sex and burning scent-sticks is overpowering. It's a low, powerful smell, sunk into the bones of the building itself. It feels like it'll be there until the Galactic City council finally tears the place down and lets atmosphere pass between the buildings again.
The paper Sinjir had written for him says he's looking for a man named Finn in a place on the third floor. The doors once had numbers on them, but now all that remains are less dirty spots on the paint. Some have replaced the numbers with written or painted-on copies. Most are blank, unmarked except for accumulated grime.
The one indicated on his paper says 2187, written in a steady hand. Big, square-ish numbers. It's a place that wants to be found. Poe shakes two more painkillers out of the small bottle in his suit pocket and swallows them dry, putting away the paper from Sinjir before he taps on the door. He wants to be alert for this.
He strikes twice with his knuckles and resists the urge to wipe his hand on his pants afterward. His whole body feels buzzing and gritty from the low level stimulant combating the hangover in his bloodstream. Poe feels on edge in here, keyed up in the narrow hallways charged with one kind of desperate energy in a way that reminds him enough of his own past that he wants answers, and he wants out.
The man that answers the door is not what Poe expects. He knows enough to be cautious, and he doesn't open the door all the way, leaning around it so that he can brace the wide panel against his shoulder as if anticipating a violent attempt to open it further. Poe can see a narrow strip of deep brown skin, big dark eyes that have a soulful quality to their intense, measuring stare, and a simple outline of shaven jaw, neatly trimmed hair, plain black clothes.
It takes him aback.
"What is it?" the man asks, guarded.
"I'm Detective Poe Dameron," Poe says, trying not to stammer. He should be smooth, should put on a cover story of some kind; he can't think of anything to offer but the truth.
The door starts to swing closed again.
"Wait, I'm not with the police," Poe protests, but the door clicks closed, and he hears the latch slip over. Poe curses himself, and taps again with his knuckles.
"Listen, I'm looking for somebody and they've got ties to the First Order," Poe leans into the door, hoping his voice will carry through the thin material, but not to any other ears in the place. "I need your help getting into their building."
The door stays closed.
"Listen, I'm not here to bust you for being a companion," Poe continues. "I mean, that's not my business. I mean, unless someone's forcing you, and then I'd like to bust that person straight out of the city."
Poe's rambling. He sighs - he'd stuck his foot in his mouth and now he might not get anywhere with the only lead he has. He's not even sure if Finn's still in there - these places had side and back ways out; they had to, to keep up with fire code. Instead of pressing the issue further, Poe reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out his card.
"If you change your mind," he says, "or if you just want a square meal, no obligations, alright?"
It's only a small chance that Finn's even still listening, but Poe slides the card under the gap beneath the door anyway, watching it disappear into the shadow beneath.
He backs off and hopes it might be enough.
Poe's turned away and started back down the hall when he hears the door open behind him again.
"Poe?" Finn calls, still peering cautiously out through a small gap. "You said something about a meal?"
-
Finn puts down three whole plates of food before the waitress takes pity on him and brings him two huge baskets of some variety of fried potato for him to pick at, and Poe tries, politely, not to stare.
He doesn't have to ask the question; the answer is self-evident, and the enjoyment with which Finn eats the simple diner-fare reveals a lot about him. Poe can guess the sort of background that would lead to this, both long-term and immediate.
He spins his own coffee cup idly on the table, chin in his palm, and feels his heart sink in his chest a little as Finn looks reluctantly at what he can't eat, as if he's disappointed in himself, as if he knows he'll miss it later.
"Things haven't been going great since you left, huh?" Poe asks, without changing the relaxed position he's sitting in. The headache is starting to come back, but the hot caf helps, and he doesn't want to break the spell that's holding the both of them suspended over mistrust like two kids out on thin ice in deep water.
"No," Finn agrees, toying with a fry, and for a moment Poe thinks that's all he'll get. A couple words and a big bill - and Poe doesn't think, in this case, he'd mind.
"Who are you looking for?" Finn turns a question back on Poe like deflecting a knife in an alleyway.
"Lor San Tekka," Poe says, seeing no harm in admitting it. "I think he was trying to uncover what's going on with the First Order. To expose how it's getting covered up."
"Well, they wouldn't like that," Finn says, without looking up. "They won't like you poking around, either."
"Well, that's probably so," Poe admits. "But I'm not interested in shaking things up. I just want to get Tekka out - a woman I respect very much has asked me to look into it."
Finn looks up then. "And you'd do it, even though you know they're dangerous?"
"If I wanted a safe job, I'd go out for the Senate," Poe jokes.
"It's not funny," Finn tells him, and real passion comes into his voice. "The First Order is very, very dangerous and you should be going the opposite way from anything they're up to as fast as you can."
"I believe you," Poe says, "but I have a job to do and I'm going to do it. It'd be less dangerous if you could walk me through how to get inside that building."
Finn looks at Poe, clear disbelief written on his features, and Poe wonders how he can press his hand - how he should press his hand. There's something about Finn - about his gorgeous determination, about the suggestion of the surroundings Poe had found him in, about - Finn - that means this dances right along the line of what Poe needs professionally, and what he wants, personally.
If he makes a move on one side of the line, he might lose the other. He doesn't know if he should try making a move to the other; he has a couple of advantages, a couple of moral hitches he likes to think his ropes are tied to, creating lines he wouldn't cross.
Poe takes a deep breath. "I'm gonna do it anyway, one way or the other. Help me out, and I'll owe you a favor. I have a few connections around-"
"Okay," Finn says, overriding any more of Poe's words.
"Okay?" Poe asks, hoping Finn will clarify.
"I'll tell you how to get in," Finn says.
-
Finn barely waits until Poe has closed his door before leaning into him, getting his big, broad hands into Poe's suit lapels and pushing him up against the door quickly enough that Poe's hat is knocked off, slipping down to the floor. Poe almost doesn't realize what's happening before it's too late, and a quick flare-bright guilt steals over him.
"Finn," he starts, then Finn's warm brown hand is on his cheek and so gentle that Poe feels his resolve waver in the face of his want, tipping down and faltering like a ship with a damaged wing. He could be weak, and just let this happen like he wants to and no one - not even Finn, probably - would hold it against him.
The lightning bolt of interest and arousal jabs down Poe's spine, but then he gets his hands up and presses them flat against Finn's chest to keep it from going further. It almost physically pains Poe to put a stop to this.
I just bought this guy lunch, Poe thinks. He was starving. I don't want this to be some kind of obligation thing.
"Finn," Poe repeats, clearing his throat to move the blockage in it. He thinks he sees almost as much disappointment as he feels in Finn's expression. "You don't owe me this, okay?"
Finn eases out of Poe's space, stepping away in an abashed way. Poe thinks he sees a hint of shame on his features as he leans down to get his hat. The felt feels flimsy and insubstantial in Poe's hand, cool from the floor. It hadn't been Poe's intent to embarrass Finn.
"Is it because I'm -" Finn starts, coming to a quick stop as if afraid of offending Poe by even saying it.
Poe meets his gaze and shakes his head. He gestures for Finn to proceed him deeper into the apartment.
"No, man," Poe says. "I don't care about that. I'm not one of those guys who thinks that getting touched makes someone less - well, anything."
He gestures at the old, overstuffed chair in his living room. Poe's apartment is pretty sparse - it's hard enough to make rent, let alone buy furniture, and he doesn't really get enough company that he needs a couch. What friends he does have are sort of a 'pile-on-the-floor' bunch, anyway.
"It's just that you don't owe me that," Poe says. "I'm not big on obligatory sex."
Finn sits in Poe's chair, dwarfing it. He sticks off at both ends, and leans his head back against the rest to peer over it and back at Poe.
For a moment, there's an uncertain silence, then Finn gives humor a shot.
"So what kind of sex are you into, then?" Finn asks, eyes alert.
Poe laughs, feeling nervous energy burn off. "I guess most kinds as long as everyone's square and consenting."
Finn looks like he's tucking that fact away for later, and Poe allows a little pilot light of hope to burn on for another day. Later, when he knows Finn a little better.
"So, it's probably too much to ask if you ever even saw the guy I'm looking for? Poe tries to navigate the conversation carefully back to the reason they'd come here in the first place.
"What's he look like?" Finn asks, reasonably.
Poe digs for his displayer and shows the holocron image Leia had given him.
Finn looks with the focus of someone combing his memory, but finally shakes his head no.
"Uh-uh," he says. "I never saw him. But a lot of stuff went on above my paygrade."
"How long have you been out?" Poe asks, allowing curiosity to pull him slightly off track. There's something dark going on in the First Order - something that Finn had seen and that Poe feels a compulsion to understand.
Then again, who wants to go into any situation blind?
"About three months now," Finn says. "I know I should get further away from there, but I keep thinking about how hard it was for me the first few weeks - if anyone else makes it, they should have support."
It's a noble thought, but Poe thinks Finn's still far from being in an easy place.
"Why are you in a companion house?" Poe doesn't mean to intrude, but there are a couple of ways to wind up there and he feels compelled to make sure no one's taking advantage of Finn.
"Doesn't take any skills or prior experience," Finn admits, "or any money to start up."
Poe supposes it doesn't, not with available space free in the relative privacy of the flop houses.
"But, uh," Finn looks away. "I'm not that great at it."
Poe can't think of anything appropriate to say. Finn's clearly got a lot of good qualities, he's big in the shoulders, good looking, good - at least Poe thinks - hearted.
It's a tough city to make it in, that's all.
"I don't think there's very many folks who can say they're really good at being companions of that sort," Poe says. He sits down on the floor, opposite Finn across the tiny folding table where he eats his dinners and sets his coffee in the morning. When he'd started living here, he'd made it a point to fold it up and put it away every time, to leave the space in his living room open.
Now, he can't be bothered to even maintain that illusion of purposeful emptiness in the apartment. It’s just - empty.
"I'm not that great of a detective, if it makes you feel any better. I don't even have an office," Poe confides. "I usually just meet clients at a coffee shop."
Finn smiles at him, as Poe calls up a map of the sector the First Order building is in - he'd tried looking for blueprints of the building, but found that none of them were public record. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep the interior out of reach.
"Alright, Detective, but I say it's a smart move to keep your clients caffeinated," Finn says, watching him. "I haven't seen the rest so I figure I'll judge for myself whether you're a good detective or not."
It's a big, wide opening for Poe. Almost an invitation for him to return the offer of judging for himself whether Finn was any good at his profession. With an extreme effort of will, Poe restrains his mouth.
"So," he says, instead of 'how about we go get some coffee right now' or 'I consider myself a pretty good judge of talent'. "How do we get in?"
Finn eases off the chair and leans in close to Poe to work the controls on his displayer to expand the map of the area, and Poe tries very hard to pay attention to the directions.
-
Poe walks him home, trying to think of something to say, some way to make an offer, some offer he has to make, but he can't come up with anything that doesn't feel like it wouldn't be insulting to Finn. Finn is out, trying to make it, taking his first steps into a world he's never touched before.
Instead, Poe stops outside the door; SINHAVEN seeming bright and burning in his thoughts. Accurate. He tucks his hands behind his back and says,
"Hey," then falters. Finn looks up at him, dark eyes in darkness. "I know you hardly know me from the next guy, and I don't mean to two-step all over what you're building but if you ever need help..."
"Sure," Finn says, and then stops. There's more to say, but neither of them say it.
Instead, Poe rummages deep in the pocket of his suit jacket and produces a business card with his number on it. A half-dozen entreaties suggest themselves to him - 'call me' or 'even if you just want to chat', but he doesn't give any of them voice. He offers Finn the card, Finn takes it, and then he heads inside. The hot breath of the building blows out the spice of sex and sweat and then Sinhaven closes its mouth and Finn is gone again.
Poe's got business elsewhere. He watches the building for a long moment, as if some sign of trouble will beckon him in, before he chides himself for foolishness, and picks himself up to move on with his night.
It's true he doesn't have an office, but Poe keeps a few caches over town - storage lockers and a couple of cheap bag-checks. He swings by one of these on the far side of town, keeping an eye out for any signs of a tail. Both Sinjir and Finn warned him that being seen poking around the building would bring attention - but he wants to move fast. He wants to keep them guessing.
He sees no sign of being followed, so Poe doubles back, ducks into one of the transport terminals. It's still busy at this hour of night, but not pulsing. The respiration of the city has slowed to a sleeping pace but has not ceased - it never would, Poe thinks. Not until the planet finally collapsed under the weight of the city.
He punches his combination into the locker, spinning the primitive wheel back and forth - a crude security system, but effective. Poe relies as much on the sheer number of lockers and the fact that the vast majority of them hold things without any value - dirty shoes, laundry, moldering snacks, correspondence between different parties.
Inside of his own, Poe finds a folded up armored vest, a compact blaster, and the rest of his break-in kit. At times, it's come in handy - especially since he'd broken ties with the Coruscant Police force and their restrictions. He got in trouble more in the private sector, but he got to the bottom of more things without all the red tape holding him back.
He stuffs his suit coat and waistcoat into the locker, and slings on the vest, straps the blaster in under his arm, slinging the holster over his shoulders. Keeping his eyes on the other patrons in the room - no one is so much as glancing at him. The early morning hours have focused and numbed the passersby to anything conspicuous - and enough people changed in these locker rooms to render it more or less normal. One small action in a sea of living narratives, all going a different direction than his.
Poe checks his lockpicks, checks the charge on his field disruptor before tucking the illegal device deep into his pockets, and pulls on his suit coat again, leaving the waistcoat and his hat, watch and identification in the locker. It's a risky move, depending on how this goes, but if he gets captured by the First Order at least he can keep them guessing for a little while.
When he exits the station again he does so through a side door, stepping out onto a transport platform and then taking the stairs down to street level, navigating the back alleyways, twisting through the deepest dark of night in the blackest places of the city. It's still hot at the surface level, still breathing the teeming heat and steam of population out of every window.
Poe fixes his eyes on the climbing towers of the First Order 'scraper, and begins to approach it circuitously. There's a door at ground level, but no way in. Finn told him that was a box; a death trap. A waiting lure for the most doggedly curious that could be opened to admit a person, then sealed behind them before they were swallowed up at the Order's convenience. This, most likely, is what happened to Lor San Tekka in his investigation of the Order itself.
It could happen to Poe, too, if he's not careful.
The buildings around it stab skywards, with bridges arching out, skywalks connecting them for convenience to keep pedestrians off the streets and away from undesirables. Poe has to go in three buildings away, strolling casually into the big old austere office building and taking the skylink as casually as one can at three in the morning. Up here, traffic is nonexistent. Poe feels the weight of every security camera in the place, feels the pressure of his own echoing footsteps and the signs placed neatly in front of the doors he passes - closed, re-opens at....
In the skylink, he can see how dark the streets below seem, the inside of the glass box is well lit to keep the glass working like a mirror from the outside. He can see down, out, look at the spread and sprawl of the city from a height, but no one can see in. The rush-walks are not operating at this hour.
Poe can't shake a certain paranoia as he crosses the yards of boxed in and empty space.
It feels exposed. Alone. Like the time - Poe tries to shut it out of his mind but the memory comes anyway. He'd been chasing Rey, trying to keep up with his partner before she outdistanced him, regretting every extra meal he'd ever eaten, regretting every time he'd skipped his morning jog and eaten a big bowl of oatmeal, one hand pressed to his side where the stitch was forming. His muscles seemed to be pulling shorter and shorter, her back fading away ahead.
She was chasing their suspect with all her might, and he knew he should be there to back her up, but he also knew that she'd get her man. He'd felt pride, then, watching her poetry-in-motion strides eat up ground even as he struggled to keep up. She had her eyes on the perp, but he'd lost track and then -
blaster fire had shattered the rhythm of his breath, unanchored his thoughts, unmoored him from his whole life. He hadn't realized it then, or even minutes later with Rey in his arms and blood on his hands, but in the weeks that followed, he'd known.
That life was over.
The feelings fade away - being high in the city still makes him feel nervous, like his feet are hanging out over thin air and his back has a target painted on it. Poe reaches gratefully for the door into the next building, telling himself to hurry. He wants to be out of the First Order tower again by five - and he knows that's pushing it. The grey of dawn will have seized hold by then, starting to paint the city silver instead of the black-and-gold of lighted silhouette.
Poe has to go up three floors and take a circuitous route to find the entrance to the next bridge, hidden behind a door marked 'service'. He leaves this propped open behind him for an avenue of escape. Immediately beyond is another door, with a keypad, and Poe doesn't touch it before he's sure of what he's doing.
He clicks on the field generator to fritz and block the cameras - there aren't any obvious in the room, but he expects he's being observed. This done, he works the lock with the picker device, prying off the keypad cover to shortwire the internals, then pulls the door open, and closes it again. No alarms sound - audibly, but Poe knows one is going off, that something will have called attention down here. He carefully lets himself back out through the open door, leaving the prop in place, and runs up the five flights of stairs to the next bridge, navigating the hallways from Finn's instructions.
No sign of any lack of fitness now - Poe hasn't missed an exercise routine in the three years since he'd left the force. He takes the flights easily, and doesn't slow down before he hits the next door, blowing by a startled janitor and hoping he doesn't get the hot idea to call in the real authorities.
Or maybe that wouldn't really be so bad, if this went pear-shaped. Someone at least would be asking questions about where he went. He hits the next service door and then blows the lock on this skybridge with a shorter, piece, jamming it against the keypad and letting the pulse render the whole thing inoperable, hoping he's sent enough people looking for him downstairs that this will go unnoticed, that no signal will make it back to whatever control room monitored this whole place.
Then, Poe's in. He pulls his blaster, and runs across the skybridge full tilt, eager to get out of the open. On the other side, there's no locked door, seemingly no security system. It's just a wide open hall that ends suddenly in darkness, and Poe passes the terminator line at full tilt and into the blackness beyond.