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Space Latinxs, Snippet #1 (experimental)

So here’s a short-short of Poe discussing what it’s like to be a Space Latino. Since this is a world where a character can be named after a rap song, I figured using “Iberican” in place of “Spanish” and extending it out to encompass both the people and language in this fictionalized, necessarily-simplified, Star Wars universe would work. Iberican is a cultural/linguistic grouping, kind of like Hispanic or Latino is on Earth, and I’m going from there. (That kind of thing though is why it’d be awesome to get some feedback on what’s shitty to simplify and what’s acceptable. That kind of thing.)

(Oh also I’ve decided that homophobia isn’t really a thing so much in this ‘verse, not most of the time; being bi or fluid is kind of just normal. Because science fiction/fantasy, c’mon. Space Gays.)

Anyway. Set sometime after the events of TFA, when Finn is recovered. 

“No,” Poe said, and he looked a little wistful. “Not many people speak it around here. There were a few of us, at the Academy, but most of the others went into other specialties. For some reason not a ton of pilots wind up being Iberican, or speaking it well, so I don’t use it much now. Oh, but there was one time–” and he lit up with remembered amusement. Finn could watch the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled all day and never be bored.

“One time, I was out with a bunch of other Fleet pilots, right, we were out on this pretty remote posting, and we had a stopover on this godforsaken little planet.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Like, one real city on the whole thing, and they had like, two bars in the place, right?”

“Oh,” Pava said, “oh, gather ‘round, it’s a Wild And Crazy Dameron story.”

“It kind of is,” Poe said, amused. Sometimes he went a little tight around the eyes when Pava referred to his putative Wild And Crazy past, but but this time it didn’t seem to bother him. “So okay.” Suddenly everyone in the room was looking expectantly at him, and it would have made Finn nervous, but it didn’t seem to faze Poe at all.

“Okay. So we’re in this little shitty bar,” Poe said, “we got nowhere to be for the night. And it turns out this backwater planet is like, rotten with First Order. So there are all these First Order guys. And like, nobody’s in uniform, right, so it’s fine, it’s not anything we’ve got to really do anything about, right. But like. There’s some tension, and everybody’s hammered. And let me point out– man, First Order? They like to drink, okay? Don’t think for a second they don’t.”

Finn nodded, and suddenly everyone was looking at him. “Oh,” he said, “not me, I was a cadet still until like, a couple months before I got out, we didn’t get that kind of freedom. But if you were offworld you could get up to all kinds of shit.”

“So some of those guys might have been Stormtroopers?” Poe asked.

Finn shrugged. “If they were off-duty,” he said, “you wouldn’t know. What, did you all think we sleep in the outfit?”

“Kinda,” Pava said.

“Hell no,” Finn said, “that shit’s uncomfortable. If you’re offworld and your commander’s chill you can go to bars and stuff, we’re not robots. We don’t, like, sleep in pods whenever we’re not needed.”

“Huh,” Poe said, like that was a revelation.

“So what did you do to them?” Finn asked, a little twitchy at everyone’s regard.

“Oh,” Poe said, and lit up a little again, visibly taking back the mantle of The One Telling The Story. “So the thing about the First Order, right, they don’t let in anybody who’s not human, and even within that, they only speak Basic. So they’re just– they’ve got zero grasp of any other languages. They’re so set on one thing, you know?” and he made a gesture with his hand, as if delineating people in regimented rows, “everything the same, uniformity. So–”

“What’d you do?” Snap asked, leaning in.

“I pretended I didn’t speak any Basic,” Poe said. “I just stuck to Iberican the whole night. I forget how it started, I think I came in and I stepped in something or whatever, and I cussed in Iberican because I wasn’t thinking about it, and then I saw who-all was there and I just rolled with it. Me and one other pilot. She wasn’t a native speaker but she was fluent enough. So we just pretended we didn’t have any Basic at all.”

“Okay,” Pava said slowly, with a visible air of waiting for there to be more.

“So here’s the thing,” Poe said. “I mean, we weren’t in uniform, but like. Our jackets have Fleet insignia on them. It’s fucking obvious we’re Fleet pilots. And you know the Fleet operates with Basic as its standard language. So at the very least we’d understand it, right? And everybody knows that, and the First Order assholes know that. And I’m like, no comprendo, perdon, ¿habla Iberica? no hablo basico, no entiendo, ¿puedo le comprar una bebida? ah, tienes ojos tan bonitos.” 

Finn was entranced; he had never heard Poe speak anything but Basic, and it made his voice seem different, lower and more liquid, sweeter somehow, and it had to just be an impression but it really seemed so different.

“Wait,” Snap said, and he clearly had understood some of that. “Did you– hit on them?”

“I did,” Poe said, eyes crinkling as he grinned widely. “The guy who seemed to be in charge, he was this ginger-haired prick, all prissy-looking, and I just decided I was going to shoot the moon and go for it. I kept getting right in his space and bringing him drinks and trying to get him to talk to me, and I’m saying absolutely outrageous things, I’m licking my lips, I’m making meaningful eye contact, I’m just– I mean, the other pilot, she’d bet me money I couldn’t get the guy to make out with me. And I decided I was really truly going to go for it. So I gave him everything I had.”

“Oh man,” Snap said. “Like, you’re not even my type, Dameron, but I’ve seen you turn it up.”

“It can be hard to resist, I’m told,” Poe said, gesturing as if presenting himself. “I clearly wasn’t this guy’s type either. You can kinda tell. He was tall, he was probably into other tall dudes. Or maybe– broad-breasted women,” and he gestured, kind of circular-ly, in front of his chest. “I got that vibe. Anyway. I still gave him all I had, you know? I was dedicated to this bet. And his buddies thought it was hilarious. I mean, when they weren’t all being super-pissy that I wouldn’t speak Basic, and they said some pretty heinous shit, but like, that was the bonus– if I was pretending I didn’t speak Basic I didn’t have to actually acknowledge the really shitty things they said.” He shrugged.

“Well?” Pava asked. “Did you get him?”

Poe blinked at her, then guffawed. “Hell no!” he said. “We ended up fighting. We nearly got into it in the bar, and managed not to actually come to blows, but then when I left they tried to jump me in the alley. Which, to be fair, I’d kind of expected– they’d literally actually said as much right in my presence, because apparently they actually bought that I was somehow a Fleet pilot with zero Basic– so I was ready for it, and so were the others of us, and we wound up having a real corker of a barfight over it, but nobody died. And I knocked my ginger pal over and gave him a big fat kiss on the mouth before I left, so.” He shrugged.

This was greeted with general applause and laughter. Finn wondered how many uptight ginger commanders there were in the First Order, and looked over at Poe as he thought about how to ask it. Poe caught his look.

“Yeah,” Poe said, “I ran into him again.”

“Really,” Snap said.

Poe sucked his teeth, nodding, and then grimaced. “He was actually on the Finalizer,” he said, “when I got captured.”

Everyone fell silent. “Really?” Pava said.

Poe nodded. “He recognized me. He’s standing there all resplendent in black with leather gloves and the whole schtick, and he looks me up and down and he’s like, no hablo basico, eh?” Poe affected an impersonation of General Hux, looking down his nose and mincing out the foreign phrase. “And I was like, dude, that shit was hilarious and you know it.”

“Did he agree?” Pava asked.

Poe made a face. “No,” he said, “that encounter really didn’t go well for me at all.” He took a drink, grimacing. “But,” he said after a moment, brightening, “I made a friend after all,” and he reached over and grabbed Finn’s shoulder, pulling him in close.

Finn basked in that attention– everyone looking at them wasn’t so bad when it was both of them. He grinned. “That’s right,” he said. And then, on impulse, he added, “And even we thought Hux had no sense of fucking humor. Our Captain thought he was a prissy little fuck.”

“Did he,” Poe said.

“She,” Finn corrected. “Phasma. She had no time for him.” He reflected on it. “She wasn’t exactly what I’d call a broad-breasted woman, but she was a couple inches taller than he was, and yeah, I’d bet you anything she was his type. And she had no interest in that at all.”

“Taller than him,” Poe said, giving Finn a strange look. “He was pretty tall.”

“Oh yeah,” Finn said. “Phasma’s enormous. Highlight of my life was throwing her down a garbage chute on the Starkiller.”

That also got a good reaction, laughter and applause and high-fives all around. Best of all, though, Poe still had his arm around Finn, and Finn leaned in against Poe’s solid warm weight and soaked it in, marveling at the way this made him feel. Like he was part of something, like he was important.