Work Text:
For years, when I lay awake at night, unable to sleep, I worried that I’d forgotten how to have a family.
It plagued my nightmares. I’d dream of my family coming back, waiting for me with open arms, and I’d run to them but somehow when I got there I’d have forgotten how to hug. My mother, always an indistinct blur, would put her arms around me and I’d push her away. Sometimes there was a wall of sand and dirt stopping me even reaching them.
I didn’t need to think about it much to work out what that meant.
Life was cheap on Jakku. People were cheap on Jakku. I found out what sex was at the age of eight, when another scavenger offered me 1/8th of a ration to touch him. I didn’t. I never did, when any of them asked. But you saw things. There wasn’t much to do at night but drink and screw, and people didn’t often care to be discreet. After all, we might all die any day. People did die all the time from the heat or the work. Why care?
Before I found the AT-AT, I used to live in town. I had a bolt hole. A unused store cupboard, really, but big enough for me to fold down into it and be sheltered from the night winds. People used to stop outside it and fuck and fight. I used to hold my doll to me and try to remember what it felt like to be hugged.
When I found the AT-AT, it was a blessing. I was far enough out from town that nobody bothered me any more. I could sleep at night without fear of someone pulling open my door and dragging me into their mess.
It was about then that I swore off touch.
Until then, I’d still look for it. I’d try to brush hands with the other traders. I’d try to make friends. I imagined one of them might adopt me. Let me sleep in a real tent. Let me live with them until my real mum and dad came back.
I didn’t need that any more. I had a home. I had a job to get food. I didn’t need anyone.
So I stayed that way, locked away, keeping my distance, only touching if necessary, until Finn arrived and grabbed my hand.
It’s surprising how easy it was to adjust to being touched again.
Finn doesn’t seem to realise that not everyone wants to be touched. He isn’t malicious with it, doesn’t want anything, or at least doesn’t seem to want anything. He just likes to touch. Sometimes I wonder how he survived as a stormtrooper, but then I just find myself feeling very glad that we found him before he proved that he couldn’t.
Poe isn’t as tactile, but he seems to be becoming more and more so over time. When we first started running missions together, while Finn was still lying unconscious and most of my energy was going into training with Master Luke, he mostly kept himself to the odd friendly pat on the shoulder. Occasionally, he threw an arm around me.
I’m glad of that. Finn was enough of a shock to the system, I don’t know what I’d have done if Poe had started by giving me long hugs too.
But as we flew together, as we waited by Finn’s bedside together, we got to know each other. His touches got longer. Less of a quick pat on the back for a job well done, more a long touch of reassurance. Of camaraderie.
One time, when my training seemed to be stalled and none of the missions we were running seemed to be bringing us closer to ending the First Order, he hugged me. I must have looked terrible for him to do it, broken, but he just held me for the longest time and I held him and it was comforting. Affirmation not only that he was there but that I was there. That I knew how to be a human. That I had a family now.
I have a family now.
Things changed, little by little. It wasn’t as though we went overnight from barely touching to cuddling but somehow sometimes it slipped in there. We came to rely on each other. To trust each other. Poe let me pilot his X-wing. I fell asleep once with my head on his shoulder.
And then Finn woke up.
And I had a family again.
And it felt like family. Warm and welcoming. There was always someone there to give me a hug and reassurance if the day had gone badly. There was always someone there to share a story with. I knew, of course, that people normally only shared that kind of closeness with one other person. Enough of the screaming arguments I’d overheard as a child related to just that. But neither of them seemed to care.
Well, until Finn ran. But that was probably just a misunderstanding. He didn’t get that, though most people only get this close to one person, there’s nothing wrong with being this close to more than one person.
After all I’ve been through, after giving up almost entirely on being cared for again, I wasn’t going to sacrifice a fraction of the care that was now mine.
The problem next was how to make sure they both stayed with me.