#I think the fighting ring should be called the box of homo

[lesbiannerdd]

When is Daniel gonna show Neph his titties and I don’t mean like how he was shirtless in the box of homo as I call it I mean like titties popped out.

[elopez7228]

Scenic Route 19/47

Life is too short to waste wallowing in tears. Read on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/18268208/chapters/43229774 

Start over : https://elopez7228.tumblr.com/post/620919089893933056/scenic-route-0147

***

Rey traveled south through Yellowstone for another two hours, admiring the beauty of the landscape around her: Sprawling rivers, steep slopes, verdant forests, and picturesque vistas blooming with yellow and red...

At 45 miles an hour, the speed limit was perfect for behind-the-wheel contemplation. The road was busy, no doubt filled with Americans who took maximal advantage of the national holiday by asking for a few more days off around the same time. The traffic was dense and she was obligated to slow down.

The road she had chosen took her far north from the southern entrance of the park, depositing her in Hunt Thumb Geyser Basin, where she was to join the circular loop that traversed the diameter of the park. It was time to take a break.

No one forgot their first geyser when they visited Yellowstone.

It was easy for frequent visitors and campers to forget such majesty when the park had so many of them. But for Rey, it was a first, and she lacked the words to express her sheer wonder at the sight.

Translucent streams of boiling water pooled in massive basins and flowed into the lakes below, creating a soft, steamy mist that glided over sedimentary rock and bubbled gently over the muddy banks. It was fascinating to watch. Finn would have loved to see it, she thought with no small amount of chagrin. Hadn’t they planned their entire honeymoon around Yellowstone?

Consulting her phone, she realized that it would be late enough in the morning to be able to call home.

“Hello, Rey,” Her heart felt too tight for her chest.

It was Poe who answered on the first ring. She was still furious she had to listen to the voice of the man who had ruined her once peaceful life. Still, she made an effort to keep the venom out of her voice. “Oh, yes, hello. How is he? Any news?”

“Nothing new, he’s the same as last night. They hooked him up to a ventilator. Rey, if—if you could see what they did to him,” she could hear Poe’s voice braking. “I have photos, evidence for the police, but I don’t know if...if you would even want to see them?”

Rey hesitated. Should she see them? Should she look upon the face she kissed a thousand times to find it broken and disfigured? She chewed on her lip. It was time to stop running from her problems.

“Yeah. Send them to me, I want to see what you’ve been through. I’m sorry I’m not there in person—“

“You have nothing to be sorry for, you did nothing wrong.” Poe interrupted her, “and you have the right to be angry too...about what happened, I’m...I’m sorry about that.”

“Oh, really? You’re sorry?”

“Yeah, I never wanted it to end up like this. What you guys had, it was so—“

“Oh, spare me your act, Poe. Would you dare tell me that if you could go back you wouldn’t do it all over again?”

Poe was silent. Rey listened to his unsteady breathing on the other side.  There was no good answer to this question. If he admitted regretting his decision to become Finn’s beau, then he wasn’t truly in love. But if he didn’t regret breaking Rey's marriage, then she was entitled hate him.

“That’s what I thought.” Rey snapped, her voice frigid. “You're not sorry in the least...so you'll excuse me if I don’t feel like having this conversation right now.”

"I understand.” Poe replied.

There was no need to elaborate. Her wounds were still fresh.

She took a deep breath. In the name of Finn's health, she would put aside her injured pride.

“What do the doctors say?  Will he recover?”

“Cranial trauma. Fractured ribs that punctured his lung. Bruises everywhere... he has a broken nose, a split lip, and a black eye. I couldn’t count all the bruises.”

Rey felt tears burning under her eyelids.  She wiped them with the back of her hand. “Bloody monstrous. And you, how are you holding up?”

"Yeah, I also have a broken rib and I took some hits, but it's nothing. They really got him.”

"But why?” She cried, “why were they hell-bent on Finn?”

Poe let out a sigh of impatience through the speaker. Finally, he snapped. “Well what do you think, Rey?  Because he’s black! He’s black and gay, and he was beaten half to death for it. Those skinheads screamed at him to go back where he came from, and that they were going to bust his homo ass, and they really beat him up. Him, not me.”

Poe took a breath, his voice breaking into a sob, but he didn’t give Rey time to respond. “I didn’t know how to protect him. I took shots at them but...I didn’t know...I didn’t know what else to do, I’m sorry.”

With her hand on her mouth to keep her terrified emotions at bay, Rey listened to what seemed to a living nightmare. Poe sighed mournfully in the distance.

She could not find the words; her mind suddenly seemed empty. How this could have happened in this day and age was beyond her. “But...but Finn is English, he was born in Devon, and his parents too!”

“Grow up, Rey, come out of the clouds.” Poe replied wearily. “Time to let go of the Care Bears.”

His last sentence was so laden with exhaustion and bitterness that it brought her back to the present. “I'll call you back tomorrow.  If there’s news in the meantime, call me, promise?” She managed to articulate.

“Promise. Anyway, try to enjoy your vacation. Life is too short to waste wallowing in tears. I’ll watch over him.”

It took several minutes for her to recover from that conversation. In a few sentences, in a few words, Poe had certainly upset her, but had also exposed himself. She had prepared for a confrontation, for the opportunity to shower Poe with insults, to make him pay for her sorrow, to make him carry the cross for inflicting such misery on all three of them...but he had been brimming with sincerity, and (though she hated to admit it) was more affected by this whole thing than she was.

She blew her nose and dried her tears. What would she have wanted instead? To marry a man who did not love her, not like that at least, and then find herself stuck in an unhappy marriage where all three of them would have been miserable?  

So what if she already paid the for the catering and the decor and all the bells and whistles? Finn was between life and death and he didn’t know that she had forgiven him. Unlike the wedding, that was truly priceless.

She would talk to Poe about it tomorrow.  It was time to make nice with each other.

Rummaging in her bag, she found an old envelope and a tiny pencil. She hastily scribbled the words on the back of it before putting it in the glove box.

Life is too short to waste wallowing in tears.

That would be her motto now. And she was going to start right away.

Heart pounding, she wrote a text to Ben.

Hello Ben, I left for Yellowstone. I needed a change of pace, I won’t be at the concert tonight. What are your upcoming dates? Rey

Her phone lit up a few seconds later, but not with the response she was expecting. Her eyes widened in horror. With trembling hands, she opened the attachments that had just been sent to her by Poe. It was Finn's photographs. He was lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to complicated machinery with tubes and wires. His right eye was huge, swollen and purpling. Below the bandages that covered his chest and shoulders, his skin bore a myriad of scars and bruises. Rey locked the phone, finding the photos unbearable.  Finn wasn’t even thirty and he was going to die. Life is too short to waste, Poe’s advice rang in her ears.

She forced herself to breathe deeply.  She would deal with it tomorrow.

Heart heavy, Rey spent a few minutes playing fetch with BB8, and the little dog's enthusiasm consoled her for a while. She was giving the dog a drink when she received an answer from Ben.

Montana: Gardiner 7th, Bozeman 10th, Helena 13th, Missoula 15th. Idaho: Grangeville, Boise. Oregon...Will I see you again?

She hesitated. Gardiner was just north of Yellowstone, which meant she could spend two days sightseeing. It was plausible. The band’s tour then continued further north than her route allowed.  Could she make a detour? The real question was, did she want to?

She hastily typed her response:

We’ll see. I would hate to be predictable. xoxo

There was something about Ben Solo that she couldn’t pin down. She had been shocked by the intensity of his advances, he was almost too sure of himself, too dashing. But she was even more surprised at herself, at how quickly she’d yielded to his desires.

She needed to wait it out. She would give him a second chance, why not? But this time, she would be the one calling the shots. And right now, she had other concerns. Finn (her ex-fiancé-but-nevertheless-best-friend) was fighting for his life, BB8 needed to get home safely, she had to deal with dangers on the road (hello, blonde who tried to rob her), she still needed to find Leia Skywalker, and most importantly, she had to explore the majesty of the most beautiful national park ever.

Stretching, she nibbled on a forgotten cookie at the bottom of the package.  Then, having exhausted the short list of distractions at her disposal, she decided to take the Falcon west, down the road leading to the famous Old Faithful. For as long as anyone could remember, the geyser sprang into action precisely every ninety minutes, reaching a height of over 50 feet. She would also be able to take advantage of the nearby visitor center to plan out her visit.

Rey eased the car forward, about to exit the parking, when a sudden noise made her jump. She turned to find someone tapping at her windshield. There stood a short Asian woman with thick-rimmed spectacles framing her beady almond-shaped eyes. Her hair was gathered up in a scarf and the rest of her outfit seemed like it was composed of mismatched clothes bought from the various markets of Kathmandu. Perplexed, Rey turned the crank to lower her window.

“Hello?” She said cautiously, “can I help you?”

“Hello young lady, would you mind hitching me a ride?  I'm walking this way.”

“Hitchhiking?” Rey marveled. “But I dunno if...how far are you going?”

“To Alaska! “ The woman laughed, and Rey wondered if she was serious. “Darling, I will go as far as you take me.”

Rey grimaced. “But I’m not going terribly far...I was going to stop at Old Faithful, it's only 18 miles away from here.”

“It will always be thirty kilometers traveled without effort. Okay with you?  My name is Maz.”

Rey paused.  She had routinely been warned against hitchhikers, and had heard dozens of terrifying stories about assaults and robberies.  But then again, the only people she had spoken to since her arrival in the United States were Ben Solo and his gang—No, that wasn’t true, she had also met Rose and Leia Skywalker, before everything went sideways.

But this little woman seemed harmless, with her harem pants and tin jewelry. It wouldn’t cost Rey much to drive her 18 miles.

“I’m Rey,” she nodded, “get in.”

At a surprisingly quick pace, old Maz walked around the Millenium Falcon and opened the door on the passenger side.  She settled in the seat yet her legs were so short that they barely touched the ground.  She was carrying a backpack as worn as it was dirty, which she slipped on the floor between her legs.

"Do you want to put that in the boot, or erm—the trunk?” Rey suggested. “There’s plenty of space.”

“Oh no, it’s no bother,” smiled Maz. “For 18 miles it's not worth it.”

Rey did not insist and began driving again, cautiously making her way through tourist-friendly areas full of cars of all sizes, and motorhomes as big as buses.

“It's pretty, your accent,” Maz remarked casually. “You’re English?”

"Yes, from London," Rey replied politely.

“You are on vacation, I assume?”

“On my honeymoon.”

Maz looked behind her, as if to look for the missing husband in the back seat. She found no one but BB8, who looked back at her with her head held high and her tongue hanging out. Rey felt her discomfort and abruptly put an end to her silent questions.

“I’m on my honeymoon alone...it's complicated.  The marriage was annulled.” She provided.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," the little woman said gently, rushing to change the subject. “You plan to travel far, like that, all alone?”

“Not to Alaska, hopefully.”

Maz laughed, and Rey relaxed a little.  She went on: "I'm going to California, through Montana and Idaho.  I wanted to see forests, all the open spaces. Everything is so much bigger than what I’m used to...And what a lot you? Are you really going to Alaska?”

“Yes, and hitchhiking too. At my age, I have all the time I can spare! Not like young people who are always in a hurry...”

"I don’t know if I'm in a hurry," Rey mused.  “But sometimes I feel like I’m in another world. Like a galaxy far, far away.”

“Isn’t it normal for a ray to have her head in the clouds?” Maz smiled.

Rey pouted. “You're the second person to make that joke this morning .”

All her life, she had been subject to jokes and expressions involving rays of sunshine, clouds, rainbows...and it was rather charming, in general.  But Poe's words, although based on a half-stupid pun, had hurt her.  He was right: she had to go back down to earth, to reality. And since she was out here making good resolutions, she ought to try not to be the victim of her own emotions and to act according to her reason rather than her impulses.

Here’s to big resolutions.