jules-onpaper

[jules-onpaper]

Western Skies: Ch 5

Din Djarin x F!Reader. Western!AU. Series Masterlist. Masterlist.

Warnings: Death of an animal (for food). Sexual themes (like, the tiniest mention of a cock, lol).

Summary: Din returns and neither of you find what you expect.

WC: 4.5k

Note: THIS ONE GETS SOFT, BABES. 🥰 Follow @jules-onpaper for updates! Dividers by @mykento. Thanks so much to @frannyzooey for the encouraging beta read and the Van ladies for their constant support 🩵 Tagging cowboy girlies (gn) below (let me know if you would like to be added, or if you would prefer not to be tagged):

@secretelephanttattoo @imaswellkid @fuckyeahdindjarin @goodwithcheese @maggiemayhemnj @kedsandtubesocks

A slow exhale that mists in the early dawn. Din presses the cold metal of the gun to his cheek, finger on the trigger, patient. The bite of early frost is in his nose, even behind his bandana. His belly tenses on the cracked and spare ground.

His target lifts its head. Aware of the fact he will meet his mortality?

It will snow soon enough. There are mists that linger down in the valley, now, in the little hamlet of Nevarro. The world has begun to slow from summer’s frenzy and autumn’s preparation.

He and the stag hover there in that one slow, bone-chilled moment. Nothing else exists but their heart beats, the deer’s large, deep brown eyes, the sensation of the iron slowly warming under his cheekbone,  and the steam issuing from their nostrils.

The shot rings across the clearing. The stag stumbles before it falls, dead before its body hits the ground. It gives its life in the skip of the heart between beats, and where before there were two broad, strong creatures in these woods with a knowing deep in their eyes that they are hunted, now there is one.

With swift, efficient movements, Din stands from his low perch, lifts his knife from his belt, and crosses the clearing.

Out of respect, he pauses for one moment before he skins and dresses the stag, the old familiar ache in his chest so routine it barely hurts any more. Silently, he nods at its dimmed eyes. They were equals. It was only the Way’s working that made it so that it was not him lying dead on the grass. 

Something feels different this time. He has never killed without purpose, but this time, he needs this deer to feed you and the child. Its death was for an even deeper purpose than survival. It meant safety through the winter. It meant a hide for the Armorer, perhaps enough for winter boots for the both of you. His respectful silence doesn’t seem enough.

“Vor entye,” he murmurs into the breeze that smells of cold pine and wild thyme. I accept this debt. 

His thanks tendered, he sinks to his knees.

The bounty the mayor had bid him to find had been wily, but that’s not what had taken Din three days to complete the job. In truth, the vermin had been easy enough to track down, but Din had never before found himself so distracted on a hunt.

So used to being surrounded by others who could protect themselves, his adopted kin or other hunters, he had taken on the child in the muddy spring and been stricken then by the fragility of the small creature. He was alien to Din’s world, needing gentle hands and regular feeding, protection, and guidance.

But as their bond deepened, as he grew slowly used to the feeling of small hands in his belt loops and the cries that meant the child fussed out of boredom instead of hunger, he had adapted. A bit of leather to play with or jerky to suck on would keep Grogu quiet long enough during a hunt. He seemed to listen when Din pointed out constellations in the wide arc of the sky. He stopped crying through the night and slept near Din’s chest, thumb firmly wedged in his mouth.

Then the kid improved his toddling to running, climbing, his curiosity wild and bright, and he had to adapt all over again. He’d tried tying the child to the horse, but that felt dangerous as the kid’s cries only upset Razor and drove off any hope of cover. Din was a big man, but even for him, carrying a toddler on his chest was burdensome, not to mention dangerous and impractical.

And so he had found you. You had seemed the perfect answer to the problem, if only for a little while ��� a solution that spared two innocent souls from fates they didn’t deserve. You would watch over the kid and the homestead while he stocked up for the winter, while he hunted wanted men for coins that could somehow, he hoped, protect what he cared for most.

Now that he has two free hands to catch bounties, he can train both eyes on the stag as he removes viscera and quarters it for transport, he has nothing but silence to train his ears for anyone watching or any errant game that he could collect to bring home or sell.

But this is worse than before. He can’t concentrate. The knife goes slowly. What should take him an hour takes him that and half again. By the time he cleans his hands on the grass and shoves his fingers back into his gloves, the joints are stiff with cold and the sun is retreating in the sky.

He doesn’t understand why he isn’t adapting this time. Why he can’t let this go. Instead of finding a place to put the thoughts of what you and the kid might be doing, all the things that could be befalling you in his absence – flood, wind, rain, robbers, fire – more crop up like weeds every time he looks away.

He had left the kid with you, but he had never counted on this, thinking of the two of you so very alone out there. What if one of you hurt yourselves? There were so many ways to injure and maim on even a tiny plot of farmland. What if Grogu had fallen ill, and you were fighting to find the right way to care for him? What if you were ill, and couldn’t leave bed? What if, worst of all, you had taken off while he was away, what if you had taken the kid with you, what if-?

With a frustrated grunt, he heaves the hide and the meat onto Razor’s back, ignoring the muffled cursing and mutters of the scrawny man hogtied to the beast’s rump. He presses the leather tips of his gloves into his eye sockets, as though he could pluck out the ridiculously swirling thoughts in his head and leave them in the dirt where they belonged.

They only knot further. There’s more hunting he could do, but Nevarro is half a day’s ride away and he has the bounty now. He won’t be sleeping tonight anyway. With a good pace, he’ll be back by morning.

With a practiced twist, you wring the water from your sopping wet nightdress and flick it outwards to dispel the last drops. Over the clothes line it goes, secured with two clothespins. You bend into the wash bucket and repeat the process with a set of wee trousers.

For once, you don’t have to keep an extra eye peeled for Grogu. He’s quite audibly nearby, splashing in his own bucket. You’ll have to peel him starkers and hang the clothes he’s wearing on the line too, or else try and keep him entertained by the fire so he dries and doesn’t catch cold, but the few minutes to complete a task without interruption is too precious to miss.

A sigh passes your lips, and as you pin the baby clothes on the line you glare accusingly at the green flannel shirt swinging harmlessly in the sunny, cool breeze. It’s late October, and the seasons have seemingly shifted overnight from oppressive heat to brisk winds and skies so heartbreakingly blue it hurts to look at.

Four days, no Din. The weather’s shift makes his absence more profound. Your anger has simmered and seasoned with each passing day. You’re frustrated that there’s nothing to soothe Grogu’s nighttime cries for his father, that there’s only silence in the little room after you’ve finally managed to get him to sleep, that the sunsets that slip behind the hills beyond the house are so spectacular that you feel smaller and smaller out here, so lonely and insignificant you could scream. You’re not sleeping well either – you can hear every twitch of every leaf, the crackle of phantom footsteps through the dry grass.

You’re standing with your hands on your hips, looking at the sky and hoping the sun will manage to dry your clothes and the other laundry before any frosts set in when Grogu squeals.

“What is it?” you ask. “Did you find a frog again?”

“Buh-buh-buh!” he cries, his dark hair and eyes wild.

He’s so excited that it takes you a moment to hear the hoofbeats over his babbling. You follow the child’s gaze around the house and down the drive, and sure enough, it’s Din and the silver-gray horse cantering up into the yard. You snatch Grogu into your arms before he can think of running into Razor’s path. He resigns himself to excited squirming.

A petty little voice inside you wants to go inside with the kid and shut the door in Din’s face, but it seems unfair to prevent Grogu from greeting his father. He had missed the tall, mysterious cowboy too.

Your heart skips and falls flat into your stomach like a pancake.

Missed him? You hadn’t missed him. Had you?

No, that’s not it, you tell yourself. It’s just the company. It’s just being alone with a toddler and a farm to care for without help.

You’re still chafing under this mental slip-up when Din swings from the saddle and his boots slam to the hard-packed earth. It takes you a few seconds to notice that both he and the horse look exhausted.

“Where on earth have you been?” You hide a cringing wince as you allow Grogu to scamper from your arms and attach himself to Din’s leg. You sound like a nagging wife, and you’re not sold on being either of those things.

Predictably, he doesn’t answer your question. “Where’s Peli?” he asks instead, his eyes scanning the yard as he lifts Grogu to his hip and works the bandana from his face, revealing a days-old beard. Though ringed with purple circles, his eyes seem more deeply brown than you remember them to be. Maybe it’s the shift in colors the autumn is bringing. Maybe it’s because he, his clothes, and the horse are filthy and dusty, and the clean brown of his eyes are brighter by comparison. It looked like you would be doing more laundry.

“I sent her home after the first night,” you answer flatly. “I don’t need a minder.”

For a moment, you think he’ll scold you. His nostrils flare and his stubbled jaw works as he observes you. Grogu palms his face, demanding attention, and then the hard lines of his face soften in a way they never do for anyone else. “Hey, kid.” He tickles the little boy’s belly until his laughter rings clear into the evening. Then his gaze returns to you. 

“Guess you don’t, huh?” His eyes skim from the top of your head to your leather shoes. You ignore the way your stomach flips. “You’re lookin’ well.”

“You’re not,” you reply, then internally scold yourself. Why is everything you say to him so barbed? With the tiny concession that you do not, in fact, need a minder, it’s more difficult to keep your anger fresh. It melts through your fingers. “I mean, thank you, we’re both quite well,” you amend quickly, “You look worn out and tired. I’ll make dinner early and you can go to bed.”

“No need,” he grunts, setting Grogu back down and turning to begin the process of untacking Razor. “Chores to do.” You don’t miss how his fingers fumble. It’s startling. His hands never grope about in perplexity. They are always sure and deft and capable, and you don’t really want to examine why you’ve chosen to notice this. 

Never one to let it be, you protest, “But I’ve been doing them.”

“Yeah, n’ I’ll be doin’ ‘em again, seeing as how I told you not to n’ you didn’t listen.” He doesn’t sound angry. In fact, you could almost swear there’s the smallest lift to the corner of his mouth. “Get on doin’ what you were doin’.”

Never minding his insistence that the day go on in the usual routine, you finish hanging the laundry and then go about starting dinner hours before sunset. 

You rejoice more than you thought you ever would at the sight of the fresh meat Din has carefully kept wrapped in oilcloth in his saddlebag. He tells you he caught a deer yesterday and most of it should be salted or dried, but that venison made a fine dinner when it was fresh.

It’s been a little while since you had fresh meat, and it’s with particular joy that you build up the fire from the banked coals from this morning and set about making a stew as Peli had done a few days ago.

Venison did indeed make a fine dinner, and when Din scrapes back his chair for a third helping you puff a little with surprised pride. You’ll have to thank Peli again for the quick uptick in your cooking abilities.

He surprises you further after dinner when he presents you with a gift from town. Two twin round cakes of soap the size of your palms.

“Ladies’ soap,” he explains, watching how your eyes shine with wonder as you carefully open the paper packaging. “S’got flowers in it.”

You lift the soap to your nose. The sweet notes of lavender flood your senses. The other smells like roses. It’s not just ladies’ soap, it’s packaged soap, made by a factory Maker-knows-where, and far softer and finer than the carbolic soap that has peeled the skin from your knuckles when you used too much for washing. This is the kind of soap ladies in Chicago or New York use.

“They’re lovely,” you tell him, smiling broadly. “But aren’t they terribly expensive?” Concern flickers in your chest. You think again about your idea of selling your sewing skills.

He doesn’t respond to that. Of course not. He only finishes his mug of tea, thanks you for the meal, and places his hat back on his flattened, dirty curls to return to the barn for evening chores.

You stare down at the cakes of soap, the tiny purple flower buds visible in the little white rounds, and make a decision right then.

The stew had not produced much to wash and between the three of you there wasn’t even any left, so dishes go quickly. Then you go about emptying and rinsing the wash tub for the fourth time today. Grogu had needed a bath anyway, you figure, and your own hair could do with washing. And Maker knew Din needed it after his trip.

“What were you doing?” you had asked during dinner. Conversation was never exactly free-flowing, but with Din’s return and the fresh meat the air was a touch celebratory, and Grogu had picked up on the mood and was chatty and loud, potatoes and venison making it to his mouth for one out of every three spoonfuls.

Din had not looked up from his plate at your question. “Hunting.”

Obviously. You have no idea how long it takes for a person to hunt and kill a deer, so you ask no further questions, but something doubtful niggles you. It seems an awfully long time for a man as capable as Din to be away for something as simple as a deer for supper. But who are you to know?

“Girl, what are you doing?” Alerted, perhaps, by your sudden increase in trips to the water pump, Din ducks into the cabin as the light is dying. His brows are wrinkled with confusion to find you boiling water in every spare pot and kettle you could find.

“I’m filling the tub for a bath.”

“Inside?”

“Of course inside,” you say matter-of-factly. “You may wash outside in the creek, but I am not going to.”

He mulls that point over for a few seconds, and you think you see a flicker of color in his cheeks, as though he hadn’t thought of that. “But why ain’t you fillin’ the tub by the pump? I can lift it inside for ya.”

“Because we’re washing with warm water, Din.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. Starting with the womp rat and finishing with you. You’ve been on the road for days and you’re the filthiest creature I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Is that right?” As it had at the barn before, Din’s jaw works. But unlike before, you suspect that instead of bracing back a scolding, he’s trying not to laugh. Well, you won’t be laughed at, but it’s better than the alternative. “And here I was thinkin’ ladies were a little less blunt with their words.”

“I have to be blunt to get anything through your hat, your kerchief, and your thick skull,” you quip back, but now the both of you are smiling. With a little more confidence, you order him back outside to tend to the cuckoo hens, and then you remember with a pang your barbed words from earlier. Maybe he didn’t deserve to be pecked at all the time. “And would you please get me a couple of fresh eggs? I need them to wash my hair.”

He looks even more confused than before, and you’re uncertain whether it’s at your request or your change in tone. But all he says is, “Yes ma’am.” Filling the doorway with his bulk, he passes back out into the twilight and leaves you to the bubbling in your pots and tummy.

You’re hot and sweaty by the time the bath water is ready and Grogu is clean. You use the lavender soap on him, secretly relishing the way his baby soft skin smells after you towel him dry before the fire.

“Why don’t you go next?” you tell Din, whose head is bobbing with exhaustion. You wonder when he last slept. “He’s all excited with you back, it’ll take me a few minutes to get him down.”

Before he can protest, you’re already sweeping away with the kid. There. That’s one way to win an argument with Din Djarin, you figure. State your case, hope he agrees, run before you can hear any protest.

You suspect the ploy won’t work a second time, but it’s bought you a few minutes.

The moment the door shuts, you realize Din will be stark naked, right on the other side of this door. And in a few minutes, so will you. Unlike most husbands and wives, you would be separated by this door. Which is exactly how it should be.

With a slight flush to your neck, you go about dressing Grogu in clean clothes for bed.

It does take longer than usual to get Grogu to fall asleep. He’s taken to sleeping in the bed with you, and it’s only a few moments into your first story that you hear it through the door. A soft groan of relief, the gentle sloshing of water.

Your cheeks burn. You wonder if his big body can even fit in the narrow basin. His arms and legs are probably draped over the edges, or else he’s squashed up like a pumpkin growing under a fence. Mostly, you’re satisfied that a warm bath is exactly what Din needed after four days in the saddle.

It takes two more stories and a low, gentle lullaby for Grogu’s eyelids to droop and fall closed. You sit still for a minute or two longer, both to ensure he’s asleep and because you’re certainly not going to leave this room until you’re certain Din’s finished with his bath.

Your unspoken question is answered promptly with a soft tap at the door, and it opens a sliver. His hair is glistening, black as midnight. “He sleepin’?”

“Yes,” you whisper.

“You can go on ahead. Never mind the tub afterward. I’ll empty it.”

He leaves you to your wash. The warm water is now a tad closer to tepid, but it’s still the most lovely wash you’ve had in ages, especially with the luxurious, fancy soap. You soak in the fragrant water for a few minutes, feeling like a lady of leisure, just enjoying the crackle of the fire as the night deepens outside.

After you’re through, you have a bowl of fresh warm water ready for your hair, and after frothing the egg whites, you take a long time to scrub every inch of your scalp clean. When it’s rinsed and you’ve combed it through with your fingers, you feel so much better that you can actually feel your muscles relax from the rigid torpor they’d been locked in for weeks.

It’s when you’re slipping on your clean new nightdress for the first time that you recognize the almost unfamiliar feeling settling warm and low in your chest. Comfort. Warmth. It soothes you, to know Din is back and nearby, that Grogu is safe and clean and happy, that you’re about to fall asleep in a soft bed, with a full belly and no one to scold or strike you.

You look around the tiny cabin, barely big enough to contain its few residents. Your situation is far from ideal, but it’s far from awful, either. Perhaps, when this is all over, you might even look back on this place with fondness.

He nearly falls asleep doing it, but he sits up in the lean-to, watching until the light from your lamp goes out in the bedroom. He could just as easily empty the tub in the morning, but the fretfulness that had followed him onto the trail draws him back into the house – girl needs to lock that damn door, he thinks. You had also forgotten to bank the fire. He knows how much it upsets you to lose your precious flame, so after he hauls the heavy tub of water outside as quietly as possible, he sneaks back in to scoop fluffy ashes over the coals so they’ll be waiting for you tomorrow.

Maker, he is tired. He sits in the rocking chair you’ve placed before the grate, enjoying the warmth of the coals for just a moment before going outside to the cold lean-to cot. It’s a far sight better than the hard ground with nothing but a blanket between him and the autumn chill, but it’s still going to be a cold night. He isn’t complaining. Just a little warmth before he goes.

He’ll just sit for a minute, he thinks drowsily. Just a minute. He can smell the lavender from your soap. He breathes it in, and in his exhaustion his brain releases the bars that keep his secret thoughts contained: he imagines how you would smell. Like lavender and honey, something sweet and natural. It would smell best close up, under the curve of your jaw, your heat so close he’d feel it on his lips an inch away. The cold of the lean-to, that enemy of the night, would flee into the wind at the warmth of your hands, rough with work he’d so much rather you didn’t have to do, but still so gentle. They’d fit so easily into his own, so small and delicate he hardly knows where you find the strength you display with them.

When his eyes snap open it’s with the hunter’s innate sense of being observed, of peril close by. The fire is dim. There’s a figure obscuring the moonlight from the window. Without thought, his hand snatches through the air, closes tight around a wrist, and he pulls.

You gasp, and as your soft body tumbles into his lap, Din comes back to himself.

You were standing over him holding a blanket. He’d fallen asleep by the fire. Something had drawn you from your bed – you must have heard him, or sensed him, and now you’re all tangled up between him and the blanket.

The scent of lavender is overwhelming, but even more so is the sight of you. It shocks him completely to his core and batters a new shape into being.

You smell like lavender and you’re bathed in moonlight from the windows of the dark cabin, your eyes wide, lips parted. Your hair is loose down your back, soft and still damp. He can see the wet spots on your dress, translucent, the barest hint at what your pretty skin looks like beyond your face and hands.

Your skin. Your arms are bare. Your legs are bare. You’re completely bare except for the thinnest excuse for clothing he’s ever seen in his Maker-damned life, a little frock that falls to your shins in froths of white. There’s even a ribbon sewn through the low collar, so sweet and distracting it makes his cock jump.

Oh, hell.

Maybe you see it or maybe you don’t, but your wrist jerks slightly in his grasp. He releases it, but you don’t stand up from where you’re sprawled over him straight away.

“I’m sorry,” you both whisper at once.

Then to his horror, he spots a single tear gliding down your cheek. In the abandon of the dark, he finds the courage to thumb it away with a gentle touch. “Hey, hey. Why you cryin’, girl?”

“I’m not, not really,” you whisper. It’s clear you’re trying to coax out the words. “I – I just –”

He waits, a soft silence. He understands that words are difficult. That sometimes they play tricks. He gives you the time you need to find the ones you want.

In the smallest voice, as though you’re that deer offering its neck for slaughter, you whisper your secret. “I was… afraid. When you were gone. I thought I was angry at you, but I wasn’t. I thought… maybe you weren’t coming home.”

His heart leaps and then swells with such fierceness that he does what he has no excuse for, what he’s got no right to do, offers what he shouldn’t and can’t give you. He traces the moon’s pale, silvery light over your cheek with his thumb, tucks your damp hair, butter soft, behind your ear.

“I’ll always come back,” he promises. “Never had a home before. Never had anyone expecting me in it, either. Guess it takes some getting used to.”

“Yes, I don’t like being under a yoke either,” you smile. Your eyes are so beautiful. You surely cannot be a creature hands like his are allowed to touch. Yet you haven’t brushed him away. “I suppose it’s natural to want to escape it a little while, if you’re not used to it.”

He frowns. “You’re not a yoke.”

You breath a scoff. “What am I, then, but a burden? A stranger in your way?”

Din shakes his head slowly. “I follow the stars. I follow the Way. They led me to Grogu, and they led me to you. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve nothing else worth coming back to.”

He’s not sure, later, who kisses whom. Everything else melts away, the moment his lips find yours and find them exactly as soft as he thought they would be.

[jules-onpaper]

Western Skies: Ch 4

Din Djarin x F!Reader. Western!AU. Series Masterlist. Masterlist.

Warnings: Grief; allusions to trauma (none occurs, implications are that Reader expects abuse due to past abuse); fake marriage/marriage of convenience; Reader is described as having hair and a menstrual cycle.

Summary: While you prepare to stay, Din prepares to leave, or: yearning for things we cannot have.

WC: 6.2k

Note: Follow @jules-onpaper for updates! Dividers by @mykento. Thanks so much to @frannyzooey for the encouraging beta read and the Van ladies for their constant support 🩵 Tagging cowboy girlies (gn) below (let me know if you would prefer not to be tagged):

@secretelephanttattoo @imaswellkid @fuckyeahdindjarin @goodwithcheese @maggiemayhemnj @kedsandtubesocks

Din has needed to leave for days now. Karga had been insistent the last time he had visited town. The window of opportunity was closing.

Instead he stays put, observing you closely without watching, tracking your movements through the house and the yard by the swish of your skirt, the trail of water drips you leave behind, the low chatter to the kid. Mostly he sticks by the barn, mending leather; you do not come outside as often if he trails the yard.

Din thinks he catches you watching him too. He feels it seep through the windows, your doubt and irritation and all of the clear signs you’re exactly where you don’t want to be, mourning everything you’ve ever had, and rightfully resenting his making you stay here when you could be on your way to the only other family you’ve ever known. You do not know he has the money to have sent you on your way already, though he certainly does – that it’s only your bargain and his selfishness keeping you here.

If you do suspect it, you don’t bother voicing your displeasure. You’re busy working yourself to the bone in chores and housework. In fact, your first few days at the homestead, he wavers on the knife’s edge of physically stopping you.

You get up so early he wonders if you’re sleeping at all. You haul water for the washing up. He sees you at it, up and about before he is, smoke from your hearth trickling in a lazy trail up into the speckled dome of early dawn, your shoulders wavering to and fro under the weight of the buckets. You’re so small beneath the weight of the yoke, it takes everything in him not to step to you and take it from you. But he knows you want work of your own to feel useful, knows that you resent the weight of your grief and you are fighting it tooth and nail. He doesn’t know if you are winning, but he knows it is a battle worth fighting.

So when you’ve returned, sweating and rubbing at your shoulders with a wince, he calls you over. That morning he teaches you how to feed and care for the cuckoo hens, and the next day, to feed the cows and hogs.

The next time he catches you up with the dawn, he teaches you to milk.

“C’mon,” he jerks his head toward the barn. You freeze like a hunted thing as you always do when he speaks to you, but you let your bundle of logs fall back onto the pile with a wooden clatter and follow him without protest.

The barn’s hay smell does only a little to cover the smells of the animals, but if it perturbs your city sensibilities you don’t comment on it. Din leads you over to the spotted Jersey and pats her down a bit, letting her get used to him.

He sets down the pail and squares up on the stool, tugging a few fine streams of milk into the dirt to clear out any debris from the teat. There’s a thin metallic sound as white streams trickle rhythmically into its tin bottom. You watch him for a bit, and then in a frigid morning whisper,

“She won’t kick me?”

Din shakes his head, bristled cheek rubbing against the cow’s warm side. “No, s’long as you go slow and let her know where you are. She’s gentle, this one.”

“Does she have a name?”

“No.”

There’s a small pause. 

“Why not?”

Instead of answering, he stands with a grunt and beckons you over to the stool. You approach warily, despite his reassurance that the bovine placidly chewing her cud wouldn’t harm you.

“All right, you try.”

Biting your lip, you do. You tug, but nothing happens. Your forehead creases. You try again and the cow snorts gently, as though perplexed at the holdup. He sinks to one knee beside you to watch. Ah, that’s it. You’re squeezing your little hand around the teat with all of your fingers, tweaking your wrist deftly, as though you’re–

“Here.” It comes out more gruffly than intended, and you stiffen for a second as he wraps his hand around your cold little fingers, showing you which grip to use, the pressure, the movement, firmly insisting his thoughts not wander and therefore filling his own head with images of your nimble fingers he’s going to see branded behind his eyelids tonight, he’s sure. With his help, the milk lets down. Once you’ve got it, he rises to his feet and watches you fill the pail.

When you’re done, you pat the cow’s side as if to thank her for behaving during your first milking, and the soft little secret smile he catches you wearing makes his chest fill with something that satisfies. Something like pride. Something like–

He sighs, scrubs his beard with the back of his hand, looks out into the pinkening sky with a deep inhale. The cool morning air clears his head. Somewhat.

After that, he gives you the charge of the chickens and milking, standing by to help if you need it. With a full load of chores, he’d hoped that you would tire yourself out and take a well-earned break at last, but he hasn’t found you out by the creek once since your first morning here. Morning, noon, and night, you cook meals of dubious consistencies. All day, you chase after the kid – much more deftly with your new moccasins, he notes – as though nervous he’ll disappear.

When at last his frustrated concern outweighs his sense and he offers to haul water and logs, you give him a steely no, thank you and continue to do it yourself, no matter how long it takes you to stagger through the yard. You won’t let him near the hearth either; it has quickly become your territory. Should he even step close to it, he can feel your glare burning into the hairs on the back of his neck. It raises his hackles just the same as a wolf’s eyes on him out on the trail. Now, as then, he steers himself and the kid well clear of the threat and keeps an eye out for any mischief.

You’re a little less wary with the animals each day, but you cook meals and you wash dishes with a focus that ought to leave burn marks behind you. Your hands are red and raw after, as though you’re attempting to scrub yourself clean of some evil he has no idea how you could have come to possess. During your first week you take on what you call “fall cleaning”, despite the fact that the prairie’s heat has barely dipped from oppressive to brisk and the September days are sunny and bright.

Whatever “fall cleaning” is, what results is a cataclysm, with many plumes of dirt any prairie dust up would envy and much moving of furniture and scattering of quite settled families of bugs and spiders. Din takes Grogu into the barn and fixes harnesses. He senses that you’re beating at something harder to reach than the cobwebs, and surmises that you want to be alone for it. 

Also, he thinks wryly, rescuing the curious child from the cuckoo cockerel (or rather vice versa, he hardly knows which cawing heathen is worse off) for the third time, it’s perhaps a kindness that the kid’s well out of your way for a day. He’s certainly felt the benefits of having long hours free from having to check every two minutes for a small hand to be where it shouldn’t, to feel the first stab of anxiety at every cry lest it be really bad this time, to feed or clean or soothe. It’s one more item on the list of things he doesn’t know how to express gratitude to you for.

That evening when it seems safe to approach, he has to admit the cabin does look more tidy, though he hardly sees what all the fuss was about. You’ve beaten away the dust and rearranged the room to your liking. The rug that usually caught all the crumbs from dinner now lies in front of the hearth. He doesn’t have much in the way of dishes, but you’ve arranged the nicer ones, two of cheap tin and two of chipped porcelain – in a row on the mantel. They glimmer gently in the evening light, making the place look more like a proper parlor than it’s ever been.

You ask him in a roundabout way if he might hang the nails for the cooking utensils lower, so you can reach them. He agrees at once. He’s ready to do anything you need to get you comfortable here if it will get you out from under that shroud of weariness, ease the hollows beneath your eyes that he fears if touched would bruise and blister like fruit gone to seed too soon. 

But that evening, you fall asleep right at the table, your cheek squished flat on one hand, the fork with your last piece of pancake you’d been drowsily offering the kid drooping from the other. Grogu watches with solemn disdain as the food drops uselessly onto the plank floor.

It takes several calls to wake you. “Girl. Girl.” He almost reaches for the delicate curve of your shoulder, the wrinkle of cotton where the borrowed dress doesn’t quite fit you. When you do wake up it’s with a start, a huff of annoyance as your tired gaze slides to his and he looks away, mindful of the beast he has woken.

“What? Now you have nothing to say? You look as though you do.”

Din works his jaw and looks down at his tin plate. It’s still something he’s getting used to, being observed bare faced like this by you. Your eyes are so bright and direct, staring him down as though you have every intention of seeing him clean through to the blood and sinew, through to every mistake and sin he’s ever committed. But this time, instead of wishing for the cover of his hat, his bandana, he steels himself and meets your eyes. His heart thumps uncomfortably hard in his chest.

“I want you to take it easy from now on. You’ve done enough. You’re pushin’ things too hard. Gonna hurt yourself.”

Now as always, your lips part quickly, baring your teeth. He thinks you feared he would strike you during your first days here. If you had ever had cause to be struck by that dead husband of yours, Din privately considers him better off lying washed up somewhere on the riverbank. But now that you’re seemingly satisfied that Din’s not going to do anything close to beating you, your teeth are sharp and ready to bite.

This time, though, he’s ready, even as you begin by sharpening words out of his own mouth.

“You said it was going to be a hard winter, I’m doing my part. You still have to show me how to pickle the vegetables, and I still don’t know how to make jam, and-”

“No,” he cuts you off sharply. Your expression breaks and freezes. He’s never been this firm with you. He sighs through his nose, glances at the kid. Unafraid, but curious at his tone, no doubt. Kid’s eyes are like planets.

“There’s some time,” he says more calmly. “We’ve got time ‘til all that.” When you’re about to protest again, he presses, “Ain’t gonna make spring come faster for working yourself half to death. Can’t do nothin’ for the winter or for the kid if you’re laid up. Cabin’s clean enough, so just worry about the regular chores a while. The rest will keep.”

Your eyes get very bright, almost glassy in the firelight, and if you were another woman he suspects you might have cried. But you’re not weeping. You’re wringing your brain for any other excuse to get what you want.

It’s surprising, really, that he finds your indignation somewhat endearing. You’re just like Grogu when he’s prevented from something he wants. Hot and determined that you’re going to have it, and hang what Din says. So he doubles down. He’ll take the snips you give him, the way you try, subtly, to draw him into a fight that you will lose. Maker be thanked you have no idea how much practice he has at resisting exactly that. May you never know. You’d run a thousand miles away.

“It’s final.”

He returns to his plate. It’s best if he reminds everyone at this table who’s in charge here. He needs to keep you both safe, healthy, and he will not let you work yourself into an illness or injury that Maker knows might kill you out here.

Your scowl deepens, but you rise from the table with the dishes without further argument.

He tries to go on chewing. His appetite has waned, and the… whatever it is you’ve put on his plate isn’t helping. It used to be meat, he thinks. Something squeaks against his back molars and he pauses a moment. Swallows. He’s had worse and survived. Besides, he didn’t keep rat poison in stock on account of the kid. And now because of you.

Din snorts to himself, and earns a look from you. Not a glare, but suspicious all the same, like the moon’s fingernail peeking over the horizon; the bright of your eyes over the smooth curve of your shoulder. Quickly, he goes back to chewing over the meat.

What are you thinking? He has no idea, except that you’d clearly prefer if he wasn’t close by. You have people back East. Are you fond of them? They of you? Do you miss them, or do you return to them out of duty and obligation, because there is simply no one else who would shelter you at their hearth?

It must be a little like being a foundling in the covert, he thinks, except that the rules are different among your people. Women without husbands or fathers or brothers to protect them lose status, as though the ability of a man to care for them made them more virtuous. Your women are not permitted to be warriors in their own right.

This is a shame, in his opinion. If you knew any better, if you had any concept of what a Child of the Watch was truly capable of, would you take pride in being a Mandalorian’s wife? He doesn’t know of any Mandalorian women who are not trained in combat, but supposedly there were some once, before the Fall. 

Devoted. Strong. Mothers of warriors.

Needless to say, he doesn’t tell you this; you don’t want to hear it. And he shouldn’t be thinking about the dreams of a younger man, anyway. He hands you his plate.

“Thank you for the meal,” he says, as he has each time before. 

No response. Just a tired look, as if you wonder why the hell he’s bothering. The tin plates clatter together noisily.

He says goodnight and again, you do not answer. On his bedroll in the lean-to, he watches the smoke from the hearth dissipate slowly and thinks of you lying in bed. Do you cry there? Do you mourn the man you lost? Or do you simply think, as he does? Perhaps you’re also awake, staring sightlessly, imagining the patterns of the stars hidden from your eyes above.

He half-expects you not to, but you heed his order to take it more slowly. At least, you look less feral at the dinner table the evening after next. You chat with Grogu, encouraging him to eat the peas on his plate rather than mash them to a green pulp coating in his hands. The baby shows you his milky teeth in a shy smile. You almost smile back, your forehead softens. The dead look seems to leave your eyes for several minutes after that.

Day by day, you’re taut with the stubborn will to live, hollow with a readiness to die. It’s still difficult to watch your grief and have nothing to stem it with but food and shelter and his poor attempts at lightening your load and occupying your time. You wear your pain deeply, yet with a stoicism he recognizes by instinct. He watches as the wound begins to knit and scar. He keeps his distance. He lets you snarl and chew, adjust to things in your own time, lest you jerk from even the most gentle of hands and gut yourself further, a snared rabbit in a trap, your soft body tinged with a red that stains. 

Slowly, very slowly, the hollowness fades. Your sharp tongue eases from a weapon of brute force to a mistrustful tool of laceration. Yes, the rest seems to do you good.

You’ve seemed to bond with the child. He had observed the tear tracks and the exhaustion on both of your faces that first day, and determined it best not to ask too much about it. The kid was fine, after all. 

He clings to your skirts now, watches you while you mutter at the fire as though daring it to go out. And while you still stumbled and sighed and tried to keep him occupied, it was with the kind of patience you did not offer anything else, including Din himself. And then, you had looked so solemn when you said, I’ll keep him safe. He had believed you. Still did. And not many had earned that trust so quickly.

Maybe that is why he senses the cracks within himself the first time he sees your smile. Not some hidden or halfhearted twitch of lips, but the real thing. 

It’s at the kid, of course, but it’s while he’s perched on Din’s shoulder as he’s walking indoors, and your grin is so broad, so sweet and affectionate and gentle that it hits him full throttle in the chest. That stretch of your fine, pretty lips echoes through his body like buckshot. He is as rattled as though you had meant to offer it to him, and not the baby with the fistful of prairie blooms: blue aster, wild bergamot, prairie rose.

“You got some pretty little flowers, didn’t you? Did you eat any bugs today?” you coo, reaching up as the kid caws at you, wearing your own precious gift on your face. When Din only stands there in the doorway, frozen, you glance at him in question.

He catches himself, lowers the kid into your waiting arms. It’s your routine by now; you take Grogu before evening chores, he takes the kid after dinner while you do the washing up.

He just hadn’t expected it, that’s all. How the simple gesture transformed you, made you look beautiful, no, vibrant. Maybe if you had smiled sooner in the day, or later, it might not have caught him so unawares. But there’s something special about this time, he has always thought. He has always felt cloaked and safe as the evening as the stars swell, when the sun retreats behind the curtains of the hills, when the crickets chirp and everything begins to still.

On the road, he enjoys this time best alone. He likes watching the moonrise, a sweet secret of the dark just for him. But here? Suddenly he has the absurd notion that if you possess smiles like this one, what the hell does he need the moon for?

But the smile is not for him. So he leaves it be.

There is so much you don’t know.

Your smile reminds him of that moon so much he thinks he might never sever the connection, and it startles him.

He needs to leave.

A few days after Din demands that you take it more slowly, he decides to punish you for it in an unexpected way. Of course, just as you had begun to feel you’d gotten the first real rest you’d had in weeks, begun to swing into a pattern, it all goes to hell.

“Well hey there, neighbor!” caws the voice from the wagon. Peli scoffs impatiently at your stunned face and brushes past you, hauling a large basket in her arms. Din descends from the wagon, somewhat shamefaced at the glare you aim his way. He had said nothing about anyone coming to the homestead. For kriff’s sake, you’re wearing these strange, comfortable shoes and there had been no hair pins in the box Mrs. Shackleton sent; your hair was braided long down your back and tied with the store twine. You’re still wearing the same damn dress. You look like a heathen.

“Well, girl, where you keep your bread tin at?” Peli calls from within.

“We’re baking bread?” you ask, still staring Din down. Clearing his throat, he passes by you without answering, his bandana and hat masking all but his dark eyes, which he does not give you, either. He sets another basket, this one full of small jars, on the kitchen table with a clinking rattle and touches the rim of his hat with two fingers. 

Peli waves him off out of his own house with authority. “Get on, Mando, we won’t be needin’ ya.”

He goes, but not as though in a hurry. This time, he meets your eyes, a golden-brown gleam. 

You stare after him for a few seconds, your heartbeat returning to normal, skipping as it usually did when he got close to you. Leftover fear, you guessed, from being around Leo’s unpredictable moods. “Gonna check the chickens, Peli,” you say suddenly then, and follow him out the door.

He’s already at the barn tacking up Razor when you approach.

“What’s she here for?” 

He buckles and re-buckles the strap at Razor’s belly, shifts the horse blanket, the saddle bags. The horse’s ears flick, perturbed. He checks the saddle once more before swinging up, his strong legs lifting him easily. “Visit,” he says at last, not looking at you.

“And you?” You scoff, fold your arms. “You don’t want to welcome your visitor too?”

“Rather not.”

Rage settles into your chest. You would also rather not, and yet here he was, getting to slip away to do Maker knew what, getting to hide behind saddle and bandana, while the sharp-tongued biddy inside was apparently more than ready to turn your day upside down.

“Only be in the way. ‘Sides, I have business in town today with the mayor.” He finally meets your eyes. “Not sure if I’ll be back tonight. Peli’s gonna stay if I can’t make it.”

You balk. “But what about the-”

“Don’t worry about anythin’, hear?” He jerks his chin towards the barn. “They’ll keep. I don’t want you goin’ in there without Peli or me.”

“Fine,” you bite.

He nods, touches the rim of his hat again, but doesn’t move. Razor snorts and paws, eager to go, but Din sits there, watching from beneath the shadow of his hat as you pout below like a child.

“I’ll keep him safe,” you say at last. Of course you would. The only thing that has kept you tethered to where you are, what you’re doing, keeps you from wandering in mind and body are the soft giggles and curious antics of his child.

He nods, solemn, and beckons the horse with his calves.

Your morning with Peli turns out to be a better experience than you feared. Though the two of you had had sharp tongues whetted to lacerate each other the first time you met, upon further reflection, you realize this may have been in large part your own doing. After all, hadn’t she been practically and calmly laying out your options, hadn’t she given you her bed and fed you?

In a few minutes you find yourself relaxing. She is nothing like the women that run the general store, the Shackletons, with their feathered hats that wouldn’t be out of place in your mother’s tailor shop, the women beneath them tutting and fretting at your buttonholes to save a few cents off the asking price. But Peli pays absolutely no mind to your strange footwear or lack of proper stockings and hair. Peli fixes a pair of wired spectacles around her goggling eyes, sets her hands on her hips, and instead of remarking on the mismatched china on the mantel, compliments how well you have scrubbed the floor. Then she takes several minutes to coo and fuss about the baby, bouncing him on her knee and saying things like,

“Look at those ears! Oh, you little prairie rat, it would be a shame not to grow into those. Here’s hopin’, huh? Tiny thing, you don’t seem to grow up much, do you? What have they fed you?”

Well, after that it’s pretty hard not to like her, as odd as she is. You even find yourself chuckling as the two of them chatter; only under your breath, but still. The vibration in your chest grates in your ribs, unfamiliar, and pausing over the coffeepot you feel a pang of shame. You shouldn’t be laughing, surely, with your husband dead only this short while?

The oppressive weight that had collapsed your lungs with shock and grief is easing from a bloodied death grip to a battle-ready fist. You’re surprised, actually, at how far you’ve come in a spare couple of weeks. You slept through the night with hardly any crying most nights, and when you did have a nightmare, it was brief and you could sometimes sleep again afterwards. When you couldn’t, you watched the baby sleep, his little puffs between plump lips and warm cheeks a sweeter vision than the ones rippling behind your eyelids when you shut them.

Peli seems to echo your thoughts as you set down a weak cup of coffee to the first and only guest you’ve ever had as a married woman; you’re also embarrassed to note you have nothing to offer with it, having broken the milk jug. Your mother would have turned up her nose and refused it, but Peli slurps the hot liquid with gusto and carries on talking. “You seem a mite more rested n’ when I saw you last, girl.”

“I am, thank you.”

“Been settlin’ in?”

“Yes.”

She levels you a dry, doubtful look over her coffee mug. She frowns a little, eyes narrowing at you. The cup makes a gentle clink against the sturdy wooden table. “Girl–” the sigh is as fond as it is exasperated. “Dunno why you won’t admit to it. Shoot, when I lost my daddy I was a wreck for many a day.”

You blink, surprised.

“It’s hard to watch somebody leave this world. Harder still I reckon to have it sudden-like, like you did, and him bein’ so young, yeah? No infirm old man comes out here for a livin’.” Peli’s amber eyes, creased with laugh lines but with no dull to their sparkle, flicker with sadness, but that’s not what loosens your shoulders. It’s the inwardness; she’s remembering a loss perhaps very far away in space and time. And it haunts her still.

Is that what you had looked like?

What did you look like now?

“I’m…” I’m fine, thank you for asking. I’m doing better. I’m all right, thank you kindly ma’am. The polite lies wither on your tongue. “I’m getting on, a little,” you admit. It still feels wrong, but it’s the closest your poor abilities can come to describing how you feel.

You tell her about learning to milk, feeding the chickens. You tell her about learning to handle Grogu. You tell her about the disastrous first instance of your cooking, and the fretfulness you had worked up in yourself over ensuring it did not happen again.

Peli’s gentle chuckles rise to a full belly laugh over your repeated plights in the cooking department, and when you grumble over the baby’s hair full of grits, she cackles and reaches down to tug the ear of the little one, as though congratulating him.

“It’s not funny,” you insist, though the corner of your mouth twitches. “It’s one of the main things I ought to be doing, taking care of the baby and cooking and-”

Peli’s arms fold comfortably. “Mando say so?”

You balk. “No.”

“Give you plenty of chores to do, then? Got you plumb beat?”

You hesitate, unsure from her matter-of-fact tone whether she expects the answer to be in the negative. Peli shuffles in her seat to get even more settled, resting her folded hands on her belly as though she intended to stay there all day. Below the table, Grogu coos over her shoe buckles.

“When Mando first came to town, I was the on’y one – the on’y one, mind – to open my door to his business. Coins are coins, in my opinion, and he had ‘em. Had this little prairie rat too,” she adds, with another fond tweak of the kid’s ear. “Took a shine to him I guess ‘cause he was polite and had a half-pint little rugrat to care for. No proper home as far as I could tell. He wanted me to fix up his wagon. Said he would be gone a few days, would I keep after the little one?”

She grins. “Well, his coin was good,” but she glances down at Grogu adoringly. “The dogs liked him, though Mando doesn’t seem to care for dogs much.”

“What did –” you hesitate over using his name. Did Peli not know Din’s name? That seemed ridiculous, but perhaps this was a nickname the two of them shared… though that didn’t seem to fit either of their personalities very well. You avoid the question. “What did he go off to do?”

Peli shrugs. “Not my business. Coin was good. Came back after a day or so, as he said.”

“And then he stayed?”

“Oh, no.” She takes a long draft of her coffee and smacks her lips. “Came and went for a few months, same as many do. I could tell folks about was as mistrustful of him as they used to be of my daddy, but just like I did, they came around when his business was clean.”

“Has he always…?” you chew on your question, uncertain.

“Covered his face? Sure. Never asked,” she tells you smoothly. “Impolite. Well, I guess he had some hullabaloo about town with some strange folk, and it was all the sheriff could do to help him clear it out. After that, the mayor was grateful enough to hand him a package of land. Good land too,” she adds, glancing out at the window. “Not that he seems of a mind to put it to much.”

“I noticed.” It was strange to Peli too, then, that a homesteader had no farm and few livestock. And, it seemed, the little cache of coins you had found did likely belong to Din, and he had had the money before the land and built that little hideaway to keep it safe. So where did he get it from? Surely a poor little pioneer town like this one hadn’t enough money to reward a stranger that handsomely?

“Well, to tell a man his business is wasted breath,” Peli says sagely. “That’s somethin’ Mando knows well too, you know.”

“How do you mean?”

Her eyebrows fold; pity? Or more exasperation at your clear inexperience? “Girl, you ain’t got a clue what you’re doin’ out here. When he dropped you at my doorstep you were hardly more’n a ghost. Like your body had come outta that river and left somethin’ missin’. Seems to me he’s grateful you’re here at all, never mind what you can do. You’re luckier than most to be alive, girl, and here you are fussin’ about a bachelor’s kitchen?” 

She snorts. “Well, I guess he ain’t a bachelor any more. Still, though, little thing like you.” She leaves it there as you note with skepticism that you have several inches on her.

“You’ll get on, girl.”

You look up. Your thoughts had wandered back to Din, wondering where he was now on his errand, if he really thought you as fragile as Peli implied. You wonder if you are. After all, what tenuous threads tie you together? The responsibility you were beginning to feel for Grogu? The promise of more work to distract you from your thoughts? 

“I guess so,” you offer. It’s the best you can do for now.

She’s looking at you with a stiff jaw, as though her compassion comes at a price she did not often pay. “I ain’t guessin’.”

You sit there and share that thought between you. That you will survive. The knowledge that you will, because you must. Maybe it’ll never be the same, but it’ll be. “And having a little one by to care for don’t hurt none,” she adds, with a bright look for the small hands using her skirt to lift the dark-eyed baby to his feet. The baby inspects the table for treats, and finding none, huffs in a wry tone beyond his years, as if to ask what on earth the point was, without any treats to get by on?

Watching you stroke your fingers gently over his pudgy cheek, Peli declares him as wise a prairie rat as she ever saw, and why didn’t the two of you make him somethin’ to eat? In a matter of minutes after that, she’s teaching you how to make bread, how to dollop cookies into a plate in the oven and throw coals on the lid to bake them. She blathers on about all the jams she’s ever made as she whips up a batch of that too, calling out ingredient for you to fetch, never minding your scurried attempts to follow along.

Once the bread is actually in the oven, though, you’re surprised by how simple it is, this visit with Peli. You show her the paper piecing you’ve traced to make yourself a nightdress and new gown. She peers at the pencil marks and huffs. For the first time, she looks rather impressed. “Maybe you do know somethin’, girl.”

Then she digs into her box that Din had brought and tells you she’s going to piece a quilt, and you seem to be handy with a needle. So you take the shears and the precious bolt of fabric for your gown, and she sits in the chair by the door and bounces Grogu on her knee.

It turns out the stitching is easy and companionable work, but you’re fascinated as she describes the intricate needlework on quilts she’s seen from some of the more skilled women in town. Patchworks of all sizes and descriptions. She asks if you’ve ever made a pinwheel like the one she’s brought, and you say you have not; your mother after all kept enough quilts at home, and the ones you had packed into your wagon had been made by your sister and mother as part of your hastily thrown together trousseau.

“Well, next time I come,” Peli exclaims, “I’ll be setting you to work! You’re quick with a needle, girl, and you’ll be a mighty help for these old eyes. Could sell, if you liked. But for now, let’s get this rugrat fed and to bed.”

Your heart leaps. Sell your sewing? Perhaps to the general store? How much money might that earn you? Would it be enough for a train ticket, or-?

But Peli heaves herself up with a grunt and carries herself to the cold storage, returning with a wrapper of beef, and tells you you’ll be making stew, everybody ought to know how to make stew. The question of sewing falls to the wayside.

Like the bread, it turns out to be simple when patiently explained over Peli’s quick, haphazard movements near the hearth. Surely she didn’t come all this way just to teach you to do that? No, that’s absurd, but it’s the strangest call you’ve ever received or witnessed.

As you sew, your thoughts return to Din. The longer you got to know him the more questions you had. His saddle, his belt, his holster, his boots – every strip of leather on him was carefully maintained, and you had seen him oiling them carefully until each one gleamed. You wondered if he was waiting for the cowhide to flash his reflection back at him.

You’ll ask him about selling some sewing to the store, you vow suddenly, your mood well improved by the full, comfortable stomach of stew and bread. It seems clear Din will not return tonight. You try and fail to coax Peli from the rocking chair, and instead settle her with a spare blanket and take Grogu into bed.

Yes. Oce you’re safely under the covers, the smell of baking helping you drift more quickly than you have in days, you resolve that in the morning you’ll ask him. You’ll be able to pay him back at least for the dress materials, for the costs you must be incurring him, if you could sell little things from the scraps at a profit. Tomorrow.

Dreams take you. For the first time, you sleep through the night.

Din doesn’t return for four days.

[jules-onpaper]

Cherry Wine | DDDNE | Jack "Whiskey" Daniels/Wife!Reader

𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵

Summary: Your marriage to your high school sweetheart has been hell for a long time, but when Jack discovers your awful secret, it all comes pouring out like a wine stain on the carpet. What do you find in the dregs?

Mind the tags below.

Warnings/content: MDNI; DDDNE; hurt people hurting people, domestic violence (verbal, physical, off stage neglect), there's a mention of human urine omg I'm truly horrified that survived the editing process, off stage drug use as a coping mechanism, alcoholism, infidelity, grief due to miscarriage/child loss, oblique suicidal ideations ("you should have killed me"); explicit smut; dirty talk; piv; fingering; possessive!Jack; emotional resolution?

Word count: 2.6k I defy the drabble that could contain me

Author Notes: Part of @wannab-urs' awesome Hozier challenge! My prompt was "Cherry Wine" with Whiskey. Did I expect to trauma-dump all over it? Nope I sure didn't! But art is catharsis. And so is cowboy smut. 🩵 Banners by @cafekitsune

The front door slams shut with a bang.

Your heart rate increases immediately, but you stay planted where you are, your face set, washing the dishes he was meant to do yesterday but hadn’t, from the dinner that you’d cooked after working your shift at The Ghost Rider, the restaurant where you work split shifts for the breakfast and dinner rushes. You’re still wearing your apron and Hokas. You still smell like beer and french fry grease. You feel the tiredness in your joints, under the weak bones of your cheeks and deep into your eye sockets.

You glance up at the window above your kitchen sink, the green reflection of the digital clock: 54:11 blinks at you behind the clover plant that’s half green and half crunch, which means it’s 11:44. It’s late. You’re so fucking tired. And yet it’s early for him to be home. Much too early. And the bang probably means he’s drunk.

You’re lucky, in a sense, that it is a Saturday that you’re alone.

Oh, he’ll bitch at you for a bit for “guilting” him for doing the dishes, radiating drink and disappointment, but then he’ll pass out in bed, for all the world a corpse. Or butt naked on the floor. Or maybe he’ll black out and piss on the couch again before trudging off to work before dawn without saying a damn word about it. 

You’d spread receipts on the coffee table with your travel mug, dressed for work, trying to calculate with a Bic pen which bill you’d be missing this month, and fucking sat in it. You’d been late that day since you had to throw your only apron and the couch slip into the washing machine.

You’re thinking about this when his boots click down the hall and into the kitchen.

You look like an angel, he thinks, leaning against the doorframe and watching you doing the washing up, even though you’re not. Still, you’re so fuckin’ beautiful, your hair illuminated by the lonely kitchen light over the sink, your apron emphasizing your waist, the curves of your hips and ass.

He gets lost there for a while, on your ass. No, no fuckin’ angel, but you do have a heavenly ass.

The bottle in his hand clinks on the counter, half empty from the drive home, and he can practically see your back tense, practically hear the fuckin’ lecture about to spill from your lips that used to smile so pretty for him and now only spits venom and lies.

Before you can, though, he crowds up behind you at the sink, ghosting his breath over your neck, pressing you up hard against the counter. He’s going to relish this. This last moment before it all goes to shit. His hands rest on your shoulders and glide down your arms.

The moment breaks when you try to shrug him off.

Jaw tightening, breath pushed from his nose, he grips you harder. You jerk, trying to fight him off, but even though you can carry a tray full of dinner plates on each arm, your strength is no match for his. His fingers press into the soft flesh of your arms as you fuss and fume, harder and harder until you’re writhing, hissing through your teeth, trying to elbow him in the ribs, kick him in the groin.

He shakes you, rough.

It makes your teeth rattle. “Jack,” you try to say through the reverberations.

“Yeah, sugar?” His breath is a hot puff against your ear, his voice low, menacingly quiet. “That’s how you’re gonna treat your husband when he gets home, huh? Gonna act all fuckin’ high and mighty with me, not give ol’ Jack the time of day? Well I happen to know you got somethin’ to tell me. Don’t you, sugar? And you better tell me right fuckin’ now.” The grit in his low voice makes your stomach drop out, an icy trap door that stiffens your entire body.

It gives you away. Jack snorts in derision. “Yeah?” he demands, shaking you again. “That’s the way it’s gonna be? A man’s gotta find out his wife is whorin’ herself out to his best fuckin’ friend from the gossipin’ hussies at the fucking pool hall? Huh? That’s how it’s gonna fuckin’ be?!” He’s shouting now, his voice ringing in your ears as you cringe and wrestle yourself out of his arms, your breath caught somewhere between your trachea and your spine.

You back away from him, towards the front hall, wondering if you should grab the phone and call the police, if he’s mad or drunk enough to actually hurt you.

He strides towards you with a swagger, removing his hat and placing it carefully on its peg, as though the two of you are about to have nothing but a pleasant discussion, but there’s a hollow to his eyes. They don’t even shine like they usually do.

“How long you been fuckin’ him?” he asks, his tone flat. When you don’t answer, just press your sweating back against the cold wall, he lifts his eyebrows. He sucks his teeth, nodding slowly at the ground, as though he understands, as though he gets it, but it’s a mockery and you both know it.

“A while, I guess.” Jack takes a step even closer, and you make a sudden grab for the landline, the rotary phone on the side table. His big hand snatches it from you and smashes it back onto the receiver so hard you hear it break. “No, sugar,” he coos, setting a palm on the drywall on either side of your head, “Pretty boy’s not comin’ for ya. Or were you gonna ring up all the other lil boys whose dicks you’ve sucked behind the bar?”

“Fuck off,” you snarl. “That’s not true.”

“The rest is, though, ain’t it.”

Your breaths mingle for a few seconds; grease and spit, beer and rage.

“Yeah,” you breathe, defiant. “It is.”

His hangdog eyes close as though you’ve wrenched out his guts with your fingers. His head drops, hanging low between the bars of his arms for a few seconds before he takes a ragged breath and meets your eyes again.

All the spaces between your ribs and the scar on your belly lights on fire as you see him, just for a second, your Jack, your husband, your cowboy, your darling. You see him for the first time in ages, the boy who’d taken you to prom and kissed you on your front porch for so long your daddy’d playfully threatened him off with his shotgun, the boy who’d proposed on one knee with nothing but hope and love in his eyes when you’d gotten pregnant at just nineteen. The man you followed across the country with nothing but a swell in your belly and a sparkle on your finger, his promising future as an airman in the wings. The man who’d never had a chance to hold his son in his hands.

That loss was so long ago, now, but time doesn’t matter. Time heals all wounds? What a joke. It was as new a wound in your heart as ever, bleeding fresh while the scar on your abdomen puckered and wrinkled with time. That man you loved was buried as deep inside as the bullet that had killed your baby. And he’s gone in a blink. The angry alcoholic is back.

“Why.” You’d moved so far from Kentucky, but his drawl has never wavered.

“Guess I wanted to feel something.”

“Son of a fuckin’ bitch,” he breathes, not really to you. He says it to the broken phone, to the past, to all the hurts that lay between you.

Jack sucks in another breath. His eyes are full.

“Fuck, baby. I wish you’d killed me instead. I wish you’d–” he grabs you by the wrist. You struggle for a moment, but he forces your fingers into an ugly shape and presses it between his eyes. “Right here. You couldn’t do that? Couldn’t kill me clean dead?”

“You don’t deserve it, Jack.”

He barks a laugh with a wicked slice of self-hatred in it, his daily bread. “I know. I know, baby. I don’t deserve shit. But you don’t either.”

You don’t. It’s true. You’d started sleeping with his ‘best friend,’ really the only friend he’d held on to since he was booted from the Air Force for dishonorable conduct, six months ago. And before that, it had been the mountain of secret credit card debt. And before that, the sleeping all day and smoking cigarettes all night, swallowing pill after pill, whatever you could get your hands on, whatever made you numb.

Eventually, when you woke up enough, you’d gone back to work. Or maybe it was because if you didn’t, the both of you would fucking starve. He was laid up every other day with a hangover and becoming meaner and meaner, unable to hold down a job for longer than it took to make rent.

But he’d never struck you. Not once. 

But maybe he would now.

That might feel like something.

“Hit me,” you snarl. “Hit me, why don’t you? Give me what I do deserve.”

Jack only looks at you, shakes his head. 

“Fucking hit-” You’re the one to grab his wrist now, but his hand is loose and floppy.

“J’ya let him lick your cunt?” he asks, face empty of expression. “Mm? Did he figure out how to make you cum with nothin’ but his dick in your ass? Scream his name? Bet he didn’t. Bet you just let him fuck your face and paint his cum all over your-”

The smack is hard enough that his head swivels on his neck, and it’s loud enough to shake the world.

You’re sobbing. “Fuck you,” you say, and hit him again. “Fuck you, fuck you, Jack fucking Daniels. You’re a liar and you’re a piece of shit and I hate you.”

“I know, babygirl,” he croaks, swallowing. “I’m a piece a’ shit and you’re a little whore, but you don’t hate me, do you? No, no more of that.” He catches your wrist in his hand when you wind back to punch him again and slams it against the wall, pinning you in place. It shocks you out of your crying.

“No,” you gulp, miserably. “I don’t. I wish I did but I can’t.”

“What a pair we are, huh?” he whispers, leaning his warm forehead on yours as you shiver and hiccup. “When you gonna stop testin’ me, baby? When you gonna learn I ain’t never leavin’? That I love you so much I’d let it fuckin’ kill me if it weren’t gon’ leave you here alone?”

“No, no, don’t. Don’t leave me alone, Jack, please-”

Your cries are pathetic. You can only whine and accept the broken kiss he gives you, smearing your tears across his own cheeks, his mouth soft and consuming and familiar and the scrape of his mustache a burn that glows. 

He is the only thing that hurts so much it feels good. 

“You ain’t gonna give it to anybody else, you fuckin’ hear me?” he growls against your lips, sucking a mark into your neck. He licks a stripe across the hollow of your throat and shoves your work skirt up above your hips, ripping your panties to the side to get at your slit. “Nobody,” he repeats over your moan. “Cause this pussy’s mine. You can hit me all you wanna, ain’t nobody gonna give you what you need but me.”

Jack mutters a curse. “That’s my girl, already fuckin’ drippin’. Which part got you off, sugar? Was it my yellin’ or your slappin’?” Before you can answer he curls two fingers inside you, seeking and immediately finding that sensitive place just behind your clit, pulling at it like the trigger he knows it is, swallowing the bullet of his name from your mouth.

The tears are still streaming down your face, but you no longer know exactly why, overwhelmed by the exquisite pleasure of his thick fingers stroking you deep and full, exactly as you like, his thumb swirling at your clit. He can rile you up as deftly as he used to be able to rope steers on his father’s ranch, showing off for you as you hung over the railing in your daisy dukes, watching with stars in your eyes.  

“M’sorry,” you whimper, and come with a cry of “Oh, fuck, Jack – I’m sorry, I’m sorry baby, fuck yes, ohmygod–”

He’s growling approval, nipping at your throat as he lets you grind down on his hand, riding through your orgasm. His warm palm strokes your leg as you quiver.

“I know, baby, I know,” he breathes, the weight of his chin hard on your shoulder as he bends to unzip his jeans and free his hard cock. “Look so fuckin’ pretty when you come just for me. Oh, there’s my girl,” he cuts off with a groan, beautiful brown eyes pinching shut as he pushes inside you, belt pressing into your hip, his hand cupping the back of your knee to keep you spread for him. 

He’s chanting, breathless, as though he’s amazed to see your eyes blown out for him after all this time.  “There’s my fuckin’ girl, yeah, love it when you squeeze me like this, fuck.” He drives home with a grunt, panting out a sound that might almost be a laugh when your eyes roll back and your skull knocks against the wall, rattling the frame of your wedding photo. 

“Yeah? Full up, babygirl?” He grinds his hips, sharp and just shy of painful against yours, but you wouldn’t dream of telling him to stop; you’re almost about to come again, rolling from one straight into another. “He fuck you like this? He can’t, can he? Nah, his dick ain’t big enough, is it?” He swats your thigh. “Answer me.”

“No,” you moan. He doesn’t just slip inside you, he stretches you, he makes you come undone to take him, as he’s always done. “N-nobody fucks me like you.” No one could. Of course not.

“S’right. S’fuckin right,” he groans, “And why?”

“‘Cause – hng –” you mumble, cut off as he begins a low, powerful pace, moving inside you like the steady, heart-stopping beat of a bass drum. “‘Cause my pussy’s yours.”

“Yeah, yeah it is,” he says, losing himself, fucking into you harder, the slap of skin and the jingle of his belt echoing in your tiny kitchen. “Perfect girl,” he moans, and the pleasure-pain rings through you exactly right, and for one single second you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, exactly the right broken puzzle shape for his broken piece to fit.

“And,” you rasp, and hold him by the throat, making him look at you as your head swims and you approach the crest of your peak, “You’re mine. You’re all mine, right?”

His face screws up and you think he might be going to cry, but he groans into your shoulder and cums instead, soft tip knocking against your cervix as he fills you, fills you, fills you. The feeling of his warm spend tips you over the jagged edge and your pussy clenches around him, seizing a whimper from his throat.

For a moment or two, you’re one breathing animal, afraid and fucked out. Then Jack hums, tastes your skin as he pulls out. 

“Right?” you ask, your voice trembling. The word could shatter into a million pieces, it’s so fragile. Shocked with a pang of regret, you look away. That can’t be true. Not after this. Not really.

A gentle thumb at your cheek, brushing away another tear, one of thousands. 

“Ain’t never been nothin’ else but yours, darlin’.”

Jack kisses your lips as they tremble, soft, slow, and sinks to his knees, scrunching up your shirt. Ignoring the heaves of your gasping breaths as you watch, he kisses from one end of your scar to the other. “Never gonna be anythin’ but sorry, stupid, and all yours.”

Domestic Violence Resources: USA Canada UK EU

How to help a loved one with Alcohol Use Disorder

Hey. You didn't have to read this. If you did and you got to the end, I'd really appreciate you letting me know what you think. This fic's contents have me feeling all kinds of vulnerable, but I think it's important to share DV and its complex truths in fiction. They are a reality many people face. If you want to share your thoughts or story, my arms are open for you. My ask box, DMs, and comments are open, too. You're safe with me.

[jules-onpaper]

Hozier at Lollapalooza Chile with a Pedro Pascal plushie

[jules-onpaper]

Every lake belongs to the quietness desired by the swans.

ig credit: gossipstyle.

[jules-onpaper]

I've been sitting on this reblog for a few days because I have no idea how to thank you Auntie for how much kindness you show me and my little story 🥹 So instead I'll just say I think of you whenever I sit down and consider Reader's grief and emotional growth, and hope I can do the journey justice 🩵

Thank you so much for the recommendation!!

Truth or Dare time! :D

📚 ⇢ what's the last thing you wrote down in your notes app? 

🌸 ⇢ do you have any pets? if you do, post some pictures of them (Yes I picked this one specifically for a picture of the Tiny Menace; you can recycle one if you'd like).

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

Thank you for the asks, Gemma! Work frying my brain is helping space out the 🌸 asks,

📚 ⇢ what's the last thing you wrote down in your notes app? 

If I am not near my personal laptop, I will write bits of fanfics in my notes app. I'm working on some fluffy flith (thank you @nerdieforpedro and @maggiemayhemnj). It won't leave my brain. So Frankie smut is the last thing I wrote in my notes app.

🌸 ⇢ do you have any pets? if you do, post some pictures of them. Do I have a pet? Do I have a pet!

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

I have been yelling about The Margay by @ohforficsake everywhere recently and am about to slide into her DMs because the last chapter? Oh man. So I am going to spread the love around in this answer and recommend Western Skies by @julesonrecord. It's a Din Djarin western AU. I have chapters 2 and 3 in my drafts and need to reblog them with something more than a keyboard smash and admiration at Jules’ talent. This series is such a treat. Jules' writing is chef's kiss. Her depictions of grief are visceral, and watching the reader try to work through it while getting used to a new way of life has been so interesting. Just. If you have some time, read it.

writer truth or dare asks

[jules-onpaper]

Mickyla 🥺 Thank you so much, love! The support means so so so much. I tip my cowgirl hat to you. 🩵

Western Skies [The Masterlist]

Stunning cover art by @nobodys-baby-now 🩵

Summary:

It's the autumn of 1888 when you're rescued from certain drowning by a mysterious figure who shields his face behind a Stetson and a dingy kerchief...

You've lost everything when he hauls you out of the river and offers you a deal: Come and live with him, and he'll get you back to the East in the spring. All you have to do in exchange for protection and safety is care for his strange, silent child. The catch? You've been a widow for less than an hour, and your morals -- and his religion -- demand that you marry this irascible stranger. Today.

Cover Reveal

Ch 1

Ch 2

Ch 3

Ch 4

Ch 5

Want to follow along? Catch updates on my writing blog @jules-onpaper!

[jules-onpaper]

[jules-onpaper]

𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭 (𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡, 𝐦𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭)

A/N: Reposting as its own post because I had second thoughts about hijacking Kelli @frannyzooey's Write Night post 😅 (I'm sorry! Can I blame that on Lucien excitement too?) Anyway, here's a thing that's been clattering around my noggin and drafts a while. It's so different than my usual stuff that I'm pretty unsure about it. idk. I guess I'm afraid Marcus comes off as rather mean and that's not him, you know? 😭

Warnings/Notes: explicit language 18+; villain!Marcus Moreno; dom!Marcus/brat!reader; breath play; spit; Marcus has metal bending powers; reader wears a torc as a collar that only Marcus can remove; established relationship -- let's assume for the sake of D/s safety that this is an unusually UNHEALTHY slip in their dynamic ok??; they're having a fight they make up with tears and kisses

WC: 828

“You just couldn’t do as you were told, could you, baby?”

“Fuck off, Marcus,” you snap, stomping past him into the penthouse. A guard tries to stop you and you shove his hand away and repeat your mantra, “Fuck off,” before shoving your way into the flat and stalking off to the balcony. 

Beneath you, the city breathes in neon and exhales exhaustion. 

“Abdul,” Marcus says from inside, distant, as though pondering something. “Take a walk.”

You weren’t quite brave enough to slam the door in his face, but maybe you should have. Then you wouldn’t have had the swoop in your gut to turn and find him watching you, his eyes blank, assessing. Your stomach flips when his jaw ticks, ever so slightly. 

“Is that how you speak to me?” Marcus asks. 

Anger flickers to life in you again. You feel like a child. “I’ll speak to you how I want.”

“Oh really?” He seems pleasantly interested, marginally so. He looks down and begins to peel off his black leather gloves, one at a time. A thick desire begins to make your mouth water, your legs woozy. “Well, come on.”

“Come on what?”

“Speak to me like you want. You want to be rude? You want to be a brat? Let’s hear it, baby.”

“I’m not being a fucking brat,” you spit. “You’re being a condescending asshole. I wanted to help. I was going to, but you stopped me. Why the fuck did you stop me?”

“Because, sweetheart, I can’t protect you when you’re being selfless and impulsive.”

“I want to go home,” you snap next. “Take my torque off.”

The air fizzles out between you. The wind plays with your hair, your bare skin, making you shiver. 

“Ask me again,” Marcus says, very quietly. “Ask me, sweetheart, and I swear I’ll take it off and drive you home. You want to be alone? Is that it?”

You want… to scream. You actually stomp your boot on the concrete. “No!” you yell. You don't want to be alone, you don't really want the reassuring weight of his collar off, but you want him to hurt, hurt like you hurt. “Take it off now. You’re so — so—“ You dig for something pointed, jagged enough to hurt. “I just thought you might want some other whore to fuck, some pliable thing with Botoxed lips and a virgin asshole.”

His eyes pop. “Excuse me?”

“Oh sorry, that’s not quite right is it? I’m mixed up. It’s you. You’re the whore, Marcus. You whored yourself out for this city and now you want me as your consolation prize. Well sorry. I’ve gone bankrupt on you. I’m not gonna make you spread your legs any-“

Your back slams against the brick wall of the balcony before the thought completes in your head, and you suck in a ragged breath of air. He didn’t even bother with his powers. His fingers are thick and held tight about your throat instead, his eyes dark, his teeth bared. There’s a perfect control in his fingers that in no way matches the glint in his pupils.

“You think,” he breathes, “You’re hot shit today, don’t you?”

“Just admit I’m a wet hole for you to fuck and let me go,” you snarl. 

You think, for a second, you see a flash of something pained, a wounded animal. And then his fingers squeeze your throat, his expression cold. He watches your pupils dilate and scowls. 

“Yeah? This is how you want to be? A little brat? You’re getting wet right now, aren’t you?” He gives you a little shake and your legs quiver. “If I look under this dress are you gonna be dripping for me?”

He leans in, bites at your bottom lip until you whimper. “Yeah, that’s how you like it, isn’t it baby? You like being a wet little hole ready whenever I want you, don’t you? You never feel better than when you give yourself over to being my little fucktoy. Open your goddamned mouth.” You do. He spits on your tongue. 

With a muffled squirm, you swallow it, show him your tongue.  “Knees,” he growls. “Now.”

Gelatinous, you do. You fall onto your knees with a thud that you know will bruise, but you don't feel it. You're looking up at him with a glaze over your eyes, and the moment he sees it the mirror between you breaks into a billion shards of crystal dust. Marcus drops to his knees, cradles your face in his big palms. "I'm sorry, baby," he whispers, his voice cracked. "I'm sorry. Look at me, sweetheart. I'm so sorry, I'd never hurt you, never, I'd never keep you here if you wanted to go." When you sink into him, your muscles liquid, he cradles your head in the cup of his palm, murmuring love notes and eulogies for promises past in your ear. "I just can't lose you. I can't lose you like I lost her."

[jules-onpaper]

Write Night today/tonight, 3/14! ❤️

Join whenever — reblog if you’re gonna participate and lemme hype you 🥰

[jules-onpaper]

Happy Birthday, Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada 🥰 (March 9th, 1979)

[jules-onpaper]

Western Skies: Ch 3

Din Djarin x F!Reader. Western!AU. Series Masterlist. Masterlist.

Warnings: Grief; allusions to trauma (none occurs, implications are that Reader expects abuse due to past abuse); fake marriage/marriage of convenience; spicy looking at cowboys, Din is STRONG and Reader likes it, a panicked crash course on parenting, Reader gets a burn injury (accidental, self-inflicted). Reader is described as having hair and a menstrual cycle.

Summary: A battle of wills. Or: Grogu makes peace, you make dinner, and Din makes an offering.

WC: 8.4k

Note: Follow @jules-onpaper for updates! Dividers by @mykento.

Grogu sleeps soundly.

You do not.

You lie down still in your clothes and, finally alone, loosen your grip on the seams holding you together.

The hot tears of grief and despair roll down your cheeks in an endless stream until the thin pillow on the straw-tick mattress is soaked nearly through. You have no energy for the scream that had made its nest in your throat since the moment you had awoken on the riverbank, and even the shaking, silent sobs that wrack your chest are scant relief. You veer between trying to force the scream out, extract it so that it will stop choking you, and stuffing it down further. You don’t want to wake the child.

A deep sleep steals over you eventually. You by turns submit and rail against it, waking every hour or so with a gasp of air as though you were still fighting through the depths of the river.

Dawn skims the sky with dusty rose-colored hands, and taps your hot, exhausted eyelids through the small window with insistence. You obey as though called. Your bones ache with such weariness you might fall apart at the least touch, but you’re grateful the night is over and you no longer have to wrestle with sleep.

You creep out of the bedroom and face the empty cabin. All is quiet, the baby’s breath gentle, so you take the chance and open the front door latch to step outside into the cool, clean morning air.

It’s a fresh morning. Maker-sent, some might say. Your mother would, had she ever bothered to look outside, and would have reminded you and your sister to say so too. The family’s hold on religion had been tenuous at best, but at least here there was no need to go through the motions.

The shapes that were mysterious and huge in the darkness are mundane and humdrum now. The barn, like the cabin, is a tall construction of logs stacked close. A plank roof. The fence that surrounds it is cleaved with chicken wire, and the tidy little hen house shares the opposite yard. Already the birds are stirring, but you have no interest in alarming any rooster and causing everyone to wake, so you steal around to the east side of the cabin.

You would have said you had no aim for your walk; only to move outside the confines of a house or a wagon, but your feet betray you. Your steps lead you towards the fluttering trickle that echoes in your heart.

The little creek bed is swollen. The rain that had preceded your and Leo’s arrival had filled its little banks. It is so clear that if not for the way the morning light whirls in it, you could see the pebbles and sand at the bottom. You trace its path, unsure what you’re seeking at the bottom.

After a quarter mile or so, you sit down on the grassy bank and track the path the creek makes. It isn’t very deep, a secret twinkling through the landscape. It winds through trees, stumbles over rocks. You imagine deer sipping from it; rabbits. 

Your eyes catch on a patch of mud with a tiny track in it. In the night, some small animal had trodden upon this very spot. 

Animals passed through here, just as you had tried to. They built their dens and reared their young. You thought of a mother rabbit sneaking from her warm and cozy nest, her kits nothing more than puffs of cotton huddled together in the dark.

How long would she leave them? Hours? Did the small heart within her rabbit breast quicken and tremble like her ample ears, just waiting for a badger or fox or dog to discover her brood, cull it with sharp teeth. Or if it wasn’t a predator, it might be the weather. The summer’s baking heat. The recent rains.

You can’t tear your eyes away from the paw print. The mud is still soft. It had filled your nose and mouth, it had been cool and sweet and dark in your throat. 

It should have filled your lungs like it did Leo’s.

“Girl.”

You gasp and lift your forehead from your knees, your breaths harsh, heartbeat erratic, until the fear that floods your chest sharpens into anger. You bristle at being watched, followed.

“What?” you spit.

“C’mon,” Din says. His low voice is almost as quiet as the creek.

“What?” You’re irritated enough now to turn, elbows on your knees, squinting until you find him. He’s wearing a fresh shirt, and a hot wash of shame crawls up your back. Even if you had changed out of your clothes from yesterday, you would have nothing to change into. 

He stands on long legs slanted at the hip, thumbs propped on his belt, hat bent low. From the ground you can see he is not looking at you. The rising sun makes his outline sharp: broad shoulders, trim waist. His bandana is tied loosely around his throat. You wonder if he stands in the sun on purpose, to obscure himself.

“Best be getting back,” he says. “Kid’s awake.”

With a hard thump in your chest, you scramble to your feet.

“Easy, now.” He lifts a hand as though soothing a skittish horse. “He’s all right for a minute. He’s eating.”

“You should have let me do that,” you say, shaking the dirt from your skirts and setting off past him at a stalk, your neck hot.

One tug at your elbow is all it takes to halt you in your tracks. You flinch. But he drops your arm once your eyes meet. His eyes squint, examining you with an expression you cannot read.

“C’mon,” he repeats, the authority clear, still at that low volume, and begins to lead the way back to the homestead. The cabin is just visible from here over the hill.

Chastened but still hot around the collar, you follow him, hugging yourself.

A breeze picks up, bringing with it the smell of a summer ending peacefully. The dawn birds have escalated from chatter to cacophony. After a moment, he asks you a question. 

“What did you do, before you came west?”

You’re not sure how to answer. You haven’t done much of anything except read. Until Leo and the months in the wagon, your biggest adventures had been fanciful, abstract. “My mother runs a tailor shop.”

He doesn’t question where your father is. The blank space is enough. “Guess you’ve never fed cuckoo hens before.”

“No.”

“Milked a cow?”

“No.”

“But you can sew.”

“Yes.”

“Cook?”

You huff, remembering burnt coffee, the clack of hardtack. “You’ll eat.”

He looks over his shoulder at you, and for the first time, you hear a wryness in him: “It’ll be a sight better than mine, that’s for sure.”

Neither of you questions that you’ll be doing the cooking. It’s the way things are done. It’s implicit in your bargain.

“You don’t farm?” Besides the kitchen garden, there is a small patch of something growing – but it’s nothing that could sell for cash.

“No more than is needed. Buy most of our things in town.”

Your lips twist. If he doesn’t farm, you wonder if he buys those jugs of blue in town, too. You know well enough by now that a man who has little to do does little but make trouble.

“Got a couple of cows,” Din says as the two of you return onto his land, pointing to them already grazing in the field. “Flock of hens. Couple of pigs; we’ll slaughter those in the fall. The horse, obviously.”

We? you think. Surely not the baby. Surely not me either.

“Garden,” he grunts, pointing with his chin. You study the rows, unable to identify many of the plants except carrots. “Those’ll need pickling. Soon, if we can manage.”

“Are winters really so bad?” you ask. This is the second time he’s implied the winter will be trying.

He chews his thought for a moment; you watch him do it while he shakes a fence post to ensure it’s secure. It’s solid, so he leans against it, folds his arms. “This one will be.”

You blink. “How do you know that?”

“Just know,” he says, infuriatingly. “It’s going to be difficult. Maybe one in a hundred cycles kind of bad.”

You scoff and turn towards the house.

No one can predict the weather. It’s just one of those things that people like you are supposed to pray to the Maker for; rain and good harvest and forgiveness from sin.

The thought makes you nauseous, thinking of Leo.

It’s not real, you think. Not real. I’m leaving. It’s just for show.

Inside, the baby is preoccupied with a sludge-like porridge. It’s evident that Din was truthful; even you could do better than the lumpy gruel the baby is squishing between his little fingers rather than eating. The small grains are spread up his arms, all over his face, and in his wispy hair.

You sigh with impatience and turn to the kitchen for a rag, only to startle when Din has beaten you there, his broad back to you at the hearth. His large shoulder blade jerks beneath strong muscle as he shakes a skillet. He’s so broad that you can’t even see the hearth behind him.

You could be forgiven for staring. You’d never seen a man cook before, but he seems relatively at ease. He takes no more notice of you, so you grab a rag from an adjoining countertop, dip it into the wash bucket, and begin the grim task of wiping minute grains of porridge from a head full of baby hair, as the child himself squirms and squawks at the interruption of his mushy play.

Fool man, letting you get all covered in muck, you think sourly, and then remember you had left the child alone in the cabin, wandering off and probably prompting Din to search for you. Your one job, and on day one he was picking up your messes. You wince and slow your motions a little, soothing strokes of fabric over chubby folds and between tiny fingers.

He’s quite a pretty baby, you think, now that you look close. His eyes and hair are inky black, as dark as coal or night sky. His hair is quite long for a child’s, swept over his ears, making the big eyes even bigger. His soft, dimpled skin is a tawny beige, darker than yours or even Din’s, and his plush little mouth is a perfect Cupid’s bow of pink lips hiding a few pearly teeth.

You swipe the rag thoughtfully over his cheeks. He deals well enough with that, staring up at you with a mute seriousness that honestly unsettles you a little. Is it normal for a child to look at one like that?

Grogu struggles when you try to clean his hands. You move his bowl out of the way, and immediately the child begins to whine and fat tears well behind those enormous eyes.

“Hush,” you murmur, quickly swiping away porridge from his little nails and finger crevices, but the baby takes no heed, sucking in a choked breath before wailing at the top of his lungs. The noise takes you completely aback, and you startle away.

“All right, now,” Din says, approaching the table with plates. “That’s enough.”

You’re not sure if he’s speaking to your ministrations or Grogu’s tantrum. Either way, Grogu settles when a fresh bowl of eggs and bacon bits is set before him. He coos interestedly and uses a tiny finger and thumb to inspect the bowl’s contents before shoving it, fingers and all, into an eager mouth.

“I’m leavin’ today,” Din says into his plate.

Distracted by Grogu, you jump and realize he’s set a plate before you too. Eggs, bacon, more of the lumpy porridge. For the two of you, there are chipped mugs of coffee.

Your stomach growls, but you focus on Din, your heart loud in your ears. “You’re leaving? Where?”

“Heading to town,” he clarifies, unhelpfully. “I’ll leave you here to watch the kid.”

It’s neither a request nor an order. It lies in the gray zone between obligation and obeisance. Before this thought can turn bitter in your mind, you stab your fork into a sunny section of egg and begin to eat.

I can do this, you think, tiredly, though you don’t want to. Watch the baby for a few hours? Easy. In point of fact you’re not sure whether you’d rather go into town with Din or be left behind with the baby. Ideally he would take Grogu too and leave you to your thoughts – perhaps you could walk more by the creek or lie in bed, sleep away some of this bone deep exhaustion. 

You know better than to ask. Din speaks little, but assuredly. You’re too tired to test wills, and besides, you have this breakfast to make up for. Cooking, the baby – those are supposed to be your tasks. Din might be a soft-spoken man, but it seems his will is sturdy, and you have no idea the shape of his temper. You don’t want anything resembling his ire near you. So you make no comment when after breakfast, Din leaves you the dishes and stands to take his hat from a peg on the wall. He sets Grogu on his hip and heads out the door, leaving you free to scrub bacon grease in peace.

A spare few minutes later, you hear the jingle of the horse’s harness and some little commotion of animals. Possibly the livestock were getting their breakfast now. Glancing out the little window, you see nothing. You scrub faster, and finishing the last dish, grab the dish pan and go outside to dump it into the grass.

The wagon rolls up, Din already astride, his kerchief on, face obscured. One of the pigs lies in the bed, crated and protesting in alarming squeals. For a moment, there is a pause. Then, Din slowly lowers Grogu’s squirming body into your arms.

He must see the hesitation on your face. He peers down at you, unreadable. “What is it?”

You look down at the baby, hot pressure behind your eyes. “I’ve… never done this before. I’m not a…” your throat goes tight, “I’m not his mother.”

Din regards you a moment, and then says, “My people have a saying. Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaas'la.”

You feel the pulse at your throat increase. You knew even less than you thought about this man. Where had he come from? Why had he left his people? But you can’t ask that. You don’t even look him in the face, instead focused on his thick fingers around the reins, resting on his thighs. “What’s it mean?”

“Doesn’t matter who his mother is. Matters what kind of mother you’ll be.” You have no idea if this is a direct translation or a separate opinion. He sits straighter, tightens his hands on the reins. “I’ll be back by nightfall.” Still, there is a tension in him, a torment. 

It takes you a moment to recognize it. The unbearable necessity of leaving something beloved behind.

“I’ll keep him safe,” you find yourself saying, despite the crack in your voice. “I promise.”

He considers you for a long, still moment. He nods once. “This is the Way.”

Then he leaves you alone, the two of you, the wagon rattling down the dirt track until finally disappearing into a copse of trees and out of sight.

This time, when Grogu cries, you join him.

Unfortunately, you have more experience in weeping. By the time the ache in your throat has begun to cool and the hot tears down your cheeks have ebbed, the wails of the baby in your arms have only escalated from whimpers to screams.

It grates your ears, this tiny thing who can wail louder than it seems heavenly possible for him to do, his face and fists screwed up so tight they may never unravel.

“Hush,” you murmur shakily, trying to bounce him lightly on your hip, but he only screeches like a crow and squirms away from you.

His sudden fit of energy surprises you. The tiny body is coiled, almost angry in a way you’ve not seen him capable of. You’re nonplussed, and slightly alarmed. You have no experience with children his age; you had no young siblings, no cousins, and your only niece was an infant when you left. That was hardly time enough to learn the needs and habits of a little one wrapped in swaddling, never mind one already mobile and with a will of his own. “Do you want to be put down?” 

But the moment you settle the tot on the earth he’s off like a shot, his tiny legs beating beneath him unsteadily but doggedly down the path his guardian had disappeared down.

“Grogu!” you call, your heart leaping from your chest at the scandalizing knowledge that the child could not only walk but scamper. “Come back here!”

He’s only a little thing, and within a few flurries of your borrowed skirt he is easily swept back up into your arms, but his rebellion is in full force now – you cannot keep a hold of him. His tiny arms twist from your clasp, his teeth sink into the flesh of your arm, his wails make your temples throb and eyes go sideways.

“It’s all right,” you insist, “Come on, we’ll go inside. Your father’s coming back, he’ll be back!”

The baby only sobs harder, twisting in your grip so that you must either clench him too tightly or let go, so you do the latter. He takes off at once.

It becomes a miserable game.

You chase after the child, retrieve him. You haul his little body back towards the house, but each time he wriggles from your hesitant arms. You’re forced to put him down. He bats away your insistent hands and takes off like hounds are after him.

Each time, he pursues the well-worn track a bit further from the house. Each time, your alternate scoldings and pleadings have no effect, though they increase in pitch. Each time, you’re angrier and angrier. 

Your lack of sleep is doing you no favors. He is in the throes of passion, filled with the kind of energy you cannot see your wrecked body ever containing again.

Perhaps that is why, after yet another desperate attempt to sweep his little body into your grip, instead of turning and stalking towards the house, out of breath and out of fight, you trip and stumble to your knees in the dusty road and clutch him to your chest, fresh sobs joining his.

The two of you crouch there in the dirt, shrieking your pain and exhaustion at the sky.

He’s not squirming any more.

You look down, your breaths ragged, your scream ending in a raspy wisp as you realize it. The little thing stares up at you, his eyes so enormous only the prairie sky could compete with them. He continues to scream and sob, but he no longer wrestles with you. His sobs are tired now, weakening. You feel his small frame tremble.

A pang like an arrow through your chest. Is he afraid of you, or simply exhausted?

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, cracked. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, little one.” You clutch him close at last, right to your chest against your ribs, and this time as you rock and sway and gasp, he settles. He doesn’t so much relax into your arms as fall apart, his tousled head against your sternum, the tiny apple of his skull fit easily in your palm, a package-sized lead weight. 

The swaying helps calm both of you down. You’re taking big, fresh gulps of air and wiping tears from your cheeks onto your shoulder when you notice something strange.

A chunk of wood, flaked and half-rotten, lying in the dust next to your ruined shoes. It can’t be what you tripped on, because whatever it was your foot had connected with, it had felt solid. Preoccupied with keeping the baby from harm, you hadn’t stopped to wonder.

Now you look around. Grogu had run the two of you all the way down the drive and into the final copse of trees before the trail turned north and weaved into town. You could see the road from here, what little it was. Faint wagon tracks, that was all.

Had you tripped on a root? You cast your gaze over the ground, and yes, there it is. You had fallen at the stump of a dead tree, and taken off a chunk of it that revealed that the inside was hollow. You peer closer, wary of having disturbed a nest of some rodent or even worse, a bee hive.

Instead, something inside glitters. You blink a few times, convinced you’re seeing things, but the shine persists. Cradling the child, you crawl forward on your sore knees.

There is a knot in the back of the stump that does not quite belong. From the road, you’d never see it. Even up close, it’s wedged into the thing so tightly it’s hardly visible.

You tug on it, and gasp when an entire section of stump falls away, a perfect camouflaged door with the knot as its handle.

And there, spilled from a leather bag, is the shining beacon you’d spotted. A single gold coin, parted from its fellows by the stretched, bulbous look of the little pouch. Next to it lay neat rows of cash, stacked thick and close. This is more money than you’ve ever seen in your life. Half-believing you must have hit your head and afraid suddenly that someone would catch you looking, you put the stump door back, your heart rate thudding in your temples.

You’re halfway through a wild trial of questions: is the money Din’s? Where did it come from? What was it doing here? before you shake yourself. It’s not your money. It’s not your business. His business was not your business. He might even be angry if he’d found out you’d discovered the little cache.

No. Best to forget it, and straight away.

Slowly, you rise on shaky feet, and walk on unsteady legs back towards the house.

Once inside, the coolness of the indoors is a relief to both of you. You sit Grogu in his chair and collapse into the one Din had occupied at breakfast. For a few moments, you regard each other, both of your lips trembling.

His face is dirty again. His clothes and hair are covered in grime and dirt, tracked with heavy tears. His beautiful eyes are puffed, and a sheen of sweat glistens around his little neck.

Something gives within you, another sharp pang at your breast, and though your muscles protest, you pull yourself to your feet and fetch the rag from earlier. It’s rough, you realize. Too rough for a tender, tear-stained face. You flounder a bit before remembering that there had been a handkerchief tucked into the pocket of the gown lent you by the Miss Shackletons.

There’s no fresh water left, so you take up the bucket and glance at the baby. He watches you with big eyes. Will he understand if you tell him you’ll be right back? You’re unsure, but you tell him anyway. He only blinks, those impossibly big eyes shiny, cautious.

Your pulse thunders as you almost flee to the water pump, a piece of wondrous machinery indeed. In a few heavy tugs of iron and wood, the fresh and clear liquid splashes and sparkles into the bucket. You’re only confident enough to fill half the bucket with your remaining strength and the anxious clawing at your throat that the child will have escaped or otherwise hurt himself in your brief absence.

But he’s exactly as you left him, leant against the back of the chair. He’s chewing one of his dirty hands and staring at you.

“We’re going to have a wash,” you tell him gently. “Come see.”

To your surprise, he accepts your gentle urge to join you in the corner of the room, where he watches your hand dip the handkerchief in the water and wring out the excess. You’re about to scrape the worst of the grime from his face when a thought occurs to you.

Instead, you wipe the cool cloth across your own forehead and cheeks, sighing with a relief only minorly exaggerated. It does feel heavenly cool and soothing. The child watches you, wide-eyed, but no longer cautious. And when you dip the soiled cloth into the bucket and begin gentle swipes over his round cheeks, his rosebud mouth quivers, but he doesn’t cry.

“Well done,” you praise him, and then show him how you clean your neck and arms. He accepts his own meager bath with only a minimum of squirming.

You stare at each other a few moments more. Your heart is heavy, but now it’s weighed down with a grief more than just your own. This little one, wherever he had come from, had been wrestled from those he loved in some way. Even Din was not his original home. It only made a terrible, saddening sense to you now that the little one would protest being left behind.

“It hurts,” you agree with him, combing his dark hair from his damp forehead with your fingers. “I know. But perhaps,” your own lips tremble, “Perhaps it won’t so much, by and by. We have that to hope for, don’t we?”

If he understands this, he makes no indication. He only stares with those unnervingly knowing big eyes.

You fetch a slice of bread, thick and mealy, but edible, and smear a healthy covering of jam over the top from a jar you find on a shelf. You share it at the table, each taking healthy bites, swallowing it down raw throats with the aid of sips of cool water.

You’re absolutely sure that such a lunch is a treat for the small boy; sugar had been rare enough on your long journey West, and it was expensive even back east. The flavor is almost too much on your tongue used to blandness and grit. Yet his eager chomping slows perceptibly as you share the bread, and he sits unresponsive to your offerings of the last bites, only consenting to suck the remainder of the jam from your finger, his teeth only gumming slightly.

After that you try and spend the next hour or so in quiet play. Grogu gracefully consents to making a racket with a wooden spoon and whatever surface he can rap it smartly upon. You wipe down the table, sweep the floor, and wash both of your hands of the sticky remnants of jam.

It’s soon clear, however, that the child’s usual zest is stupored, fitful. When you offer him a sip from a tin of milk, he turns away, his gaze uninterested. When you offer to play a game of swords with his spoon by offering your own, he huffs and drops it with a clatter on the floor.

It’s only then that you see the heavy blinks. Tired, you realize.

A little rest will do you both good, you figure, so together you depart into the bedroom. You settle him this time in the bed, tucking a pillow behind so his little body won’t fall off onto the floor. Almost at once, Grogu nuzzles like a cat into the blankets and his eyes shut with the heavy shudder of a young thing, unaware until their body gives into it that sleep is what will soothe the heaviness within.

You watch him for a few minutes, making sure he’s truly asleep, you tell yourself, but his breaths are even and fluttery. Everything about him seems so small, fragile. And yet the screams he had unleashed today proved otherwise. There was a lot hiding inside this tiny body. You would know it better from now on.

The weariness seeps into you again. You feel it in the sockets of your eyes, in the drag of your hands over Grogu’s little head, stroking his hair as he slumbers.

You want to sleep. You will sleep. You’ll lay your head down besides the baby’s and accept what small step towards comfort his warm skin and baby breaths provide. 

But first, you put your whole weight behind the heavy oak dresser in the corner until completely it blocks the door.

A gentle cooing wakes you.

You startle awake, your body stiff for a moment, but it’s only Grogu, patting your cheek with his palm in heavy taps you’re sure he does not understand are far from gentle.

Before you have a chance to do more than stare up at him in surprise, catching his little hand in yours to save yourself further beating, a clattering is audible outside the window.

You startle up, stomach flipping in dread, anxiety. Din is home. 

Rising from the bed you peer out the window, Grogu following at a babbling crawl. The wagon is indeed being pulled into the barn, the pigs and cows lowing loudly at the arrival of their keeper. He would likely start evening chores, wouldn’t he? Based on the light from the window, the sun is only just approaching the horizon.

Which means you have maybe an hour, you guess, to prepare dinner from a hearth that has almost certainly gone out by now.

Cursing under your breath, you move your makeshift baby gate out of the door frame and fly into the main room, wincing when indeed, the hearth lies dormant and cold.

Your cheeks are hotter than the hearth is right now, and as though searching for help, you look down at Grogu, who watches you with big, curious eyes. His clothes are dirty and he still looks worn out from your earlier struggle, his eyes puffy with crying and sleep.

Failure at motherhood is no surprise, you suppose, though it still pangs that someone else has to suffer for that lack. But cooking? You can at least do that. You’ll be damned if you mess this up, too.

There’s no time to think; you simply flurry into action. A flurried shove of kindling and more wood onto the fire that hasn’t quite given up the ghost yet, as you discover to your relief while pumping the bellows to get it going. It will be a while before it’s hot enough to cook much, but it’s a start.

Grogu cooing hearthside is your next issue. You need him out of the way so that you can focus without interruption and prevent any burns. A quick glance across the haphazard pantry shelves leads to you discover a jar of dried beans. You think of his porridge this morning; maybe he would enjoy playing with this too. You grab a handful and give him a spoon, the beans in a small bowl, and a bite more of the mealy bread. He chews contentedly enough and the beans and spoon are enough to distract him… at least for the moment.

Pots and pans are accessible enough, though hung rather high up, as well as utensils, but what on earth are you supposed to cook? 

No use getting fancy, you think, scanning the shelves again in desperation. Grits it is.

Grits in the pot. Enough water to cover. Salt? You find some in an earthen jar and add a healthy pinch. The fire isn’t hot enough yet, but you may as well stick the cauldron on its stand and let it warm as it would while you scrounge up something else for dinner.

Think, think. You watch Grogu dipping his hand in and out of the bowl, absorbed in scattering the little black pebbles all over the floorboards. Oh well. You’ll sweep them up later.

The creek, you realize. The creek outside had a little bucket in it. You hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but maybe it was cold storage?

You open the door and a wash of late afternoon sunshine spills into the cabin. You blink quickly to adjust. The sky holds a few clouds that soar heavenward like mounds of whipped cream in a blue sea. Had the farm been so colorful this morning? Maybe it is the sunshine. It seeps into everything, brightening the wooden fence posts, gleaming on the backs of the red cuckoo hens.

And it also shines dewy and bright on the sweat over Din’s brow as he passes you by, a rough shoulder yoke balancing two full pails of water across his broad back that you know, from having filled the bucket only half earlier, is incredibly heavy.

For a moment you’re surprised that a weight that would crush you into the dirt seems a simple enough chore for him. He pauses too, squinting down at you in the sun, the pails swinging. A wrinkle forms between his brows.

You hadn’t meant to stare so long. With a swallow you gesture back towards the house, an excuse quick on your lips. “He’s playing. I’ll be right back.”

He only nods and continues his trek to the barn at the same steady, competent pace. You wonder how many times he has to fill the buckets to water the horse, the cows, the pigs. Should you be helping him?

You shake yourself and continue to the creekbed. You couldn’t help him lift that stupid thing if you tried.

Yes, here it is. A little bucket stashed in a nest of smoothed river rocks. You unlock the hinge on the lid and peer inside.

Joy of joys. This is more luxury than you had dreamed of. Slices of smoked ham and bacon, a near-complete wheel of hearty cheese, a stack of speckled eggs. You lift the lid on a jug and your heart skips to find fresh milk. Another crock holds butter. Your mouth waters. You haven’t had butter in more weeks than you care to count.

A bit of butter, the milk jug, and a few pieces of ham go into the bowl you’d brought, and then you’re scampering back to the house. Your pace is slowed by your broken boot heel.

You’ve no more than kicked the door shut behind you when you hear a merry sizzling. The cauldron with grits and water is frothing, a wicked witch’s brew of foam and yellow cornmeal bubbling over the sides of the iron pot and onto the flagstones.

With a gasp you drop the cold ingredients and fly to the hearth and grasp the handle of the lid – stupidly, as you find out barely a moment later, crying out as your fingers burn.

You curse under your breath, but there’s more important matters to attend to than your fingers – you grab a cloth and whip the lid from the pot and then yank the arm it hangs on from the seat of the fire. At least that is burning up more quickly than you’d hoped.

“Trouble?”

You start and turn to find Din at the door, removing his hat and placing it with a practiced movement on a peg hammered into one of the logs. He takes a sweeping glance around the room – Grogu gumming his hands in dirty trousers, surrounded by scattered beans and cawing happily at Din; grits and water all over the floor; milk jug spilled on the table, dripping placidly onto the floor; the paltry fire, spitting out more venom than heat; and you, towel clutched in your hand, tears of pain and frustration in your eyes.

“I’m sorry,” you rasp, unsure what his reaction will be, “I’m sorry-”

But he’s already moving, stepping over the scattered beans to Grogu, gently dissuading the little one from experimentally shoving one of the little dark pebbles up his nose and settling him on his hip. Another stride and he’s by your side, reaching for the hand clutched tight around the rag. “Show me.”

Reluctantly, hot-faced, you do. Without meeting your eyes, Din throws the towel over one large shoulder and takes your hand in his, spreading out your clenched fingers with a strong thumb. He inspects your hand, a little island in the cup of his palm. The fingers are raw and shiny, the burn already a shade darker than your usual skin tone.

Din lets out a low whistle and you hiss like a feral cat, thinking him laughing at you, but with the same easy strength that he had used to haul the water pails he retains your hand in his grip.

“C’mere,” he says, and guides you towards the table. “Sit down.”

You’re not sure what makes you obey, curling your hurt hand to your chest; the surety in his voice, perhaps, or the fact that he hasn’t yelled at you or struck you yet.

With a scrape, he pulls the other chair close and settles in it, and passes Grogu to your lap. The baby makes a passing gurgle, but when he sees that Din remains close, he quiets, consenting to lean against the wall of your body and watch the proceedings.

Din deftly sets the milk jug upright and slides the butter crock towards himself. With a sure hand he dips his fingers in, scooping up a dollop of clean, cold butter. It still drips from the cool water it was stored in.

“Come on,” he murmurs, and you realize you’ve tensed, holding your hand away. “It’ll help.”

Slowly, you consent to place your hand back in his, and before you can stir up any nerves about the process, he swipes the cold butter over your burn, stoic as you suck in a ragged gasp and then breathe a long sigh of relief.

He continues dabbing on the cool butter with the gentlest hands you have ever recalled holding yours. Not even your own mother had tended to any of your childhood injuries so carefully. You dare to glance at his face.

It’s tranquil, focused. His hair and chest are wet, dark curls swept back over his scalp and his ears. He must have washed outside before coming in. Water droplets still cling to the strong sinews of his neck, reddened by sun. You watch as one of them glides blithely down the pebbled skin before lingering a moment, perched on the hollow of his throat before diving down and disappearing under his shirt.

Your mouth is dry, and you don’t notice he’s binding your hand in a clean rag until he cinches the knot with a tug and you wince.

He meets your eyes – for half a moment you sit there together, your hand in his, eyes locked. Your pulse slows.

Then Grogu squirms, hands grabbing for the butter, and the two of you move as one. Din drops your hand and scoots the butter dish away. You bundle Grogu closer to your chest and stand.

“No,” Din says, “You watch him. I’ll get this.”

“But I was in the middle of-”

He doesn’t hear or doesn’t heed your argument. It’s like speaking to a wall. He rises and immediately begins rescuing dinner, stirring the mealy goop inside the pot and throwing the ham on to cook. He also starts coffee.

Clumsily, you try to hide your burning face by wiping up the spilled milk and getting the broom to gather Grogu’s beans. At least the jug hadn’t broken. In less than ten minutes, the cabin is clean and filled with the tantalizing smells of slightly burnt ham (you had let the pan get too hot), fresh coffee, and buttery corn, for in lieu of any milk Din swiped a healthy measure of butter into the overcooked grits, too.

You set the table, Din fills the plates, and the three of you eat the disappointing meal in silence. You and Grogu had certainly had an eventful day, and though you’re not sure how taxing a trip to town would be, Din seems tired too, chewing over his plate thoughtfully, shoulders curled.

When dinner is finished, you gather the dishes. As he did this morning, Din scoops Grogu onto his hip and lopes out the door.

The cool water soothes your burn further as you wash and scrub. The cauldron is the most irritating; you have to scrape solidified grits from the bottom with angry fervor, but it does you good. By the time the dishes are clean, you’re worn out and feeling more placid than you have all day.

You’re just hanging the ladle up to dry when you hear a thud on wood. When you turn it’s to find Din releasing the strings on a large bundle covered in brown paper. He leans against the table on his palms.

For a minute, you both stare at the package. You have no idea what he’s thinking.

“Asked at the general store for anything a woman might be… needin’,” he says at last. “Miss Margo put this together. Sends her best wishes.”

Your jaw slackens, and you snap it shut, remembering yourself. “She’s a kind woman.”

Din nods. “I’ll be packing it in. Goodnight. Lock the door.”

“Yes. Goodnight.”

With a final tweak to the kid’s ear, Din leaves. As he asked, you swivel the wooden lock into its slot with a comforting click, securing yourself and Grogu in the cabin.

You almost seize a knife to tear the strings open, but take a breath and remember that unlike in your old home in the city, trips to the store here are likely few and far between. You’ll likely want this string later on.

So slowly, with your clunky bandage and excited fingers, you pry open the knots, and then carefully unfold the paper. You still manage to rip it, so with an impatient sigh you scrunch up the broken piece and give it to Grogu to play with. He accepts with a gurgle, forestalling the tiny whimpers he’d been making at Din’s exit.

A simple push of the wooden lid, and you gasp.

Your first thought is that Miss Shackleton must have sent Din home with the wrong box. There is no way that this rosy colored cotton, yards of it, more than enough for a dress, is meant for you. 

You pick it up with trembling hands, admiring its shade, and find another bolt of cloth beneath it; this one heavy, a pure woolen blue, perfect for winter. There’s material here for a bonnet. There’s a pair of stockings and a one of gloves, just your size. There are ribbons, buttons, a complete sewing kit with needles and thread and a pair of scissors with blades shaped like a crane’s beak. There’s a jar of cherry preserves, an expensive addition you were sure was a gesture of kindness from the gentle-eyed lady. There are sanitary materials, a gift you silently pray a whisper of gratitude for, for you would have never asked Din for them. Never.

At the very bottom of the crate lies something you knew could never have come from the Shackleton’s store.

You pull them out, your throat tight for a reason you can’t put words to. A perfect pair of soft leather shoes. In a trance, you rub your thumb over the buttery material. They are so different from your once-fine and fashionable boots that for a moment you wonder if the slippers are really meant for wearing outside at all. 

But they are. The soles are flexible but durable, while the sides are velvety soft. They’re obviously expertly crafted, sewn with fine leather cords and embroidered with delicate beading over the tongue in a pattern of blue, orange, and red glass. From sight you can tell they will fit you perfectly. Your eyes rest on a sigil of a shape you don’t recognize on the heel of the left shoe. The maker’s mark, possibly.

Were they made for you? But that couldn’t be. You had only dropped into this life yesterday.

With a shuddering breath you set the lovely shoes on top of the pretty pink fabric. The disparity between the fabric you’re sure will make a sturdy but quite proper lady’s dress and the leather shoes of a type you’ve never seen is strange, but somehow beautiful.

Before you can talk yourself out of it, you plop down on the kitchen chair and peel off your boots. They clatter to the floor, dirty and worn, the broken heel ridiculous.

The shoes are not quite a perfect fit. Unfamiliar and strangely flexible to your bare toes, they are nonetheless perhaps the most comfortable things you have ever touched.

The jagged companion you carry, the anger that lies ready at the root of your tongue, the bite of your teeth, cloys your nose and throat with heat. What did he mean by it? Was he embarrassed by you, by your ragged appearance? The audacity of that possibility makes your palms itch with rage. He was one to talk, covering his face in public and making outlandish proposals to women he didn’t know.

You feel a tug at your knee. Grogu has used your skirt to pull himself to his feet and now holds the fabric as leverage as he leans, patting your new shoes with his chubby hand. His coos are curious, fascinated. He likes the softness, the colors. 

The rage spills and cools as you realize with a shock that he clearly recognizes them. They are the adult sized version of the soft leather booties he wears on his own feet, made of the same leather, just as soft, only missing the colorful embroidery.

Grogu looks up as the first gasp leaves your throat, his big eyes ponderous. He pats the shoes harder, a tiny philosopher emphasizing his point.

“I know,” you croak, your breaths shaking as your eyes flood with tears. “Pretty. They’re just like yours, aren’t they?” You lift him up onto your lap, trying and failing to reinforce the dam inside you that is already breaking. The baby makes an inquiring gurgle, reaching for your cheek, and then you crush him to your chest and lose your composure completely.

Din settles into the lean to, watching the stars overhead, listening to the homestead settle in for the evening. He doesn’t care that he’s laid out on the ground; it’s warm and it’s hardly the least comfortable bed he’s ever made. Now that he knows you and the kid are locked up safe in the cabin, he rests easy, arms folded behind his head as the night breezes play with his hair.

He hopes the crate contains at least the basics of what you’d need in the coming months. He knows next to nothing about what a woman needs, practically speaking, so when Miss Shackleton had asked, he’d merely paused, his kerchief close and hot around his face, and said, “Clothes for winter.”

It had been clear she’d been about to press further, but changed her mind at the last minute. “I’ll put a box together.” She mentioned they had checked the previous day and still had none that would fit the young lady. “Your friend Peli did make this, however.” She unfolds the sheet of paper containing the pencil mark of your little foot.

Din stares at it for a few seconds before nodding. His day would be longer than planned after all. “Can you have it ready by this afternoon?” 

It took him several hours to make the ride into the prairie. The covert had not been pleased to see him, but then, they had never exactly been affectionate. The Armorer in her leather tent desired no further explanation than the offering of the paper.

“You have taken a wife, Din Djarin,” she said evenly, examining the shape of the pencil beneath a leathered finger. It was not a question. 

“Only for winter,” he’d explained. “Like a foundling. To care for the child.”

She looks at him, disapproving. “That is not how bindings are made. As I told you before, the foundling is to you as a son. The Creed does not specify adult persons as foundlings, even if they are not warriors. If you have taken this woman into your care, it is as wife or concubine.”

Din doesn’t answer, but then, she doesn’t expect him to.

It doesn’t take her long. He watches her punch the sewing holes into clean, soft, new leather with her tools, deftly bead the tiny sparkles of expensive glass into delicate strands, remembering how his first armor when he had taken the creed had been forged from donated hide. Leather had been even rarer then, scrounged from bodies, battlefields, black markets.

His first clothes as a Mandalorian had been… not shameful, exactly, but the mark of a foundling, a bastard outsider of an intricately woven clan of families and history he could never quite breach. 

Maybe that is why when the Armorer pauses, her branding rod in hand, he makes no protest. With a short nod, she places the final mark on the new shoes, the singe of burnt hide a familiar raw sting in his nostrils.

When she hands him the completed moccasins, he can feel it, still hot beneath his gloves. The signet of a creature with a tall horn; the mark of his clan. 

It was weighty in the lightness of the small shoes, he knew it as he took them and paid the Armorer for the work. It was just a mark in leather to the common people, perhaps, but not to Mandalorians, and not to Din.

It was a sign of protection, of care. By his signet, his clan, his leather, his name, his bullets, his body.

As long as you were near him, you would be protected. He was responsible for your needs, sworn to your happiness. No words had been spoken in Mando’a, but the Creed didn’t need words to be true. 

The signet speaks it all. He wants Grogu – and now you – to have more than he once did. Something that marks you as belonging, without the struggle he had had to get it.

He knows you are not his. That day would likely never come, no matter the bindings he had placed himself in. You would not love him, you would not take him to your bed, you would not look at him with anything but the civil hatred you had been taught to see, through the lens you have been given as a proper young woman of the other people – the outsiders.

You are not his and never would be. But from the first moment you wear his clan’s mark, he accepts that he will be yours.

Series Masterlist. Masterlist.

Your comments help inspire me to keep going. 🩵

[jules-onpaper]

I'm not sure where all of the love for Western Skies came from all of the sudden, but hello all you new folks, and welcome! Check out a sneak peek of ch 3 under the cut (no warnings, just eyeball-ravishing a cowboy cause that's how we do).

We're looking at 5.1k for chapter 3 so far. According to my Very Official writing process [4 Google docs, 26 crumpled sticky notes, a coffee-stained notebook, and many conversations with a very patient Monsieur Jules who despite himself is Here For the Plot] this means we're pretty dang close to publication!

A note: I'm bad at getting to every reblog because I'm quickly overwhelmed by how wonderfully nice you all are, and I am sorry about that, but I read and cherish every one, and your support fuels this madcap train. 🩵

He stands on long legs slanted at the hip, thumbs propped on his belt, hat bent low. From the ground you can see he is not looking at you. The rising sun makes his outline sharp: broad shoulders, trim waist, strong thighs. His bandana is tied loosely around his throat. You wonder if he stands in the sun on purpose, to obscure himself. “Best be getting back,” he says. “Kid’s awake.” With a hard thump in your chest, you scramble to your feet. “Easy, now.” He lifts a hand as though soothing a skittish horse. “He’s all right for a minute. He’s eating.” “You should have let me do that,” you say, shaking the dirt from your skirts and setting off past him at a stalk, your neck hot. One tug at your elbow is all it takes to halt you in your tracks. You flinch. But he drops your arm once your eyes meet. His eyes squint, examining you with an expression you cannot read. “C’mon,” he repeats, the authority clear, still at that low volume, and begins to lead the way back to the homestead. The cabin is just visible from here over the hill.

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[jules-onpaper]

Summer Rose

Professor!Santiago Garcia x female OC Co-written with @julesonrecord

Rating: E for Explicit 18+ Word Count: 6k Warnings: OC is named (Daphne Antonelli) but has minimal physical description. Age gap 10+ years. Both parties are consenting adults. Alcohol consumption, mutual pining, professor/student, oral sex (f and m receiving), 69, sexy mythology references, vaginal sex, protected sex, fingernails/scratching, a bit of biting. Summary: Daphne is having an absolutely terrible day and has missed office hours to turn in her final paper to Professor Garcia. When she turns up on his doorstep to turn in her assignment, the professor she's been crushing on for ages offers her a supportive ear -- and help relaxing. Notes: A little collaboration between myself and my beloved Jules featuring a character we've working on (Daphne) and today's wet daydream of college professor!Santiago. Honestly this is just a bit of porn with the barest thread of a plot, and we're not sorry. Also, just a disclaimer that I have no clue how one finishes a masters degree, but it doesn't matter. We're here for the porn, not the threadbare plot.

Twilight is beautiful on campus. Santiago has always thought so, even before he had the letters after his last name that demarcate him as faculty. He enjoys the blush of the sun fading, the purple of the dusky sky fading to blue-black, indigo, then glitter with starlight.

He likes walking home after class this way; a quiet moment to ease his mind after lectures and before grading. This late in the semester, it will be one of the last walks before the summer term. As he passes through the quiet neighborhood and climbs his front doors, he glances up, spies Orion's Belt in the heavens. He thinks about introducing the story next time he holds his Mythology and Myth-Making class. Did he include it this year? He can't remember. He'd been... distracted.

His phone pings with a text as he sets his messenger bag on the dining room table and undoes his cuff buttons, rolling them up. Too damn hot for this, damn dress code rules... He peers down at the message, and notes it's from an unknown number. His students know to text him if they have an emergency, so he opens it straight away.

Hi, Professor Garcia. I know that it's after office hours, but the fact is...I missed office hours altogether. Would it be an inconvenience to call you and explain? Otherwise I'm not sure how to get my final paper to you. Thanks, Daphne Antonelli (Mythology and Myth-Making)

Santiago lifts an eyebrow. He recognizes the name. Oh yes, he recognizes it. In fact, he's called it to mind more often than is probably appropriate, along with the image of a very beautiful graduate student with a focused stare and drop-dead gorgeous eyes. She was an attentive student, responsive, ready to answer questions but never one to hog the spotlight, making insightful, empathetic, and razor-sharp questions. It was unlike her to miss anything, never mind not visit office hours. They'd spent many such visits over the semester. Short. Professional. Of course.

So why does his heart rate increase, his teeth sink into his bottom lip as he thoughtfully taps the phone screen, spelling out a careful, professional text?

Hi Daphne. As this is your final paper, I would really like to have it ASAP as I am required to submit grades on Monday. Why don't you swing by my home to drop it off?

Feel free to call, he types, then deletes before sending. He wanted to hear her voice. He did need that paper. No reason why he couldn't do both in person. No reason at all.

He had had his graduate students over for a spring dinner after midterms so they know how and where to find him. The bonfire that night had lasted for ages, as tipsy grad students who were feeling feisty with a full meal in their bellies debated the cultural implications of different myth origins and the similarities of some creation myths that they had just been discussing in class. Daphne had been amongst the students that night, animatedly defending her points with unmatched ferocity that was impossible to ignore.

The text that comes through a few moments later takes a while for her to decide on, judging from the continuously undulating bubbles indicating how long she was typing compared to the brevity of the eventual message.

Thank you for understanding. I'll be over shortly so the rest of your night isn't interrupted.

Satisfaction. He tosses the phone down and leans over the table with a slow sigh, taking a look around the room. The same old familiar wall-to-wall bookshelves line the tidy bungalow. The same pendant lamps up, tacky, that he'd meant to change when he bought this place... four years ago. His degrees might be hung in his office upstairs, his clothes are here, he shaves here, but who does he have here, really? Nobody. Warm sheets for a night and then no one. Nothing. There was no reason to bother, really—

And then Daphne. Daphne with her slowly blossoming smile that melted from shy to beaming when he said hello to her on campus. Daphne with her neat notes in the margins, Daphne with the legs that had so often been tucked primly next to his as they leaned over a book or paper together, never touching but so close, close enough so that he could smell her perfume: cinnamon, orchid, incense.

"Fuck," he mutters to the table. There's no way of hiding from himself, not really. He pushes off the wood and stalks to the kitchen for a beer. He cracks it open efficiently and takes a long swallow, Adam's apple bobbing. He wants her. That much is clear. How could he not? She was intelligent, fierce, gorgeous. He could fool himself all he wanted, her coming here was a bad idea. It's been a long semester, keeping her close but not too close.

But, he realizes with a jolt, she's about to graduate. This is her final, his course is over. He is... well, technically by Monday, no longer her professor.

"Fuck," he mutters again, this time to a magnet of a catfish, his only catch from a weekend out fishing with the guys.

It's twenty minutes later precisely when his doorbell rings. There was no sound of a car outside on the street or dramatic slam of a door, but when he opens the door there is a bicycle leaning against his front gate and a frazzled looking student on his front step.

"Hi, Professor." Daphne stands on his step with a mix of anxiety and embarrassment on her face and she digs into her bag right away to pull out a manila folder with his class name and number written on it alongside her name. "I'm so sorry about this. I know it's technically late and that you'll have to dock points for that. It's completely my fault."

"Hey, hey, easy." He lifts a palm and lowers it soothingly, taking the manila folder gently. "There's no need to be sorry, accidents happen." Then, as he knew he would, he asked, "Would you like to come in? It's the end of semester, though. Maybe you have a party you'd rather get to?" He smiles fondly, bumping his shoulder against the doorframe and folding his arms to show off his tanned forearms, shirt sleeves straining slightly.

Yeah, he's still got moves. And he wants to show them off. To Daphne. Who is no longer his student. Who's staring up at him with the anguish slowly sliding from her face. He wants to remove it, stroke her stress away with his thumb, ease it out of her slowly—

Fuck, he's screwed.

"I'm not really – I mean, I haven't –" She doesn't get invited to parties, is what she's trying to say. Not that she doesn't enjoy parties, because she does. She absolutely does. The night they spent here at his house just sitting around the fire talking and sharing a meal was one of her favorite graduate school memories. But she isn't great at socializing with the other students in her program, she's found. There is something a little odd about Daphne, and it has reverberated through her life to keep her just a little on the outside of normal.

Maybe that's why she nods, accepting the invitation with swallowed thanks, and steps inside her professor's house. Her professor who has more than a decade on her in terms of age but has never held his years of experience or knowledge over her head. If they were colleagues, she might have even considered him a friend. As it is, being his student, she's stuck in a sort of limbo with a useless crush and fond memories. "I've had kind of a crazy day," she admits sheepishly. "Even if I had been invited to any of the parties on campus, I don't think I would be going."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Daph," he says, with real sympathy. "Is everything all right? I just opened a beer, would you like anything?"

"A pipe burst at my place and my landlord is claiming I'm liable, then my computer crashed in the middle of doing one last edit on your term paper and the tech office gave me grief, it's just...it's been a long day." She barely even nodded in agreement that a drink would be a huge relief, but he is immediately retreating to his refrigerator to grab her a beer. "Oh, and my summer plans fell through today." Her shoulders sag, the stress of the day dragging her down and determined to keep her there. "I'm just lucky I got up to take a shower first thing this morning or else the day would've been even worse."

"Oh, Daph, that's a rotten one," he says, placing the opened beer on the coffee table and settling his hands on her shoulders. "What happened to your summer? Surely you're going off to some incredible internship, you're more than qualified." And she is. He'd have recommended her to any program she wanted, and had, in fact, written her a letter of recommendation earlier in the year. "You know I'm not going to dock points, right?" he asks more quietly. "None of today was your fault, sweetheart."

Sweetheart. That shouldn't burrow into her chest and bloom into warmth like it does, and Daphne's eyes drop to the floor immediately to carefully focus on the toes of her boots instead of looking him in the face. That's your professor. Don't be creepy. "I had that internship lined up in London with the publishing company but they pulled the rug out from under me." She shrugs, feeling more vulnerable in the moment than she wants to admit. "Apparently the CFO's kid decided all of a sudden that he wants to be an author, so they rescinded my offer. He's going to get it instead."

His chest pangs. He hates that there is nothing he can do to fix this for her -- because she's right. That's the cherry on top of an extremely long day, and all he can do then is what feels most natural, which is to lift her chin up with the crook of his finger, his voice soft, gentle. "Hey."

When she meets his gaze, he watches them flicker slightly, scanning his face as he drinks in hers. Her eyes are so pretty. Like fresh honey dripped from a spoon.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he says again, and means it. "You deserve that spot, but you'll find something better, okay? Hey, look at me." She had turned away slightly, embarrassed or perhaps made shy by his praise, but her eyes fix on him again, golden and fringed with thick lashes. "I promise, you will. There's lots of ways into this world, and you're too talented not to break in. Okay? You want to sit down, tell me about it?" His fingers clasp around her delicate elbow, ready to guide her to the couch.

"There's not a lot more to tell, to be honest." Two people with two beers steer almost mechanically toward the couch, and Daphne finds herself being seated on his plush leather sectional just before he sits down beside her. This spring has been chilly and he still has a throw blanket out, which he pulls close to them as if to have it at the ready. "No summer in London means I'm going to have to either go back home and figure out my next step there, or find a new place here and do the same. Because I'm sure as hell not staying in the place I'm in now. As if the landlord weren't bad enough, now the plumbing is going."

"Huh." He trails his arm over the back of the sofa, sipping his beer thoughtfully. "What kinda guy is this-" Asshole, he wants to say, but quells it, "Fellow? Any chance he'll back off? Perhaps once he... calms down, he can be reasoned with." He's approaching the boundary of reason himself. He can see it, taste it, the drip of something sweet down his throat. "Beautiful woman like you? You could convince a man of anything."

The pffft sound that comes out of her mouth goes with a wave of her hand, but she does accept a sip of the beer that he's brought her with a grateful sigh. "The apartment is a piece of shit anyway, if I'm honest. I hate it there. It's just that it's affordable." There's a moment's pause where Daphne's eyes widen in panic and she deflates again with a groan. "I already put in my notice at my job, oh my god."

"Hey, hey, Daphne." He puts his beer down and reaches for her, wrapping one arm around her waist, cupping her flushed cheek with the other hand. "C'mon, it's going to be okay, I promise, but for right now, I need you to relax, okay? Can you do that for me, bebita?" They're so close now, almost nose to nose. He's lost in her eyes again, but he can feel the burning heat of her little cheek in his palm.

She had been so sure she was going to start crying instantly with that realization, but two searing hot hands on her skin steady her. His touch is grounding, pulling her away from the edge of panic and drawing her into his aura so effortlessly that she didn't even realize how close he was until she felt his breath on her skin. "O—okay—" He can't know that the thing keeping her from having a complete panic attack on his couch right now is the fact that all the blood in her body has rushed to her aching clit, but damned if it isn't working. Daphne nods vaguely, trying to keep her head from swimming, but all she feels is his hands on her and the way his coffee brown eyes have turned to oceans in front of her. "Okay," she repeats softly.

"Okay?" Santiago nods, his breath coming a little fast. "I'll help you. I'll help you relax, sweetheart. You tell me to stop any time, okay?" He leans closer so slowly, their breaths mingling. He can almost count her eyelashes. Her nose is sweet and soft as it brushes his, but it's nothing compared to her plush lips. They seal against his and he feels the world fall out from under him. Something deep and ravenous unlocks and spills out all over his inside. He barely chokes down a groan.

There is no doubt that this is the most surreal moment of Daphne's life, and it isn't as though she hasn't been in some weird situations before. It's a miracle that she managed to get her beer bottle onto the nearby coffee table without spilling or knocking anything over, but she needs her hands for this. For a year and a half she's been working on a master's degree and avoiding too much contact with the one professor who makes her mind fog up and her daydreams wander, until finally she had landed in his classroom.

And now on his couch.

Kissing him.

If it were anything besides the most surreal moment of her life, she might have jumped backward or at the very least, pulled away. But Daphne has imagined kissing Santiago Garcia far too many times to do anything but sigh in response and open up for him like a summer rose.

"It's okay," he repeats soothingly between kisses: to himself, to her, to the waiting tension in the room. "I've got you, cariño. I've got you now, there you go, so sweet for me. So pretty. Beautiful, smart girl." He deepens the kiss, tasting her lips slowly, reverently, one hand sliding slowly down her soft sweater to rest on her waist and squeeze gently. He brushes his thumb over the soft material and then flicks it open, wanting closeness, to drag his palm up her thin blouse, wide and slow across her back.

The sound that bubbles out of her is a plaintive moan, unsure but wanting, and one of her hands grasps for steadiness on his arm even as the other instinctively sinks into his curls to keep him close. The battle is want versus wisdom, and it takes longer than she's proud of for Daphne to drag her lips from his and pant for a breath that still has no prayer of clearing her head.

"But." The fog in her mind has settled thick and heavy like the arousal in her core, and even as she's trying to straighten herself out she's still clinging to him with digging fingers and sharp nails. "You'll get fired," she manages to breathe out a few seconds later. Her only real protest being that she doesn't want him to get in trouble over a whim – which is surely all this is to him.

"Baby, no, no," he shakes his head, almost laughing with relief that that is her only concern. "No, you're graduating. I'm not your teacher any more. You handed in your paper. We can finally do what I – what I've been—" Shit. This is going to sound so bad. "What I've been thinking about since I met you," he admits.

Santi leans his forehead against hers, sighing. "I'm sorry. It's so inappropriate, but it's true. I've been waiting so long to kiss you, baby girl. Let me kiss you." He brushes his fingers over her knee, lifting her skirt just a little. "Let me make you feel so good, my little nymph. Do you even know how long you've been haunting me?" His mouth brushes her again, gently, over the corner of her mouth, the edge of her jaw, the flutter of her pulse, which smells delicious, deep and floral, her scent.

His cock aches against his zipper.

"Fuck." This time Daphne groans, sinking further into the couch, and feels herself giggle softly in disbelief more than she's actually aware of making the sound herself. "You've been haunted?" She challenges, eyes burning with courage now that she's heard his confession. Heard him beg. Did he really just beg for her? "Do you know how long I put off taking your class because I didn't know if I could even concentrate around you?"

Using the opportunity of her gently reclining body, Santiago leans in for the catch. "I never could," he murmurs into the hollow of her throat, his hands sweeping her skirt up, revealing her pretty legs, and god her thighs, so plush and luscious in his hands. He takes a moment to stroke there, brush the hem of her panties with his thumbs. "Never. You came in with Eros and made me Apollo." One thumb slips gently under the gusset of her panties. "Are you running, little nymph, hm?"

"Fuck—I—no, I—I don't even think my legs work now," she huffs, all at once tense as a bowstring with desire and measurably more relaxed as the reality of the man she's wanted forever finally touching her exactly where she wants him.

Well, not exactly. But it's not going to take long to get there at the rate they're going.

"What should I..." Daphne's head falls back on the sofa cushion as his thumb strokes her slit and she moans. "Santiago is a lot of syllables to moan."

"Santi. You can call me Santi from now on," he murmurs, removing his thumb from her panties only to twist the thin white cotton things, Jesus, so fucking wet, around his fingers and slide them down, down. He tosses them to the side and shucks off her high heeled boots while he's there, his eyes locked on where she glistens for him, needs him. "But you can call out any god you want to, bonita." He flicks his gaze to hers and smirks. "Show me how much you were paying attention, yeah?"

If she can even remember a single name from his class at this point she'll be shocked, and the cool air of his house on her overheated cunt is enough to have her squirming instinctively underneath him. Her brain has pretty much given up the ghost already, overstimulated in the very best way possible far before the rest of her body feels the same. Although she has a feeling that it will get there. "Santi..." Trying it out, there is a sweetness on her tongue and heaviness in her core that really is just a whine waiting to break free. Daphne's hands have found their way to his shirt front, fumbling to free the buttons even while she's nearly shaking with desire. "If you get to touch me, I want to touch you, too."

His lips find hers again, almost impatient to taste her again. "You can touch me, I want you to," he mutters against her lips, lifting her blouse hem from her skirt as she takes care of his buttons. Santiago doesn't pause, doesn't make it easy for her or for himself, drowning himself in the touch of her, the sweet little noises emanating from her throat, the ones taking a running leap on the way to begging for everything he's ready to give. He lifts her shirt over her head and begins tugging down her skirt an inch at a time, his fingers dragging slowly over her hips, her now bare legs.

Nothing is exactly torn away, not specifically, but the pile of clothing that collects beside his living room sofa accumulates quickly and haphazardly — shirts and sweaters and everything else discarded blindly as they drown in kissing each other and swallowing those moans that make their way to the surface over and over again. With that building freedom Daphne finds a buried courage — not that she is a timid lover by any means, but there is an eagerness below the surface here that she hasn’t felt in so long. When the only thing left between them is the flimsy pair of boxers that do nothing to disguise how achingly hard he is, Daph bites down on his bottom lip to pull a groan out of him and soothes it away by sucking on the same spot as her fingers slip under the waistband of his last remaining piece of clothing.

"Fuck," he hisses, hips jumping forward so that the weeping tip of his cock brushes against her hand and he groans. He sits up straighter, caught in a web, aching to touch her – at least take his boxers off, fuck – but loathe to move away from her curious little hand. He settles for sitting up on his knees, staring at the place she's touching him, watching her explore him as though in a trance.

Taking advantage of the momentary shift, Daphne sits up along with him and nudges Santi backward so that he is on his back now instead of her. His curls are mussed and his eyes are so black with lust that he looks positively debauched before she’s even had a chance to touch him very much. Once he’s on his back, though, Daphne hooks her thumbs in his boxers and peels them away, groaning at the sight of him. Harder than diamonds and leaking precum like an eager teenager, a sly smirk rides across her face knowing she did that to him. “I want to suck your cock,” she admits, gaze flickering between his length and his blackened eyes. “You have no idea how many hours I’ve spent imagining sucking your cock under that desk in your office.”

Santiago closes his eyes a moment. Is he fucking dreaming? Or is his most fucked fantasy coming true before his eyes?

"Probably almost as many as what I've spent imagining what that wet little pussy tastes like." His voice is a low rasp, but he pulls himself together enough to halt her hand on his throbbing dick. His fingers squeeze around hers, gliding over the rigid shaft slowly, with control. His breath fans over her forehead. "You want this, baby? Hm? Gonna have to give me something in return. Come here," he urges, a low purr, her very own siren. "Come here and give me a little taste, cariño."

“Even Kama had to worship a lover in order to find his release,” Daph breathes, having spent an entire semester doodling images of the Hindu love god’s sugarcane bow and bird companions in her notes while thinking of all the various ways her professor could be worshipped.

"Kama was burnt alive by Shiva, sweetheart, and I don't plan on doing any different to you. Come here, that's it." Santi helps Daphne turn in his lap, both of them facing the wall. He guides her hips over his face as he lies back on the couch. Thank fuck it was big enough, for this and more, and then her perfect pussy is hovering over his face, tantalizing him. At heart? Santiago likes torturing himself, loves the thrill of giving into pleasure. Perhaps that too, is why he waited so long to take this girl into his bed. Perhaps that's why he's slow and sure as he spreads her lips, flattens his tongue, and tastes her indulgently, from clit to hole.

Daphne's momentary flash of composure is gone again as soon as he tastes her. Her legs shake on either side of his head, thighs pressed to his ears so her moans are muffled but it isn't on purpose. It's just been so long since she had a man between her legs who knew what the fuck he was doing that just having her clit noticed is a vast improvement. Daphne's body sags momentarily before she is shifting all her weight to one hand and wrapping the other around the base of his cock to stroke his base with the pressure that he showed her – the pressure he likes – while she takes as much of him as she can into her mouth.

When he moans it's with a growl into her pussy she can feel vibrate all the way up through her lungs.

She's not fucking sitting, and he knows it's because she's still, however minutely now that her moans are ringing sweet and clear across his living room, in her head instead of fully in her perfect body the way he wants. Licking up her slick almost lazily, he drags his nails lightly up the outsides of her thighs before firmly catching her hips in hand and pressing her into his waiting mouth, his evening stubble scraping across her folds. Only then does he give her a real reason to moan, encouraging her to grind while his laps at her clit with his tongue, filling his hands with all the gorgeous skin he can reach.

"Sit," he grunts, "Fuck, baby, I wanna to go to the field of fucking reeds with this pussy on my face, come on, you can do it, give it to me."

Come on, carińo, I know you can come for me, such a good fucking girl, he thinks, his brain a hazy lightning storm at the sensation of her hot throat squeezing around him as she swallows. Fuck, he could let her do this all night, but he's hungry for her pleasure and he's so close, he can taste it. Santiago lifts her hips with a final loud suck and trails a finger around her slit, teasing, almost pressing, but only just, his thumb running circles around her clit. With a deep breath he lifts his mouth, slips his tongue and a single finger inside, fucking into her with slow, measured movements.

The overwhelming pleasure of having more than just the tip of his tongue inside her pussy has Daphne moaning so earnestly that she pulls off of him cock with a lurid pop. "Dammit—I—fuck, I'm going to cum—Santi, baby, oh my f—" The shaking of her legs and the coil in her core twist down on each other so her thighs tighten and he breathes into her like he's going to devour her whole as she falls apart at the seams.

Oh yes. He really likes hearing her moaning that, but not more than the way she gives in as her orgasm rocks through her, grinding her hips down, into his waiting, eager mouth, helping her ride him through it until the aftershocks ease. His voice is barely a scrape when he lifts her up, his aching cock swinging between his legs as he presses forward, eager for her mouth. "Did so good, baby, such a good girl for me. I need to fuck you. Need to fuck you, baby. How do you want it?"

"Any way." Daphne gasps, trying to wrap her head around any kind of how that's more artful than just sinking down on him right here and now. When she does wrap her head around it, though, she groans in a less ethereal tone. "Let me grab a condom." Like any sensible, sexually active college girl, she carries one in her regular purse. Emergency cock wrap, if you will. She just never thought she'd actually need it.

"Wait, I got it." He scoots up a moment, digging into the small table beside the couch. From the drawer Santi draws out the foil pouch and rips it open, quickly rolling it on before turning his attention back on Daphne, who's watching him with drowned eyes, eyes deep and longing and still so lovely.

"Lie back, sweetheart. You ready for me?" He slowly glides the head over her silky wet folds, smearing her slick across his tip.

Deciding she absolutely does not need to know how many other girls have been fucked on this couch -- possibly at the end of their own courses -- Daph pushed herself up on her elbows to kiss him fiercely. Tonight is not to be wasted. Tonight is to be a fantastic memory. "I'm ready." Her nails drag down the base of his scalp, having caught a near purr from him earlier when she did the same. "I want you to fuck me, Santi."

Almost before his name is out of her mouth, he's pushing inside her with a low rumble, his head falling back slightly into her hands. Her nails scrape sensation over his scalp and down his spine, and her cunt is licking flames over him, so warm and perfect he almost comes right fucking there, but halts, breathing damp against her lips, his teeth nipping her lip possessively.

They hold like that, frozen together in the heat of the moment as he regains his composure and she adjusts to the stretch and fill and thickness of his cock inside her. The only movement, in this long moment of coming together, is the languid slide and tangle of their tongues together as they drown in the intimacy of feverish kisses.

Gradually, Santi comes down enough to get restless, eager again. He nips and bites down over her jaw and descends on her throat, sucking a mark low on her collarbone as his hands pay some long overdue attention to her pretty, heaving tits. Mine.

When the mark on her neck is soothed with his tongue, he sits up slowly, his eyes a glittering black, his lips parted. He looks like he's about to devour her. He takes one of her calves in his hand, eyes never leaving hers, tipping her knee up towards her head and then out, spread wide for him. He grips her ankle in a warm hand. Then, with a grunt, he's pulling back and pitching forward hard enough for their skin to clap obscenely, fast enough to make them both soon begin to tremble.

The position that he's in has him almost entirely out of her reach, just close even to graze her nails over his chest as he thrusts into her at a pace frantic enough to make them both pant and heave. Her back arches off the couch with a keen and her hands grapple with the couch cushions for purchase to hold on tight as Santi fucks her so deeply and insistently that she can practically feel him all the way up in her throat.

"Gripping me so fuckin' tight, baby, Jesus," he says through his teeth, his jaw tight, streaks of pleasure raking down his chest with her sharp, clinging nails. Keeping his relentless pace, he bends forward, pushing her thigh up, testing her limit. When he's low enough he seizes her mouth with his, grinding deep.

"One more for me, pretty girl, one more," he whispers huskily, his other hand skimming down her body to rub at her clit.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, so good baby, oh my fucking god—" Something in Daphne's mind short circuits, and the rambling begins in earnest the higher and higher she climbs toward a second orgasm. Tripping over her own tongue and throwing her hands up over her head as he slams into her so hard that either they are moving up the length of the sofa or the entire sofa is moving, Daph is completely lost in her pleasure. That volcano of pleasure building in her core is damn near ready to explode and the only thing she wants more than to erupt is to take him with her.

The second her expression breaks and she cries out for him, he's gone. He thinks he's done even before she clamps down on his cock like a goddamned vice, ripping his orgasm from him in a half dozen hard but increasingly languid strokes.

His upper body grows heavy, and with a groan he grinds in deeply just once more – never mind why – and leans his forehead on her soft breast, pulling out of her with a sigh. His entire body is basking, floating. If she puts her hands in his hair again he might even fall asleep.

There's a moment of quiet as he ties off and disposes of the condom, and for a split-second Santi disappears around a corner but he comes back with a warm, damp kitchen cloth to clean them both up with before curling back around her on the couch. "Goddamn," she huffs, giggling softly to herself as his arms come around her.

"Tell me about it," he says sleepily, flipping the throw blanket over the two of them as they settle, kiss, explore lazily what before had been greedily consumed. "Still not sure I'm not dreaming," he says, only half-joking, tracing her lips with a smile. "Did I really get so lucky?"

"I'm not sure how you're the starstruck one out of the two of us," Daphne teases, even though it's through a thin veil of honesty.

"Bonita, I've been increasingly starstruck all semester," he chuckles. "You have so much to look forward to. Shit, you're definitely going farther places than I am. I'm just happy to be here," he presses a kiss to her left tit, "To enjoy-" to her right nipple- "The satisfaction of being right." He kisses her forehead and studies her, his lids heavy. "Do you need anything before you fall asleep, baby girl? You wanna sleep here or in bed? I can't let you bike home this late, querida, so don't even try. Besides, you can shower here, my plumbing is fine." He smirks here, as if anticipating the swat he's earned himself.

"It's not that late." Daphne wrinkles her nose at herself. The protest was just good manners. She doesn't actually want to leave. She wants to wrap up in him and breathe in this comfort for as long as humanly possible. When he levels her with a disapproving look, Daph just ends up grinning. "Let's go to bed," she suggests, catching his lips as he drags them along her jaw. "And when I wake you up in the morning with my lips wrapped around your cock again, you'll be glad your back isn't sore."

The laugh bursts out of his chest with delight, easy and real. "All right, baby, all right, and what makes you think I won't beat you to it?" Santi pulls her to her feet, wrapping the soft blanket securely around her shoulders before guiding her upstairs with a hand at the small of her back.

No matter which one of them beats the other two it, they both know they aren't done. Whether it's a weekend, a week, a month, or even more. This night is just the beginning.

______

Master Tags: @pixiedurango @chattychell @winter-fox-queen @lady-himbo @artsymaddie @princess76179 @paintballkid711 @missminkylove @pedrosbrat @ew-erin @sarahjkl82-blog @sharkbait77 @justanotherblonde23 @lv7867 @recklesswit @mylittlesenaar @f0rever15elf @gallowsjoker @steeevienicks @athalien @sherala007 @skvatnavle @thatpinkshirt @jaime1110 @girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @goodgriefitsawildworld @greeneyedblondie44 @littlemousedroid @harriedandharassed @churchill356 @ajathegreats-blog @haylzcyon   @beardsanddetectives @kirsteng42 @ladykatakuri @adancedivasmom @madiebear @tanzthompson @emilianamason @bigsdinger @xocalliexo @pedr0swh0r3 @avaleineandafryingpan @charlyrmv @avidreader73 @iceclaw101 @loveslide @elegantduckturtle @becsworld @julesonrecord @its-nebuleuse @itsrubberbisquit @mikeyswifie @guelyury @lizzie-cakes @for-a-longlongtime @vabeachazn @purplerain04 @weho2kcmo @madnessofadaydreamer

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[jules-onpaper]

Western Skies: Ch 2

Din Djarin x F!Reader. Western!AU. Warnings: Grief; allusions to sexual trauma (none occurs and it's oblique); mention of death by childbirth; shame via societal norms (be strong, fellow weirds); fake marriage/marriage of convenience; allusions to religion (not Christanity but there are flavors of it). Reader is described as having hair. Summary: A funeral. A wedding. A child. It's all out of order. or: You owe him everything. You hate it. WC: 6.7k

Note: Y'all should know that the burn in this story is slow, but there are embers of somethin' brewin'. Follow @jules-onpaper for updates! Dividers by @mykento.

He is…

Not what you expected.

Had you really expected anything?

You’re not sure. Perhaps you’d expected your savior to be as rough and rugged as his hands had been, pulling you from the grave-mud of the river shallows and hauling you onto his horse with sheer, stubborn will – as though determined to wrest you from the Maker themself. 

You blink a few times, your heart thudding in the hollow of your throat. Your palms are sweating. “Take…” Your tongue is dry. “Will you take off your hat?”

A beat. You think he’ll refuse the request, but then his fingers pluck at the rim slowly for a moment, as though he’s drawing courage from beneath it. Finally the dust-colored veil lifts from his forehead and you see him in full for the first time, lit by the stark rays of the sun.

And in a way, he is rugged. His skin is golden, sun-warmed. The few gray hairs you spotted yesterday shelf a fine and sturdy jaw in an otherwise patchy dark beard and full mustache. His nose is strong, angled, proud. In the bright morning sun, you see his eyes more clearly. Not black, at least not today. They are brown, fringed with dark lashes, and wary. 

And instantly, you see that he is both well-attuned to the asperities of this landscape that suffers no fools, and that there is something – else. You can’t put your finger to it for a moment. It’s not softness, but like something resembling it, threaded through the imminent danger of his broad frame, an unsettling combination. No wonder he covers his face.

He doesn’t belong here, you think, and then, but I can’t imagine placing him anywhere else.

His lips twist, defiant and almost sour, watching your inspection with obvious discomfort.

You don’t see what there is to be shy about. A small part of you admits, begrudgingly, he would do for some. It’s just a face, though you can’t parse much about the man wearing it.

That hair, though, is riotous. Fluffy dark curls dented by the crown of his broad hat and damp with sweat, swaying gently in the wind. It makes the natural tidier in you want desperately to see it combed. No, washed first.

“You ‘bout done?” he asks gruffly.

“You’re filthy,” you bite back, embarrassed. “Why are you covered in mud?” you ask, when he crams the hat back on his head.

This gives him pause. “There’s mud at the river.”

Your heart leaps into your throat and blocks your voice. He sees the question in your eyes. Slowly, he shakes his head.

“Nothing left.”

Nothing left. The news drives through you like a stake through spring sod – you actually clutch your hand to your hollow chest – and though you close your eyes, for a while all you can see is the blades of grass around his boots, the mud of the river caked into his spurs.

He gives you a moment. There isn’t time, but he isn’t cruel. He had watched the grief remove the cronish, lemon-like expression of your mouth that says all too clearly that now you’ve seen him, you don’t like what you see. Maker, you’re so young, years irrelevant in the untested metal of an Eastern girl’s tongue and spirit. You don’t even know what you’ve asked of him. What power your small hands hold over him.

And that’s all right. It’s a look he’s all too used to. Of the few of his people that are left, he knows they disapprove of his interactions with the outsiders. 

His people have a Way. A creed he walks with every beat of his heart. And yet he doesn’t belong in the desert with them, either.

He’s used to blazing his own path. He always has. He always will. He takes jobs, if they pay well, if the person offering can be trusted. He doesn’t care much for the law of the United States Government; they have lied before and they will do it again. He’s only drawn back to the covert for leatherworking, for armor, for news. He doesn’t pick up stragglers, or he didn’t, until the little womp rat made his appearance. 

He wouldn’t do this, otherwise. He offers no charity except for what the foundlings require, but he has a plot of land now, more of a home than he’s had in… too long. The kid belongs there. He’s getting bigger; he needs looking after. It’s too dangerous on the road now.

Besides: you don’t look like a straggler, for all that you’re disheveled and dirtier than he is, even now that your hair is dry. It’s clear Peli hasn’t offered you a bath. Your shoes are warped and the travel dress you’re wearing is probably a loss. Once he drops you off at Peli’s, he can arrange for–

No. He composes himself. You’ve got to agree to this. You’ve got to. 

He’s desperate.

“Well? Do you have an answer?” he prompts, trying not to be brusque, though you jump from your thoughts all the same.

Your eyes fix on him slowly, wide, pleading. 

He sighs through clenched teeth. He’s scared you. Worse, you might be too shaken up, too frightened to even consider what he’s asking you to-

“No. I can’t accept,” you say, looking anywhere but his face.

His chest tightens. He thought you might refuse; you’re well within your rights to, despite the predicament you’re in. He could pay Peli to take you on, maybe. It’s just he doesn’t know what he’ll do now about the kid. What options does he have? Boy’s getting too big for the saddle but he’s much too small for anything but a pony, and he can’t-

“I can’t be indebted to anyone like that,” you continue, interrupting his thoughts once again. “I have nothing to my name. There’s no way I could pay you back.”

Relief floods him. That’s all you’re worried over? He can work with that.

“Ma’am,” he says carefully, “I’m not offering charity. Can’t afford it. It’s just a roof. A bed. Food in the larder and a ticket to Chicago in the spring.” He casts a glance around at the sprightly apple trees, the clear, hot sky, the yellowed grass waving in the breeze. “Might be fine weather now, but this prairie don’t mess around come winter. You need a place to stay and I have a kid that needs tending, and a homestead n’ all.”

“It sure seems an unfair barter, given that you have saved my life,” you remark, but cross your arms, rubbing the gingham of your ruined gown between your fingers. Your cheekbones are delicate, your chin obstinate. His eyes trace the thoughtful curve of your mouth. You’re considering what he’s offered.

He is, at the root, a hunter. He takes you in almost instinctively, as a matter of course. He wonders how long you have lived hand-to-mouth. Not long, he suspects. Your dress was once a fine one. You have the surliness of a well-tended thing left behind. Why did you choose to go West, given how you seem to hate this place? 

He thumbs his belt, strong leather, woven by skilled hands. Was it love that did it? Love for a now-dead man that brought you here and now holds you back? He doesn’t think so. You’re feisty. Too hardscrabble and practical to have sacrificed it all for love. Duty? Maybe.

That, he understands to the marrow.

“It’s what we’ve got,” he says, with finality. He doesn’t need to understand you. You’re not a mark or a bounty. You’re not the kid. You’re a means to an end. “We keep each other alive.”

He looks away, jaw working. He wonders: if you knew what he was, would you run?

You really should.

You swallow and feel your nerve leak from the holes in your stockings into the earth beneath you. Your knees tremble, threatening to bulk.

“Can… can I have a while to think about it?” you ask at last.

“Well,” he says eventually, knocking his boot against the trunk of the nearest tree. He seems to be carefully not meeting your eyes. “Preacher leaves tomorrow. The Sheriff asked me to see him out of town myself.”

No preacher, no marriage.

Your underarms are hot and wet. “Couldn’t we-” you grasp, trying to catch his gaze, but he seems determined not to look your way, “Couldn’t we just go over to the next town with a church and-?”

He’s already shaking his head. “Preacher won’t be back ‘til spring. Don’t know where the nearest is, and I can’t leave the kid that long anyways and find out.”

“We have to be married? I couldn’t-?” you’re fumbling. “S-stay in town, and then-?”

The answer is apologetic, but firm. “No. S’too far.”

It lies between you like a gauntlet.

“I can’t live with a man, unmarried. It’s against my-” The word chokes you. You can’t get it past your tight teeth. He nods.

“And mine.”

You fight a wave of nausea. There’s no question, then. If you’re to accept this offer, it has to be now. Today. 

“I’ll give you the night to think it over,” he says at last. With a respectful nod, he passes you and starts down the hill toward Peli's.

Suddenly your chest tightens with a cloying, sickly rage. You hate him. You hate him from the click of his spurs to the air in his lungs, this presumptuous man who could be leading you into anything from a brothel to a prison for all you know about him, and if it weren’t for the fact that you already owe him so much you’d rather lie down on this hillside and die.

There’s no other option. He’s your only choice.

It makes you want to vomit.

“Wait!” you call, swiveling on your heel, the cold sweat tracing your spine like a lover.

He pauses part way down the incline, only feet away. He stares up at you, large brown eyes neutral, composed. An oak’s branches weave a dappled canopy over his face.

“I’ll marry you,” you almost spit.

His dark eyes glance over your face, and if he were in his right mind, he would have told you to never mind, let’s forget the whole thing, sorry to have bothered you, ma’am. But he doesn’t. He nods, and with a short movement, he draws the bandana over his face and cheeks. “C’mon along, then. We got the funeral to do, too,” he says, and leaves you to follow him.

This is perhaps the most surreal position you will ever be in, you think, watching the preacher speak simple and wholesome words for Leo’s soul over a simple wooden marker sunken into the earth. There is no body, and this sparse little funeral is attended by a single bereaved: you. Peli, Mando, and a couple of townspeople stand respectfully to the side, listening to the preacher’s words of renewal, of safety, of returning home.

You wish you could rip the words from the man’s teeth and choke him with them.

Finally, he settles a grizzled palm over the dirt, and he and the two town ladies whisper a fervent, Amen. You and Peli say nothing. Mando appears to mouth something entirely, perhaps a private prayer.

Then it is over, and before anyone can move, the broad figure is once again beside you, and Mando says,

“Figured we would marry up while we can.”

You glance up for the first time, wondering through a hollow numbness whether the preacher or fussy town ladies would clamor at such a proposition. Who is going to be the first to shout, Are you insane? Get away from her! This is an outrage! You’re standing over her husband’s grave!

“Of course,” says the man of the cloth somberly.

“Jest makes sense,” Peli puts in approvingly.

You think you even see one of the town ladies nod, while the other stands there, impassive. Somehow, the two of them had managed to dress in sober black. One of them loaned you her dark shawl as a measure of respect for your dead husband.

Now it is your wedding veil. 

Your cheeks would be burning, you think, but now that the finality of Leo’s death is here and you are officially a widow, everything just feels… pointless. Who cares, then? You have nowhere to run. Let it be.

“Please join hands,” the preacher says in his papery voice, having turned his book to the appropriate passage.

The sentence takes a while to sink through the muddy cloud of your brain, and before it does, you feel a gentle press to your fingers. You glance down. He’s grasping it in his leather glove. It nearly engulfs yours.

That’s all you have the energy to notice, and you don’t really care. You’re back on the thought of being a widow. How many hours a widow, while you stand here and take a second husband? Could it be a full day? Surely not. Twenty hours at best. The sun is making a blushing curtsey behind the distant hills now. You couldn’t even afford him the dignity of waiting until the day had ended, that the sun has witnessed your shame. You look away.

The preacher’s voice washes over you, and occasionally, Mando squeezes your fingers, and you gain enough self-awareness to repeat your lines as instructed. You hear nothing else until his voice prickles something in you and you blink yourself awake.

“Din.”

“What?” you ask, dazed. You couldn’t hear anything.

He looks down at you, unmoved.

“My name,” he says in an undertone. “Din Djarin.”

A shiver crawls down your neck, but you have little time to consider it, for he turns back to the preacher, his next words chilling you to ice.

“I will.”

You want to throw up. Your lips won’t open. Would you vomit more water if you did? You have a vision of running away, damn your ruined clothes and what these simple people think. You’ll walk into that river yet, let its current take you for a wife instead of this impassive stranger. You’ll join your real husband in the depths, you’ll–

Peli’s eyes meet yours, and she nods. Just a simple, encouraging jerk of her wiry curls, but her expression makes you think suddenly of that kid of his. It doesn’t seem fair to either of you, suddenly, that this child would get a mother he never chose, one who didn’t want him or his father or anything to do with this Maker-forsaken place. You think of your sister, the nephew or niece that might kill her before you ever get to see her again.

It’s not fair. It’s just a child. How could life be so cruel as to tear those most loving arms away from one so young? 

“I will,” you say at last, and you’re crying.

Just like brides are supposed to do.

Then it is over. You snatch your hand back as surreptitiously as you can, unable to bear the feel of your own body, let alone any one else’s.

Immediately, though, your wishes are dashed, for a sleek black arm tucks around your waist and there is a gentle murmur in your ear:

“Come, dear.”

You’re being ushered away from the site of the mock wedding and funeral. For neither one was real, you think, eyes locked on the fluttering skirts of the woman leading you back to the wagon. There could be no funeral for Leo without his body. And if there was no funeral, you were not a disloyal heathen, but a woman biding her time under the guise of propriety.

Yes. Yes, you think, with a surge of relief so powerful you cry all the harder, silently and persistently. There was no point in calling this charade a marriage.

The preacher helps you into the wagon. You’re not sure to whom it belongs. The other ladies’ bonnets sway like so many wildflowers. They are sitting some distance from Peli Motto, you note through your haze.

The woman across from you hems, and when you glance up, you note that she – the one whose veil you’re still wearing – is not nudging you, but the lady beside her.

Suddenly you’re awash with nausea again, expecting congratulations.

But none comes.

The elder woman, very straight-backed and sober-looking, merely observes you a moment, before glancing at her wide-eyed companion with a sigh.

“You are most welcome at our house for a visit,” she offers, with cold politeness. “Once you are… settled.”

You lick your lips. “Thank you, madam.” You have no intention of following up on this offer.

“What my sister means,” the kind one corrects with a warm smile, “Is that we would be most glad of your friendship, Mrs. Djarin.”

You flinch. She seems to notice, for she continues more gently,

“It is most rare for Caroline and I to receive a lady’s company at our house.”

As one, the three of you glance at Peli. Thankfully, she’s fallen asleep in the rock of the wagon. If you could be so lucky.

“Indeed,” Caroline puts in. She has a strong voice, one with iron weight, hauteur. “You seem to be an educated young woman, and we are most sorry for your… circumstances. Still…” she sighs, and you sense a thread of disapproval. “You will not be without protection. That is the Maker’s blessing to you.”

You’re not sure what to say to that, so instead you venture, “I know nothing of him.”

“Unfortunately,” Caroline goes on, flicking her glance past your left shoulder, “Nor do I.”

Mando (Din?) is following the wagon at a reasonable distance upon his horse. He had removed neither hat nor kerchief during the ceremony. Maybe it is this fact that curls Caroline’s lip.

Her sister – you remember suddenly she introduced herself as Margaret – leans forward and pats your hand with an aunt-like reassurance. “We haven’t had the pleasure of much acquaintance with him.”

“Nor do we see him at church,” Caroline adds, waspish.

“I think,” Margaret continues, “He is a good man. He has always been very polite, sister, and offered his assistance every time I have been out on my own. And I am sure he keeps very busy. He’s not in town much.”

“No, nor often at that droll little house.”

“I suppose he finds work elsewhere, with his kind-”

“His kind?” you ask, too loudly. Peli snorts and snuffles her way awake, blinking owlishly.

“Whassat?” she asks.

Margaret’s cheeks spot red, but Caroline only blinks placidly. 

The wagon halts with a clatter in town, the main street of which you take in properly for the first time. It’s a row of neat false-front buildings in various dull colors: white, gray, a brown that might once have been pink. Still, it is more of a town than you have seen in many weeks. Carriages and horses make their way through town on well-worn dirt tracks, and you even spot a few children tapping a hoop before a few prim little houses down the way.

Besides those of you in the wagon, there are no women visible.

Caroline is assisted down first onto the clapboard sidewalk, then Margaret, then Peli. Peli’s descent causes some little hubbub, as she squawks and insists she can hop down from a wagon, she’s as sprightly as she ever was, though she clings to the baffled preacher’s hands as though she teeters from a cliff. You stand stiffly behind, waiting your turn.

A fine black leather-gloved hand appears by your side. You peer down at it in surprise and take it without much thought, before even thinking to acknowledge the man it’s attached to.

Your heart jumps. It’s not the Mando, as you expected, but another. Tall, wiry, with a fine silver beard and twinkling blue eyes considering you with interest. He helps you from the wagon with easy grace, and your eye catches on a golden glint pinned to his red shirt.

“Thank you,” you say.

“Ma’am,” he greets you politely, with a fingertip touching the brim of his hat. “A mighty fine pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Cobb Vanth.”

A voice behind you calls, “Good day, Sheriff.”

He bows slightly towards the sisters, eyes crinkling pleasantly in the late afternoon sun. “Mrs. Shackleton. Miss Margo. Kind of you ladies to escort our new neighbor into town. I would have attended myself, had I not been called to other matters.”

Caroline bends her head in a small bow, but Margaret beams at him. “Will you come to dinner, Sheriff?” she asks. “We can expect the mayor, also.”

“I’m much obliged,” he says warmly. “The Mando and I will be along shortly. We have some small business to settle.”

“Mrs. Djarin, come away now, Mr. Vanth is busy,” Caroline calls to you. Your cheeks heat once again.

The sheriff considers you another few seconds, then tips his hat to you once more and strides away.

“A fine man,” Margaret remarks, as her sister unlocks a storefront with an iron key from around her neck.

“A goose,” Caroline replies. “But he will balance the party nicely.”

To your chagrin, Peli and the Shackleton sisters usher you into the store, one full of everything from dry goods to liquor to bolts of cloth. The sisters’ fine clothes are explained at once. Are they yet another business run by women in these parts?

They make no explanations, however, and instead bustle you through the merchandise and into an upstairs parlor, sparse in comparison to any in the East. Behind the privacy of a dressing screen, they bid you undress at once. Dumbly, you obey. Your arms are heavy.

“You will have to make do with my niece’s things,” Caroline says crisply, untying your corset while Margaret carries a bundle of clean and ironed clothes in her arms from the front of the store.

“I really couldn’t-” you say weakly, but get a stern rap on the ankle. Peli is measuring your feet on a slip of brown paper, tracing the shape with a pencil.

“Hold still, girl, or you’ll get hooves instead,” she warns brightly.

They quell your protests and honestly, once you spot a tub of clean water still steaming, you submit fairly easily, and proceedings continue more smoothly. While you scrub your skin and nails of mud, Margaret takes great pains to gently brush the worst of the dirt from your hair.

Outside, the sun has retreated. Visible from the window are other storefronts, other townspeople lighting lamps and lanterns in their upstairs parlors. The one on the Shackleton’s windowsill burns clean, steady. 

“I wish there were time to wash it,” she sighs, a sound barely heard over swish of the bath water. After seeing you into the tub, Peli and Caroline had gone to greet the men downstairs, leaving you alone with Margo – the nickname suits her, you think. “You have such lovely hair. But there isn’t time to dry it and we mustn’t send you home with a damp head, you’ll catch cold.”

You doubt that in the summer breeze you would catch much of anything besides bugs, but decide not to say so.

“Where is home?” you ask instead.

“Oh, I don’t rightly know,” Margaret answers, a little bewildered. “I suppose Mr. Djarin’s homestead is a few miles from here. He always comes into town from the west.”

You both catch it then – the shrill cry of a child downstairs, echoing through the thin walls. Adult murmurings overtake it, and the noise quiets down.

“Is that-?” you ask, your heart beating fast.

Gently, “Yes.”

She doesn’t press as you turn stiff, silent. The water is only tepid, but goosebumps erupt over your arms and back. 

Without much more talk, Margaret helps you dress: a white and clean corset over an equally clean new shift, a cotton petticoat, stockings, and a blue and white checked cambric frock.

“Quite tidy,” Margaret praises, studying you. “Now that your hair is up you look right and proper again. I am sorry about your shoes.”

“No, I-” you swallow the lump in your throat. There was no replacing your shoes – you needed new ones made and there was no cobbler here. Peli had taken your measurements only to find no shoes in the Shackleton General Store stock would fit. You’d simply have to make do with the ones you had, hobbling along with warped ankles and clipped heels. “Thank you. I do appreciate your kindness. I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Of course, dear,” she says, in a warm murmur. Then, she bustles up, tidying the room slightly. “Well, best to get downstairs.”

Heart in your throat, but damned if you’ll ask her to go with you, you descend the steps, careful to hide your feet. Luckily, the Shackleton niece seems to be an inch or so taller than you, and this is easily done with the hem of your skirts.

A stirring of movement. Conversation dims and quiets to a halt. When you look up, four men wait for you at the bottom of the stairwell.

“There she is,” says a voice, warm. The Sheriff has arrived, and bereft of his hat he’s even more handsome. He reminds you of a slightly more rugged version of the illustrations you’d seen of John D. Rockefeller. “Welcome, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” you say, and take in the other faces in the room. Besides the sheriff, the preacher nods and smiles at you, and is already standing behind his seat at the head of the table, where until a moment ago he had been speaking with a rotund, jolly-faced man of dark skin and intelligent eyes. He stands at your entrance and bows his head.

“Ma’am. I am truly sorry to hear of your loss.”

A pain in your throat makes it feel as though you’ve swallowed a pin. “Thank you, sir.”

“This is Greef Karga, our good mayor,” Cobb Vanth informs you. “Mr. Karga, this is-”

“Where is-?” you interrupt, before you’re interrupted yourself.

A loud, infantile caw rings from the other room, and your stomach drops. 

Mrs. Shackleton appears, carrying a bundle that is squirming and growing louder by the minute. She looks harassed and irritated.

“There you are,” she says crisply, as though you were late. And to your horror, she deposits the bundle into your arms just as a familiar baritone calls, “Wait-”

He had taken Karga’s horse to the town stables, as the mare had picked up a stone along the way and he had offered to see about it before coming back to the Shackletons’. The stone had come out easily and the young horse was mollified, mouthing at his ear as though he had a lump of sugar hidden under his hat. He gave her one from his pocket instead.

He had only wanted a few more minutes of air, really, and now he’s back and you’re-

You look different, clean. The fine young lady you really were. A tailor or a lawyer’s daughter, possibly. A vision from the East, where he does not dare go.

Not any better or worse. No, the fierceness in your jaw and mettle in your carriage was always there. It’s just…

Din swallows. He doesn’t like this, doesn’t like being here with these people, and now you’re here, fine and fresh-looking, a new green sprout in the spring’s fertile earth.

What the hell is he doing? He’s got to be the most selfish sonofabitch that has ever traipsed the Tattooine sands.

He feels even worse when you look to him. There’s something fearful, confused in your eyes.

You’re holding the kid, who’s squirming, crying, wailing, his huge eyes spilling over.

He hadn’t time – there was no time to explain this to either of you. And the look on your face – it’s like you want to be screaming and crying, too.

The kid sees Din, and immediately the wailing halts, and frenetic gasps take their place. Small hands grasp wildly for him.

“He’ll become used to his new mother presently,” Caroline is telling you, as though she knows all about it. “But you must be firm and not coddle him. Too much fuss isn’t good for children.”

“I–” you’re stammering. “I–”

“Here,” Din says, stepping close and taking the small body from your arms. It’s impossible not to feel your shaking. “I’ve got him.” In an undertone, he asks, “Are you going to faint?”

That irks you. Your eyes spark, but the tears there recede slightly. “No,” you mutter back. “I just didn’t expect it. That.”

Something hardens inside him. He turns the kid closer into his side. It? That?  “Expect… what?”

Your brow furrows in confusion, but you don’t get the chance to answer, because Mrs. Shackleton is ushering you all inside to the dining room.

Maker, he hopes this dinner is over quickly. The kid is less squirmy now that he’s comfortably installed by Din’s side, but who knows how long that will last?

He glances at the clock. An hour, he decides, to get some food into you. And then he’s taking the both of you out of here. To the homestead. To some peace.

He does not think, yaim. 

You have no idea what is wrong with these people.

You’re surrounded by the insane.

Greef Karga sits to your right, mildly discussing a matter of contention on trains and shipping with an amicable Sheriff Vanth, who swirls his wine and sends you smiling little looks now and then, as though sipping from the view of you. The preacher, after having spoken the prayer before the meal, had proceeded to be steamrolled in conversation by Caroline Shackleton. Their topic is the matter of one’s duty to attend church every week, without failure. Her sister is quiet, sipping her soup with blissful serenity.

Insane. The lot of them.

 For he isn’t sitting at the table at all. He is in one corner, the child on his knee, staring out the window, bouncing the wee one now and then. He removed his hat when the prayer was said and the ladies were standing, but as soon as dinner began, he retreated to his corner with the baby. His bandana hasn’t moved an inch since this morning, when he showed you his face. Nobody has offered him wine, or bread, or anything.

Occasionally, Karga or the Sheriff will make some remark to him, and his answers are brief. Simple. Wry, even. Then he goes back to staring out the window, impassive, like a statue in the corner.

And nobody seems to think this an odd occurrence at all.

You glance to your left, and decide to chance a question.

“Miss Margo?” you whisper. When she looks up, smiling, you ask, “Does… he always wear his kerchief?”

She blinks a few times before comprehension hits her. “Oh! Yes. I have never seen him without it, inside or out.”

“What? Why?” you ask, flummoxed. Margo winces.

“I’m sure your husband has his reasons,” is her only answer.

Your stomach flips. He’s not my husband, is on your tongue, and so is, It’s just a face under there, but Greef Karga has turned to you.

“Familiar with farming, ma’am?” he wants to know.

You pace your way through dinner, answering questions, trying to appear… you don’t even know. How does a proper young woman act in this situation? Cool, somber, grateful? You don’t know about that. But you give it your best. You don’t remember, later, what was said. You do remember that the longer Mando sat in the corner, the more your eye was drawn to him, the stillness of his being (the baby had fallen asleep in his lap).

Finally, the last dish is scraped clean, and you don’t register that the Sheriff is speaking to you at the moment, so you stand, ready to clear, to wash – anything but to remain in place. The heaviness in your chest is only increasing.

“No, please,” Margo protests, at the same time her sister insists, “Absolutely not, Mrs. Djarin.”

His voice cuts through the clamor. “Thank you, Mrs. Shackleton. We’d best be going.” 

Over the table, your eyes meet.

You could be grateful he’s getting you out of here. You could, if he were really your husband and not some stranger of a few sparse hours. If he were handing you your child, not a sleeping (and heavy) bundled baby that is not the color a child of his should be. If you knew where you’d be sleeping tonight, and what waited for you tomorrow. If you knew why he’d shown his face to you and apparently, to no one else.

But nobody seems predisposed to tell you anything important, and so you’ll simply have to find out, eventually. Or maybe not. Does it matter?

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say instead, through the hardness in your jaw. 

“Come along, then.” 

Do you comply because you’re eager to leave before the child wakes, his snuffling breaths warm and sleepy against your neck? Or because you really can’t stand being in this prim little room with these people any longer? Or because he’s your husband and you’re obliged by the oaths you took to obey him?

The world is upside down. Everything has fallen to pieces. You don’t recognize who you are or where you fit any longer.

He lifts his hat slightly to the ladies and the preacher, shakes Karga’s and Vanth’s hands, and helps you into the wagon, which now has his dappled gray horse attached to it. His touch is brief, steady on your elbow. He clucks to the horse and the small party, lit by lantern light, waves you off.

“You come and call on us when you like, dear!” Margo calls.

“Mando! Like I said, we’re around if you need anything!” calls the mayor.

Your husband nods once, and turns back to the horse.

He says nothing to you as the wagon clatters through rivets and bends in the road. He says nothing as the bloom of night flowers surround you, and the bite of insects buzz in your ears, and nothing as you cover the baby with his swaddling to protect him from the worst of the slight chill.

He says nothing, in fact, for the entire journey, just keeps his eyes on the road, his foot near a shotgun stowed by his thigh. He’s tense, you can see it, but you make no attempt to say anything.

Some time later, your back and hips are sore from the jostling of the wagon – cheaper, less sturdy than the one Leo had bought for you to come West with. Your arms ache from holding the child. Unthinking, you fail to repress the shiver that passes through your body as a cool night breeze whips up slightly. The baby stirs, stretches, and you tense, having no idea what to do if he begins to cry again, but his hand only curls around the edge of his blanket and he sleeps on, his head cradled in the crook of your elbow.

What tiny hands, you think.

A heavy weight drapes over your shoulders, making you startle. Warmth that smells of clean hay and gunmetal surrounds you, his coat an anchoring tent over your back. He’s picking up the reins in his shirtsleeves.

He glances at you as you stare at him. 

“Almost home,” he says simply.

His coat is very warm. The baby didn’t stir after all.

You bite your tongue until you taste pennies.

Moonlight is your guide through the final stretch. Woods: pine and fir, mostly, with gentle swaying grasses of many types you don’t know how to name. They cut stark shapes against the silvery beams, but the horse seems to know exactly where you are.

When you make the final bend up a small hill, there’s not much to see in the dark. A small house with a porch. A yard with fences. A large shadow that’s probably the barn, a hundred yards from the house. You think you hear water nearby.

Din stops the wagon and jumps down. Without looking at you, he gestures for the kid, who you gladly give over, thankful for the chance to stretch your shoulders. You jump from the wagon on your own.

“I’ll set him to bed,” you say, the first real words between you in the dark.

You can’t see his eyes, but his silence is telling.

“You wanted me here to care for him,” you point out.

“Yeah,” he says at last, and gives you back the baby, turning towards the small cabin. He removes his hat. Unties the kerchief. His face looks worn, tired. “I’ll… show you the bedroom.”

Something deep inside you shudders as you step over the threshold to follow him.

It’s… spartan. But rather than anything you might have had time to fear or anticipate – a bachelor’s sty, that is – it’s neat. Just the two rooms, like at Peli’s: the hearth takes up the majority of the space, the unlit grate sparkling dully in the lamplight.

Cooking tools are hung on nails driven into the logs. A wooden counter rests beneath one of the few windows. The kitchen table is rough hewn. Suddenly you wonder: did he carve Peli’s furniture? Perhaps he exchanged the service for gun parts.

Din doesn’t seem the type of man to welcome questions, and anyway, you suddenly feel dead on your feet. The child is heavy and you’re aching. All you want to do is lie down and let the tears come. You suppose you’ll have to wait until… after. You bite your tongue again, determined he won’t see you cry, conclude that you can’t handle it.

It’s nothing you haven’t done before; lie stoically beneath the will of the man who branded you with his name.

“Bedroom’s there,” he says, pointing unnecessarily to the only other door in the house. “He’ll go down easy in one of the dresser drawers if you don’t want him in your bed.”

“My…? What about you?” you ask, your heart thudding in your throat. “You don’t want to-?”

“I’ll bunk in the lean-to.”

It’s final, clear. The rattling, clawed thing in you that had been quaking since you arrived stills, but you’re still wary.

“You don’t-?”

“No.”

“N-” you swallow hard, afraid to ask, afraid of what the answer might be. “Never?”

He clears his throat, and then his large frame is passing you, the smell of the gunmetal and hay stronger now, mixed with evening air and something else you don’t quite catch.

“Goodnight,” he says. “Best get to bed. Kid wakes early.”

Hardly believing your luck, you call, “Wait.”

Din’s silhouette is still visible, broad and tall in the flickering lamp light. “Yeah?”

You glance down at the sleeping child.

“What is his name? If I’m–” Nope. No. You switch tacks. “I can’t believe I don’t know.”

He turns back, and for a moment, you both stare at the small face, dirty, you realize, and splotchy from his earlier cry. Then Din almost seems to laugh, and you rile.

“I don’t see anything funny-”

He shakes his head, salted curls and rough jaw. He explains, “I didn’t know it for a long time, either. It’s Grogu.”

“Then he’s not… yours?” This surprises you, but also doesn’t. The child looks nothing like his supposed father, but then, families were odd. Still, the baby seems to dote on the imposing figure in the doorway, for all the world the antithesis of tenderness and care. And yet.

Din shakes his head, then shrugs. “He wasn’t. Not at first.”

“And now?”

He observes you a moment longer. A gloved hand passes over the rough scruff of his jaw. “Now…” He shrugs slightly again, a brief shuffle of his wide shoulders. “Wherever I go, he goes.”

“He wasn’t with you today,” you observe.

“No, ma’am.”

You look him over, and what you’re thinking spills out before you can stem it. “You seem to have a knack for finding folks who are in trouble.”

His gaze flicks away from you, into the night. He strides away, boots heavy on the soil, without answering.

[jules-onpaper]

The Gift is You ❄️ (Frankie Morales x F!Reader)

Happy holidays! @the-blind-assassin-12, I'm your Pedrostories Secret Santa! I had so much fun rolling with as many cozy holiday/winter themes as I could in this piece. I hope you enjoy it! This fic is dedicated to you, plus anyone who needs a reminder that they very much have a family of their choosing this holiday season. Don't mind me just using fic to heal trauma lol

Summary: It's Christmas Eve and even though you're free from toxic family this year in favor of spending Christmas with Frankie and his family, you're still feeling down. Frankie and the Delta boys conspire to bring a little Christmas cheer to your heart and pussy. You can read this as a pair with the drabble "Snow Day" or alone. Tagging my Frankie-loving-queen @imaswellkid ❄️

Content/warnings: Toxic family mentions but we skirt any real bad shit; explicit smut; Reader has no description beyond being shorter than the Delta boys; established relationship; FLUFF; CHRISTMAS CHEER; p-i-v sex; sir kink if you squint lol; found family; Delta boy shenans; 1 'good girl'; mentions of alcohol.

Dividers by @saradika. ❄️

Early morning winter sunlight stabs at you, and you burrow more closely into the covers of your bed, your cold feet searching, searching…

They trail across cool sheets; you come up empty.

Out of surprise and, you won’t lie, a pang of anxiety, a lonely jolt to your syrupy bones, you blink your eyes open and sit up, taking in the still slightly unfamiliar shape of your things inside this bedroom. It still smells only of him; his flannel shirts and his gritty charcoal soap and the woody cologne he wears when he takes you out and even, faintly, the smell of the clean new boards he’d milled outside to build you your very own shelves in the closet and the balsa wood he keeps in the drawers on strict instructions from his mamá.

You lick dry lips and croak, “Frankie?”

You’d woken him up crying last night, overwhelmed and grieving from a day of repeated calls from your furious family. They did this every year; hounded you with interrogations of when you would be arriving for the holidays, what you would wear, who needed which gifts, who expected you at which time… only to offer you in return a tepid if not cool reception when you actually arrived, having tried your best. Smile for the pictures they’d blast on Facebook with #blessed and then get out. That always seemed to be the underlying message.

This year, under the approval of your therapist and your boyfriend of two very happy years, you’d decided to cut the dying branch off the tree. And while you were proud of the work you’d done to get to this healthy choice, the wound was still bleeding.

Your stomach churns with guilt. Had Frankie fled the comfort of your shared bed to escape having to comfort you more? Was the work he had put in last night, soothing your tears, stroking your hair, kissing you when your breath calmed, enough to scare him away?

You swallow hard and remember your therapy. Frankie loves you. Frankie wants to take care of you. Partners take care of each other. 

You’re not a burden.

Yeah, you’re still working on that last part.

As if on cue, you hear his thudding footsteps creak on the top step, the one he’s always bitching about but never fixes.

“Hey, g’morning baby girl,” he says, shuffling into his – no, yours, together – bedroom in his socks and boxers, two mugs in hand and a beneficent smile spreading over his face. “Did you miss me?” His salted chocolate curls are totally askew, your favorite part of his morning ensemble, though you have to admit, the faint trail of hair leading from the golden skin on his belly down under the seam of his boxers is…

You bite your lip and flick your gaze back up to his. “Yes, but I forgive you if one of those is for me.”

He knows exactly what you were doing and his smirk is playful. “‘Course. Just took me ten extra minutes to figure out how to use your fancy dancy fuckin’ coffee thing-”

“It’s a moka pot, Francisco, it’s hardly fine beverage making,” you interrupt, taking the warm mug from him with a laugh. What appeared nearly a thimble of hot liquid in his hand is now a small bucket in yours. You take a sip, and immediately the jolt of high-intensity caffeine sends your eyebrows and your brain to the top of your skull.

“This is yours,” you say after a gasping swallow, swapping the mugs. “I can’t drink an entire mug of straight espresso. How did you make that happen?”

There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes as he tips the mug over his nose and slurps loudly, folding his long legs beneath him as he joins you on the bed, impervious to the morning chill. “Oops.”

You narrow your eyes suspiciously and take a smaller, tentative sip from the mug. Then you hum in surprise: your mouth is full of the sweet-bitterness of your favorite coffee flavor, made just the way you like it. Taking another quick sip, you resort to kicking your feet against the mattress in delight. You swallow, humming happily. “You didn’t make this, you went out and got my favorite drink!”

His big eyes are warm, soft, playful. “You like it?”

“Yes, yes! Thank you. You’re so good to me.” You lean forward and he accepts your gratitude with a pleased hum, sliding his tongue over your bottom lip and inside to taste you slowly.

He sighs against your mouth, melting under your praise. “You’re so fuckin’ sweet, baby.”

Your thoughts go liquid, as they always do when he’s kissing you, and you’re just letting go of the thought of coffee stains on the white sheets in lieu of wondering if you can still taste yourself from last night when your phone vibrates.

You flinch. 

Frankie glances at it, the unobtrusive rectangle lit with a tall row of missed calls, before flexing his jaw, his free hand scratching at his beard as he swallows. His lips thin for a moment and a glitter of something dark passes over his eyes before he says gently,

“Hey, cariño. I have to get going, but… you’re gonna hang out with my mom today, yeah?”

You tear your eyes away from your bedside table, your stomach clenching. “Yeah.”

“Thanks for humoring her. Without dad around to temper her groove she goes apeshit for this time of year.”

You shrug. You adore his mamá, and she you. If she wanted your help putting up yet more Christmas decorations and baking gingerbread houses meant for Frankie’s sisters’ kids to crumble tomorrow morning in their chubby little hands, you weren’t going to argue. Today, she wants help putting the final touches on Christmas, and with Frankie busy at Will Miller’s house helping with some Christmas thing – he had deftly skirted details – you were happy to step in.

“Hey.” He lifts your chin in his hand, kisses your forehead, then your nose. “I know I said I wanted to stay here tonight, but if you want, we can stay at Ma’s. She’d be thrilled.”

“No, I’m looking forward to waking up with you. Like always,” you say, truthfully, braving a little smile. “This time of year just…”

“I know, baby.” He kisses you and sighs again, a mournful breath against your skin. “I’m just a call away. Try not and let ‘em get you down.”

“I won’t.”

“And there’s something else I want.” He brushes a practiced thumb over your clothed clit, so close yet so far in your thin cotton panties, and your hips jump, a moan cresting to your throat. “Keep this pretty pussy warm for me.”

Your smile is saucy, your tone on the sweet side of sarcastic. “Yes sir.”

He growls low in his throat, plucks at the skin of your throat with his teeth. “If I didn’t have to go, I’d make you repeat that more respectfully.”

“Yeah?” You’re breathless. In spite of yourself, your body responds to him, stirring with electricity, called to attention.

“Yeah,” he says, mouthing your pulse, his beard scraping a path over your clavicle. You feel his tongue press into his favorite spot beneath your ear and you hum, your back a gentle arch, desire slashing through your core. “Maybe I’ll make you say it a dozen more times ‘til you get it right.”

“Go,” you urge through the heat that spreads over your chest, smiling at the reluctance in his posture, even as his alarm starts ringing and he sweeps his tongue over the hollow in your throat and groans. You both know that if he’s late, the boys have no qualms about letting themselves into his house to collect him – no matter where his attention may be situated. There have been a few close calls, and you’re pretty sure Santiago saw a glimpse of your tits the last time, before Frankie hauled him out the door by the collar, cursing his best friend out in furious Spanish as Santi hollered that he’d have your man back to you by nightfall.

“Fuck. Rain check?” he says, eyes warm and bleary, wide and pleading, searching your face as though you would ever tell him no. You swipe a thumb over his full bottom lip and he kisses it. You can’t believe you have this effect on him. But then, doesn’t he do the same to you?

You bundle up warm and head out to Mrs. Morales’. During his morning excursion, Frankie also took the time to scrape the fresh layer of fallen snow off of your car. Heart heavy with several accusatory texts from your mother, you sink into the seat feeling just a little warmer.

Rosa Morales lives in a sweet little ranch bursting in summer with rich, colorful flower beds which are the envy of the neighborhood. The same is true in winter: the colors just bloom from poinsettias and cheerful lights instead, plus a large arch of tinsel and fairy lights straight out of a Hallmark movie. The idea that she needed help in constructing her Christmas wonderland was laughable; you told Frankie so the first year she’d asked. You’d never met a more sprightly and active grandmother.

“Help? Nah, she doesn’t want help,” he’d laughed. “She wants you to look at the goddamned lights and ooh and aah and then she wants to pepper you with questions about when I’m gonna get on one knee.”

You felt a fluttering. “Well, when are you going to? Just so we all know ahead of time?”

He’d only winked at you and squeezed your thigh with one hand, spinning the wheel on his truck with an ease that had made your tummy flip.

It turns out that today, Rosa does need help. She needs you to help haul groceries for a dozen people into her tiny smart car, then unload the same into the fridge while she checks the piles and piles of tamales ready for tomorrow. She also wants your opinion on whether her pristinely decorated Christmas tree is quite straight, and whether you can clearly see the happy faces of her children and grandchildren as babies lined up on sparkling baubles near the front.

You smile down at one of them, a good forty something years old, the date scribbled in marker, the picture cut out from a polaroid of a tiny, frowning, curly-mopped nine-month-old. Frankie’s first Christmas.

“Now, niña,” Rosa says. “What about the tree?”

“It’s great. I think I see a strand of lights in the back that have switched off, though.” You frown and lean your slightly taller frame around the tree where there is indeed a dark spot in the sparkling branches. “Can I get back there without stepping on… uh, anything?”

You glance around at the piles of presents, all neatly organized by color. Most of them are big piles of toys for the grandbabies, no doubt, but there is a green and white pile with yours and Frankie’s names on them. You had looked away, embarrassed to see your name on a few labels, ashamed to think of making more work for Rosa, pressuring her by the promise of your presence to get something for you so that you weren’t awkwardly sitting by watching her family have a good time, jealous of the easy camaraderie and fun they were having.

“Thank you, honey. Can you reach it from here? Maybe a plug slipped loose. Dios mio, these lights are somehow hanging on another year? They must be older than you,” she chuckles, watching closely as you pick your way carefully around the present pyramids.

With a little jiggling and just one lightbulb that turns out to be loose, the final section of the tree flickers to life in technicolored rainbow glory. You blink in surprise, an ornament of Mary holding the baby Jesus staring mournfully at you from the bough you just brought back to light.

“Perfecto. Come out, honey, and we’ll have some tea. I got you those cookies you like, the chocolate ones, yes?  You started that new job since I saw you last. I want to hear all about it. Ah! And you just wait until I tell you about that–” she mutters something under her breath, “At the hardware store, my coworker. She’s gonna get it one of these days, mark my words.”

You gasp, immediately picking up the thread. Rosa is a font of gossip and hilarious stories, and you’re more than eager to hear more of them. “Sue? Frankie told me she called the police on some innocent old man for shoplifting? I couldn’t believe it!”

“I know!” And this is quite enough to get her going on the subject, chattering merrily as she bustles around her full-to-bursting kitchen.

You grin as you pick your way through the forest of shiny paper and bows. You might feel a little awkward, sure, like you’re about to barge in on Rosa Morales’ perfect Christmas. But with the way she laughs and grips your hand when you tell her at her insistence how you and Frankie spent half your vacation in Porto under the misguided wanderings of a hapless tour guide and how neither of your Spanish helped at all, you think maybe the welcome mat outside Rosa’s front door really invites you to do what it bids all guests: Make Yourself at Home!

By the time the afternoon rolls around, your belly is full of some of the many tamales and you’re fidgety, mind wandering to Frankie, the deep sweet depths of his eyes, the pull of his laugh you can almost feel in your chest. You’re drawn to him; you always have been. It’s more than his broad shoulders protecting you from the world, though that helps. It’s more than the steady press of his hands that make you melt, make you come undone almost at his whim. Your heart is his. You’re just not drawn in solid lines until he’s by your side. 

Maybe Rosa clocks it. At any rate, she looks at you with affection when you say you should probably go, does she need anything else before tomorrow? She shakes her head, her green and red beaded earrings swinging, the faint wrinkles around her dark eyes – just like his – creasing as she smiles, cheek on her hand.

“No, mija. Just come whenever you like tomorrow, okay? The babies will keep us busy all day. Enjoy the peace while you can, eh?” She winks, and something knowing in it makes your neck hot.

Before you can answer, you hear a familiar horn. Instinctively, you grab your hat and glance outside. The sky has just started to spit snowflakes.

“Is that-?”

“Tell him to enjoy his gift, niña,” Rosa says, and sends you on your way, just as Frankie lays on the horn again.

“What the hell?” you burst out laughing when you skid out onto the icy front step, the chill of snow imminent – you swear you can smell the flurries coming. 

“Merry Christmas!” come sauced voices from the bed of Frankie’s truck, and Benny lifts his arms in a thick-armed wave.

Frankie climbs out of the truck to come and collect you, wrapping his hand around yours, his eyes alight with excitement. “You like it, baby?” he half-yells over the roar of the engine and the rendition of “Jingle Bells” Will, and Benny have begun chanting with horrible tuning.

You can’t stop laughing. The boys are clustered in the bed of Frankie’s truck around fully-decked Christmas tree, complete with twinkling lights and precarious baubles. You think you spot an angel made out of an empty bottle of tequila at the top. Best of all? Benny’s arm is wrapped affably around a large stuffed reindeer, an Army t-shirt pulled over its downy fur, tinsel in its antlers.

“How the hell did you make it onto the highway like this?” you laugh, wiping a freezing tear from your eye.

“We didn’t!” Benny yells, his ears and cheeks red. Even his full beard doesn’t seem to be keeping him very warm. “We got pulled over!” 

You glance at Frankie, glad to see that he, at least, seems completely sober. He shrugs guiltily. “Will knew the guy. I promised to take it down tomorrow and he let us go. He found it pretty hilarious, too.”

“And can I ask why you four wanted to recreate Santa’s sleigh in the bed of Frankie’s Chevy? And where the hell is Santiago?”

“It’s your carriage to Christmas wonderland, sweetheart,” Will says, jumping down into the snow of Rosa’s driveway and opening the truck cab. “Now c’mon, before my ass freezes to this piece of-”

“Hey,” Frankie warns, laughing, as Will helps you into the tall seat with a friendly chuckle.

When you’re all bundled inside, Frankie pulls out of the driveway, his mother watching with folded arms and a smile from the window. He turns out onto the street and you glance into the rearview, concerned. The Millers have to be chilled to the bone.

“They’re fine, cariño,” Frankie says, his grin infectious. “We’re not going far.”

He’s true to his word. He follows a lonely dirt road for a couple of miles. This far into the country, you’ve no idea where he’s headed but delight and excitement roll for dominance in your belly. You can’t keep the smile from your face.

In just a few minutes, you catch the wink of stars overhead. It seems like the threat of snow has passed, but that’s all right; the lonely road has a frosty covering already.

Frankie pulls the truck into yet another road, this one bumpier and gnarlier than the last, the forest beginning to surround you in earnest. You hear Benny jolt and laugh in the back as a car passes you at a snail’s pace. You think you see a child’s hands waving, and the boys all shout and wave too and you can’t keep from giggling.

The truck pulls into a clearing where something bright flickers between trees. You see a familiar shape throw a log into a circle of flames, and sparks erupt, bright and warm.

“Oh my gosh,” you say, climbing down from the truck, grinning. “What is this?”

“Welcome to the first annual Christmas eve shindig, sweetheart,” Benny calls, leaping over the side of the bed and throwing an arm around your shoulders. 

“Just a bonfire, nothing big,” Will says, handing you a thermos, “But Frankie made you this, too.”

You unscrew the lid curiously and a warm waft of dark chocolate hits your nostrils. You sigh. “Cocoa. You thought of everything.” You take a sip and sigh, the warmth of the fire, the chocolate, and the fierce and bright love in your chest making you glow with warmth. “Almost everything,” you add with a grin. With the boys around you you’re suddenly aware of how tall they all are, bulky in their winter gear. “Just needs a shot of-”

“Whatcha want, baby?” Frankie says, and with an identical movement the four men pull out silver flasks from their coat pockets. “Rum?”

“Peppermint vodka?” Will offers.

“Whiskey,” Benny grunts, taking a sip from his.

“Don’t-” Frankie interrupts before Santi can open his mouth, “Drink whatever that bastard offers you. I think he made it in his bathtub.”

“It’ll knock you on your ass faster than even I could,” Benny chuckles.

“So that’s how you’re all keeping warm.” You opt for the rum.

“Navy rum,” Frankie says, tipping you a generous share into your thermos. 

“Only thing those fuckers are good for.” A burst of laughter and razzing, and then Benny’s pulling you closer to the fire and the boys are talking and laughing, throwing logs on the fire now and then, and Frankie sits down beside you and pressing cold lips to your temple and asking in a low voice,

“This is a little better than festive hell at your parents’, huh?”

You look into his face, his cap low over his head, his arm heavy and secure around your waist.

“Better? This is perfect, Francisco. This is… the family I wish I had.”

“You do have it,” Santi says quietly, nudging your shoulder with his. It’s not like you’d been trying to hide your conversation. You’re all huddled close around the bright fire to keep warm. “We were family before Frankie found you and now you’re part of it, too, hermosa.”

“Thank you,” you tell them all, swallowing hard. “Delta Christmas!” you yell before the boys can see you crying, lifting your thermos.

“Delta Christmas!” they shout, flasks in the air.

After an hour, you’re all chilled and the fire’s dying down, and Santi’s loading Benny and Will (and the stuffed reindeer) into his car to drive them home. You hug them all tightly, already feeling that this is a tradition you could happily repeat year over year. No gifts were exchanged, no expectations; just a fun time with the people you loved best.

You’re barely inside before he’s on you, huge and warm, broad shoulders and lean thighs pressing you against the door before you can draw your first breath of warm air. The door closes with a jingle and a bang, the wreath you’d placed there summarily squelched.

Frankie hums against your mouth. “You’re so cold.” You chuck your mittens off and slide your hands into his back pockets.

He reaches back, curls a hand around your wrist. “Did you do what I asked?”

You only hum, your heart thudding louder between your ribs, the full color of you returning in the wash of his smell, the hardness you can feel pressed against your belly. 

Of course you did what he asked. You’ve been nursing a deep ache meant for him to soothe all day, and now that he’s here, now that he’s got you pressed up against the door like he means to fuck you through it – Jesus – you’re well on the way to catching as alight as the Delta bonfire.

“Maybe you should check,” you breathe through a laugh, as he tosses your hat from your head and immediately begins peeling you from your winter layers: coat, cardigan, thermal shirt.

By the time he makes it to your bra he’s lost patience.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters, and bends to lift you by the seat of your jeans, finally bringing you together where you’re meant to be, grinding his hips against your soft core.

Your moans meet in the middle, his teeth nipping at your lip, your fingers plunging into his curls, his taking full handfuls of your ass.

“I need to take you upstairs,” he groans. “Mierda, you’re gonna freeze against the fuckin’ door, but you feel so good, baby.”

“Need you,” you rasp, trying to communicate the burning inside you, the way your clit is pulsing. “Need you inside me, please.” An idea occurs to you and you roll with it, taking his earlobe in your teeth for a gentle bite before whispering, “Let me show you how warm you make me.”

Frankie lets out a growl that’s almost a whine. “Fuck. Fuuuuck, baby.” He sets you down with a swat to the ass and takes your hand, almost yanking you from your boots as he marches you upstairs, back to the dim bedroom that smells like the safe, scratching underside of his throat.

“Get naked for me,” he orders, and with a swipe of his arms over his head he’s stripping himself down and pressing his mouth to yours, crowding you into the bed so insistently that it’s all you can do to shove the denim from your legs, your panties sticky and wet where you’re leaking for him.

His fingers grip your hip and before you’re quite prepared for it he flips you over, the easy strength sending a hot zap to your core, arching your spine and lifting your hips, presenting yourself for him.

With a low groan rumbling deep from his chest you can’t see him, can only feel the reverent press of his thumbs over your cheeks, spreading your glistening folds for him, parting your lips to the cool air.

You whine, wriggling slightly as he only stares at you, transfixed, and when the warm velvet softness of his cock brushes your thigh you whine again, “Frankie.”

“I know, bebita,” he murmurs. “So pretty for me.” He glides a finger through your folds experimentally before sinking it inside you, his lids heavy and gaze dark as you grind on it, seeking relief. “There you go. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“No,” you pant, “More.”

“My good girl wants more? Okay, baby. I’ll give you more.” His fingers leave you and you hear the plush suck of his lips as he draws your taste into his mouth, savoring it, his other hand at the soft crease of your hip, drawing you close, tapping the head of his cock against your clit, then up, soft brushstrokes against the place he intends to breach, to own, before finally tilting his hips forward, slowly, slowly pressing just the tip of himself inside.

He pauses there and you mewl, fingernails clawing at the duvet, unable to sink your hips back into him like you want. You can feel his thick, hot head stretching you, the pulse of his heart throbbing at your entrance. Your cunt flutters and you both groan, it’s not enough.

“Love it when she squeezes me,” he breathes, and shoves home, the stretch of him sudden and beautiful, the coarse hairs at his base grinding against your ass and his tip nudging your back wall just so-

You come in record time, clenching around him. It’s the first of several. Maybe three, maybe four, your brain turned to static around the time he tipped you onto your side, lifting your leg to sprawl over his shoulder, fucking into you like he would break you in two.

You love the feeling of Frankie inside you when he comes, the crease in his brow, the groaned gasps, the pulsing of his cock deep in your cunt.

You shiver in his arms as he glides down, covering you, warm and drowsy.

“Thank you for my gift, baby,” you whisper.

He chuckles into your hair, nuzzles your cheek with his nose.

“That’s not your gift. I got you an espresso machine so I can make you those fuckin' expensive lattes you like at home.”

“Frankie.”

“Merry Christmas, baby.” 

It hits you again.

Frankie loves you. Frankie wants to take care of you. Partners take care of each other. Real families do, too. Before you can open your mouth to thank him again, he kisses you, murmurs:

“You’re the gift, querida.”

You smile through your tears and kiss him under the glow of the millions of shining stars outside, the chill in your cheeks nothing against the warmth in your heart. You can face tomorrow. You can face anything.

[jules-onpaper]

Western Skies: Ch 1

Summary: It's 1889, America. You go West with a reluctant heart and your expectations are dashed against the riverbank. The faceless one who pulls you free makes an impossible offer.

Warnings: Please read responsibly. Brief suicidal ideations. Implicit domestic violence. Near-drowning. Grief.

Notes: It's here! Enjoy.

Blue. Deep. Endless.

Bubbles like glistening stars. You stare around you at the stillness for several moments before ever realizing your danger. It seems natural that you would continue your trajectory into the inky darkness.

You sink for what might be the rest of your life.

Wet.

Everything hurts.

Wet.

You watch the rivulets of water spill from the ends of your loose hair onto the mud with numb lips and stinging eyes. You watch the droplets build in peaks and spatters into the soft earth as your frame shakes, as you cough and spit and your belly heaves in fiery retches.

The river water tastes like ash, built up and clogged in your throat, scraping your nostrils and making the tears in your eyes burn hot and fast.

Leo is gone.

Leo would have surfaced by now if he was going to.

Leo is still out there. How are you supposed to reach him?

Help, you try, your throat rough. All that comes out is another racking dry heave, nothing left in you to give.

The river races on, too wide and too fast for you to swim. Its low hum is all you can hear. You will hear it every night in your mind for months to come.

You should have told him not to. You shouldn’t have held your tongue.

The back of your neck burns in the heat. The collar of your dress might even be dry. Somehow the thought of this – that your dress has begun to dry while Leo is submerged under the cruel water – breaks the well inside of you and you begin to sob.

You can’t even see the wreck of your wagon anymore. It was washed away clean, just as though you and your husband of a sparse three months and every last thing you could call yours had never been at all, as though the Maker had set you down drenched and alone in the middle of this forsaken prairie with mud in your hair and caking into your skin.

The sobs turn to a keen that you don’t even recognize as coming from your own body. It rips from your chest, an unfair screech against the world.

The wind flutters by, passive to your protest.

You retch into the dirt again and then weakness overcomes you. You lie down in the mud, cold and soft, and hope that you won’t open your eyes again.

You’re not sure how long you lie there (seconds?) before you feel it. Your cheek has barely touched the earth it seems, when rough hands turn you to face the blisteringly bright sky. 

Your chest heaves. No. No. You want to die. You want to sink into this earth and have everything be as it should be. 

This should be your grave.

The world’s axis turns and the sun rubs your skin raw.

For a long time, you only feel the beat of the sunrays and the curious whisper of the wind. Then:

Someone is speaking to you.

Words are muffled, and you realize you haven’t heard much in the last few minutes. Minutes? Could it really be only that? Not weeks?

“Get up, c’mon now. Are you all right?”

You’re hauled upward into a sitting position, and automatically your body spits out more water you thought you’d seen the last of.

Would Leo have made it to the other bank? 

“Mmmf,” you manage through your raw throat, pointing at the rushing current, the rapids spilling white over rocks just downstream. You’ve grasped at last that the someone here making you face the damnable sun and breathe again could do something, do anything–

A soft exhale of breath, and then a pair of tall dark boots enters your field of vision, and the man in them lowers slowly to peer at you, face to face.

There is no face.

It is shrouded in a broad brimmed hat and a dingy kerchief the color of scraped-clean earth drawn over his nose. All you can see are the eyes. Dark. Watchful. Wary, even. Careful. There is no shine to them, shrouded as they are. They almost aren’t human at all.

“Your man in that wagon?” he asks, his voice a low baritone, jerking his head at the river.

You nod dumbly. You think you almost hear the expanding of his broad chest as his head hangs low for a moment, his gaze falling to the earth.

When they return to you, however, they’re steely. “He’s dead. Wagon’s busted up too. You’d best come along with me, ma’am.”

“Leo,” you croak the syllables with shape this time, shaking your head, your tears welling hot and painful in your eyes. The low roar of the river washes your words away.

“C’mon,” he says. “Can you walk?”

Seeing that you can barely blink at him in your muddy daze, you feel an arm plunged under your knees and around your sopping skirts. He lifts you with a low grunt of effort and you protest weakly, pushing fumbling fingers into his rough waistcoat as he carries you away from the riverbank.

He doesn’t seem to be listening. His chest may as well be a brick wall.

Leo is out there somewhere, you know, and the idea of him seeing you like this makes you squirm, fight weakly but with more shame this time. The rawness of your throat won’t let you speak any more but the hot rush of tears that run down your cheeks and neck are ones of bone-deep, earth-shattering submission. 

A vision of a floating whiteness in the bobbing current of the river overtakes you and you shudder in the arms of your would-be savior.

“Put – down–” you rasp, scratching harder but still weakly against his shirt. His arms are hard, like iron. Like he isn’t human at all, but hard and resolute and somehow as unliving as the tempestuous river.

He doesn’t answer you. His strides are long and purposeful, the deep cerulean of the sky painful in your eyes and further obstructing any closer view you might get of his face. You only glimpse a gray sliver in his beard that the bandana doesn’t obscure.

“At once,” you insist, though your limbs are so far from you you’re not sure you could compel them to stand upright if he did release you.

With a matter of fact heave, as though you’re a bale of hay, he adjusts you in his arms and then you’re being lifted. Your body takes over the rest, swinging your legs in the correct position.

Somehow, you’re not really sure, you settle into the saddle, the broad expanse of the man behind you warm and close at your back. His right hand settles around your waist, cupping the small of your waist with a broad thumb.

You tense at the sensation and shake your head in mute protest, but all he does is place your trembling hands on the saddlehorn and give a hurried click to the horse, a gray dappled beast wide between your legs. He’s placed you on the horse like a man. Your thighs shudder as movement spurs you onward, away from the river and your fate at the bottom of it, but you know it’s no use. What are you going to do, fall off into the dust for the sake of propriety?

And who cares who sees you out here, anyway.

The river hadn’t taken you. It made no difference if this lone rider did.

The scenes of the last months of your life flash behind your screwed shut eyelids.

Leo. A little older, not very wise but so earnest, with beseeching eyes and a bewildered smile when you just chanced to love him. Your mother telling you he would make a good match, you were too old to receive many more offers anyway. Your sister, babe in arms and another on the way, smiling with joy when you showed her your quaint gold ring. He had woven you promises of a rich, happy life in the West. He told you stories of the great house he would build you, of the life you would have together. You had frolicked together like children over the ideas of corn, wheat, pigs, sheep. 

You had never been quite as swept up as he, but still you planned, you tracked his fingers over the maps, ignorant of the trails. You bit your tongue over his spending, admiring his full beard and the way his blue eyes sparkled with hope. You sewed the quilts that would keep the two of you warm, not knowing about the prairie’s blazing dry heat. You bore it all; you had after all accepted his wagon and canvas as your bride-house.

The many frigid nights in the wagon. The wooden clack of hardtack. The endless burning of coffee over the camp stove, your hot, blushing face presenting it as the best you could do. The one time he had traded sugar for whiskey from a passing wagon train and pushed you rough and ugly into the dirt when you protested in front of the other man that he had had enough. The way he had cried and begged your forgiveness the next morning. You had bruises. The way you had held this fact tight over him like a firm rein the rest of the way into the West. The way he turned both sour and cruel when he hadn’t enough to eat.

You’d both turned thin and bitter in the months on the trail. He hadn’t planned it very well. You should have left in May, everyone said so, and in the final blush of June your wedding bells rang and the yoke was falling over the oxen.

And now he had taken a river crossing too confidently and he was gone.

One more terrible thought, unbidden. When was the last time you had had your bleeding?

You sit bolt upright, the black of the river leaking from your mind’s eye. The ticking in the mattress is coming undone. You can feel pricks of straw in your hair, leaving marks over your skin.

You’re in a bed. Not a very nice one, but a bed, which to you after weeks in the wagon is luxury itself. You’re in a nightdress. Not yours. Your skin crawls, disturbed by this.

Sounds of snuffling at the door of the modest bedroom you’ve been placed in. A thin, reedy voice. 

“Hey! You awake in there?”

“Yes,” you respond, and the voice, a woman’s, says “Well, I done dried your clothes on the line. Get dressed and join me out here, won’t cha.”

It is not a question.

You look to your left, and sure enough, your dress is there, rumpled, but dry. You make some effort to put yourself together, but there’s little use. You have no hair pins left. No ribbon. The wash basin is empty. You can still taste the mud in your mouth.

“‘Bout time,” says the voice when you creak open the door, and then several snuffling noses scurry under your skirts.

“Hey! Get away from her,” the woman growls, shooing away the dogs. A tiny woman with tight curls squeezes herself between your body and the several nuzzling animals with bright eyes, and with a single stern git! the creatures scurry away, lying down obediently by the large hearth.

The woman turns to you, and removes a corncob pipe from her mouth, looking you up and down. She looks to be in her fifties, but the lines in her face do nothing to dampen the spirit in her slack mouth, button nose, and bright brown eyes.

“Y’don’t look well,” she declares. “Sickly, are ya? Worse for ya out here if ya are.”

You blink. “I – I guess so.”

The woman shrugs. “Well, you have had a time, I suppose. And how are ya?”

You swallow and look at the floor. “I’m fine.”

“Reckon ya are,” the woman says. “I’m Peli.”

You give her your name. Your tongue stumbles over your surname. Leo’s.

Peli has the grace not to notice. She jerks her head towards a rickety table behind her, and bids you sit down, are ya hungry? Without waiting for an answer, she strides with sure steps towards a range and begins to scrape at something that smells good. Bacon. Bread.

The cabin only has two rooms. Bright sunlight filters through two windows, and the simple furniture is laden with bright, clean cloths and a doily or two. An array of curious, glittering objects litter every surface.

Your stomach grinds as the bacon fat sizzles loudly in the pan on the stove. You’re not sure how much mud you’ve eaten, but obviously your hunger is craving something more substantial.

Slowly, you do as she bids and sit down on one of the two chairs. It’s sturdy enough, but rough-hewn. Strange, you think, gazing unblinkingly at the table before you. Did she make this herself? Seems impossible, but how are you to know? 

“Where-?” you begin.

“You’re in town,” Peli declares without turning around, now adding a coffee pot to the burner and whisking another log into the fire with efficient, practiced movements. Your shoulders relax just at the thought of a hot cup of something. Something akin to the life you seem to have lost inside of you. “Mos Eisley. Heard of it?”

“No.”

“Not many have,” she says comfortably, placing a plate of biscuits on the table and a dish of butter. “No need to stand on ceremony,” she says sternly, when you don’t move. “With your bein’ half drowned and dead lookin’, I can’t have you dyin’ on my watch. Eat. Coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

“Manners, at least,” she says approvingly, and sets a tin mug before you, which you sip gratefully. It’s a sight better than the coffee you’d burnt on the wagon trail. You sigh and take a larger sip, wince. It burns your throat, but you don’t care.

“Cream?”

Wordlessly and with a grateful look, you drop a tiny spindle into the cup and feel absolutely spoiled. After a few bites of tender, buttery biscuit and swallows of coffee, you find it in yourself to ask,

“You have a cow?”

Peli snorts derisively, but her expression isn’t unkind. She slides another plate towards you, this one filled with pickles, and nods at you to keep eating, which you’re only too happy to do. “Not likely. Where the heck would I keep it? Naw, I buy my butter and cream from them folks down the street. They trade me in parts.”

Your gaze falls to the other side of the rough table, where several metal components lay in neat wooden boxes.

“Can fix most anything that’s got metal in it,” she informs you, with pardonable pride. “Out here it’s guns, mostly, but I like to work on wagons and carriages in my spare time.”

“Your… husband taught you?” you ask, and immediately wince when her bright eyes flicker with something hot.

“Ain’t never been married,” she says defiantly, “I taught myself damn near everything I know. Don’t care for people much. Got my parts and the dogs.”

“I’m sorry,” you say quickly, but she waves you away with a careless hand, tipping bacon and eggs still sputtering onto your plate before serving herself.

“Lots of folks think that way,” she says, flat. “That a woman can’t nor should do anything. My daddy always said that was hogwash. Everything I didn’t teach myself, he told me. But enough about Peli Motto.” She sits down, shooing a dog away with something like a growl, though the animal’s bright and excited tail shows that it can expect a treat later. Indeed, Peli begins by breaking her biscuit into quarters and setting one of them aside. She asks, without looking up,

“So what’s your story, girl? Best ‘fess up, unless you’d rather me get that preacher that’s come by these parts. He’ll be gone day after tomorrow, though. He ain’t here to stay. Not enough folks for his collection tin.” She snorts with derision.

You don’t even know where to grasp at a beginning, so you try one of the many questions bubbling on your lips. “I… who brought me here? I just… I remember waking after he pulled me from the river. But I don’t remember much else.”

Peli smears some sort of preserves on her biscuit and takes a large bite before answering. “That fellow the Mandalorian brought you to me. Knows ain’t nobody else would take a bundle from him, and I guess he oughta know not many folks’d dare to ask me such a favor, but he and I get on well enough.”

“Mandalorian?”

Peli flicks a bit of biscuit off the table and the dogs go nuts for it, snuffling and licking at the buttery crumbs.. “Yep. Didn’t say much when he unloaded ya. Just asked me to fix you up. Nothin’ ‘bout who ya are or how you came to be lookin’ like a little drowned cat.”

You look down at your plate. You don’t know why it should smart, the fact that he had dropped you off like you were of no consequence to him. Hadn’t he wanted to know you were all right? You push this aside and wrap your hands around the warmth of your coffee mug.

“My…” Your throat threatens to swell. “We came by wagon. Missed the last train out of Chicago, so…” You swallow down the last of your coffee, only for Peli to fill it at once.

“Struck out on your own, huh?” she asks. “Damned silly, but plenty of folks have done it and been fine. Where’d ya go wrong?”

“River crossing,” you say through stiff lips. Your eyes are hot. “My… husband thought he could ford it fine. Said not to worry. I thought I’d best not tell him otherwise.” You lick your lips, then search Peli’s face for something you don’t want to name. Reassurance. There’s only open curiosity. “I… we’d argued. Yesterday morning, I guess. Funny how it was only yesterday.”

She only looks at you, solemn.

“No sign of him?”

A teardrop splashes onto the sturdy table. “No. Everything was… was like it had never been there. All but me.”

A deep, heavy sigh. Peli stands, and you wince, instantly afraid you’d offended her with your crying. You try to sniff quietly, dab away the wetness with your sleeve. You had no handkerchief.

You had nothing.

But all she does is fill your plate again, this time with a slice of pie so wide you stare at it in confusion, until she pours a helping of cream over it and then sets the entire jug next to your cup.

“I’m right sorry, girl,” she says, and goes silent for several long minutes over her plate.

The pie oozes cherry juice, a sticky burgundy on the tin plate. When you place a bite into your mouth, the intensity of the sweet-tartness is so great that you screw shut your eyes in almost-pain, your mouth flooding with spit, with a well of sugary pleasure that brings an ache to your jaw. You have to swallow hard to get it down. When your eyes run over, you just keep chewing and chewing and chewing until you gulp, and then you pick up your fork and do it again. And again. 

Neither you nor Peli says a thing until the plates are clean. 

In fact, you’re mechanically rubbing the dishes dry as Peli scrubs them when she asks, pulling you from thoughts of the water, the stranger, the horse, the river – 

“Got a plan?” 

Your stomach of bacon and biscuits curdles. “No.”

“‘Fraid you can’t stay here,” she says simply, but firmly. “Ain’t room for but one and that’s me. Guess you dunno what you’ll do.”

“No,” you agree, matching her calm tone, feeling stupid for your one word answers, your helplessness. Then the cast iron skillet you’re drying begins to tremble.

“Now,” she warns sternly. “Ain’t gonna throw you to the coyotes, girl. Just sayin’ you can’t set up here long. Ain’t got any family near?”

You shake your head.

She sighs. “Bet that man of yours was gonna set up a homestead on that government-free land, huh?”

He was. He was lit from within with fervor for that promised free bid of land. Your mind wanders again, drawn to thoughts of the dozens of conversations you’d had with Leo, planning every detail of your fine house, down to the mantelpiece. The kitchen drawers. The lace curtains. And then Peli says something that shakes you deep to your core.

“Too bad Mos Eisley ain’t big enough for a brothel. You could try Mos Espa, the town over.”

“What?” you sputter. “How –” your chest swells with something new, something ugly and hot. “I would never–”

“Hold it, missy,” Peli says, eyeing you with a steely glare, “Put down your airs and pick up what sense ya got left. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with what them ladies do. They look after themselves and lots of other folks, too. Most of ‘em got even less than you have. And you ain’t got much.”

You’re clammy with rage, seething, hot and embarrassed and close to tears again. “Got? What have I-?”

You’re stopped cold by a knock at the door. Peli shoots you a sarcastic look and jerks her head. “Go on. Open it, Miss High and Mighty.”

You purse your lips tightly and do as she says.

Sunlight sweeps across the paw-scratched floor and into your eyes, but you don’t need to blink to know – it’s him. Who else could block out the sun with such wide shoulders and cover his face as though anyone on the street outside – dirt, gently bustling, lined with storefront houses just like Peli’s – were out to get him.

It’s your stony savior.

“There ya are,” Peli calls, loud and acerbic, her arms crossed tight over her sand colored print dress.  “Nice parcel of goods you’ve left me with, Mando!”

“Can I speak to you?” he asks. His voice is as low and quiet as you remember, muffled slightly by his mask. “Privately?”

“I hardly think that’s appropri-” you begin, still riding the coattails of your anger, when Peli snipes,

“Take her out to the orchard!”

The man – Mando? What kind of a name was that? – nods over your shoulder, and without looking at you turns and strides away. Huffing, you’re left with no choice but to follow.

It’s bright outside, hot. The burn of August that seeps into everything. Your dress is dry, but for a moment you imagine you feel a damp spot, over the dip in your spine, and it makes you shudder.

Mando leads you around the side of the clapboard little house and up a small hill, never once looking back to see if you’re following. You are, haphazardly. The water might have done something to your shoes.

“This’ll do,” he says, when you both reach the top of the hill. 

The apple trees here are stout, hardy-looking, as though battered regularly by hard winters and harsh winds. You suppose they are, but their fruit is coming in nicely, weighing heavy and full on the boughs.

“You aren’t hurt?”

You look to him. His gaze is fixed on you. On your face. You swallow the bile in your throat that rises when you remember the state he found you in. 

You hope he didn’t hear you screaming.

You hope, suddenly, he’ll be assured that you’re all right and you never have to see him again. You can bury this death inside you. 

“Fine,” you say coldly.

If he’s surprised at your tone, he doesn’t show it. In fact, it’s like he ignores your response completely, his eyes making a careful circuit over you. Your stained dress. Warped shoes. Your collar bones. Your ire.

“Thank you,” you say, before your teeth can draw blood on the words. “For saving my life.”

He ignores this too. Suddenly, he’s the one that won’t look at you. Instead, he says,

“Figure Peli’s told you to clear out already.”

You bite your tongue. “Yes. Or she will, if she hasn’t already.”

“She’s a good one. Sharp tongue.”

“Imagine,” you respond, so icily that this time, his eyebrow quirks.

“She offend you or somethin’?”

“I don’t like,” you say, “People with expectations of me.”

His eyes flick over you briefly. “I understand.”

And, the thing is, he looks as though he does.

“I have a proposition,” he says suddenly, halfway through a beat, as though if he doesn’t say it, it’ll never come out. “I guess you don’t have folks here?”

You shake your head. “No. They’re back in Chicago. I’ll… get money for a train, somehow.”

His forehead furrows. “That isn’t going to work.”

Heat flares up in your chest again. “Excuse me? I’ll beg, I’ll borrow – I’ll do what I need to, thank you very much, not that it’s your business.”

“No, it’s –” he sighs. “There are no trains that come through here until April. Not for a hundred miles.”

The bottom falls out of your stomach, but the kindling that carried you up this hill isn’t dead yet. “I’ll work through the winter.”

“Where? Got any skills?”

“I sew.”

“So does every woman.”

“I can…” You’re grappling with thin air. “I can teach.”

His gloved hands sit loose on his hips. “Yeah? Got a certificate?”

You blink hard. “No. And what in Maker’s name is it to you?”

He stares for a long few seconds. You wonder if, behind the kerchief, he might have swallowed. His voice is lower, softer when he speaks.

“I’m asking, because… I have a proposition.”

“So you’ve said, but I don’t seem to be any closer to learning what it is,” you snap.

The man’s eyes glint silently, and the mere gaze is enough to chill your heart all at once, make its next few thuds sluggish, fearful.

“I –” you swallow. “I’m sorry. What is it?”

He takes a breath. Takes another. “I’ve got a boy. He needs looking after. I can’t take him on the trail any more. I’ve got a piece of land. A – house. So I’m thinking… We’ll marry. While the preacher’s in town. You can look after the boy, keep him well and fed while I’m gone.”

You feel a wave of dizziness overtake you, a slight buzzing in your ears. 

“I–” you fumble. “I-”

“And in spring,” he continues, his right hand flexing nervously by his side. “I’ll buy your train ticket home.”

“I… no,” you say at once, voice trembling. You’re afraid. You don’t want to be alone with this man any more. “No.”

“Just listen,” he says more quietly still. “This is the best way I can see to-”

“You’re asking a woman you just pulled out of a river yesterday to marry you?” Your screech tails off in a bitter laugh. “I am – you are –”

“Now, just-”

“I can’t believe-”

“You got any better options?” he asks, flatly, almost cruel. You gulp, more tears leaking down your cheeks.

You haven’t. Not if you don’t want to be out on the street, or pin up your pride and go to the brothel, as Peli suggested.

“I–” you protest weakly. “I haven’t even seen your face.”

He pauses. Stills.

Your breathing continues, ragged in your chest.

Slowly, as though in a trance, his left hand removes his right glove. It’s a warm, male, human hand. Large. Calloused. Scarred in places. It rises slowly, and without fanfare, tugs down the handkerchief covering his face.