Title: The Glistening Edges
Fandom: Star Wars The Force Awakens
Rating: R
Length: 2100 w
Content notes: voluntary oviposition
Author notes: Side story to my Cure for Pain series (pre-TFA Han/Poe backstory) but absolutely a standalone. Title from Morphine, "Let's Take a Trip Together"

Summary: Han's the smuggler, but Poe's the one taking the risk this time.




"You are a smuggler, are you not?" As the Braconida cocked her head, her antennae twitched slightly. Her voice was quiet, almost strained. "I'm not seeing the problem, I'm sorry."

"The problem! She's not seeing the problem!" Han turned, arms spread, to address Poe, then whirled back around.

"Guess not, no," Poe replied. When the Braconida's mandible dropped open in something like a smile, he grinned back and shrugged. What can you do? he tried to say. He's Han. As if she'd even know what that meant; Poe barely understood it himself.

"Payment will be up front," the Braconida said. "If that's the concern?"

Han shook his head. "One rule! I have one rule: get out with my skin intact. Everything else is a bonus."

"I don't know where else to go," she said, her antennae drooping; her forelegs, tipped with pincers, came up to cover her face.

"Sorry, lady, but that ain't my problem." Han glanced over his shoulder. "Our problem, I should say. That ain't our problem."

"How much?" Poe asked, careful not to look at Han as he approached. He heard, of course, the gusty, put-upon sigh; the entire hangar probably did.

"Four thousand credits," she said.

"No, how much, um." He looked at his feet, then up, past her. "The cargo?"

"Kid --" Han put in.

Poe held up his hand, still not actually looking at him.

"A quarter million," she said softly. "Maybe more, but I don't think so."

"I'll do it," Poe said.

Her huge, compound eyes glittered and her mandibles clicked in what he assumed was joy. Perhaps relief? Something positive, at any rate.

"Nope. No, you won't, for fuck's sake." Han stepped between them. "There's a difference between 'helpful' and 'suicidally stupid', you know. Damn it."

"Is there?" Poe asked, stepping around him. "Are you going to figure that difference out someday, or...?"

"Fuck." Han whistled, low and long, rocking back on his heels. "This is beyond stupid, kiddo. And I should know."

Poe held out his hand to the Braconida. "I'm Poe. You're...?"

"Kanaya," she said, grasping his wrist with one pincer. "Thank you, Poe."

»«

"Look, it's not a million," Poe tried to argue on the way back to the Jaina. "Not even half a million. A quarter of a million eggs? I'll hardly feel them."

When he said it aloud like that, he didn't feel quite so confident.

"Kid --" Han half-laughed, half-groaned. "You'll feel it, all right."

»«

Onboard, Kanaya had him lie down on a spare bunk, shirt off, but otherwise fully dressed. Poe had taken three shots of Corellian brandy - Han joined him - but he wasn't feeling it.

"You can wait outside," she told Han.

Poe swallowed against a small, fast rush of cold down his throat. "He can --"

"I'm staying," Han said. It was bluster, nothing more, and obvious at that, but Poe relaxed slightly all the same.

"The process is..." She cocked her head, fore-wings lifting slowly, then drifting down. "Intimate."

"You don't say?" Han clasped Poe's shoulder and squeezed. "Then I'm definitely staying."

Poe stared upward at the bulkhead, counting the rivets, then studying the patterns of rust and flaking paint.

Kanaya rose, horizontal now, both sets of wings beating lazily.

Poe rolled his shoulders and tried to loosen his muscles. He'd done way weirder, far scarier things. He didn't know why this was making him feel quite so nervous. It was probably too much brandy; his tolerance was never going to rival Han's.

"Hey," he said as she landed light as a breath atop him.

"You've done this before?" Kanaya asked.

"No --?" Poe started to sit up, but her pincer, which had been light, almost tickling, on his hand earlier, was now firm, even painful, around the base of his neck. "That's all right, right?"

Her reply was a strange buzz that came from both her jaw and the small hind wings.

"There's a first time for everything," Poe tried and added a smile.

In the corner, Han grunted. "This is so stupid."

"You already said that," Poe told him. "Several times."

"Oh, did I? Because you'd think when someone tells you -- repeatedly! -- that this is a stupid, terrible, awful idea, you might listen. I assumed, since you're still going through with said stupid idea, maybe I'd forgotten to point out the obvious."

"Four thousand credits --" The last syllable died just past Poe's lips as Kanaya let loose a sigh full of something - pheromones, narcotics, Poe didn't know and didn't care - that sifted rapidly right through his consciousness. Each pore across his skin opened like a whirlwind, begging for something more.

He watched her ovipositor unroll out of her thorax as she arched sharply and curved over him. A small, singular hair at first, the ovipositor soon swelled, both broadening and lengthening.

Far away, Han said, faintly, "Kid? Hey, kid?"

Poe couldn't speak.

"Yes," Kanaya said a bit later, stroking the tip of the ovipositor down Poe's sternum, playing his ribcage like an old instrument. "Yes, you'll do. We like you."

"Hey!" That was Han again, even farther away.

Poe's mouth was still open, his tongue caught against the back of his teeth on the sibilant 's' of credits. The vibrations persisted across his palate and lips. As she lowered herself, the bristles along her jaw piece stroked his lips, made him hungry.

Between them, he could just make out the ovipositor, so thick now, pulsing and flexing. The tip scraped at the hollow of his stomach, just below the arch of his ribs.

When she pierced him, he screamed and moaned and stayed silent. His cock was half-hard, twitching against his trousers. Han entered his vision, a scowling face topped by gray hair.

"The fuck are you doing?"

Her pincer tightened around Poe's throat. He did gurgle at that. His body could make a lot of noise, but he couldn't.

She said something harsh and buzzing in Braconii to Han, never moving her head. She seemed focused, both compound eyes and the three ocelli, solely on Poe. The ocelli looked bottomless, dark and beckoning, while the larger compound eyes twinkled at him like a thousand guttering candles, the stars of an unfamiliar system.

His skin was too tight, too fragile. He wanted to rip it off, give her access to everything. Her ovipositor flexed within him, almost mechanical in its smoothness and coldness, lifting up the top layer of his skin, excavating room for her eggs. When they started to enter and disperse through the cavity, his cock went all the way hard. He heard himself gurgle, felt drool spill out his mouth like a fountain.

Han said his name. Poe heard it, but all he could see were Kanaya's eyes, her slowly opening-then-shutting mandibles, and the throbbing base of the ovipositor.

The eggs were slippery, wet and chilly, wrong, twisting and rolling between his skin and muscle. Far, far too many to count but still he pretended he could; he needed to know how many, to feel each one pulse into him, quiver, then find its way to its sisters.

"Good boy," Kanaya was murmuring, her mandibles stroking his mouth now, rhythmically, in time with her egg-laying. Poe would have writhed toward her, gotten even closer, if he could have moved. As it was, untouched, unbidden, his cock moved and ached. "Good, good boy."

Han said something else. It must have been serious; she turned her head, antennae straight and mean.

"I warn you --" She broke off, the ovipositor shuddering, the flow of eggs slowing into something much jerkier. "Do not interrupt the process, not if you --"

"Just tell me he's alive," Han said. His hand landed on Poe's shoulder, warm, smooth, human.

Her antennae dipped and jiggled. "What use is a dead host to me?"

"Reassuring," Han said. Poe's muscles twitched, like waking from a very deep sleep; he still couldn't move, but at least he could feel them again. "That's real reassuring, thanks so much."

She did not reply. Her fore-wings beat hard as the ovipositor thrust into him one last time, but no eggs came. She lifted herself from Poe, then hovered over him, rubbing closed the entry point with the retracting ovipositor tip.

"Delivery to my sisters on Gannaria-3 within five standard days, as agreed," Kanaya said, returning to her upright stance. "Your account has already been credited."

»«

No matter how much he jerked off, he couldn't seem to lose his erection. By the end of the first standard day, he was in near agony, shooting dry, his head resounding with pain.

"Fever," Han said, holding his palm against Poe's forehead. "The fuck were you thinking?"

"I --" He swallowed. "I don't know."

"Go lie down," Han said and turned away. When his hand broke contact with Poe's face, there was a dizzying wave of cold for a moment. "I got this."

He meant the cockpit, Poe assumed. His feet were heavy and clumsy. He made his way back to the bunk by creeping along, one hand on the bulkhead the whole way.

He couldn't feel the eggs, not when he pressed his palm against his belly, not when he closed his eyes and concentrated. He imagined them dissolving, sinking right into him, binding him forever.

(That made him come again, fist in his mouth to stifle the noise.)

»«

It was none of Han's business what Poe did on the side. They both agreed about that. So it was stupid, really stupid, that Poe wished like hell that Han had stopped the deal. Failing that, that he'd find some solution now.

He wasn't Poe's father. He was his boss, in a couple different positions, but he didn't get a say beyond "fly there" and "unload that" and, maybe, most of the time, "suck me".

Expecting more just meant Poe was more disappointed.

He was just smuggling unusual cargo. He didn't have to make this into a whole thing.

»«

On Gennaria, Poe's fever broke as soon as the senior Braconidae sliced a small x just above his navel. One pressed both forelegs down on his chest and, after a strange, stuttering pause, the eggs poured out. They were tiny, very beautiful, oval gems of deep, reddish purple. They moved in a rush, almost as if racing each other.

Behind him, Han retched.

There was no sense of emptiness or loss when they were done. Poe simply sagged on the edge of the table, sweat all over his face and running down his back.

"How do you know you got 'em all?" Han asked.

The junior Braconida clicked her mandibles several times. "We got them all."

"But how do you know?"

The senior one applied a bacta plaster to Poe's incision and stroked her pincers over his abdomen. "Our young do not tolerate mammalian hosts for very long. They rushed to escape, believe me."

"That's why I've been so sick," Poe said. He straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck. "They were sick."

"You'll all get over it," she told him, pincer grazing one of his nipples.

He bit his lip, looking at her big compound eyes. It was impossible to tell what she meant, or what she wanted, if anything at all; all the same, he couldn't look away.

"He's all yours again," she told Han, speaking over Poe's head. "Treat him well."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Han asked, but they were already gathering their supplies, stowing away the large flask of eggs, and making for the exit. "What was that, lady? Huh?"

Poe pulled on his shirt and slid off the table to his feet. "C'mon," he said, and took Han's hand. "I'm buying the next several rounds."

"Careful, kiddo." Han dropped a kiss on the crown of Poe's head, then pressed his mouth there, immobilizing them both, for several moments. Finally, he straightened up. "I can drink you under any and all tables."

"Truth," Poe said and leaned against Han, just for the space of a blink, before moving back into the main room of the cantina. "This way, though, I get to have my way with you."

Han's laugh was big, almost barking, even in the overwhelming clamor of the bar. "No need to get me liquored up for that --"

"Oh," Poe said, and faked a turn for the front door. "In that case --"

"No, no, nice try." Han steered him back to the bar. "Keeping your word's important. You're buying, you said. No takebacks."

»«

Later, half a system away, Poe's fever long gone but hangover still trembling through them both, Han turned him over in bed, moved his mouth from Poe's lips to his throat, tracing the pincer bruises with his tongue, then travelled down his chest, across to his swollen, abraded nipples, and lower still, first to the oviposition point - a fading bruise - then the incision - a fresh, fragile scab. Poe's fingers flexed and clutched in Han's hair, against his shoulders, as Han kissed, and bit, then suckled hot and wet, each point, every trace.

Poe came in Han's mouth, pouring out the rest of himself, a torrent and a rush, and then, finally, he was both empty and safe, for the time being.