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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Poe's done the rounds. Checked in. Learned about the murders that happened while these people had him wherever they had him. A week, vanished, like smoke, and he wakes up to people dead at the hands of someone trapped here just like them. He needs to clear his head. The stars are starting to come out--he's learned their names by now, their constellations, the fact that supposedly there's no life orbiting any of them. That's hard enough for him to believe.

He settles the ladder against the side of the house, clambers up, starts making his way toward the peak, where he usually sits.

He doesn't get all the way there.

Vertigo hits him, so abrupt and powerful that he's not even aware he's falling. The world swoops, dips, grays around the edges-- and then he has a giddy freefall sensation and the vertigo is gone, and there's the edge of the roof, slipping past. The ladder tips over backwards, and Poe follows it fast toward the ground.

Whether it's a stroke of luck, by design or kismet, Caroline won't ever know. All she knows that as she just so happens to be walking by Poe's house that evening. And by 'just so happens', I mean, walking by it because she's worried about him despite her best efforts not to be, she's angry that he was missing without a word, although not at him. It could have been worse, he could be dead right now, killed by a woman she met briefly before.

None of it matters when she spots him. Everything happens quickly. She spots him. Then the ladder falls backward and takes Poe with it. In the span of a breath, she reacts and he's suddenly in her arms, sort of. More like, he falls onto her and she catches him.

She's got the strength to pick him up but with the force of his body, it's more like she catches him (straight up bridal style) and she stumbles, almost dropping him as she tries to get her footing.

Edited 2017-05-26 04:06 (UTC)

He hadn't even had the chance to get into a proper fall. Protect his head, all that. Instead there's the abrupt landing in someone's arms, the stagger, and he instinctively wraps an arm around his rescuer's shoulders.

If it's Cassian this is going to be really embarr--

It's Caroline. He is in Caroline's arms.

"Well. This is unexpected." A pause, and then, "Nice catch."

"Yeah and nice fall," she lectures him, looking at him for a moment before she moves to set him down, hastily. "Why were you on a ladder, at night, by yourself, Poe? You could have broken your neck." She cares, Poe, it's why she's lecturing you.

She takes a step back, covering her mouth, realizing that... yeah, she just exposed herself pretty big time just now and she doesn't even know how to begin to explain it to him. Nor does she even want to lie. Maybe she just needs to compel him except that she promised Steve she would never do that and the idea of compelling Poe makes her a little sick.

Edited 2017-05-26 04:18 (UTC)

"I climb ladders by myself at night all the time."

He touches his temple lightly, disconcerted by how fast that came on, whatever it was. Even the first time he climbed up onto the roof, right after he was out of the hospital, nothing had gone wrong. What makes this time different?

Caroline looks horrified. That's the bigger thing right now. He's been gone for a week, people were just murdered, and he almost cracked his head on the pavement and earned himself another trip to the creepy hospital, right in front of her. "Hey--it's okay. You got me, I'm fine. I didn't mean to scare you."

Edited 2017-05-26 04:26 (UTC)

"Well, you shouldn't, climb ladders. At night. By yourself. All the time," she mumbles the words behind her hand, letting it fall to her side as she looks at him, uncertain, steeling herself for the rejection that's sure to come. Steve hadn't rejected her, she reminds herself but she didn't think she'd get so lucky again.

Hi, I'm Caroline, your not!dead, not!ex-girlfriend who drinks blood to survive. Love me!.

"You didn't... scare me." Her heart was pounding to be sure but...

"Caroline--" He reaches out to touch her arm, lightly, not sure if she wants more contact than that or would allow it. He knows how he feels. He could easily wrap his arms around her and never let go, right now. Right now, this place seems as menacing and desolate as the deserts of Jakku.

"What is it?"

She looks at him, a little bewildered, feeling a little crazy. "How are you not freaking out right now?"

Okay. Now he's confused. He glances at the ladder, up toward the roof, like that will give him some clue about her distress. All it does is reaffirm how lucky he was she happened to be where she was when she was.

"About what?"

"About wh--" She looks at him, taking a step forward. "Are you okay? Did you hit your head before...?" Because maybe he blacked out or something and didn't realize that she was down the block and she caught him.

"No-- I mean I'm fine, I didn't hit my head, you caught me before I could."

He reaches for her hand, wondering now if she's okay. "Really, what is it?"

It's better he doesn't know, right? Safer? And here comes Caroline Forbes, the horrible liar. But she has to try, so she shakes her head. "It's nothing. It's noth-- I'm fine. Just worried about you."

Now he takes both of her hands, pulling gently, hoping to get her to come closer. "Fake memories or no fake memories, I can tell you're a worse liar than I am."

She lets him tug her closer, too bewildered by how nonchalant he is, to do anything else. Matt's words of rejection echo in her head more clearly than ever and she looks at him as he calls her out for lying.

She should have known it wouldn't work with him. He's probably trained to see lies and she's a horrible liar for the most part. "I caught you, Poe. I was down the block and then... I was here. I caught you. You weigh more than me, no offense. And you're taller than me." By an inch but still. "And you don't... think that's weird?" Why is she pointing it out to him? Why?

"...Caroline." He tries not to smile. He really, really, really tries not to smile. It shows in the quiver of his lips, the way the corners of his mouth twitch, and when he speaks the smile wins. "You remember the part where I'm from another galaxy, right? A very big, very busy galaxy. That's not even-- it's not even top ten on my list of strangest things I've seen. Maybe top twenty-five."

Edited 2017-05-26 05:12 (UTC)

He isn't recoiling in fear... he's holding her hands and smiling. He isn't begging her to tell him what's going on, what the hell she is, he's telling her that what just happened to him isn't all that weird. And she's standing there feeling like she almost crashed her car and caught the brake just in time.

He's so casual and she feels like she might cry. And she kind of does, she lets out a sound that's half laughter and half a sob. She pulls one of her hands from his to hold her face, to cover her eyes, shoulders shaking a little with how overwhelmed she feels.

Uh oh. He screwed up, somehow? It was the smile, probably. He reaches out with his free hand to brush her hair back from her face, the gesture tender and familiar and hard to separate from the history this place has fabricated for them.

It's jarring, somehow frightening to realize he's falling for this woman in increments so small he hadn't felt the shift until this moment. (Falling for her again, his mind says, and he dismisses the thought.) There's a part of him wondering if this would work, how it would work, how he can convince her to come home with him when the time comes.

He steps on that. He has to. He's not going to drag her away from everything familiar and into a war.

"It's all right. It's okay."

He doesn't know what she is yet, not completely. But it's the fact that he doesn't step back in horror, he doesn't shy away from what he just saw, what she did... It's the acceptance from a man she loved(?), wants to be loved by? A man she barely knows but she feels drawn to in ways that are both familiar and strange...

When he reaches up to brush her hair back from her face, he'll see her smile then. "I'm sorry," she laughs, tearfully, astonished, relieved, grateful. "I just..." Slow down, Caroline. He doesn't know what you are, there's still time for him to freak out.

She holds more confidence in herself than she used to but here, she's found her footing shaky from the start and how he sees her, how he feels about her matters. It matters as much as Steve, as much as Stefan, as much as Elena or Bonnie. "Back home... when people... when I got exposed as what I am... People would freak out, even the people who loved me. I'm not normal back home.

I'm not human. Not anymore. Have you even heard of a vampire before?"

Edited 2017-05-26 05:39 (UTC)

A little weird, yeah. Not human any more raises questions. Of course it does. But the way she talks makes him hurt for her. Got exposed. I'm not normal. Even the people who loved me.

He won't be another of those people.

Shit, he thinks. I just thought it.

And he does. He does love her, though it's a confusing and conflicted sort of love. It's one-half the love of a friend, one-half something else. Maybe a few thirds confusion. But still. At bottom it's one simple fact, no matter the pieces that make up the whole. He loves Caroline. What form that takes in the end remains to be seen.

"I feel like I've heard the word." He can't say where, what context, or what it was describing. But he's heard it.

Poe gives her hand a little squeeze, reassurance that he's there and steady and not running for the jungle. Metaphorically speaking. "Humans aren't the be-all end-all of anything, y'know. Just gonna put that on the table."

Edited 2017-05-26 05:57 (UTC)

There's no question that she cares about Poe, even if she can't define those feelings exactly. But the devastation she'd been prepared to feel when/if he'd rejected her is proof of that. And it's a lot, she almost feels dizzy with it. He goes on to say that humans aren't the be-all end-all of anything and she opens her mouth to say more, to explain with delicacy what it means to be a vampire before she remembers herself.

Her eyes flicker to where she thinks a camera sits. Her voice raises a little, "We should go inside. Maybe you need to lay down for a bit." She wonders how much she might get punished for exposing herself already but... if she can just talk to him for a little while, without worrying about what's being said. She hopes and assumes, he'll catch her meeting and she doesn't care if whoever is watching on the camera does too. They can't see what happens in their minds.

Also, despite taking these few selfish moments to sort her shit out, she is a little worried as to why he just fell backwards.

Edited 2017-05-26 06:04 (UTC)

There's a moment of confusion, clear on his face, but then the cloud lifts. "You're right. You're probably right."

Caroline is not the only terrible liar in this scenario. It's all Poe can do not to look at the cameras as he leads the way into the house. BB-8 rolls out from the kitchen, starting to ask Poe what the noise outside was-- and then chirps a greeting to Caroline instead of finishing the question. Poe reaches down to pat the little droid on the way to the bedroom.

He sits down on the bed, then lays down on it, barefoot as he already was. Easier to climb that way. "Why don't you come lay with me?"

This is the least awkward setup for a thing ever.

If Caroline weren't in the middle of this situation, she might actually laugh at how awful the two of them are at being covert, how stilted they both sound. And she wonders if she'll ever get better at this. Probably not until her life is truly at risk or the lives of those she cares about...

Either way, she follows him inside, she greets BB-8 with genuine affection at this point, although she leaves the head pat to Poe before they make their way into his bedroom.

There's a prickle of anticipation that hits her, as she realizes she's in his room and they're about to lay on his bed. "Yeah, I'd like that." It sounds more natural because, well, she means it on some level.

She slips out of her jacket and shoes before she moves to join him. There are butterflies in her stomach as she moves to lay down on her side, facing him, reaching out for his hands to hold. "Are you okay?" She means it in every sense. There's a lot that needs to be said but it'll be easier if he's asleep. "Why did you fall?"

Poe rolls onto his side facing her, so she can take his hands and he can speak to her more easily. "It was just dizziness. Hit me all at once."

Which doesn't begin to describe the total sensory disorientation. That he's troubled by it is obvious enough. The last thing he needs is to get sick, or have more internal damage, beyond what he's had since he showed up. "I'll be fine."

She can't help the way she extracts her hand from one of his to brush some of the curls from his forehead back, letting her fingers slide over his temple and along his cheek for a moment as she looks at him, her voice lowering. Cameras can still probably hear here but she doesn't care. "Is it because of where you were? Did they hurt you?"

He closes his eyes at the touch, soaking up the comfort of it. It makes the next thing he says a little easier to get out. "I don't know. I don't remember."

A week. Gone. Poof. Better or worse than remembering every excruciating hour of torture? Up until that morning he would have said better, but at least in the First Order's cells he could recall what they ripped from his mind. That someone might have done something like that and he doesn't remember it is more frightening by far.

May 28th, Evening

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