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flightrules · 4 years ago

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Throwing this into the void to get it out of my head. I was NOT going to write a sequel to Which Kind Do You Want to Be? But the story had other ideas.

Part I was Din/female reader. We’re now in Din’s POV. Until our paths cross, they said, before she walked away. He’s realizing now, he shouldn’t have let her go.

(Tags on this one for a four-letter word, grown-up concepts under the cut. Please be old enough to be reading this.)

He doesn’t know her name.

Why did I never ask her name?

But the answer is simple. Because she did not ask for his.

She didn’t ask for anything.

She held the child on her lap and told the names of animals. Worried about the child’s safety. Let him win at games.

She listened to Din talk. Put up with his silence. Touched him with kindness. And also fucked him into the floor of the Razor Crest.

He figures he owes her.

It’s not in him to admit that he misses her. He didn’t even know her for a tenday. Missing her wouldn’t make sense.

He’d really like to talk to her again.

Beyond the claristeel of the cockpit windows, space stretches away into blackness. The windows are flat, squared-off, utilitarian. He’s still getting used to the modern controls.

He wonders if she’s still carrying that rifle. If she’s settled down somewhere. Is she even still alive?

What he knows: She was gentle. What he knows: She was alone.

There are ways to find people. It’s what he does.

It’s how he crossed paths with the child. It’s why he doesn’t have the child now. Not that he found the Jedi, exactly, but he was a big part of the finding.

This would be easier with a tracking fob.

He tells Karga: A village wiped out by the Empire.

“Which one?” Karga asks.

“The people were kind,” Din says.

Karga is courteous enough not to laugh.

He’s on the way to his next job, or the next one, or the next one. He leans forward, flips a switch on the nav system. Studies maps.

Known space has borders.

It may as well be endless.

Cara says, “What else do you know?”

“Not much. There were no other survivors.”

Cara rubs her thumb across the marshal’s badge she wears. “No idea,” she says. “There were so many towns like that. We couldn’t think about the ones we couldn’t save.”

He’s found what’s left of his tribe. Not his, really, but the covert he threw his fate in with.The people who took him in, the last time he’d tired of running.

The people who welcomed him back, now, even though his own actions were why they were so few.

He doesn’t spend much time there. He brings them credits, and he leaves, and he returns with more. And then he leaves again.

When the Armorer asked him, he told her that his quest was done. She waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she let him go.

Fett says, “There must be something.”

She said something about fields. About firebugs and twilight. Playing tag.

“Agriculture,” Fett says. “Could mean the Lahara sector. Moff Motana was in charge there. She had a reputation for being ruthless. If you’re looking for places that aren’t there anymore.”

Agricultural settlements, small towns. The Lahara sector has two hundred and forty-five worlds. The maps show what’s there. But how to tell what’s gone?

Twin suns are mid-day high, and he’s glad for the adjustable shading in his visor.

“Yeah,” Peli says, one hand shielding her eyes from the brightness. “I might be able to locate an old nav system.” She shoos him into a patch of shade, where an awning juts out from a wall. “It’s gonna cost you. Those things are antiques. Even if you could find one yourself? It’d probably be burnt out. Cracked through.”

She turns as if to head into her office, then stops. Din’s new ship is parked in the landing bay. It’s a single-pilot gunship, a recent-generation Incom, dangerous, practical, and ordinary. And built in the past few years.

“What do you want one for, anyway?”

“What’s your price?” Din says.

“No,” says Peli. “You’re not getting off that easy.”

“Fine,” he says, and turns to go. Mos Eisley must have a junkyard. He should have started there instead.

She squints at him. “You’re looking for something on a pre-Empire map.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, now you’ve gotta tell me. Is it treasure?”

“No,” Din says. Yes.

In the end, it turns out there’s an ancient nav computer right there among the circuits and parts that are piled at the back of Peli’s shop. The price she names is ridiculous. The bargain she offers is half off, in exchange for knowing why the hell he wants it.

Looking for someone leads to Who? ends up with Peli demanding how he could possibly not have known her name.

And that ends with her charging him extra for stupidity, but then personally supervising the installation of the thing and making sure it works. They look together at twin holomaps. New and pre-Imperial landscapes turn slowly side by side. In some places, the patterns of towns and villages and landing fields match up. In others, gaps reveal what’s changed.

“Two hundred and forty-five worlds?”

“If it’s the right system.”

“You’re crazy,” Peli says. “Does she know you’re crazy?”

“Probably,” Din says.

“Well. I hope you find her.”

There is always work. The New Republic is kinder in many ways, but there is still a prison system, and there is still such a thing as bail. And there are side jobs, too, outside of Guild rules, often bloodier but higher pay, as long as he keeps his mouth shut.

He’s good at keeping his mouth shut.

Most of his credits still go to the covert. To feed foundlings. Buy weapons. Buy time, until their strength is such that they can move freely in the world again.

There is some shame in what he doesn’t bring them. In the credits he holds back for food and fuel and time of his own between jobs. But there is shame already, in what else he hasn’t told them. In three days on a lost ship with a woman who knows his face. Knows his secrets.

Isn’t even family.

He marks the maps with each visit to places-that-were. Walks among shards that used to be people’s homes. There is ash on his boots. In the silent fields, green is just starting to poke up through charred ground.

He asks at the places that still are.

It’s not that he thinks she’ll be there. It’s just that he hopes they’ll know her name.

Word gets around: A Mandalorian on the hunt. Some people close their doors. Others trade information for money.

No one recalls a village with one sole survivor.

Sometimes, though, they’ll send for someone who might.

There’s a year’s more grey in his hair, a year more of the Armorer’s silence while he tithes his credits and waits to be dismissed.

He’s in a place where it’s early summer. Firebugs glimmer in twilight, a year’s more green has crept back into those charred fields, and she shows up at the farmhouse where he’s stopped to ask the way.

The rifle is gone, but there’s a blaster in her hand.

“Who are you looking for?”

He has been wanting, all this time, to talk to her again.

And now, suddenly, he remembers: No promises. She asked if they could trust each other, and she put a condition on it. Trust ended when the Crest’s landing gear settled onto the ground of Pavotha. Or at least, when she stepped off onto cracked duracrete, and he just– let her go.

“I’m not here on business,” he says. He wonders if she can hear that his voice is shaking.

The blaster lowers, slowly, and slides into a holster at her hip.

“It’s all right,” she says to the woman who summoned her. “It’s all right. I know him.”

She moves as though she belongs here, reassuring the older woman, walking her to a doorway, ushering her into another room. She comes back and faces him, a careful meter or two away.

He should say something to her.

He hasn’t thought that far.

“What do you want?” she says.

#the mandalorian #fanfic #din djarin pov

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flightrules · 4 years ago

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Anyone out there want to share your Book of Boba Fett predictions, about what Boba Fett and Fennec Shand are doing on Tatooine?

My brain decided there needs to be an epilogue to my Din/reader fic and it involves a visit to see them. But what the heck are they up to???

#the mandalorian #boba fett #fennec shand

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flightrules · 4 years ago

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Which Kind Do You Want to Be?

Chapter 7: Last Day

Honoring trust means keeping your promises.

Summary: You’re from a deeply sex-positive culture. He hasn’t gone unarmored in front of another human in... It’s been a very long time.

This is a story about trust and kindness, loneliness and loss, belief and transgression. And two people crossing paths just long enough to find each other.

Final chapter! Want to read the rest? Previous chapters on tumblr here or find the whole story the same username on AO3.

Relationships and characters: Din/female reader (both similar age to Din in canon), Grogu, and a cameo from Peli.

Rating: Mature? Explicit? Anyhow, grown-up sexy stuff. Please be old enough to be reading this kind of thing.

Tags and warnings: Moments of angst, domesticity, kindness, explicit consent, and Din doing his best to be a conscientious parent in the midst of everything. Heads up for descriptions of canon-typical violence, mention of past dubious consent, and a moment of (unintentional) violence between our protagonists. Ending is bittersweet.

When the chrono alarm wakes you, you’re sticky with sweat. Your lips are chapped and your eyes feel stuck shut. The side of your face is pressed against his chest and you’ve got one leg thrown across his thigh, while he’s been holding you close even in sleep.

But now he’s sliding out from under your weight, tucking the blanket back around you, and going to turn off the blaring noise.

When you crack your eyes open again, he’s pulled on a pair of trousers and there’s a little green child standing next to your head, peering at you curiously.

“Hey,” the man says, crouching down to talk to him. “Let’s let her sleep. Can you stay out of trouble while I take a shower?” Those big ears perk up as he speaks. “You know the rules.”

You’re not quite ready to lift your head, but you manage to form some words. “What are the rules?”

“Don’t set the ship on fire,” he says. “Leave the hyperdrive running. Don’t disengage the life support.”

“Has he done that?”

“I turned it back on.”

“I guess I’m glad you laid some rules down.” You feel around for the bundled clothes that form your makeshift pillow. The child wanders away and starts poking at cupboard latches, as if trying to see which ones will open. “He doesn’t understand the rules, does he?”

“No.” He leans down to pick up the pile of neatly folded clothes beside the bedroll, along with the few last pieces that hadn’t gotten folded at all. “Why don’t you go climb into the bunk and get some more sleep?”

You groan into the carrysack. “I’m a mess.”

“You can clean up later. Go sleep.”

You discover quickly that it hurts to move. That vague ache in your back from yesterday has worsened, and your neck is so stiff you can’t turn your head all the way to the left. You end up wrapping the blanket around yourself so you can shuffle over to his sleeping quarters. He stops you on the way to kiss you again, and you can’t help the yelp that comes out of your mouth when, hands on the back of your head, he tips your face up toward him. “Sorry,” you say. “I’m still paying for startling you.”

A moment later he’s picked you up, deposited you carefully on the mattress in his bunk, and is bringing you a cup of that tinny-tasting water. “You should drink.”

The water feels good going down. Your body recognizes how much it needs it. Then you crawl the rest of the way into his bed. The mattress is thin and the blankets are rough, but it’s better than the floor. There’s a faint scent of the stuff he was using to polish the armor. Just two days ago, you were asking if he slept in it.

He rests one warm hand on your ankle, shaking it gently until you acknowledge him showing you how to operate the door. And then you’re dead to the world again.

When you emerge a few hours later, the blanket wrapped around you like a robe, he’s at the table, the child on his lap and several pieces of armor spread out in front of them. You sit for a bit at the edge of the mattress, trying to find the energy to stand.

He’s getting up from his chair. “We’ll go upstairs,” he says, heading for the ladder, and for the first time you’re grateful for his modesty. You’d both been to the ‘fresher in the middle of the night, and you hadn’t thought much of it at all. But right now, you’re not really up for an audience. “There should be water left in the tank, if you want a real shower,” he adds, one foot already on the first rung. “Controls on the left. It’s separate from the galley, so don’t worry if you use it up.”

There’s no such thing as a long shower on a small ship. At least, not a ship like this one. You’ve heard that the big military ships have purifiers, recycling everything back into drinkable water. Supposedly that’s something wealthy people have on board their cruisers, too, but you’ve never seen it. People with that kind of money don’t need to hire people like you.

Still, even the five minutes you get before the water runs out feels like heaven. Your hair feels properly clean for the first time in ages. The place between your legs is tender, fragile skin rubbed raw in spots, and the warm water is soothing. Even your neck and back feel better.

By the time you’ve gotten dressed, fixed yourself a cup of caff, and downed half a protein bar, you’re feeling almost ready to face a new day.

He’s flipping through maps on the vidscreen while the child sits in the jumpseat, poking at a board full of switches and buttons that look just like the ones on the Razor Crest’s control panels.

“He knows they’re not real. He’ll humor me for a while, until he gets bored and goes for the real ones.”

You lean over his shoulder. “Is that Pavotha?”

“Yes. We need to decide if we’re landing at the main shipyard, or the second city.”

“The second city’s a little seedier. More underworld. Better for me,” you admit.

He switches back and forth between the maps, studying the layout of the streets. “All right,” he says. “Probably better for me, too. Did you eat?”

You show him the half-finished protein bar in your hand.

“Good.” He swivels the chair around so he can see your face. “I need to talk to you. Come downstairs?”

It’s the first time you’ve seen the child manage the ladder on his own. You’re already down on the durasteel deck, expecting the man to be right behind you with the child in one arm. But instead, he’s waiting up top while the child scoots along one rung, wraps tiny arms around a side support, and slides his way down to the next rung. The little face is determined as he climbs carefully down, until he gets to the last step. At which point he launches himself to the floor with a happy squeal.

The man slides down the ladder after him, feet hitting the deck with a thump.

“You don’t worry about him falling, do you?”

“I worry about him all the time.” The child toddles over to where your bedroll is now folded up against the wall, tugs at the blanket resting on top, and promptly pulls it onto his head. He peeks back out from under it, ears flattened by the cloth, which he’s now wearing like a hood. “But how else is he going to learn?”

“If we have to talk,” you say, “can I make another cup of caff first?”

Your mug is sitting on the table beside the beskar backplate. He’s got the chest piece in his hands and the helmet sitting by one elbow. He’s examining the breastplate’s circuitry, holding it up to a bright light affixed to the helmet’s side.

How is he awake enough to be focusing on such precise work? His eyes look tired, but his movements are the same as ever, compact and economical.

“This isn’t talking,” you say, after several minutes of silence.

“Beskar will stand up to almost anything,” he says, turning the breastplate to examine it from another angle. “When I took the child from the Imperials, we had twenty or thirty bounty hunters trying to stop us. Without this, I would be dead. The Imperials would be experimenting on him.”

He sets down the piece in his hands and picks up the backplate. “I have to keep finding work, so we can keep moving. This stopped an MK-modified rifle bolt.”

Once, you would have been horrified at the idea that making a living meant getting shot at. “It’s good armor.”

“It is.”

You sip at your caff, the bitterness of it filling your mouth, giving you something to focus on instead of worrying about whatever he’s going to say. “Are you telling me this for a reason?”

“Thank you,” he says. “For last night.”

And now you can’t help smiling at how serious he is. “That's not the sort of thing you need to say thank you for.”

He doesn’t smile back. He looks down at his body, covered only in soft cotton and poly weave. "I said I would protect the child. I said I would find his people. I don't know how to do that, like this.”

He lays his hands out on the table, bare hands that a knife or a blaster burn would easily render useless. “I don't know how to be,” he says, “if I'm not Mandalorian."

You brush your fingertips across his knuckles, across the bruises fading now from blue to yellow. "You did say, there are different ways to be Mandalorian."

He picks up the backplate again, picks up the bright-tipped tool that was laying beside it, and tinkers for a while with the circuits.

You sip at your caff.

He finishes running the polishing rag across the armor plate’s surface, sets them both aside. "There is only one Way that I know."

You already promised you were leaving. You have no intention of breaking your word. It still feels like something is slipping away from you. But you are not the only one in this picture. “Do you want that?”

“I need it,” he says.

“Then,” you say, “what do I do to help you make that happen?”

You understand him well enough, now, to expect that he’ll tell you what he’s thinking. He might just need some time to assemble the words.

He sets to work on a vambrace, testing the seating of each of the tiny missiles arrayed above the wrist.

While he continues, you ask to borrow the datapad he and the child were looking at yesterday. That way you can be nearby, but you won’t be tempted to interrupt. You can leave him room for whatever he needs to think through.

Before long, there are little claws scratching at your leg, and you’ve lifted the child onto your knee. You find a file with pictures of animals from across the galaxy, all arranged by the sounds of their names. A bantha, a bergruutfa, a blistmok, a blurrg. The child knows how to press the button that advances the pictures. He looks up at you now and then, and you discover that if you name the animal you’ll be rewarded with a happy chirp as he moves on to the next one.

The man’s voice, quiet but clear, brings you back to the conversation. “Your people. If you made a mistake, would they have taken you back?”

You can see where he’s going with this, but you’re not sure it holds. “What kind of mistake?”

“You said they were peaceful. If they knew you fought for a living?”

“It doesn’t matter,” you say.

“Why not?”

“There’s no one left to disapprove.”

He looks down at the vambrace, at the intricate mechanism at the wrist, at the tiny explosives made to kill multiple men at one time. “Is that the only reason to believe in something?”

Is it? You’ve been angry and sad for such a long time now. You move through the world the way you do because there’s no one left to care. Your life, even the way you met this man, is deals and trades that hinge on violence.

And yet, here you are, still looking for kindness. Still trying to give it.

The child is tapping at your arm. The datapad shows a bulbous creature with rows of sharp teeth. “That’s a cannock,” you tell him. He pushes the control button. Next up is a tall, four-legged animal with a long, curved jaw. “That’s a cherfer. Don’t make him mad, you’d be just about a mouthful for him.” The child gives a little humph as if to say, that’s enough, you don’t need to editorialize, and switches the image again.

The man is watching you from across the table. You haven’t answered him yet. “Most of your Creed, it’s about the tribe, isn’t it? How you are with other Mandalorians.” You’re thinking about the words as you speak them. “Loyalty to your clan. Helping each other. What if you were the only one left?”

“I suppose,” he says slowly, “I’d have to rebuild.”

“All by yourself?”

He sets the vambrace down and holds out his arms, palms up, bare of gloves and armor. “I wouldn’t do a very good job, would I?”

He would, though. You’re sure he would. “I think you'd care, and that's what matters."

“Do you think your people would forgive you?”

“I think,” you say, “you need to forgive yourself.”

Sleeping late makes the day slip away that much faster. The maintenance on the armor done, the three of you gather around the table again for a mid-day meal. The gleaming beskar plates have been carefully put away, for now, wrapped in soft fabric and tucked in a cupboard beside the armory.

The lack of sleep is finally starting to show in his movements. He’s slow to get up when the meal is done and actually yawns before reminding the child that it’s naptime. You offer to take care of cleaning cups and ration trays, and when you finish you find him leaning against the wall by the bunk, watching the child sleep.

You’re halfway across the narrow floor, meaning to slip your arms around his waist, when you remember and stop a meter or so away. “Maybe you should have a nap too.”

“Maybe I should,” he says, turning to sink down at the edge of the thin mattress. When he looks back at you, it’s still that full movement of head and upper body, as if he’s looking through a visor. “Will you join me?”

Your own face must show confusion, or maybe it’s that your eyes go to the little hammock, to the child curled up there.

“Just to sleep,” he says.

“You don’t think he’ll be upset?”

“I think he’ll feel safer. I think he likes knowing we’re friends.”

It’s dark in the small space, with just enough room for the two of you to curl up together. He nudges you over onto your side, one arm cushioning your head and the other wrapped around you.

You’re pretty sure he’s already asleep, when he speaks softly against your hair. “You helped me take the armor off,” he says. “Will you help me put it back on?”

You can think of several things you’d rather do instead, none of which are appropriate with a child sleeping in this same room. You find his hand, trace the shape of his wrist, work your hand up under the edge of his sleeve and listen to his breathing change as you run your fingers over his skin. “Of course I will.”

The ship’s chrono tells you there are about eight hours left before planetfall. You’ve had a much less eventful game of tag today, you’ve each fit in a quick workout, he’s checked the hyperdrive controls to make sure the ship’s still on course. The child's long since been tucked in for the night.

You’re dressed in fresh clothes again, hair crackling with static from the sonic shower, and you’re thinking about what you said to him that first night. About celebrating after a fight well won, celebrating being alive.

Only this time the sweat you just washed away was not from battle, but from the past few hours of slow, careful time.

Your brain’s replaying pictures that echo on your skin. His face as he leans down to kiss you. The weight of his body on yours. His hands in your hair.

At one point you let him walk you up against that wall by the galley and hold you there, pinning your body in place while he pushed into you, head bent down and face buried against your neck. When he finally let you go, his eyes were wet and his lips tasted of salt.

You’ve managed not to say the thing your heart keeps wanting. You’re leaving this ship in the morning. You won’t be looking back. The words I love you aren’t going to help anyone here, in any way, at all.

You still haven’t asked for his name.

He’s sitting on a crate in the hold, now, dressed in the flightsuit that underlies the armor. The pieces of his armor are laid out, neatly, on the surfaces of crates nearby.

Start with the boots, he said, and so you do. You wrap one hand around the back of his right calf and slide your palm slowly down the curve of muscle to his ankle where, beneath the cloth, skin lies thinner over fragile-feeling bone. When you go to settle his foot into the right boot, he sits there and lets you control the movement, knee and ankle loose in your hands. You do the same on the left side, then sink back on your heels to look at the metal clasps that hold the boots on.

“Like this?”

He tilts his head down to watch as you click them into place, one by one. “Yes.”

It’s a clever mechanism. You’ve had shoelaces come untied in a fight, and it’s not pretty when that happens.

The greave that holds spare rifle shells clicks into place over the right boot, and then the next piece is the metal guard that sits over his left knee. He shows you how it should fit, how it fastens. You push his hands away, gently, and lift the piece aside to plant a kiss over his kneecap before you settle it back again and click the fastener closed.

You can hear him take a slow, deep breath.

Fitting the thigh guards requires him to stand. You’re still on your knees, and now, before you set this next barrier between your body and his, you circle palms and fingers around his right thigh. The shapes of him are an anatomy lesson, defined hamstrings tapering to the hollow at the back of his knee. Your fingertips press along the muscles at each side of his thigh, thumbs sliding over the wiring embedded in the flightsuit.

His hand settles against the side of your head.

You pick up one of the thigh guards and hold it in your hand, admiring the balance of it, how perfectly the surface shines. You curve your other hand over the place on his leg where that armor plate will sit, feeling the cloth warm from the heat between your palm and his skin.

His fingers tighten in your hair.

When you go to set the thigh guard in place, you can’t recall exactly how the catches work. “You’re going to have to help me.”

He’s slow to move, lifting his hand from your head as though it’s gone heavy.

“Like this,” he says, fingers guiding yours.

It’s beginning to feel like a ritual. You repeat your process on the other leg, pressing your touch into his skin before setting the beskar against his thigh. This time you’re able to fasten the plate yourself. When you look up you see his hands are at his sides now, fingers curled into loose fists. His eyes are closed. He’s breathing slow and measured, like he’s needing to think about it.

You get to your feet, standing close, and place a palm flat against his chest, like you did when all this began. His heart is pounding.

Last chance. You step closer, lining your body against his, ready to move away if this isn't what he wants. As his arms come up to wrap around you, you slip your palm over his ribs and around to the middle of his back. Your other hand goes to the base of his spine. The curves of the armor plates press hard against your own thighs. His hips hit just above yours. You can feel his body responding to the closeness, but you will your own hips to stay still, don't push in against him. If he changes his mind, if he wants you to recognize his arousal, he knows he can lead you there.

The side of your face is pressed into the space where his neck and collarbone meet. You find yourself matching your breathing to his.

Measured, focused, slow.

Five breaths, ten, a dozen, until you're able to get your mouth to form the words against his skin. "What's next?"

Five breaths more until his arms around you loosen.

The next piece is a quilted gambeson, like a short jacket. Foundations for the pauldrons are embedded at the shoulders. There is a flexible plate in front that will protect him from chest to pelvis, below where the beskar chestplate ends. You examine how the plate is integrated with the fabric, a series of soft, flat buckles holding it in place.

“This isn’t beskar.”

“It’s a synthetic,” he says, his voice shaky on the first syllables but smoothing out as he settles into familiar territory. “It has to be able to bend, so I can move. It can take a couple of blaster bolts, as long as it’s not close range.”

You take his hand and fold his fingers around one edge of the quilted fabric. “Hold this for me?”

You shape your hands around his ribs, then, sliding over fabric that hides his skin beneath, then flatten your fingers across abdominal muscles, feeling the shapes and ridges there, taking time for this vulnerable place where there’s no bone to stop a knife. Those muscles move as he breathes, still deep and steady and slow.

You help him slip his arms through the sleeves. The gambeson fastens down one side with hook-and-loop tape, reinforced with a half dozen hook-and-eye closures that hide beneath the seam.

You slide one finger down that seam, closed now and holding the garment snug to his body, and feel him shiver.

The cuirass, front and back plates, is next. It’s attached to its own tightly woven vest, and like the thigh guards, it’s lighter than it looks. You’re able to hold it in one hand while you trace the outline of the breastplate on his chest. The layers of cloth make it harder to feel the shapes of him, but you find the hollow below his collarbone and then the ridge of each rib, continuing down the sides of his chest to the last curve of bone.

You place another kiss, this one against the cloth at the top of his sternum, and his breath catches but he doesn’t move, just lets you continue to touch him before the beskar hides his body away again.

He guides your hands to fit the vest in place and fasten it, so that you’re working together to get the pieces set.

“I’m sorry it’s not different,” you find yourself saying, fingers still touching his. Sorry isn’t really the right word but you don’t have a better one.

“I wish it were,” he says.

He hands you the right pauldon first. You want to press a bite into his shoulder beneath where it will sit, where the top of the muscle connects to bone, but there’s already metal over that spot for the pauldron to attach. Instead, you go up on tiptoe and run your teeth along the bare skin on the left side of his neck, then trace the same line with your tongue, and finally smooth the spot with your fingers as you click the pauldron into place on the opposite side. The sound he makes as you do--somewhere between a gasp and a groan--makes you want to rip the armor back off his body.

You trace one finger over the mudhorn signet. “It’s good that he has you. You’re right to put him first.”

Once the left pauldron is also in place, he reaches silently to the remaining items laid out on the crate beside him. He lifts the thick leather belt that’s studded with sections of metal, with more plates of that synthetic material bolted on and a flat piece of beskar between them. It’s heavy, needing both your hands and most of your attention to lift it into place.

There’s the strap like a bandolier that goes over his left shoulder, then the belt with its sturdy metal buckle. The beskar plate rests at his lower back, and at each side is protection for his hips. You have to think how to build in softness here, to make his body remember kindness with this piece, too. You slip a hand beneath one of the plates, resting light over his hip bone, and feel his weight shift just the slightest bit toward your palm.

The last pieces are vambraces, handplates, gloves. You start with the left side and weave your fingers between his, feeling the strength in his hand as it curls around yours. You’re not sure if the pulse you feel at the base of your fingers is his or your own.

But then, you need both your hands to slide on the leather glove, follow his instructions to fit the vambrace, and clip the flat piece of metal that guards the back of his hand into place.

Once more on the other side, skin to skin, then leather glove, then beskar.

You lower his hand back down to his side and force yourself to let go.

Step back.

“How does it feel?”

He breathes, breastplate rising and falling. “It feels more like me.”

Again, your body echoes his. Deep, slow breaths, and it helps you stay centered, helps your hands stay steady, helps you stay that half-meter away.

“I’ll go upstairs so you can sleep,” you say. “I can bunk down up there. Let you get comfortable again.”

“Thank you,” he says. And then, one hand half-lifted toward you, “Can I still--”

“Of course you can.”

The beskar feels cool through your thin shirt, but his mouth is warm, and his hand at the back of your neck is gentle. You sink your fingers into his hair, hands fisting in those soft curls, letting the sounds he makes vibrate against your skin.

Dawn on Pavotha is muddy-looking, the sky a dull brownish-grey. You’re standing with him in the ship’s entryway, your pack sitting at your feet. Your rifle's in its sling beside it, ready to be clipped on. It's a good system, the result of months of trial and error. You're not as quick as he is with his blaster, but that rifle draws smooth and fast.

He's suited up. The armor plates are secured, electrical connections clicked in and catches locked, rifle across his back and blaster at his right hip. He’s got the helmet in one hand.

The child is tucked into the carry-bag on his other side, contentedly gnawing at a piece of flatbread.

You crouch down to the child's level and rest your weight on one knee, careful of the healing bruise there, so you're face to face to say goodbye.

"It was nice getting to know you, kid." Big eyes look at you over the flatbread. "Take care of your dad, yeah?" The child looks up at the man, gives a cheerful chirp, and turns his attention back to eating. You run a finger along one of the wrinkles in his forehead, feeling the soft fuzz there.

The little head tilts, and then he's offering the bread to you.

"That's ok kiddo. You keep that."

Back on your feet, and now you’re meeting the man’s gaze again.

"You'll be alright out there?" he says.

"Will you?"

He laughs, and you're glad because it was a joke, a strange kind of joke when there's a perfectly fine chance that one or both of you will be patching up wounds by nightfall.

He's still smiling as he reaches out, pausing with his hand a few centimeters from your face to ask, "May I?"

"I told you you could."

His palm rests against your cheek, fingertips at your temple. You're up on tiptoe to meet him as he leans in to kiss you. He tastes like the caff you both had with breakfast.

This is making it hard to leave.

The kiss finally slows, then stops, because you both know you need to be out there in this morning, when the city comes alive. He rests his forehead against yours for what feels like minutes, and it feels like pulling apart magnets when he finally steps back.

He goes to put the helmet on.

"Wait," you say. "Before you do that."

He looks at you, head tilted, curious, and it takes you back to that night on Tatooine. "This," you say, with a gesture back into the ship, back to the past few days and so much in them. "This never happened."

He leans in to kiss you one more time.

"It did."

He straightens up. Settles the helmet in place and he’s a Mandalorian again, anonymous in the armor. He hits the control to lower the ramp.

"Good luck," you tell him, as you step off onto the scuffed duracrete of Pavotha's spaceport.

"Until our paths cross," he says.

"Until our paths cross."

#the mandalorian #fanfic #din djarin x reader #din djarin needs a hug #touch-starved din djarin #reader character also needs a hug

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flightrules · 4 years ago

Text

Which Kind Do You Want to Be?

Chapter 6: No Promises

Sometimes, a sleepless night is a good thing.

Summary: This is a story about trust and kindness, loneliness and loss, belief and transgression. And two people crossing paths just long enough to find each other.

Previous chapters: I keep hearing tumblr suppresses posts with links. So, visit the pinned post on my blog or the same username on AO3.

Relationships and characters: Din/female reader (both similar age to Din in canon), Grogu, and a cameo from Peli.

Rating: Mature? Explicit? Anyhow, grown-up sexy stuff. Please be old enough to be reading this kind of thing.

Supper is the same as the midday meal, cold rations washed down with tinny tasting water. "You eat like this all the time?"

"I try not to," he says. "He needs real food. I haven't had much chance to go shopping."

The child is sitting on your lap now, as you hold his little tray for him and he picks out bites to eat. He's seemed subdued ever since your game of chase went so wrong.

It's a bit of a balancing act to manage your own meal while keeping the tray steady and the little body balanced. But you turned down the man's offer to take him.

You should be careful about letting the child think there's something changing here, that you'll be a presence in his life.

It's just so nice to imagine, for a small moment, that you could be. That a child's laughter could be part of your world again.

There's not much conversation over the meal. You're tired and your body still has that vague achy feeling, like it isn't ready to forget getting thrown to your knees.

The ration trays get washed in the sink again, and then the child gets a bath in the sink again, too.

"You don't mind, do you?" he asks first. "He doesn't like the sonic shower. I think it's hard on his ears."

You stay at the table while he pushes his sleeves up past his elbows, pops the child into a mess of warm water and soap bubbles, and lets him splash around a bit. By the time the man lifts him out again, there are bubbles all across the counter and water on the floor. "I've told you not to do that," he says mildly as he wraps the child in a towel and, holding him in one arm, swipes a rag across the counter and then uses one foot to wipe the rag along the floor.

He crouches to pick the rag up again, a perfectly balanced movement with the child cuddled against his chest.

"I'll let you get him ready for bed," you say, getting up from the table and resisting the urge to go over there and melt yourself against this man. You are not his family, or the child's, and you need to remember it for yourself as much as for the little one.

The bedtime routine consists of a quiet, one-sided conversation, the man narrating all the little things they did today and the child cooing in response. You take the opportunity to use the ‘fresher while he’s busy in the little sleeping room, then spread out your bedroll, stuffing some clean clothes in a carry-sack to serve as a pillow. It's early, but you stretch out and close your own eyes, letting your back and shoulders rest flat against the blanket.

There's something comforting about his voice, the slight gravel in it, the way almost everything he tells the child is framed as "we." You've never been sure how much the child understands, but you hope he can at least hear how safe he is in this man's care.

You're almost asleep, yourself, by the time he gets to how he hurt you. "I made a mistake," he says, clear and matter-of-fact. "I'll always protect you, but that doesn't mean it's all right to hurt our friend. I want you to know we can trust her. Don't make the same mistake I did."

That's very sweet, you think drowsily. As if the tiny creature could do you any harm.

"Are you awake?"

You open your eyes to find he's standing a couple of meters away. Earlier today you might have thought that strange, but now you think, Right. No sudden moves.

"May I…" his voice trails off.

You sit up, making room for him to join you. And now it's your turn to ask, as he's left a careful few centimeters space between. "I'd like to touch you."

His voice is quiet, his usual confident tone sounding suddenly half strangled. "I'd like that."

You don't do it right away, though. You look at him, contemplating. There are curls falling over his forehead again. The scruff of beard he had yesterday is gone. Did he shave for you, or is that just something he does every few days? With the helmet covering his face all the time, he certainly wouldn't have to worry about looking neat.

Loose as it is, the shirt he's wearing does nothing to hide his solid-looking shoulders, and you've already seen the shape of his chest and waist from the t-shirt he had on this morning. Stars, that was so long ago.

You turn your body toward him and reach out, so slowly, to skim your hands over his hips and under his shirt, pushing the fabric up to bare the flat plane of his stomach, and then a little more so your hands are framing the bottom of his ribs. "Help me?" you say, meaning help me get your shirt off, but he's just staring at you, lips slightly parted, not moving at all.

"You tell me if you want me to stop," you remind him, and then get up onto your knees so you can lift his shirt further. The bruises from earlier remind you to move carefully, but you're able to shift your weight so it almost doesn't hurt to kneel.

He has dark hair across his chest. You resist the urge to run your thumb across one nipple, instead asking him more clearly to lift his arms so you can get the shirt over his head.

He does, now, taking over with a single smooth movement and then actually stopping to fold the thing and set it aside.

There's something about that that makes your heart hurt. That makes you think you could fall in love with him, if you had the opportunity to try.

You do finally have the chance to see what happens when you drag your teeth across his ribs. You start at his collarbone, lining kisses from neck to shoulder, then down over the muscles of his chest. As you do you can feel his breathing quicken, turning to a gasp as you go from soft kisses to the scrape of teeth. You should probably remind him to breathe but now you're tracing your tongue along a pale line of scar where, you realize, the beskar breastplate doesn't reach.

His hands on your shoulders stop you. He's gentle but firm, guiding your body back upright, giving you plenty of time to fight it if you want to.

You don't want to.

"Show me how to kiss you," he says.

"It takes practice." Kissing a new partner's mouth usually starts out clumsy and uncoordinated, until you find each other's rhythm.

"We have until morning," he says.

It is, indeed, uncoordinated at first. He's obviously got the general idea--you can't spend 40-something years in this galaxy without seeing what people do--but no idea how to actually do it. He's a quick learner, though, echoing back your movements until he's got the hang of it. And then that precision kicks in and he's got your mouth trapped beneath his, tongue at the corner of your lips and then gently opening you up to his warmth, and you're the one who's forgetting how to breathe.

It's new to him and it's been a while for you, and the two of you end up making out like teenagers for a while, his hand against your jaw and your fingers in his hair, and when you need to catch your breath you bury your head in his shoulder until gently insistent hands lift your face to his again.

What stops you is a small sound from the child. You might not even have noticed it, coming from behind the metal door, but he's already turning his head to listen. He kisses your forehead before getting up to trigger the controls.

The noises from the hammock sound like sobs.

"Hey," the man tells him, sitting on the edge of the mattress, leaning in to lay a hand over the little body. "Whatever it is, I'm here." He turns to you. "He cries in his sleep sometimes. Usually I sing to him."

"Then you should." You get up to go sit beside him on the floor and lean your head against his knee. It's the same lullaby you heard that first night on board the Razor Crest. He can barely carry a tune but that's all right, you don't know the melody anyway and you don't understand the words. You stay there for a while even after the child's cries have stopped, as he continues through a half-dozen verses, you resting against him and his hand against your hair.

More of the evening disappears into figuring out his body, into his hands finding confidence in how to touch your skin.

The last time someone touched you with such reverence, you were probably sixteen years old, trying new things for the first time with a boy you'd grown up with, whose body you'd seen change as you both slipped toward adulthood. He's long gone, that boy, not even buried, just lost in the ash that used to be your home.

Your shirt's off now, too, and he folded it for you, and you can't even explain why that makes you ache inside.

He's tracing your breasts with his fingertips, light against your skin but following every curve. He seems to know, by instinct maybe, to leave your nipples until they're aching for him to touch, and then to follow his fingers with his mouth, with his tongue and then lips and then, so very gently, with his teeth. He's got you panting, your fingers digging hard into his shoulder until you suddenly realize that's the side that was bothering him and you drop your hand.

He looks up at you, and it takes him a minute to find words. "What's wrong?"

You're slow to make sense, too. "You--you're hurt, I don't want to--"

He looks down at his own shoulder, the one you were working on together this morning. Then he's pulling you in to him, so very slow again and careful, until you're skin to skin against his body, your breasts pressed up against the muscle of his chest, his head bent down to yours. "Thank you," he says, and it's a whisper against your temple and then just the two of you breathing together for a while, the hum off the ship's engines the only other sound.

You know the shapes of the muscles on his back now. You've run your fingers along the grooves between them. You know now how his skin feels different over scars, and how the burn scar at his neck is different from the knife scar on his side.

You were surprised to find the small, circular bump of a contraceptive implant on his arm, and at first you looked at him in accusation. From what he’s told you, he shouldn’t have needed it. But he just shrugged. "When I swore the Creed," he said, "I swore I would care for any child I made. I've never been in a place to be able to care for a child." You could feel your eyebrows go up as you nodded toward his bunk, where the tiny being in his care was sleeping. "I'm still not," he said. "It seemed like a good idea, to make sure it couldn't happen."

He knows the most sensitive spot on your neck by now, and he knows the way you'll move your head if he kisses you there. He knows that if he runs his hands over your belly you'll jump at first, ticklish, but then lean into his touch if he uses a little more pressure. He's figured out what happens if he traces the shell of your ear with his tongue.

Right now you're kneeling behind him, one hand on his chest, one finger sliding over a stiffened nipple while the other hand traces the hair that trails down his abdomen to the waistband of his trousers. For the first time, you slide your fingertips beneath the fabric. His hand comes up to wrap around your wrist and hold your arm still.

But he doesn't tell you to stop.

You tuck your chin over his shoulder and ask him if you should.

He doesn't answer. He's sitting up straighter, though, that uncomfortable posture you'd started to hope he'd left behind.

Carefully, you move your hands from his body, and his fingers slide from your wrist as you do. You shift around to face him.

Slow. You promised him slow.

Your own body is edging toward impatience. You've been wet for him for hours and, although you're not complaining about any of this so far, there's a sense of emptiness that your body is letting you know, in no uncertain terms, it would like him to fill.

You check in before you move next, get his permission to settle yourself back on his lap, knees to either side of his hips. It lets you press against the length of him through his trousers, and you find you're shivering as the most sensitive part of you connects there.

His voice is a vibration through your own chest as he says, "I can't."

You know you should let go, move back, but your muscles won't listen to your brain until he speaks again, until ingrained reflex takes over when he says the word "Stop."

He's keeping his hands to himself now, still breathing a little hard but keeping his body constrained. One hand clenches and then slowly opens, coming to rest at his side.

"If we keep going," he says, "I'm going to want you to stay."

Your heart skips for a second, and you're already thinking, yes.

"I can't let you stay." He's sitting so still. His fingers move again, what seems to be an involuntary tic. It's his right hand, the one that would reach for the blaster that's usually at his hip.

"I can't be distracted. If I had to choose between you and the child--"

He doesn't finish. You don't need him to. You reach over, slowly, slowly, and take his right hand. Slowly, you help him open those clenched fingers, and you place a kiss on his palm. "No promises," you remind him. And then, because there's nothing else you can say: "I'm leaving at Pavotha."

It's still so curious, getting to see his face. How sometimes his expressions are open and sometimes they're unreadable, like in all those years with the helmet on he's lost the ability to mirror certain feelings. Lost the muscle memory.

Right now, though, there's no mistaking that you're looking at pure gratitude.

"Do you still want to stop?" you ask him, and you're asking a little bit for him, but it's mostly because your body is longing to see the rest of his, to touch him in new places. To settle in against him, take his cock inside you, and move together until the rest of the galaxy disappears.

"No promises?" he says.

And, although your whole body is screaming at you not to say it, you tell him again: "Only that I'm leaving."

If you were planetside, it would be dawn by now. But here in the dimly lit hold, there's only the chrono to tell you it's near morning.

You're not looking at it though.

You're sitting on his lap again, legs around his waist and feet planted against the floor. His hands are on your hips. You showed him how this position works and now he's helping you move, bringing you down against him so his cock is buried deep inside you, holding you so there's pressure against your clit as he presses closer, then lifting your body so the length of him slides against your opening, setting every nerve on fire. You didn't teach him to pause sometimes, keeping your hips in place against him, and lean up to kiss you. He figured that out on his own.

He lasted longer than you might have expected the first time, when you drew his body over you and slow disappeared when he said "Are you sure?" and you said "Yes." And although you guided him in gently, carefully, neither one of you could stop after that. You bit your own lip so hard, trying not to cry out and wake the child, that there was blood on both your faces by the end.

You're going to have to sleep soon, before the child wakes up and the new day starts. But for now you're going to stay like this, your skin slicked with your sweat and his, the taste of him in your mouth, and the sacredness of trust between you.

#the mandalorian #fanfic #din djarin x reader #din djarin needs a hug #touch-starved din djarin #reader character also needs a hug.

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