Title: It's Tricky
Fandom: Star Wars The Force Awakens
Characters/ships: Luke Skywalker, Finn/Poe Dameron
Rating: R
Length: 2900 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: title from Run-DMC; inspired by this picture; Poe's preferred term for the disguise registry was dreamed up by AO3 user galacticproportions.
Summary: Secrets and costumes, but not many lies at all (not with these three).

Poe shrugs it off. "Whatever wicked awesome magic communing you two're getting up to, it really isn't my business, much as I'm desperate for details and hopefully some kind of demo."

Luke starts to say something else, but Finn says, too loudly, "So what are you doing here?"

"Except it is my business, now, because I need you."

"Who?" Finn asks, pulling on his jersey. "What for?"

"Both of you." Poe grins, pointing at them. "For a mission." He says it with relish and zeal, almost childlike exhilaration. "A secret mission."

They make time for this in out-of-the-way corners on base, in odd moments snatched from the usual turmoil.

Today, they're in a trashed hangar deck on the second ship in the linked fleet. Luke prefers, of course, to be planetside - even bouncing on a low-G moon, anything that has a faintly living atmosphere and surface - but that's not an option at the moment.

The bulkhead here collapsed long before the ship came into the fleet. The life support works just fine, but there are only dim, greenish-tinged emergency lights and very hesitant heat to be had.

Luke is pressed against Finn's back, cheek between his shoulder blades. They both have their arms outstretched; Luke holds Finn's forearms, just above his wrists, while Finn points and stretches his fingers.

It is very quiet. The thud and thrum of the ship are steady. Eventually, their breathing slows and matches up. Their heartbeats follow suit.

"Do you feel that?" Luke murmurs.

"Mmm." Finn has his eyes closed, his lips together. When he answers, it's all sound, no language.

Luke's own training was so hectic, so frantically conducted and haphazard. He cannot imagine inflicting that on anyone else. His first attempt at training others was a different sort of tragedy -- and not just in the end.

This is different, it has to be.

"What do you see?" Luke asks.

"Eyes're closed."

"Yes. What do you see?"

Finn smiles a little. "Light, sort of. Warmth, spilling. Love?"

Releasing Finn, Luke takes a step back. "This isn't what it looks like."

Finn's eyes fly open. He crashes back to the floor. He'd been levitating at least five centimeters up.

Poe's leaning in the entryway, arms loosely crossed and head slightly cocked. "Looking good, babe."

Finn looks between Luke and Poe, Poe and Luke, rapidly, helplessly. He hasn't told Poe about the training. It's so casual, it doesn't mean anything. He'd been waiting, but he doesn't know -- especially now -- quite for what.

"It's really not anything to worry about," Luke puts in.

Shrugging one shoulder, Poe waves his hand. "I'm not worried. Figured it out a while back."

"I didn't think it was a good idea." Luke pulls his robes a bit tighter around himself and glances at Finn. "But it was his decision."

He is acutely aware, as he would be of a winter wind or sudden downpour, of his responsibilities as well as the intricacies of others' commitments.

Poe pushes off from the bulkhead, moving as smoothly as water. "Yeah, well, I'm sure you always kept everything aboveboard and by the book, down to the last detail."

The corners of Luke's mouth deepen. "Well."

"Exactly, and it's none of my business," Poe says. "Whatever wicked awesome magic communing you two're getting up to, it really isn't, much as I'm desperate for details and hopefully some kind of demo."

Luke starts to say something else, but Finn says, too loudly, "So what are you doing here?"

"Except it is my business, now, because I need you."

"Who?" Finn asks, pulling on his jersey. "What for?"

"Both of you." Poe grins, pointing at them. "For a mission." He says it with relish and zeal, almost childlike exhilaration. "A secret mission."

*

Maz's daughter, or her cousin, or possibly a hivemate -- the relationship is quite vague -- runs a cantina adjacent to the Republic base on Y'danl. Enough leaks of low- and mid-level intel on troop movements and fleet deployments have been traced back to the bar that it's obviously bugged, yet sweep after sweep turned up nothing. Since the base is one of the main diversion points for materiel and intelligence to the Resistance, no one can afford many more leaks.

"So maybe it's not the bar," Finn suggests.

"No, it's definitely the bar," Poe says. "It's just not a tech bug. Could be organic, or maybe espers. Other sensitives."

Luke strokes his beard slowly, then drops his hand as soon as he realizes what he's doing. "You can't know that for sure."

"No," Poe agrees. "Not until we get in there and check."

He sits back, hands on his knees, grinning.

"I can't go into the Inner Rim," Luke says. "Send Rey."

"Time sensitive," Poe replies. "We just can't wait for her to get back from her treasure hunt."

"Artifact quest," Finn says.

"Retrieval mission," Luke says.

"Whatever you want to call it," Poe says.

Luke tries again. "I can't --"

"No, you can't, but the Municipal Official at Large of Ghaim-VI, Bey Jaina, and his executive assistant Lars Bail certainly can." Poe waits for them to get it, nodding slowly at his own cleverness. "That's where the costume department comes in."

"Disguise registry," Finn tells Luke. "He means the --"

"Whatever!"

"So who're you?" Finn asks, because he knows Poe is saving the best for last, as well as the best role for himself.

"Well, I wanted to be Alderaanian Exile cultural attaché Verlaine," Poe replies, shoulders slumped and voice sad, "but I'm not tall enough. And my five o'clock shadow's a little too obvious. So I'm just humble pilot Dasein Dunb."

"You're going to play a Sullustan," Luke says.

"I am! They've been rigging up some extremely lifelike prostheses."

"Who's they?" Finn asks, narrowing his eyes slightly. "The costume department doesn't actually exist."

"Intelligence division, you wouldn't know them. Very hush-hush."

"Uh-huh," Finn says. "Under whose mandate?"

"It was a consensus, really." Poe jumps to his feet and claps his hands once. "We leave at 0700, men. Buddies. Dudes. Let's get some good rest in beforehand." He offers a hand up to Finn and pulls him close. "By rest, you know, I mean --" He starts to whisper, mouth against Finn's ear.

Finn carefully doesn't look at Luke. "Yes, I know what you mean."

"Sweet, just wanted to be sure."

When they're back in their bunk, Finn takes his time. He straightens up his things, checks over his disguise, washes up and eats three protein bars. He needs the quiet, needs to let thoughts sift out and settle, and Poe seems to get that. He lies on his back, datapad on one updrawn knee, idly tapping through personnel reports and low-rated intelligence summaries.

"You figured it out, huh?" Finn asks, sitting on the edge of the bed, back to Poe. When Poe tugs on the strap of his undershirt, Finn exhales and lies down, resting against Poe's thigh. "The training."

"Yeah," Poe says, "I did."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

Poe powers down the pad and sets it aside. "Figured you had your reasons."

Finn squints up at the bulkhead ceiling. Where he ends and Poe begins, he knows very well, but where they move together, what belongs to both of them, that -- that he's still trying to figure out. "Yeah."

"Kind of dying to know what they are, though, I cannot lie."

Finn fidgets with the hem on his undershirt, rolling it between thumb and index finger. "I don't know, that's the thing."

Poe taps his fingers along the curve of Finn's ear. "I know you don't need...permission or whatever." He speaks slowly, trying out the tone, making sure it's right, "but I think it's fucking cool."

Finn looks at him now, smiling faintly. "Lying to you?"

"Ass. No. You being a Jedi."

"I'm not a Jedi."

"Well, no. You're way better than a Jedi."

Scowling a little, Finn says, "This ought to be good. Explain."

Poe shoves his shoulder and tugs on his arm until Finn's reoriented on the bed, then straddles his waist and slides his hands palms up and down Finn's arms. He thinks best in motion; failing that, while touching is preferable. "You're in the world, see. You're not a weird sad hermit wizard or holy saint guy or -- and I love Rey, you know I love Rey -- you're not a beautiful deadly feral sandcat, either, hunting alone, carving her own path. You're here. You're Finn."

Finn's hands settle on Poe's hips, tighten. "Oh."

"Not bad, right?" Poe kisses him, gently, and when he pulls back, Finn is smiling, his face open and gaze soft again. "Sometimes I get it right."

Finn smirks a little. "Sometimes."

"Yeah," Poe says, coming back in to kiss him again. "Improving all the time."

"If I'm here," Finn says a little later, when Poe's come in his mouth and he's shot all over Poe's hand and they're both rapidly dissolving to sleep, "it's thanks to you."

"Nah," Poe mutters, rolling over, dropping his arm heavy as a piece of rebar across Finn's chest. "All you."

*

They arrive just after first sunset on Y'danl. Swathed in their municipal regalia, Finn and Luke proceed without incident through customs and immunization, then make for the cantina. Poe waits back at the ship. He gets briefly stuck in the Sullustan prosthetic mask when the adhesive dries faster than he'd been expecting. Then, when he's extracted himself and reapplied everything, he can't find the fake ID chips for himself and the ship.

Once they're located (in the front pocket of his Bestial Mercantile flight-suit), he only gets through planet inspections with the judicious application of bribery, in the form of both credits and promissory notes for no-questions-asked freight transport.

Poe makes up for lost time, however, when he finally reaches the cantina, nearly two hours after he was due. He solves the question of the leak within twenty minutes. There are no espers or any other shady bugs, just a skinny humanoid barback who aspires to be a squire of Ren, romancing a lonely midlevel Trandoshan officer in the base's file and comms registries.

Luke and Finn don't realize this right away. They've taken a semi-private table in the main room, on a slight dais, in the guise of hiring two Togruta dancers for entertainment and companionship.

"What do you sense," Luke asks when the Togrutas bend their heads together over a holo-sabacc game.

Finn rolls his shoulders and tries to forget about the surface noise and bustle. "A lot. Maybe nothing. It's so loud."

He means the noise from the force, all the different minds and souls and hearts here and out in the city, but it applies to the ambient clatter as well.

"It certainly is," Luke says and sips his ale. "Just breathe."

Finn was told just breathe for most of his life. He never knew what it meant when Phasma or another trooper officer said it; he certainly doesn't know what it means now, coming from the diametrically opposite sort of person.

The Togrutas giggle and poke each other until the slightly taller one asks Luke for more credits to continue their game.

Finn can feel the game as well as the living beings here. Its probabilities spread out like an asteroid field or a marsh studded with mines. He holds his breath, lets the probabilities sharpen and reveal themselves, then selects the three best and nudges them closer to reality.

The smaller Togruta - an androgyne, Finn is fairly sure, claps their hands and bounces delightedly when the next four turns are wins.

Luke taps the back of Finn's hand. "Concentrate."

"I am," Finn says.

"What do you see?"

"Eyes're closed."

"I know." Luke is smiling, his voice makes clear. It's warm and soft, not vague and sorrowful as it usually is. "What do you see?"

Sometimes, Finn senses individuals in the force as bright, moist patches of color that shift and bump into each other. Their edges feather and bleed together for a moment before they separate and drift apart. Other times, especially onboard one of the capital ships, each soul is its own burst of noise, a clutch of static, a single note repeated over and over like a Corellian monk's string plucked at by a child.

Tonight, flanked here by Luke and the Togrutas, hoping without thinking that Poe shows soon, Finn sees a broad river moving through the pool in a pleasure garden. The water, dark because of the humid night, is, he assumes, the force itself, while each bobbing flower or trailing leafy pad is a humanoid soul. Vines trail down from the banks; the air smells like too many flowers, so sweet as to be nearly fetid. Fish and reptiles dart beneath the surface, hard to make out, more motion than bodies; those are other souls he isn't so familiar with, all the non-humanoids crowding the place. He feels them, just as strongly as the flowers and pads, but he doesn't know them, not yet.

There's a bright paper lantern, just one, hung only a meter or so above the pool. Its reflection bobs and broadens on the water, all the brighter and warmer for the darkness all around.

A black snake -- something like a vine, and an eel, and something else, metallic and truly alien -- pulls itself through the water, just at the bottom of the water. Its motion cleaves the water, pulls it apart, leaves a void in its wake before the water struggles to reassert itself and flow back together.

"That," Finn says, grabbing for Luke's hand. "Do you feel that?"

"Easy, easy." Luke fights to stay calm and tries to seem casual as he leans forward and looks around.

The eel leaps from the water -- or it erases the water -- such that the fish and flowers fall to the rocky bottom, rapidly drying. The bright crimson lantern dips downward, too, but stops, hovering over the eel. The eel, whatever it is (Finn hears, almost in a panic, Poe's joyously dismissive whatever!), leaps at the lantern, which flares and swells in reaction.

"Over there," Luke says and Finn pushes the table away, seeing his destination, diving for it, before Luke finishes speaking.

A Sullustan is grappling with a sleek black-hided hybrid droid. It hisses out a stream of curses and urgent code when Finn tackles it, rolling awkwardly through the scattering crowd. It shifts and condenses, impossibly, sickeningly, in his grasp, but then comes the comforting, familiar sound of a blaster bolt, and his opponent sizzles and freezes. EM energy jumps and sparks over its surface.

Finn pulls back, his hands numb, but not before getting the hybrid's main circuit ground under his boot.

"You okay, sweetheart?" Poe asks from within the Sullustan mask. He crouches on the other side of the hybrid, snipping open its hide.

"Don't --"

"Sorry," Poe says, dropping his head, busying himself with the captive. "Forgot."

Finn frowns briefly at him. "Forgot what?"

"Not to call you...you know. In the field." Poe holds up one finger and tilts his head; he's receiving more instructions from BB-8 back at the ship. Nodding, he tasers the headpiece of the hybrid, then looks back (probably; the mask makes it hard to tell) at Finn. "I got scared."

"No, no, that's fine." More than fine, Finn should say, but that's for later. He huffs out a lungful of anxiety and kneels over the hybrid, patting down its sleek, unsettling armor. "I meant, don't waste time checking on me."

"Oh, I'm always going to do that," Poe replies. "You good to stand? Think it's going to take two of us to haul this guy."

"Sullustans are far stronger than humans," Finn points out. "Surprised you don't just toss him over one shoulder."

"Yeah, I would." Poe plants his fists on his hips and looks around. "But I didn't stretch today and I've got this trick knee, see, so --"

Finn heaves a dramatic sigh. "I'll carry him, you do, like. Crowd control or something."

Poe bobs his head. "Cool, cool, see you at the front."

Luke meets them in the street, the Togrutas on his arms. "I'm going to walk our friends back to their housing. Shall I meet you at the ship, your honor?"

Finn straightens up, belatedly remembering his cover role. "That's fine, Bail."

After wrestling the Sullustan mask off Poe, they get the immobilized hybrid tied up in the cargo hold. BB-8 rolls in frantic circles around them, looping back and forth, chirping quickly.

"All yours," Poe tells it. "But be careful, okay?"

BB-8 does not reply. It's already nudging a sharp nano-probe into the hybrid's thorax.

"Remind me to check in on them," Poe says quietly as they withdraw, making for the cockpit. "It seemed pretty eager, right?"

"Yeah," Finn says, glancing over his shoulder. "Really eager, I'm not sure --"

He breaks off when Poe pulls him up against himself, crowding him back against the bulkhead, his mouth on Finn's neck, hands shoving up under the robes that make up his disguise.

"Take these off, come on," Poe mutters, pushing them down Finn's arms, getting them both tangled up. "Want you, just you, come on."

"Right here --" There's laughter in Finn's mouth, and certainty coursing through him, the bright lantern-glow of Poe sweeping him up and whirling him round.