Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandoms:
Relationships:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2025-06-15
Words:
1,929
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
38
Kudos:
107
Bookmarks:
5
Hits:
762

Glow

Summary:

Finn (who really isn’t getting paid enough for this kark) is tasked to investigate a noise complaint in the Resistance barracks.

Yes, it’s coming from Rey’s quarters.

Yes, it’s that kind of noise.

Notes:

I’ve been sort of radio silent these last few months, because a few not-so-very-fun things happened to me, but I’m slowly clawing my way back to a place where I can write, and I thought I’d get this silly little thing out as a warm-up exercise, before I tackle any of my poor, neglected WIPs.

This is just a silly little one shot, based on an idea that I had when I visited my dear Sand_Scorpio last month. It’s 98% tame, 92% silly, and 100% unedited, so go easy on me pls.

 

Work Text:

The open stretch of grass between the mess hall and the living quarters is bathed in the silvery light that the gas giant Ajara, hanging huge and pale-green above the clearing like a Haysian paper lantern, reflects back on its tiny satellite. As soon as Finn exits the command center he is assaulted by the humid night-air of Ajan Kloss.

The karking moon never really seems to cool down and Finn really doesn't know how Poe stands it, but then again Poe grew up on Yarvin IV or not in the sterile, environmentally controlled corridors of a Star Destroyer, so maybe he's just used to feeling damp all the karking time. The mournful song of the zymods accompanies him as he crosses the expanse of trampled grass. The air is thick and heavy, oddly sweet with the scent of the night-blooming fern-trees that ring the base like sentinels.

Sweat instantly beads on his forehead—seriously, it's the middle of the karking night—and he barely makes it back into the cooler, rock-walled corridor of the barracks before any of the moon's indigenous (and unbelievably vicious) bloodgnats zero in on him.

The base is quiet at this time of the night cycle, the corridors bathed in the dim glow of the low-powered standby lighting, there's nary a soul in sight.

Because, really, no one should be up and about at this time of day.

And yet, someone is.

Finn sighs. It's bad enough that Poe talked him into taking his shift at the comms console—Finn really needs to learn how to tell the karking flyboy off, but that's easier said than done when it comes to one Poe Dameron and his big, brown eyes—but of course this is the one night when Jannah has to call in a noise complaint about the person quartered next to her.

That person being Rey.

And from the sound of it she's not rearranging her furniture.

It's fair to say that Finn would rather do just about anything else, including (but not exclusively limited to) riding another Orbak along the hull of a star destroyer to blow-up a navigation tower or, maybe, facing another two dozen Vexis snakes while wearing a Huttese slave-girl outfit and armed with nothing but a sparklemint stick.

Yeah. That's how much he doesn't want to be here.

But, there's no helping it. He's in front of Rey's door now, which is identical to all the other drab, grey duraplast doors that line the narrow corridor, except that this one—ok, yep, maybe he can see why Jannah called this in—has noise coming from the other side of it.

Loud, thumping noise. Maybe she's... exercising?

Finn curses under his breath, in five different languages, featuring imagery that might have made Poe blush if he were here—and Finn really, really wishes that Poe was here right now—before he activates the door chime.

The sounds stop instantly, only to be followed by a prolonged, heavy silence. Somehow, silence is worse.

Silence means that he wasn't supposed to hear any of this.

Finn sighs, remembering that he swore to Jannah that he would have a word with Rey, and presses the chime again.

There's a rustling sound on the other side of the door, followed by Rey's voice, indistinctly hissing in that high-pitched, stage-whispery way that people always seem to assume won't carry, followed by a louder, fake-cheerful "I'm coming!"

Seconds later the door cracks open to reveal Rey's face. Or rather, a sliver thereof.

She barely cracks the door open far enough to Finn to see her flushed left cheek, and the sweat-damp, frizzy flyaways curling at her temple, all bathed in soft, blue light.

And, Finn can't help but notice what appears to be an impressive hickey just above her clavicle.

"Finn! What a pleasant surprise!" Rey says, with a 1000-megawatt smile firmly plastered in place, like she just happened to run into him outside the commissary. Nothing to see here, that smile pleads. Move it along. The effect is only slightly spoiled by the fact that she's panting like she just repeatedly ran her training course.. Her eyes dart to the side, looking at something next to the door that Finn can't see—and he thinks maybe she's mouthing something?—before she turns back to him. "What, er, what can I do for you?"

"Uh... there's been a noi-" Finn flinches when there's a loud clang from behind the door.

He's been inside of Rey's quarters, recently, and he knows that Rey is secretly a gremlin and that every last square inch of space on her shelves and, importantly, on the little Resistance-issued dresser behind the door is covered in scrap. Circuit boards, stabilizers. Last time he was in there, he'd spied a half-dismantled droid brain on her nightstand.

As Finn realized a long time ago, you can take the scavenger out of Jakku, but you can't take Jakku out of the scavenger.

And from the sound—the very loud, aggressive sound of someone or something vaguely Bantha-sized trying to press themselves into the dead angle between the door and the wall—whoever is in Rey's quarters has just realized that too.

"Wha-"

"Nothing!" Rey says, in a high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like her usual soft, Coruscant-accented alto. "Absolutely nothing! You were saying?!"

"Erm... yeah, it's, uhm, sorry to disturb you so... late, but Jannah called in a noise complaint, and I was wondering if you and-" another bang makes him falter, but Rey is beaming at him in such a strained way, it has him wonder if she's trying to mind-trick him into ignoring the noise. Rather than find out, Finn forges on. "And, uhm, I was wondering if you and your, er... friend, could ma-"

"What friend?" Rey all but squeaks.

"The one behind your door?" Finn sighs.

Rey's smile, if anything, grows a little more broad and a lot more forced. At this point Finn is actively afraid that she's going to sprain something. 'Nobody here but poor little me!' that smile pleads.

She opens the door by maybe a quarter of an inch, gesturing with her free hand like that proves anything while holding the duraplast door in place like her life depends on it. "See? Empty."

"Rey," Finn pinches the bridge of his nose. "This is silly"

"No, you-" This time it's Rey that's interrupted as something metallic and dense hits the polished duracrete floor of her quarters.

CLANG!

"I mean... there-" She tries—Force bless her, she really, really tries —to get a word in edgewise, but it seems that this is the moment in which the accumulated scrap in her quarters is staging a revolt.

BANG!

"No one-"

WHUMP!

"In-"

WHAM!

"-here."

Rey squeezes her eyes shut at the loudest crash yet, like a toolbox full of secrets violently spilling its innards on the ground.

For a moment, a blessed, wonderful moment, it seems like the cacophony is finally over, when—with one last, high-pitched clink—a single, sarrassian iron cogwheel hits the floor, as if summoned from the chaos by comedic timing itself.

It wobbles unsteadily, somehow finding its way past Rey's worn striders, out the narrow gap of the door, continuing a fair bit into the hallway, tracing a graceful, albeit unsteady, path across the polished floor.

They both stare at the spinning metal, which against all odds shows no sign of slowing down. Its arching, erratic path leads it back to Finn, who sidesteps almost guiltily.

It seems wrong to impede its progress, it looks like it has somewhere important to be.

Finn looks at Rey, seeing a bead of sweat on her temple as she's nervously gnawing on her lip.

Whirrr... wobble...

The cogwheel takes one last, erratic small circle, like it was bowing out from a performance, before falling over to its side, where it continues to oscillate. If anything, this is even louder.

Wobble-wobble-wobble...

Rey shifts slightly, making a valiant attempt to pretend that her soul isn't actively trying to flee her body. It's not really working for Finn.

"Uh..." Rey says, just as the cogwheel stops spinning with a final, defiant clink.

"Right."

"Yeah."

Finn scratches behind his ear. "So, uhm, you're positive that you're alone in there?"

"Yeah. Absolutely." There's still sweat beading on her temple. The violent flush on her cheeks isn't from exertion anymore, but from embarrassment. The hickey, however, still very much there.

Finn decides to have pity on her. And on himself.

"So, uh, you were... mediating?"

It's a life line, and the returning glimmer of hope in Rey's eyes tells him that she knows this.

"Yeah, like, uhm... a lot. It can get, ah, intense? Meditation… you know?" Her voice helplessly trails off.

Finn… well, Finn doesn't know, but then again he'd also gladly pay all the credits he has to his name in order not to find out.

"Sure, yeah." His eyes flicker to her left, and he swallows to work some moisture back into his mouth. "Just, uhm, maybe keep it down? With the, uh, meditating? Jannah has been... complaining."

"Oh," Rey chuckles nervously. "Oops. Sorry. That's... yeah. Uh. Sorry. It won’t happen, uh, again. Not… this loudly."

She soothes the errand flyaways away from her face, the blue light that's still permeating her room giving her skin an ethereal glow.

Finn's eyes narrow. The overheads in the barracks are one and all more of a nauseatingly piercing yellow reminiscent of a Trodatome’s slime trail, not this soft, oddly warm blue.

Also the room is otherwise dark, at least what he can see of it. It's just the side of her face that bathed in this strange light. The side that's facing the space behind the door.

"What, uh... what's with the light, Rey? New lamp?" He mentions vaguely to his own face.

Rey blinks, pulling her arm down, to raptly watch as the blue glow dances over her knuckles, painting muted highlights and shadows across the topography of her hand.

"Yeah." There's a smile on her face. Not the worried, thousand megawatt grin from a few minutes ago, nor the familiar, fond expression she will have whenever she's talking to BeeBee or when Maz has just given her a compliment.

No, it's nothing like that.

Finn doesn't think he's ever seen her look at anyone or anything just like that.

It lights up her whole face, that smile. Her face is absolutely luminous, carefree and open and soft, and it's not just from that strange blue light.

"New glow-lamp. From Chandrila" Her eyes are unmistakably more than a little shiny as she looks to the side, behind her door. "I like it a lot," she whispers.

Finn doesn't really know what to say to that, doesn't know how to react to the naked yearning in his friend’s eyes, so he just shrugs helplessly as she softly shuts the door in his face, the conversation apparently thoroughly having run its course.

He walks back to the command centre, not quite able to make sense of what just happened, just knowing that something did happen. Something big, somehow.

It almost feels like that one time, just after the battle of Exegol, when he'd felt Rey's life-force flicker out and die. Only, like, the exact opposite.

Finn shakes his head, stepping back out into the humid night-air, only to be immediately enveloped by the sounds and smells of Ajan Kloss. He shrugs again.

Maybe it's nothing. Just a new glow-lamp, like she said.

After all, Rey—of all people—deserves to have nice things.