pineslog | And I'll use you as a warning sign

Entry tags:

And I'll use you as a warning sign

Who: Okay this turned into a Poe catchall + Various
Where: Various locations/listed in the headings
When: May 1st-31st
What: May Catchall - specific closed prompts, some open threads
Warnings: N/A yet
[Open and Closed]

May 10th - Open

Tequila Mockingbird has Cassian's liquor of choice in the name, which is why Poe picked it. He's not a big drinker, but between the memories, the conversation with Jyn, the... party. Well. He has a few reasons to drink.

The reason he picked for tonight was to pour one out for L'ulo, for Muran, for the pilots whose names and faces he hasn't yet remembered. Not for his mother--it doesn't seem right, to drink for her. She wouldn't want it, her son inebriated and alone at a bar, wallowing in her memory. Poe won't pretend that isn't what he's doing. Wallowing, letting himself feel the grief and pain he tries so hard to outpace.

Jyn is right. He has to stop sometime, and taking the opportunity now to brace himself for future losses is better than breaking under one too many.

His table is in the corner, in a quiet part of the restaurant. Not by any virtue of paranoia. Poe doesn't have the same hardwired need to keep his back to a wall and his eyes on the exits that some veterans do. It was just the most private space he could find while still being around people. Drinking at home where Rey might have seen him would have felt worse than this, but drinking somewhere entirely alone wouldn't have been right either. He might not have squadmates to share a glass with, but having some form of life circulating around him is better than being entirely alone. Plus, there's BB-8, sitting underneath the table, domed head tilted to rest against Poe's leg.

Maker, he's glad to have his droid.

May 12th - Open

Poe is beating up a freestanding punching bag thing. He's been going to Crossbones Boxing in the morning on the days he doesn't work. He'll go stir-crazy if he just hangs around the house, and being grounded for this long is driving him bonkers as it is. He's tried to keep his head down, tried to be good, but man (thump, kick, wham) he going to blow a sensor if he doesn't get some air time.

It doesn't help that beating up things is usually the time he spends talking to BB-8 about whatever's on his mind. Here, where it's public and monitored like everywhere else, they have to keep up the same act. So BB-8 sits, watching, grumbling to himself with a towel draped over his head dome, while Poe tries to kill an inanimate object.

May 13th - Open

Poe is in a tree.

It is a tall tree. A very tall tree, near the edge of town, just inside those woods they aren't technically supposed to enter.

He is very high in this very tall tree.

Fuck gravity to be honest.

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"Not in his programming. He's--" Poe catches himself before he can start in on BB-8's specialties, barely. "It's not in his programming. Oh, and I've got one now."

Wow, he's suddenly glad Rey wasn't there when Caroline first showed up. That would have made things... even more awkward. Particularly given how blunt he's discovered Rey to be. He likes that about her, certainly, but he'd prefer not to have that bluntness applied to his and Caroline's situation. Not right now. "A roommate, I mean. Her name's Rey. We know some people in common."

He gestures upward with the fork as he says the last bit, hopefully indicating, y'know, space.

Caroline feels a flare of jealousy that she has absolutely no right to feel when he oh-so-subtly mentions that his new roommate is a girl. It distracts her for a moment and she has to take a sip of coffee to wash down any comment she might say about it.

He's not your boyfriend anymore. Or ever, actually.

He points upward and she gets it, they're from the same place. Nodding, she lowers the coffee cup from her mouth, trying her best to lie, kind of, despite being a terrible liar. "That's great, Poe." God, the words sound so wooden and she knows it, so she laughs. "I mean, it's good you have a roommate and I swear I'm not going to be a jealous ex about it." That's mostly true. She keeps her jealous ex feelings to herself most of the time but she's not perfect and Caroline Forbes can be petty as the next person.

Poe isn't a jealous person by nature. It just doesn't occur to him to be. So he doesn't get it, when her congratulations come out stiff. He doesn't get it until she says I'm not going to be a jealous ex about it.

He almost chokes on his coffee, trying not to laugh.

"She's my roommate, Caroline. We're friends." He's not sure suddenly why he's explaining--there's no real reason for him to do it, but he doesn't want Caroline to harbor any bad feelings toward Rey. She doesn't deserve them, and he'd much rather she and Caroline be friends than not.

She wants to say that it shouldn't matter if she was more than just his friend but she doesn't want to get into that conversation right now, not when the conversation has been going fairly smooth. She just grins at him, "I know, I was just saying. We're friends too." He and her, although she does say that last bit with a bit of a hopeful expression, as if she might need him confirm it before it can be completely true.

Something in him relaxes. He'd been hoping, without asking, that they were finding their way toward being friends. After a start like theirs he wouldn't have blamed her if she said it couldn't happen. It would be his fault--he started it, kissing her the way he did.

"Yeah. I'd like to be."

He relaxes, she relaxes. And suddenly things are a lot more relaxed. "Okay," she says with a more confident smile and a sage nod. Her lips quirk before she takes a sip of her coffee before she leans on her elbow again, chin resting in her palm. "So as a I friend... can I tell you that you definitely need a shower today?" It was meant to make him laugh and hopefully it would.

It works: he laughs, and inspects himself with exaggerated consideration.

"I thought farmer looked good on me."

It certainly doesn't look good on his clothes, but he's used to being dirty. Another familiar feeling to negotiate, to try and separate from this place.

"Oh, no, it does. But it doesn't smell good on you," she teases him, trying carefully not to smirk too much but failing miserably. She does, however, laugh. "I kind of remember you always being a bit messy. It's why I liked you." And yeah, she remembers a few steamy showers.

He's trying very hard not to remember those steamy showers, because that veers out of friendship territory into confusing, chemistry-soaked territory that they need to avoid. It's the same reason he's looking at her face without looking at her lips, or right into her eyes.

She has a nice nose, and it's a safe nose.

"You remember right." He dusts a bit of dried hay off his sleeve and onto the floor. "Usually it's more grease and less dirt. The mess is nice, though. Means I've gotten something done."

He cocks his head. "I remember you cleaning when you get upset."

"I can understand that," she grins at him, understanding that sometimes you have to get dirty to get things done. And once you're done, it feels good. Caroline's never been afraid of getting a little dirty herself. Take that as you will.

At his commentary, she laughs, a little flustered as she tucks her hair behind her ears. "I'm a stress cleaner, yeah." He should see her house right now, it's so clean it barely looks lived in. "Blah, blah, sense of control, blah."

That hits him in an unexpected place. That flippant way she throws off comments about things that are bothering her, like it's nothing, like it's a joke. He recognizes it. The self-protection. (He recognizes it from his younger pilots, otherwise unremembered. The way some of them try to laugh off blast scarring on their wings, lost droids, engine failure.)

Filthy or not, he reaches out to take her hand and give it a tiny squeeze. "There are worse ways to handle things."

The touch centers her, brings her focus back to him and she looks at him for a moment. He has no idea. There are way worse ways to handle things. She could easily just turn off her emotions and not feel anything. Just flip a switch and then nothing would matter anymore.

Except to Caroline, that choice wasn't an easy one nor was it option (little did she know that in the future, it was a choice she'd make).

"Yeah," she says it softly, resisting the urge to shy away from this, from the way he seems to be able to look right through her defenses and she doesn't make another joke. "I've gotten pretty good at finding coping mechanisms."

"Just don't let the coping mechanisms take over for feeling."

He smiles to soften the words, giving her hand another little squeeze before he lets go. "That's a dangerous road. You have to let the emotions in, let your mind do the work it's meant to. The galaxy's too rough a place to be at war with yourself."

Poe shifts in his seat, coming back to the present. He felt a million miles away, for a moment there, and he can see a room full of people in uniform, a plinth and a coffin and General Organa standing at its side. The memory leaves a sober ache behind, and in spite of his advice to Caroline, he pushes it away.

"The world, I meant," he says. He looks at the nearest camera, a cockeyed smile back in place. "I meant the world."

It takes all she has not to laugh bitterly at what Poe is saying. She doesn't need this pep talk from anyone, she doesn't need the lecture. She's seen too many of her friends 'turn it off', she doesn't intend on doing it herself.

"I'm not... I don't not feel, Poe," she puts in her brow furrowing, her hands moving to cradle her coffee mug. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not the most repressed person, emotionally." She was open with most people, it was just... her eyes flicker up towards the camera. "I just prefer not to have an audience." To give them the satisfaction.

"Besides, if I was? All the repressed and hide-my-feelings type? That whole tiny, awkward, lets-never-talk-about-it-but-will-overthink-it-forever disaster the other night probably wouldn't have happened."

Edited 2017-05-08 19:15 (UTC)

He laughs again, though this time it's sheepish and almost humorless. "Sorry. I..."

That room again, the fear in the eyes of the recruits who had never seen a funeral for one of their own. "I was thinking about something."

He rubs one eye and sits back, drinking his own coffee down to the dregs. "I like that about you. That you don't hide things. I mean, I will. I do. Both." A gesture at the air with his mug. "There's a statement about nonlinear spacetime some religious type could make here, but I'm not one."

At the mention of the other night, well. His eyes fall to hers, the kind of blue that hits the sky just before the stars come out. That whole tiny, awkward, lets-never-talk-about-it-but-will-overthink-it-forever disaster comes crashing back in from where he had so carefully walled it off.

The words Do you regret it? spike to his lips and he bites the bottom one to keep from speaking. He doesn't do this kind of thing, he won't do this kind of thing, he has a war to fight, never mind the fact that there's this place to unravel.

That doesn't keep his palm from tingling where he pressed it against her wrist. Telling himself its nerve damage doesn't help.

"Don't be sorry," she urged him, her tone meaning to remind him that he had nothing to be sorry for, he didn't know her all that well. Memories were coming and going at a rapid rate, how could he know or remember every little thing about her.

"I feel like... if I understood what you just said, I would definitely laugh." She laughs all the same because she gets the gist of what he meant. "Because you've got that whole charming, confident pi--" she stops herself from saying pilot and switches it to-- "farmboy thing going on for you." And yeah, the way he bites his lip is so damn appealing that it only makes her want to figure out the other ways she could make him do that more, for better reasons.

Oh, God, Caroline, get your mind out of the gutter.

"But you were really... sweet and soft too. I remember liking that about you. The whole--" she waves her hand around at him. "Package, honestly."

Edited 2017-05-08 19:52 (UTC)

It's kind of nice, the fact that he doesn't know all about her already. That he can make slips like those. Both a pin in the eye of the people here and a chance to get to know her on his own. He wants to get to know her on his own.

"Any good I managed to be is on my parents," Poe says. It's not deflection, it's just the truth, as far as he's concerned. He may not yet remember his mother, but he remembers the way his father loved her. If he's any kind of decent person, it's because of them. (There's deflection there, too, a habit of modesty so ingrained it's gotten him in trouble with the General in the past. Straight answers, like patience, aren't always his strong suit.) As far as being charming and confident--he just grins.

"You say charming, my sq... friends say unbearable."

Due diligence done, he lapses into silence, trying to think of something to say in return. The possibilities all stir up emotions he's not sure what to do with. He's had one night stands and dalliances with men, women, genders in-between. He doesn't remember them, but they've all been friendly, with a mutual understanding that they weren't meant to last. He doesn't know what to do with wanting to know someone for keeps and knowing that can't happen.

"I remember...." Brown eyes study blue. They really do remind him of a nighttime sky. "The way you commit."

That was what did it. That's what tripped him up. That boundless willingness to leap in to the breach. He fell for it then, he wants to recruit it now. The Resistance needs administrators as much as they need pilots. People to orient on the details, people organize and control the flow of information--

With a jolt like an electric shock he remembers where they are. She has no idea what he's fighting for. She not even from a planet BB-8 has heard of.

And he needs to be careful, here. More careful than he realized. "I remember that you don't hold back."

"Yes, they raised you right but you chose to stay that way," she reminds him gently, so he'll take some credit. Because as hard as it had been when he left her (she feels an ache in her heart so keenly), he'd been a good man otherwise. She feels ashamed as she sees the memories in her head of their breakup, at the way she yelled at him to stop, to come back, calling him a coward for walking away from her.

She wonders what his reasoning was, she wonders if he could tell her now because now... it's not real. Their relationship, their breakup. Maybe someday she'd be able to ask him but it wasn't the right time. Not today. Not when they were slowly building a bridge of friendship.

It's still a struggle, for her and for him, it seems. He mentions her commitment, the way she doesn't hold back and she glances down at her now-empty coffee cup. Even in reality, she knows she doesn't hold back. She gives herself completely to so much and in the end, it's gotten her hurt.

A lot.

"Yeah, I'm not sure that's a good thing." Otherwise, why was it so easy for so many people to cast her aside? Matt, Tyler, Klaus. Her father. She looks up at him with a sadder smile before forces a happier one upon her lips. "I'm definitely a bit of a control freak. I think we both know that. I seem to remember an obsessively planned summer barbecue." She doesn't actually remember that, she just assumes it might have happened and she's looking to deflect.

"No, don't say that." He leans forward, suddenly intent. "The universe needs more people who care. People like you are the standard bearers, you're the..."

He stops and tries to rearrange his thoughts. This is important. Not for them getting to know each other, either. It's important for her, and important to him that she understands her value. "People like you make sure the world turns while flyboys like me are out there blowing things up. People like you build the dreams that make people like me want to fly in the first place."

Poe takes her hand again, eyes bright. "It's easy for people to call you a control freak. Half the time they don't want to put in the work themselves."

She wants to cry, she wants to thank him, she wants to kiss him, she wants to shove him away and leave the coffee shop. She's suddenly overwhelmed by those few simple words that mean more to her than anything she can remember from home (yes, there are still fragments missing but still).

She blinks at him, her other hand moving to cover the one holding hers. Damn him, damn him for being as wonderful as the fake memories made him out to be. And damn him for cutting her right to the core.

Blinking away the tears that well up in her eyes, her lips curve into a flattered sort of smile as she looks at him. "Are all flyboys this good with words?" She laughs, pulling one of the hands touching his to brush away a tear from her eye just as as another falls. "No one's ever said that to me. Or, well, something like that." It's not that people haven't said kind words to her, about her before, that's not true at all. There have been some lovely, epic speeches made about her, whether or not she's aware of them but... this is something different.

"I can't be that good with words. I made you cry." It's teasing, but gently so. More seriously, he says, "I meant it. The worlds need people like you."

He doesn't notice that he's made it plural. All of this probably verges into talking about the past as it is, without subconscious slips.

It's so frustrating, being trapped here. He wants to take her to the General, get her an assignment, show her a whole movement of people who care too much in the eyes of half the galaxy. It's part of what drives him. Finding people like Caroline and bringing them home.

Poe exhales and clears his throat, realizing very suddenly that he's holding her hand. He doesn't let go or pull away. Now is a bad time to do that, when she's vulnerable. "Y'going to be okay?"

She shakes her head when he asks if she'll be okay, laughing a little. "I'm fine," she says it and means it, pulling her hand gently from his so she can wipe at her cheeks, smiling while she does it. "You're just sweet and you make it really hard for me to not to like you." Because she's supposed to be playing the ex-girlfriend.

"I'm good," she smiles a little more, moving to sit up a bit. "Are you a recruiter or something because... yeah, you're good, very good."

"Maybe. In another life."

He sits back, wistful. The General told him their first priority has to be getting home, and she's right. There's so much more at stake with General Organa here, with the Resistance missing one of its most prominent figureheads and powerful leaders. He's confident that things won't fall apart in her absence. (Where does the confidence come from, when he doesn't remember who they work with? Probably from his confidence in her.) But that doesn't mean they can afford to waste time.

That sense of urgency is going to drive him crazy. He knows it, as well as he knows anything right now.

"In this life, I should probably get that shower." A moment of silence, then, "I really did mean that. It wasn't a pitch."

"Um, yeah, I would recommend it," she says with a scrunched up nose, teasing him about the way he smells, which isn't all that bad. But it feels better to keep things light than to go deeper, which he does a moment later. Nodding, she offers him a tender smile instead of disbelief. "I know. I'm just saying, you're good at making us feel good."

"Good." There are two parts of him happy at that statement. The one just getting to know her, that generally cares about people and the way they feel. And the one that wants her to be happy, always.

That one he tries to ignore.

Poe stretches and climbs to his feet. "I should shower and rescue my cousin from my droid."

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