happy birthday to you

"You don't know when your birthday is?"

Poe is perched on a crate of rations, watching Rey and Finn get some forms properly filled in. It's already been somewhat of a disturbing experience, even with the administrator tactfully skipping over last names--Rey only reluctantly put down Jakku as her home planet, and Finn has been shuttled to and fro too many times to name just one. 

Rey shakes her head with both defiance and embarrassment. Of course she doesn't know her birthday. She doesn't even know her own family. Poe supposes he shouldn't be surprised.

"And you?" Poe turns to Finn.

He shrugs. "The First Order never kept track. It's easy to figure out your age if you have the right technology, though. I'm twenty-three. You can put that down."

The administrator does so, dutifully.

"I'm nineteen," Rey chimes in. "At least, I think so."

You think so? "That means you've never had a birthday party, either."

Again Rey and Finn exchange slightly confused glances."...No?" Rey ventures. 

"Sort of," Finn qualifies, remembering all the new duties the First Order added with every year you grew.

"Okay." Poe holds up his hands and shakes his head. "Do you want a birthday?"

"What's so important about a birthday?"

This stumps Poe for a second, because it's always seemed so natural, birthdays in the Dameron home, in the Resistance. "It's like a day...to celebrate...being you. Your existence. You know? People sing songs and have fun. They give you presents, too. Mine is in a few days, and I think Jessika is plotting something."

The General walks past, busy as always, but catching a snatch of their conversation. She pauses to look fondly at the bright faces of the boy who broke his training to join her battle and the girl who brought her brother home. "I think the two of you are cause for celebration," she says, before moving on.

"See," says Poe. "The General thinks you should have birthdays, too. Just pick a date that you like. The day you met the Resistance, maybe?" No, he thinks, a second too late. That's mixed with too many bad memories.

Rey and Finn both scrunch up their faces and think. It takes a long time. Too many dates have bad memories tied to them, Poe guesses, dismayed.

"Maybe," Rey finally says, "we can have yours?"

"Yeah, yeah!" Poe jumps off the crates with a kind of eager desperation. "Sure. You can have mine. We can all have the same birthday. That'd be nice. You can put that down," he adds, to the longsuffering administrator.

He leaves the three of them to complete the paperwork and covers the base to make sure at least ninety percent of them remember to wish Rey and Finn a happy birthday--because if there's anything Poe Dameron is good at, it's rallying the troops.

-

Poe has big plans for the big day. There's only one small problem.

If there's anything Poe Dameron is good at, it's not baking.

Jessika comes in, her hands sticky with paint from hanging up a birthday banner, takes one look at the cake, and bursts out laughing. 

"What's so funny? It's not--it's not that--okay, come on, you're getting paint everywhere."

His friend stops laughing long enough to gasp out, "That's the worst cake...I've ever seen."

Poe frowns at it. It does look sort of terrible, lopsided and charred on one side, the iced words a barely intelligible scrawl. "I don't have time to bake another. Maybe I can add some sprinkles."

"Poe, no amount of sprinkles can possibly save that cake."

With a sigh, Poe deposits the cake on the far end of the counter. "Okay, let me see that banner."

Cheerfully, Jessika unfurls it. "Happy Birthday to Rey and Finn and Poe," it reads. The "Poe" is very small, the letters all squished together. At his squint Jessika shrugs. "I ran out of room."

She did it on purpose to rag him, but Poe can hear Rey and Finn's voices in the hall, so he waves mutely for her to hang it up. It turns out Resistance pilots are laughably bad at all sorts of arts and crafts, because the banner sags threateningly and falls down on them both, and when they finally disentangle themselves the birthday kids are already peering at the cake.

"It says 'Rey and Finn,'" Finn observes, puzzled.

Rey has gone ahead and taken a mouthful, even as the two banner-swathed pilots fling out both hands to stop her. "Rey, stop, that's the junkiest cake ever," Jessika says, but Rey's eyes light up.

"What is this?" she asks with her mouth full.

"Cake," Poe answers helplessly.

"Cake?" Finn stares down at the chunk Rey has handed him, and tentatively puts it into his mouth. "Maybe I've heard of it. It's sort of like bread, but better."

"It's the best cake I've ever had," Rey says breathlessly.

"I've never had cake."

"Neither have I," Rey admits, and then before anyone can get in her way she's running off with a slice for the General, too.

General Organa returns with a napkin, crumbly cake, and a perplexed expression, while Rey bounds in front of her in a state of great excitement. Her eyes roam the room until they land on Poe. "Who taught you to bake, Dameron?" she demands, but she looks like she's trying not to laugh.

For a second Poe stares at his boots. "No disrespect meant, ma'am, but...you did."

Oh, that brings back memories. For a moment Leia is lost in a scrambled recollection of two little boys licking batter out of the pan, and, even further back, two other wild boys, one dark and one fair, presenting her with a cake they cobbled together from Rebellion rations. (It was completely unpalatable, but they ate it anyway, stealing whatever joy they could from under the hands of their oppressors.)

She snaps herself back to the present. Rey gives Poe such a brilliant smile that he'll carry the memory of it for a dozen birthdays to come. He figures if she's grinning at him like that, the cake can't be that bad.

So he tries it, scooping a bite up with a fork, and then makes a disgusted face, because it is. 

But the laughter is sweet, anyway.