summary: poe dameron wants nothing more than to give you the world. sometimes, it feels a little out of his reach.
There were two parts to Poe Dameron's soul.
The first was irretrievably and completely taken up by you. You'd been his everything to him since the day you met. He couldn't quite describe the feeling but it felt like everything started making sense the minute that you'd walked into his life. A lot of things in the universe were vastly confusing and complicated, but never you. Leia Organa had once described you as two halves of a whole idiot and a statement had never rang more true. You were his home and his whole damn heart.
Then there was Max - in the same way he couldn't describe falling in love with you, Poe couldn't describe the feeling of holding his kid for the first time. You'd put another person into the galaxy and he was half you and half Poe and it was...well, it was everything. He didn't think it was possible to love you more but after becoming parents, his feelings towards you only increased by a thousand. Those first few weeks after becoming a trio truly felt like heaven.
But, being a parent came with fear. Poe was still living with bad memories: memories of the war, memories of his friends dying, memories of the constant fear that he might lose you. Above all, he remembered how it felt to lose his own mum. He'd lost Shara and then he'd lost Leia and now he couldn't shake the fear of his son losing you.
Those thoughts only creeped up on him after dark - usually when you were dead to the world beside him, sleeping quietly. They would seep into his mind, pulling him from the happy little bubble you'd formed around yourselves, reminding him that the war being over didn't make the galaxy less terrifying. There was still bad out there; mortality was still fragile as fuck and everything was hanging by a thread. Poe knew that you could handle yourself - heck, you could probably handle him too - but all he wanted to do was protect you. To protect your son, and to protect any future children you might have. His parents had fought so hard to give him the best galaxy they could and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to do the same.
And, as though Max could sense his father's unrest, the kid began to rise. Poe had suspected on a few occasions that his one-year-old's weirdly empathetic tendencies might have been to do with (dare he say it) the Force. That was probably a thought for the morning. At 2AM, he did not have the brain capacity to think about his son being able to do the same freaky mind shit as Luke Skywalker.
Max was stood in the middle of his cot, dark curls sticking up everywhere as he jutted out his bottom lip. He usually had a million different reasons for waking in the night: too hot, too cold, he wanted you, he wanted Poe, BB-8 had got bored of playing whale noises and rolled away, he was hungry, he was thirsty. The only three words in his vocabulary were Finn, effswing and up! so really, there was no telling what was wrong.
'Hey, buddy!' Poe picked him up, taking him in his arms as he sat in the chair across the room. 'What's going on?'
He let out a small hiccup as Poe held him, bumping him up and down on his leg for a minute. It quickly became clear what he wanted: attention. The fact he'd screamed at the top of his lungs until someone came to see him was certainly a Dameron trait. Perhaps Max Dameron was short for Maximum Dameron because he seemed to have all the peak traits of Poe, Kes and Shara.
'You wanna know about my day, huh?' Poe continued. 'I flew to Coruscant this morning. Did you know that politics is really boring? I could have napped through the whole thing. Leia - you don't know Leia, but she was really cool - would have come back to haunt my ass if I did.'
Max let out a tired babble in response, leaning into his father's chest.
'I know, right?' The pilot responded. He gently ran his hand through Max's hair, trying to tidy it up a little bit. 'Getting to fly was fun. I'll teach you soon.'
'Soon being at least five years I hope.' The sound of your voice from the door way made Poe jump. He immediately smiled when he saw you - a natural reflex, really.
'You should be sleeping.' He shot back.
Poe shuffled over slightly so that you could cram into the arm chair beside him, leaning into his side. He placed Max between the two of you - that was finally enough to get him to stop sniffling. With one hand wrapped around Poe's finger and the other clinging onto your shirt, he peered quietly up at both of you.
'What's on your mind?' With your free hand, you reached up to brush a few curls out of Poe's eyes.
'Other than the fact it's 2AM and my kid is using my hand as a teething device?' He replied. 'I'm fine, baby. Just tired.'
'Poe.' You groaned. 'You know there's no point in trying to lie to me, right?'
It was true. You knew the man like the back of your hand and you easily see through any bullshit he gave you. It was a curse at the best of times - but when he really wanted to hide something from you? Like the fact he was suddenly so terrified of losing you that he was becoming sleepless? It was a real pain in the backside. You were already busy with Max and trying to help rebuild the Republic; he didn't want to add to your work load.
'It's nothing.' He said. 'I promise.'
'I know that you haven't been sleeping properly for a while.' You softly said. 'You practically flew out the room when Max started crying.'
'I've just...' Poe trailed off, brown eyes falling to your son. He was almost asleep now. 'I've been thinking a lot about what would happen to him if you died, or if I died.'
'The war's over, baby.' You reminded him. 'You don't have to worry about that anymore.'
'I know.' He nodded. 'But I lost my mum years after her war was over. I keep thinking about Max having that same pain and I...I can't let that happen. I can't.'
'It won't.' You gently broke your hand free from Max's grip, placing it on Poe's cheek. 'If you spend so much time thinking about ifs and the buts and the maybes then you forget to appreciate what's happening right in front of you.'
You pressed a kiss to his forehead before continuing. 'It will be okay. I know things are scary right now and that we're still coming down from the war but that fear will subside eventually. You're the bravest person I know, Poe Dameron, and whatever life throws at you, you've got this.'
Poe tilted your head up to his, meeting you half way in a soft kiss. 'How do you always know what to say?'
'I spend my whole life around Dameron boys.' You reminded him. 'I'm fluent in your language.'
'We're lucky to have you.' He smiled. 'I used to say that I'd give you the whole world but I think you've done that for me.'
'You have.' You shot back. 'Everything we have is because of you.'
'And you.'
You glanced down at Max, who was now dead to the world and dribbling on your shirt. 'Call it a tie?'
'Fine.'
Poe'd had a hole in his heart since he'd lost his mum. It had only got bigger when Leia had died - increased his fear of losing you, really. The whole time he'd known you, he'd always thought that you were simply helping him forget about what he'd lost, distracting him from the things he was missing. Now, he was realising it was something much more.
You weren't distracting him - you were healing him.
