#the strange planet show was sweet and peaceful to watch

[babykittenteach]

2023 in review! I made an effort to try more things and it worked mostly (at least for TV and movies). New things, new-to-me things, and new installments of old things all had characters to love even if I didn't necessarily feel fannish about them, and I'm hoping 2024 does, too.

[tinydefector]

MTMTE headcanons

Some of the headcanons I have for when I write stuff for the characters. So enjoy the silly little things I think about while writing these guys

Warnings: some have nsfw content in them

Words count: 3K

The Scientist 

- Perceptor and Brainstorm regularly have intense debates over various sci-fi shows and movies while working. 

- Rewind is secretly a formidable DJ and often Swerve has him doing music playlist for the bar. 

- Brainstorm insists on demonstrating his latest inventions at weekly crew meetings. Most of his devices are useless or end up causing minor disasters, to the annoyance of Ultra Magnus, it has resulted in multiple new rules being made . 

- Rewind is making a documentary about life on the Lost Light. Nobody realised until he released the "behind the scenes" cut that has Magnus and Megatron both drivking energon, “I hate this crew so much” Magnus huffs, “would you rather starscream?”.

- Rewind has amassed a huge secret stash of rare historical films, songs, and books that he pirates from other planets if its stuff he himself hasn't recorded. He'll only share them if you trade rare datafiles with him. 

- Brainstorm's experiments have caused more than one shipwide malfunction or strange phenomenon. Which resulted in having to contain the humans on board after realising it affected their skin in a way that the scent made The bots extremely horny. 

Cyclonus and Tailgate 

- Cyclonus is generally stoic but has a secret sweet tooth. He can often be found sneaking snacks when he thinks no one is looking. 

- Cyclonus has accumulated a giant collection of tiny earth souvenirs for tailgate but will never admit where they come from. 

- Cyclonus indulges Tailgate's interests just to spend time with him, 

-Cyclonus has taken to meditating in the engine room with drift to get away from the daily chaos. UnfortunatelyWhirl joins them every time to "help him find his inner peace" which mostly involves strange noises and objects flying by.

-Tailgate has become convinced the Lost Light is haunted after a prank goes wrong. Now he drags Cyclonus along on nightly "ghost hunts" which mostly consist of jumping at shadows. 

- Tailgate gets very excited about trying new types of energon goodies and treats he finds on other planets. Cyclonus has to gently remind him to pace himself so he doesn't get a tank ache. 

- Thanks to his small size, Tailgate can easily squeeze into small spaces to repair things or retrieve lost items. Unfortunately he sometimes gets stuck and needs help wiggling back out which has led to some rather spicy times for himself and Cyclonus. Occasionally Whirl. 

- Tailgate is an awful shot with firearms but tries to practise constantly. The other bots have to avoid being in the line of fire during his "target practice sessions."

- Tailgate tries so hard to act tough that he sometimes comes across more adorable than intimidating. The other bots try not to laugh...most of the time.

- Tailgate has become obsessed with human paranormal investigation shows. He tries to convince everyone to do a seance in the lower cargo decks and engine room, he forgot the sparkeater was down there. 

- Tailgate loves watching old earth movies with the human crew. Rewind is always happy to supply new films from his extensive archives or record them from the humans Movie, Usb and harddrive stashes. 

Ratchet & Drift

-Drift and Ratchet have started a betting pool on how long it will take for Rodimus and Magnus to get in a screaming match this time. Ratchet always wins, Drift enjoys it. 

-Drift is somehow the richest bot on the Lost Light from his days as Deadlock, he doesn't use his shanix on himself and only spends it on people he cares for. 

- Drift meditates regularly and has tried to introduce the crew to Earth wellness practices like yoga, much to their bafflement. He enjoys practising with the human members of the ship.

- Drift meditates for hours in the cargo bay and tries to spread his philosophy of peace. It doesn't always work on this crew of hassling madmen but he does try.

- Drift meditates frequently to find his inner calm. It's one of the only things that allows him to tolerate Rodimus' antics for so long without having a breakdown over the speedster endangering himself.

-asides from Rung *cough Primus cough* Drift is one the oldest member of the crew who wasn't statused, but no one can tell due to how well he looks after himself now, but Ratchet knows how bad he used to look. 

- Ratchet has a comm channel blocked nearly every night to "discuss medical matters” it's his line to bitch talk with Rung. 

- Ratchet has a secret ship called the "USS Nail-Him-To-The-Berth", which is a small shuttle solely used to stealthily transport Drift to remote planets for romantic getaways. Drift jokingly added captain's stripes to his arms without telling him, drift was in fact the one who brought him said ship as a job gift.

- Ratchet having a secret collection of badly written medical holodramas he'll never admit to enjoying. Claims it's just for "research." But many nights you can find him, Drift and Rodimus curled up together watching them.

 

- Ratchet grumbles about why he signed up to be a doctor for a ship full of unruly idiots but deep down he cares about them all. Even Whirl...sometimes.

- Ratchet has banned Brainstorm from the medical bay after one too many experiment explosions. Now he has to do checkups in the hallway.

Megaton 

- Whenever he's frustrated, Megatron mutters to himself in ancient Cybetronian. Unfortunately, a lot of the curses and insults have been lost to time so they just sound silly now to some of the younger bots, it nearly makes Rung freeze up hearing the old text.

-Megatron has stowed away in one of the escape pods when things get too much. He leaves a note saying he needed a break, and he tries to make himself as small as he can inside the pod. 

- Megatron has started joining Swerve at the bar after shift and they've developed a genuine friendship, though Megatron still pretends he finds Swerve annoying. 

- Megatron has developed a secret hobby of arranging tiny furniture and scenes inside empty energon cubes. He claims it helps him relax. Eventually some of the humans ask him to help with arranging their own furniture 

- Megatron has a secret hobby where he writes romance novels under a pen name. He's actually quite the romantic,  quite a few bots have read his work but he rather keep it under a pen name these days after the works he used to publish. 

- Megatron has taken to leaving sticky notes reminding Rodimus of the task he has to do. It doesn't always work but it has gotten Rodimus to remember a few things. 

- Megatron writes "broadly, deeply philosophical" in his captain's log, then spends an hour ranting about the merits of proper temporal coordinates and in the end both he and Ultra Magnus tend to both have rants over how bad Rodimus’ spelling is. 

-megatron always gets roped into babysitting whatever wild creatures Whirl and Rodimus find/rescue that week. On many occasions the humans have been left in his care against his pleads. 

- Megatron has started a small garden on one of the observation decks and finds the meticulous care of plants to be a calming hobby, it had become the food score for many of the humans on board and they are rather grateful to him for the hobby. 

- During movie nights, Megatron always ends up with either (Rodimus or insert) falling asleep on his lap. 

Skids

- Skids is clueless about his own strength and accidentally breaks things all the time like datapads or fuel cubes. He apologises profusely each time.

- skids gets way too invested in holodramas and movies, and yells at characters' bad decisions. The others gently tease him for it.

- skids tried exotic new fuel mixes in the hab suite's energon dispenser that usually end up glitching it. Swerve has to come and fix it. 

- His favourite Earth movie is The Fast and the Furious because he loves seeing high-speed races, but he can never remember the characters' names. 

- He once tried to make cybertronian energon goodies for humans and ended up nearly giving one of them food poisoning, Ratchet had to inform him humans can't consume energon.

- Skids volunteers to test out new gadgets from Brainstorm but often ends up as an unwilling test subject when things go wrong. He's developed a strange immunity to most sedatives at this point.

 

- Skids loves catching up on gossip and can always be counted on to have the latest gossip. He just may not always get all the details right…

Ultra Magnus/ Minimus Ambus 

- Magnus takes Rodimus' jokes and antics way too seriously and has trouble understanding sarcasm or joking around sometimes.

- He has an extensive collection of data pads cataloguing Cybertronian laws and regulations. He reads them for fun in his spare time. 

- Magnus gets distracted while trying to scold Rodimus because he's also trying to find the words to express how disappointed he is. 

- Whenever the Lost Light encounters something unknown, Magnus volunteers to write the official first contact report in excruciating detail, complete with footnotes and bibliography, most times he also needs the input from others to help with making decent impressions. 

- Despite his stern demeanour, Magnus has been known to crack a dad joke or two when he thinks no one is listening, it starts happening more often when Megatron and he are working together. 

- In a desperate attempt to loosen up, Magnus once joined Tailgate and Cyclonus for a night of drinking. He got absolutely overcharged and started doing karaoke. It is now part of Rewind's collection of Rare footage. 

- Deep down, he's a softy for romantic holodramas. 

- Somehow Minimus Ambus accumulates a massive collection of tiny human souvenirs like shot glasses and snow globes that he treasures. He meticulously dusts each one weekly. 

- In recharging moments, Ultra Magnus mutters equations and legal codes. His docking clamp also twitches in alignment with Enforcer protocols it's another rare thing that only (Megatron/ Human insert) know about. 

- Ultra Magnus has memorised and could recite the entire Great Charter of the Functionalists as it was something he did study mainly for knowledge. 

- Ultra Magnus has hidden photos of Rodimus doing ridiculous dances and lip sync battles with humans when he thinks no one is watching Proud Dad™️. 

Rung

- Rungs office is soundproof but sometimes Megatron or Rodimus can still hear him having meltdowns after appointments with certain patients. 

- Rung has a very rare high grade collection, some of the cubes are older than bots on the ship. 

- Old war stories give Rung flashbacks, and most times he has to walk away so he doesn't try and correct people on events he was present for. 

- Deep down Rung is a bit of a gearhead and loves helping Brainstorm in the lab, but don't tell anyone - it's his little secret joy.

-To help decompress after long therapy sessions, Rung knits tiny sweaters for all the human's onboard the Lost Light. Even made oen for Miminus, as other botss find out they start asking for small requested pieces from him. 

- The other bots have a gambling pool going on about how long it will take Rung to get fed up with Rodimus' antics and throw something at him. So far no one has won. 

- Rung had an impossible time getting anyone to show up for their therapy sessions until Megatron joined, now he seems to have a Very steady flow of patients, many with Ptsd. 

- Rung has redecorated his room with alien silk cushions and incense burning meditations pods. Crew members often visit just to relax and vent about ship problems.

-Rung never truly stopped being primus. It's just after so many millions of years, he's tired and he'd rather if people could just forget. His biggest fear is that one day he might turn out just like Unicron. 

Whirl

-Whirl is always stealing Rodimus' energon drinks and mixing them with high grade. Rodimus gets plastered and wakes up in weird places without remembering how he got there. 

- Whirl loves to sneak up on Tailgate and startle him for laughs. Cyclonus threatens Whirl with dismemberment if he doesn't knock it off. 

- Whirl starts an underground gambling pool for betting on who will be the next couple to get together. Nautica and Velocity are currently the frontrunners followed closely by (insert and Bot of choice).

- He snuck into Megatron's quarters on the Lost Light and messed with all his decor, moving furniture around and putting self-portraits of himself on the walls. To this day no one knows if Megatron has noticed and why nothing was said if he had.

- Whirl hacked the shipwide intercom to play love songs on repeat for a week straight. He claimed it was for "motivational purposes" but many bots suspected he was just bored.

- No one can prove it was him, but after one of Tailgate's game nights someone released glitter bombs all over the ship that took days to fully clean up. Suspicion fell on Whirl, it was in fact Tailgate who had gotten Whirl to make it for him. 

-Whirl accidentally joining every single one of Tailgate's hobby clubs and getting waaay to into each one, to the little bot's surprise. No one knows how to tell him he's in the sewing circle by mistake. 

- Whirl hits on everything that moves, despite constant rejections. He took getting thrown in the brig by security as a good sign once. 

- Whirl talks a big game and seems chaotic, but he is actually the most mature when it comes to looking after children. When one of the humans on board had a baby he became rather protective of them and their child. It also transfers over with sparklings (if/when) they are on the ship, he and Megatron are dubbed the babysitters. 

Swerve

- Constantly redecorating the bar to try out new lighting/theme ideas. One day it's a tiki bar, next it's a speakeasy. 

- Always bugging the other bots to join in games and activities at the bar. Usually ends up being the only one participating in crafts or dance contests. 

- Clumsy and easily startled. Accidentally breaks something in the bar at least once a week through spills or failed dance moves. 

- he Makes crazy custom drinks with wild synthetic engex concoctions. Often leads to strange/funny reactions in customers. 

- Endless list of nicknames for all the other crews. Brainstorm is "Sciencebot", Rodimus is "Hotshot", etc. Loves giving codenames. 

- Secretly a shipper and enjoys gossiping about who he thinks is into who. Always trying to play matchmaker between crewmates with whirl. 

- His favourite game to play at the bar is "Who Would You Rather?" and he always chooses the wildest, most inappropriate options to get a rise out of people, he loves hassling the humans over their strange biology. 

- Swerve is secretly hoping Megatron will one day ask him to be his personal assistant. He has the whole job role planned out because Megatron would make the best security guard. Swerve's bar fights would become such a problem that Megatron would consider said roll. 

- Swerve is convinced he's going to open the best bar/restaurant in the galaxy someday. He experiments with new fuel and engex recipes in the ship's improvised kitchen to the dismay of Ultra Magnus. 

- Swerve's bar gets rowdier each week as new engex flavours are tested. Merchandise bets and wild stories are the norm. 

- Swerve refuses to let Megatron stay in his bar without paying his tab in full first. But over time he starts handing off drinks to the old war lord.

Rodimus 

- Rodimus is constantly coming up with ridiculous dares to try and get Magnus to lighten up. So far he's had one of his human companions shot whipped cream at the enforcer before they bolted". 

- Rodimus is banned from the ship's engines after the sparkeater incident, mainly for his own safety. 

- Rodimus gets distracted easily during conversations and often trails off its Megatron who's the one who realises it and gets him a large figure toy so he can keep occupied while in meetings. 

- He doodles elaborate designs for new finish styles and ship paint jobs during important briefings and lectures, much to Ultra Magnus' chagrin. Megatron tells Magnus to ignore it because it's one of the only ways Rodimus seems to take in what is being said to him. 

- His habsuite is constantly a mess of strewn tools, parts, paint and upgrades. Drift tries to tidy it and just gives up. 

- Has started using ridiculous Earth slang he doesn't fully understand like "groovy" and "far out" just to get laughs. Drives Ultra Magnus nuts, the humans find it rather amusing watching him use it in the wrong terms. 

- Secretly loves 80s hair metal music but would never admit it. But he loves listening to it in his habsuite while working on things, he loves human music alot. 

- He tries desperately to be the cool, laid back leader but is constantly stressed and awkward. Inside he's a nervous wreck, worried that no matter what he does he's living in Optimus' shadow as a prime. 

- Rodimus stays up late watching Earth romcom movies and serial melodramas to get leadership tips, but mostly just ends up confused, he loves cuddling with (insert) as they explain the plot for him to make it slightly easier for him to understand. 

- He compulsively taps his pedes when anxious and doesn't realise he's doing it. Megatron is the one who normally send him away knowing that the more tapping the less Rodimus is listening when he's in this state. 

- His favourite Earth beverage is monster energy drinks, which the humans find rather amusing. (Energy Fluid au, he takes one mouthful and nearly spits it back out. “WHY ARE YOU ALL DRINKING TRANSFLUID!?!?” it leads to a lot of discoveries with *human insert*) He hassles them a lot with the promise of their favourite drink, no this dirty pervert instead just fills cups with transfluid and tells them that he has his own secret stash of monsters. As it gets around alot more bots start to get rather interested in how the humans had a drink that was pretty much the flavour of their transfluid. 

[seriowan]

for the dancing and the dreaming (hunter x f!reader)

“Surviving is the bare minimum of what it means to live. Thanks to you, Omega knows how to survive — maybe you should show her what it means to live a little bit as well.”

summary: on the night of pabu's annual 'giving festival', omega opens herself up to new experiences while hunter's night takes an unexpected turn, leaving him with a memorable moment that might change the course of his life forever...

pairing: hunter x f!reader (nicknamed coral)

tags: spoilers for tbb s2ep13; love at first sight; meet-cute; first-meeting kiss; reader is described as wearing a yellow sundress; nothing but fluff! - brief mentions of tech/phee

word count: 5k

a/n: the second i watched episode 13 i got this idea to write hunter in a whirlwind romance with a pabu girl and three drafts later, this is the final product! i wrote it with MAJOR inspiration from tangled's 'kingdom dance' scene and that one scene from how to train your dragon, so prepare thyself!

radio: kingdom dance, alan menkin — for the dancing and the dreaming, httyd soundtrack

♡ masterlist ♡

Pabu was a true gem of nature, tucked away amid the endless oceans of its home planet.

  As the warm sun kissed the little island, turquoise waters lapped gently against the grainy shores and ancient stone ports. Vibrant green brush and trees swayed in the breeze, their fronds whispering to one another. The air was filled with the sweet fragrance of exotic flowers, peppering the island in patches of oranges, reds, and pinks. Birdsong echoed alongside the crashing waves, moon-yo hoots and howls bouncing from one side of the island to the other. From the cobblestone streets and markets came the sound of life; cacophonies of chatter and murmurs, a blend of voices as the islanders bartered and laughed and greeted one another with merry smiles. 

   It was as if time stood still on Pabu, and every moment spent there was a moment of peace. 

   Hunter looked over the city from the balcony of Shep’s home, his stomach full and his heart more so. 

   He tuned in to Tech and Phee’s conversation, smiling into his cup of freshly squeezed juice when he mostly heard Tech’s voice going on about artifacts. A quick side eye and there Phee was, listening with her elbow on the table and her cheek in her palm, eyes locked onto his rambling brother as if he was the only person around. 

   Wrecker lay on a lounge chair, his hands behind his head and a dazed smile on his lips. With his belly finally full, the food coma hit him harder than ever, sending him into a blissful sleep that no one thought to disturb. Especially not when the sun was just right. Not when the winds carried the salty smell of the ocean and the sound of Omega’s laughter as she and Lyana chased the moon-yos around the balcony.

   He looked over the city once more, watching as everyone lived their little slices of life. Couples walked hand-in-hand. Kids played ball and danced together, holding fizzing sparklers above their heads. An older man fed a cluster of moon-yos from a paper bag of scraps, waving at a woman as she walked past him with a basket of flowers hooked on her arm. 

   Hunter found it hard to believe that this island wasn’t a dream. Everything felt so serene and calm that it just… didn’t feel familiar. Not for them, at least. Not after years of missions and months of running and scavenging. After living day-to-day for most of his life, being able to sit and breathe felt odd. It was even more strange that he actually had to sit and wonder if he could call this island home. 

   As far as he could remember, home was never really a place but a people. His people — the one rambling on to an interested girl; the other sleeping peacefully on the lounge chair; the little girl who held Lyana’s hand as she scurried out through the gate. 

   Hunter glanced down at his cup and gave it a gentle swirl. 

   When did he last feel so content?

  With the little voice in the back of his head reminding him that two of his brothers were out fighting for their lives (albeit for different reasons), he knew that he’d never have a total moment of peace… but, as small as this was, it was enough. Enough for him to close his eyes and take a deep breath. Enough for him to sit and actually feel the sun on his face. Enough for him to listen to the ocean, its gentle waves reminding him of a quiet Kamino. 

   Footsteps approached him from behind. He smelled the faintest scent of fruit as Phee leaned against the parapet, elbows up on the wall with a cup in her hand. She left Tech by the table, sparing a glance his way before turning towards Hunter. 

   “You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind,” she teased. 

   The opposite, actually, was what he wanted to say. Instead, he settled on, “It’s nice here.”

   “Nice enough to stay?” She wasn’t pushing him but she wasn’t exactly being subtle about it either. Hunter knew that Phee always had two reasons for everything she did and when she glanced back at Tech, eyes softening, Hunter knew exactly why she posed this question. 

   He smothered the urge to smile and looked off towards the ocean, shoulders sagging as he struggled to come up with an answer. 

   “Think about it,” Phee murmured, nudging his arm with her elbow. “Take all the time you need. Pabu’s not goin’ anywhere.” 

   He hummed, the corner of his mouth lifting as he glanced from Phee to Tech. “Sure.” 

   An unspoken conversation took place as Phee narrowed her eyes, unable to hide the smallest trace of her smile. Hunter just arched a brow and she gave in with a sigh, shaking her head.

“You’ve got me there, Bandana. I think staying here would do you all some good — especially Omega. But, I’m not one for peer pressure. Maybe a walk through the city might help you come to a decision.” She looked over the city, her face lighting up when she noticed the streamers and decorations hanging from rooftop to rooftop. “Looks like tonight’s the Giving Festival.” 

   “Giving Festival?” 

   Phee nodded. “Everyone comes out for the Giving Festival and shares things like food, clothes, and jewelry — and everything’s free with no expectation to receive anything in return. They thank the ocean and the island for giving them a safe haven. It's why the kids get dressed in blue clothes and parade around with their sparklers. In fact, Omega and Lyana should be down there right now.” 

   He thought of it for a brief moment before nodding. Phee took that as her sign to leave but not without giving Hunter’s arm a squeeze. When she turned, Tech greeted her with the smallest smile — an action that Hunter seemed to notice happening more frequently than usual. 

   Leaving his cup on the parapet, Hunter removed his knife from the sheath on his waist and placed it atop the table.  After a final glance back at his brothers, Hunter walked through the gate and left the balcony, entering the colorful streets of Pabu. 

   It took him a bit to get used to the sheer kindness that never seemed to run out from the island’s residents. Wherever he went, it seemed that everyone knew he was a newcomer, so he was often given cheerful waves and happy smiles. Some even stopped him, briefly chatting to introduce themselves before going back to their festivities. It was all odd, truly, but it was somewhat nice to be treated like a neighbor instead of a criminal on the run. 

   A father, as Shep had previously called him. Those words still echoed in his head and he had no intention of ever forgetting them. 

   Hunter’s walk through the city had its effect, as Phee suggested. The more he wandered, the more he wondered if he could live like the islanders: at peace and happy. Domesticity was never really an option until now, but as he watched the children play in front of their homes, parents watching from balconies and doorways, he imagined himself in their shoes. It was easy to picture Omega running through these stone streets, laughing as freely as she did when she first latched onto his heart. 

   It didn’t take long before he came across that exact sight. 

   Standing in the center of a busy market street, Omega and Lyana wore blue robes over their clothes and carried glowing sparklers in their hands. They both had blue powder staining their cheeks and nose, causing Hunter to smile when the girls shared a giggle at how they looked. It wasn’t until Omega turned towards a store and waved that he realized the two girls weren’t alone. 

   Emerging from the doorway of a dome home was the woman he saw from Shep’s balcony. While she didn’t have a basket of flowers hanging from her elbow anymore, she carried two necklaces of sea glass in her hands and gave them to Omega and Lyana. From where he stood, Hunter could hear the gratefulness in Omega’s voice as the woman tied the thin string around her neck. Her nimble finger worked quite quickly before she took a step back, gently brushing a strand of hair out of Omega’s eyes. 

   The action was so soft that it made Hunter watch her with a peculiar gaze. She was beautiful, but she had a certain quality about her that outshone her beauty — a genuine energy that she revealed as she spoke to Omega with ease.

   When she turned her head, Hunter noticed the flower poised behind her ear — a bright orange flower that brought out the color of her cheeks and the vibrance in her eyes. The woman crouched, her yellow sundress settling around her like a river of color. She grasped Omega’s hands and squeezed, grinning up at her before winking. Omega giddily nodded her head up and down and squeezed the woman’s hand as she turned, pulling her along as they both followed Lyana down the road. 

   The woman’s dress billowed after her as she ran. She had a captivating smile, cheeks flushed and eyes blazing. The wind blew through her hair as if it was created just for her, carrying her laughter to his ears.  

   The moment they took the corner, Hunter followed, interested to see where this night would take him. 

-

You liked Lyana’s new friend. Omega was a firecracker of energy and curiosity, roaming to and fro with the intention to seek, find, and explore. When Lyana brought her to your doorstep and made introductions, you just knew that the little blonde was bound to become a new regular in your jewelry shop. She loved exploring the various things you created, including the sea glass necklaces. 

   When it came time to meet the girls outside, you made sure to grab the necklaces she’d been eyeballing. Omega’s expression of shock was worth it when you presented it to her, and her soft voice of thanks was enough to make your heart melt. 

   True to the promise you made to both girls, you took Lyana and Omega to the market square full of music and dance. Omega’s eyes were full of amazement as she looked over the festivities. Vibrant colors glowed from the lanterns hanging overhead. Streamers swayed in the wind like spinning ribbons of silk. Dancers formed circles that spun quickly, cheering and coaxing others to join. Lively, upbeat music played from the performers standing around a tall statue. They played with passion, dancing alongside a few children that joined their sides. 

   You held both Omega and Lyana’s hands as you guided them to the dancing circle in the center of the square. While Lyana was excited to join, Omega’s reluctance grew until she pulled her hand away, shaking her head as she took a step back. 

   “I can’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve never danced before.” 

   You smiled softly. “Would you feel better if I went first? Then you can see how it goes and if you want to join, you can jump in next to me and Lyana.” 

   Omega nodded and you grinned, turning to face the circle. Adjusting the flower in your hair, you picked up your dress and barged into the dancing circle, joining those who moved in unison. It took a moment before you caught up, but falling into step was easy. You spun and twirled and danced like there was no tomorrow, eyes shut as you switched partners and crossed the open circle alongside others. As the circle broke apart, paving way for duos and trios to have their own moment of dance, you noticed Omega and Lyana holding hands while they jumped back and forth and all around, laughing and giggling like girls in their prime. 

   The music picked up its pace and the circle reformed. Dresses were kicked up and hands were clapped loudly, laughter and whistles echoing from the bystanders that watched. Entranced by the pure jubilance of the music, and the energetic feeling of the dance, it was as if the world melted away, leaving nothing but you and the music. 

   You closed your eyes to enjoy the moment when suddenly, your balance slipped away as you bumped into the person beside you. Just before you could hit the ground, a pair of hands grabbed you by the elbows, hauling you up to a firm chest. Planting your hands on the figure’s vest, you struggled to catch your breath as you laughed, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. 

   “My goodness,” you gasped, shaking your head. “I’m so sorry-” 

   The moment you looked up, all of the words just left your lips. A knot twisted in your gut when you met a pair of rich brown eyes, that crinkled with amusement as they gaze down at you. 

   “Careful,” he murmured, his voice low and steady. 

   You wet your lips, uncertain if you could even speak, when Omega’s voice suddenly echoed from behind you. 

   “Hunter! 

  She and Lyana ran up to you and the man, halting in their tracks the moment they saw the odd position you were in - your hands on Hunter’s chest with his on your arms.  They looked at one another with wide eyes and started giggling, causing you to take a step back and shyly fiddle with the flower behind your ear, cheeks as red as the lights above you. 

   Hunter put his hands on his hips, a little furrow in his brow, but he didn’t seem threatening. It was the observant gaze of a father.

You couldn't help but stir at the sight. Not only was he protective but he was quite gorgeous. He had the structure of the marble statues you’d seen in the Archium. Soft features, like the roundness of his jaw and the curve of his nose, but there was strength as well. Strength in his rich brown eyes as they moved from you to Omega. 

   And that strength, however threatening it may have been to others, softened when he placed his hand on Omega’s head, teasing her with a little tug on the ends of her hair. 

   “Having fun?”

   It was easy to admit that you were entranced by everything about him - from the way he carried himself to the way he spoke. He was both gentle and sturdy, something that drew you in and made it impossible to look away. 

   “Yeah!” Omega giggled, breathless from the amount of running she did earlier. “Lyana took me around the market and look-!”

Shoving her hands in her pockets, she pulled out various little trinkets: a knife made of whalebone, bracelets fashioned from polished stone, a ring of silver with a little opal on top, chewing gum from sweet sap, and a few others that she’d been gifted by the market goers. 

   With the tip of his finger, Hunter nudged around the items in her palm before offering her a small smile. He gave the blue powder on her cheek a gentle swipe with his thumb before settling his hand on her shoulder, eyes shifting to you.

You stuck your hand out, smiling bashfully.

  “Everyone calls me Coral around here,” you said, managing a small chuckle. “And I promise that I’m not as clumsy as I seemed earlier.” 

   “I know,” he remarked, shaking your hand. When he noticed your odd look, he backtracked, eyes widening just slightly. “I mean I saw you, uh, dancing. You’re good — at dancing, I mean.”

   Ignoring Omega and Lyana’s giggles, you bowed your head in thanks, your voice soft as you hummed, “Thank you, Hunter.” 

   He gave a small smile. “My pleasure, Coral.” 

   “It’s a giving festival, Hunter,” Omega sang, nudging his side. “It’s custom here to give something to someone that you meet for the first time. Look, Coral gave me a necklace from her shop! Lyana has the same one so we’re matching.” 

   Hunter frowned, glancing down at his empty pockets. He flashed you an apologetic look and you couldn’t help but giggle. “Sorry, I don’t have anything on me at the moment.” 

   You shook your head, removing the flower from behind your ear. Taking a step forward, you closed the gap between you and Hunter, tilting your head to look up at him as you tucked the flower in the breast pocket of his vest. 

   “It’s not a matter of obligation,” you murmured softly, adjusting the petals so that they were all on display. “It’s just a matter of acceptance. You’re new here, so we give you-” You glanced down at Omega and winked. “-and you, these gifts to welcome you to Pabu. You accept these gifts; we accept you.” 

   Lyana smirked, adding, “Kisses are accepted too!” 

   “Alright that’s enough from you two,” you interrupted, shooing them away when the two girls started giggling. “Go back to dancing — and make sure you get some of those dragon candies before Sebby runs out!” 

   Lyana gasped and snatched Omega’s hand. As she began to pull her away, Omega gave you and Hunter a happy wave, turning with a laugh that made Hunter’s eyes soften. 

   “She hasn’t been this happy in a long time,” he noted in a quiet voice, unable to look away from the girl even when you glanced at him. “Things have been… they’ve been tough on her.” 

   “I know,” you murmured, causing him to arch his brows in surprise. “Omega kind of told me everything about your current situation. She told me so much about you and your brothers, I practically feel like I know you already.” 

   “Of course,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Sorry, she has a habit of doing that.” 

   “Don’t worry,” you assured, nudging his side. When his lip twitched up, you smiled. “I can keep a secret. Besides, I’d like to see her around more often. Lyana has a hard time making friends and Omega’s brought out a side of her that I haven’t seen before — she just looks so youthful when she isn’t shouldering some of Shep’s burdens. Being a single father is tough on the two of them and I think having some support is doing them both some good.” 

   What you said must have resonated deeply with Hunter for he fell into silence, a distant look in his eyes as he watched Omega receive a cup of steaming candies from a stand. She looked his way and lifted the cup above her head, a toothy grin forming when Hunter nodded at her in approval. 

   “Thank you for making her feel accepted here.” 

   “Of course… but what about you?” 

   He glanced down at you and arched a brow. 

   “Do you feel accepted here?” You clarified, gesturing towards everyone in the market square. “I know how hard it can be to settle down. I had a similar experience before I found myself on Pabu. It took me a while to adjust but once I did, this place became my safe haven like it did for so many others.”  

   Hunter took a moment to look over the festivities. He watched the people smile and dance and greet one another. He watched them live their lives, sighing. 

   “As long as Omega can find a home here, that’s all that matters.”

   “It isn’t a crime to put your own needs forward, Hunter. Think of what’s good for you as well.” 

   “We still have unresolved matters,” he explained with a trace of frustration; not at you, but rather at the ‘unresolved matters’ that he mentioned. “There are things that need our attention-” 

   You removed your hand from around his arm to place your palm against his chest. He stopped talking, his eyes honing in on yours as you peered up at him with a seriousness he hadn’t seen before. 

   “Can you resolve any of those things from here?” You questioned, arching a brow.

   He hesitated, then shook his head. 

   “Then it’s best for you-” You glanced back at Omega, “-and her, to put those aside for now and just accept this time of peace. She needs your attention too, not just your protection.” Giving him a little smile, you fiddled with the flower in his pocket, murmuring, “Care to take a bit of advice from a stranger?” 

   Hunter’s eyes crinkled as he nodded, amusement in his voice when he hummed, “Go ahead.”

   You absentmindedly adjusted the petals as you spoke. “Surviving is the bare minimum of what it means to live. Thanks to you, Omega knows how to survive — maybe you should show her what it means to live a little bit as well.” 

   “How do you suppose I do that,” he asked with a sincereness that made your heart shatter. “Us clones don’t do much living — all we’ve ever done is survive.” 

   “Learn from others,” you suggested. “Learn from their experiences and their own lives… and if you feel comfortable with accepting help, let us show you so that you can show Omega.” 

   Hunter’s nod was so sudden that it made you furrow your brow in confusion. 

   “Alright,” he said without an ounce of hesitation. 

   “Alright?” You echoed, shocked by how quick he agreed.

   To your surprise, Hunter took your hand in his own, engulfing your fingers, and began to pull you towards the girls across the square. His expression was muted but there was a little smile on his lips as he said lightly, “We need to learn how to live, right? Then show me how.” 

   You laughed as you nodded, squeezing his hand back in return. “Alright, but you can’t get mad at me when the time comes for you to step out of your comfort zone. Living doesn’t mean it’s always comfortable.” 

   “I can handle a bit of discomfort." 

   “We’ll see about that." 

   You called out for Omega and Lyana as you approached them, earning wide-eyed looks of excitement the moment they noticed you and Hunter holding hands. To their dismay, you let go just to give Omega a gentle nudge toward Hunter. 

   “Hunter said he’d like to dance with you,” you lied, causing Omega’s eyes to widen as they flicked up to him. 

   “Really?” 

   His reluctant gaze shifted from Omega to you, narrowing just slightly before he looked back down and offered his little girl a small smile, nodding. When he held out his hand, Omega grasped it with excitement and pulled him to the dancing square, rambling on and on about the things she experienced while he was busy talking to you. As he was pulled into the sea of dancing duos and trios, he looked back at you with a mixed expression, causing you to giggle and wave. 

   “You like him,” Lyana sang by your side, tugging on your dress. “I think it’s cute. You can’t stop looking at him with googly eyes.” 

   “Don’t act like this wasn’t part of your plan, squid,” you huffed, earning a giggle. “You and Omega don’t exactly look as innocent as you think you do.” 

   “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she sang, taking your hand and squeezing it with a hopeful gaze. “Do you want to dance with me?”

  “How could I ever say no to you? Lead the way, squid.” 

   And lead the way, she did. Lyana pulled you into the circle right alongside Omega and Hunter, swinging you into a spin the moment she had a grip on both of your hands. You spun and spun with her, laughing alongside her giggles, cheering when everyone clapped in unison. Out of the corner of your eye,  you caught a few glimpses of Hunter and Omega. It wasn’t so much of a duo dance as it was Omega dancing while Hunter held her hands, occasionally spinning and hauling her up in the air just to hear her laugh. 

   All that mattered was that Hunter seemed to be enjoying himself. He didn’t have the same stress that you noticed in him earlier; no more tense muscles or furrowed expression. Peace sat in his eyes as he danced with the little blonde, living off of Omega’s happiness. 

   Lyana spun and spun you until suddenly, without warning, she let go of your hands, sending you stumbling into the person beside you. You went to apologize but stopped when Hunter’s familiar face looked down at you, his hands sprawled across the plain of your back to keep you upright as he held you in a dip. 

   Omega and Lyana both giggled as they began dancing together, acting as innocent as the little devils could. 

   “What did you say about not being clumsy?” He teased, causing you to flush with embarrassment. 

   “Second time's a charm?” 

   Hunter lifted you, taking your hand to guide you into a spin. He pulled you into him, bringing your back against his chest. 

   “Thank you,” he murmured against your ear, “Tonight’s been fun.” 

   “See?” You hummed, guiding him in a gentle sway from side to side. Almost instantly, the music softened and the upbeat tune became a gentle, harmonious song that eased a bit of peace through the energetic festival. “Can you feel that peace? That is the difference between living and surviving, and there’s so much more for you to experience, too.” 

   “Will you show me?” He asked, causing you to turn your head and give him a credulous smile.

   “Does this mean you’ve decided to stay on Pabu?” 

   “I think that’d be best for all of us.”

   “Then yes,” you agreed. “I’ll help as best as I can… but can I ask why me?”

   “Omega likes you,” he said with an audible smile on his lips, “And I… I trust you... so far.”

   “I’m honored,” you murmured, breaking into a giggle when he spun you around to face him. Your hands slid up and over his shoulders, interlocking behind his head. It was an involuntary gesture to look down at his lips but you couldn’t help it. 

   Hunter had this protective, genuine feeling that made you feel so safe near him. It was an odd thing to notice about someone when first meeting them, but it was only solidified when watching him and Omega. He had a specific gentleness that he kept reserved for her and now, as it seemed, for you as well. 

   What you didn’t expect, however, was for him to feel the same way as you. 

   “Was Lyana telling the truth earlier?” 

   “About what,” you murmured, forcing your gaze to go from his lips to his eyes. 

   “About a kiss being a gift.” 

   Your mind went blank. It took a moment before you nodded, finding the confidence to move your lips and speak. “She was.” 

   He guided you into another spin, gentler than before as he pulled you into his chest. “What does it mean?” 

   “It’s an invitation,” you explained softly. “A gift of vulnerability, as well as a promise. They aren’t given unless they are genuine — it means you find enough value in another person to give them your affection rather than an item. Kissing someone at the Giving Festival is typically a sign of courtship.” 

   “Courtship?” He questioned curiously. “You carry that tradition around here? Didn't take you for an old-school type of girl.” 

   “Well,” you sang, causing him to chuckle. “The elders call it that. I mean, it’s just dating among the younger generations.” 

   He hummed, slow movements swaying you to and fro. As he danced with you around the statue, passing the band that played their gentle tune, he noticed the beautiful flowers on the floor and stopped to pick one up. With gentle fingers, he tucked it behind your ear and gave you a small smile when he noticed how red your cheeks had become. Just like the flower in your hair.

   “Can I kiss you?” He asked gently, tucking away a strand of hair that fell in front of your face. 

   You tilted your head up to him, smiling to hide the fact that your heart was practically beating out of his chest.  

   “Yes,” you breathed, your stomach twisting with anticipation.

   His hand cupped the back of your head, the other gently resting against your back. Hunter pulled you close enough for your chests to touch before he lowered his head, lips skimming over your own. 

   “Are you certain about this?” You whispered against his lips. “You hardly know me.”  

   “I know enough to be certain I want to kiss you,” he hummed. “Are you?” 

   You couldn’t help but laugh, shaking your head. 

   “Just kiss me, handsome,” you said with a smile. “We’ll figure out the rest later.” 

   He smiled as he kissed you, lips curled in amusement even after your lips collided. You couldn’t help but giggle against his mouth when his hand wove through your hair. It was an even bigger surprise when he dipped you, earning a few cheers and hoots of encouragement from those who stood by — including Omega and Lyana who seemed to be the loudest (and happiest) of the spectators. 

   When he pulled away, he never truly left. He kept his hand interwoven with yours, keeping you by his side as the dancing resumed and the festivities regained their upbeat tempo. Hunter pulled you out of the crowd and even though you didn’t return to the dance, the night continued with you showing him various different things throughout the market. From different juice stands to candies (which he denied rather quickly), you showed Hunter all that the market had to offer before stealing him away to show him the island itself. 

   While Omega and his brothers were distracted with the festival, you brought Hunter to the sandy shores. You removed your shoes and coaxed him to do the same before dragging him to the water. He cringed at how cold it was and stiffened when you splashed him, earning a glare that slowly turned into a smile when you turned to run away, laughing as loud and freely as one could. 

   And so the night continued — with music echoing from the city while water splashed and laughter bubbled from the sandy shores. The Giving Festival continued into the morning, and when Omega and Lyana tiredly returned home to find Hunter still missing, the two girls shared a knowing look that washed their fatigue away. They gossiped back and forth about you and Hunter, whispers turning into giggles that then turned into gasps when they realized that Hunter might, someday - possibly - plant roots on Pabu. 

   It occurred to Omega then, as she sat on the floor of Lyana’s bedroom surrounded by blankets and pillows and snacks, that the Giving Festival did, in fact, give her something. It wasn’t jewelry and it wasn’t candy, although she did hold every gift very close to her heart. It wasn’t Lyana and the new friends she’d made that night, including you and all the others she met.

   It was a new home — and that was the gift that Omega found herself cherishing the most. 

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(i'll be replying to comment reblogs in the comments of this post! just so that there isn't too much clutter on the dash 🫶🏼 a huge thank you to those who always have something nice to say about my writing. i might not always respond but please know that you all have my heart and my endless thanks for being so kind and encouraging. may the universe give back the same kindness you've given me, and i having nothing but love for you all!)

[softquietsteadylove]

Would you write Ajak watching her children sleep before they split up? Especially Thena and Gilgamesh?

Tenochtitlan: a great city sprawling out from grand temples already built and established. They had found a wonderful city full of wonderful people here. People who were accepting of the Eternals and their strangeness and gifts and powers.

They were freshly settled, had spoken with locals. Phastos had worked with them to build a temple for them to stay in properly. Ajak had told him explicitly to use restraint. He would use his powers at night and tell each of the shifts of human workers that the other shift had gotten so much done!

Ajak wasn't sure about lying to them like that but it seemed to encourage them, the two different teams congratulating and praising one another when they were present together.

Ajak walked through the halls. Her children were sleeping. There would not be much more time until they were her children no longer. Her children, free of the burden of their mission.

Ikaris and Sersi were anxious around one another. Ikaris grew more agitated the fewer Deviants there were, but Sersi couldn't understand why. Instead, she was left to wonder why her husband of all this time was pulling away from her as he was.

Ajak peeked into their room. Ikaris was on watch, leaving Sersi to sleep alone. She was on his side of the bed, a book unfolded in what was usually her spot. Her poor, sweet Sersi. But Ikaris said he was protecting her from the knowledge of the Emergence, and Ajak accepted that choice.

Sprite and Kingo were actually out with the locals. The people here enjoyed the spirit of night life, food and drink and gatherings of people. The two more social Eternals - despite Sprite's temper - thrived off the sense of community found with the locals. Locals who didn't consider them gods, nor batted an eye at their powers nor Sprite's eternal youth.

Ajak walked past Phastos' lab. She knew he was in there working, as he always was. He still had not found a soul to match his. And perhaps there was no perfect match for the Fabricator Eternal, but she hoped there was. She hoped there was some peace for him in the rest of his life on this planet.

Druig and Makkari were growing closer and closer. They had always been close, of course, but there was also a part of them that was tethered at somewhat of a distance. Makkari simply was too free to be nailed down in any permanent sense. To ground her little hummingbird heart would be to kill her. Meanwhile Druig unconsciously craved to settlement. He was tired of moving, of the world's bombastic rhythm constantly banging at the door to his otherwise peaceful mind.

Druig was sleeping on his back, his arms wrapped around himself. His head was leaned against Makkari's, though. The Speedster Eternal didn't often need sleep. Or she would sleep and regain her energy in the blink of an eye, the same speed at which she lived the rest of her life. But as time went on, she started indulging in sleep more often.

Makkari's head was tucked against Druig's jaw, but her arms were folded between them. They slept together, and yet apart in some ways.

Ajak hoped the best for them. Come the time to separate, she was not sure where they would go, or if it would be together.

Unlike the last two.

Gilgamesh and Thena showed no signs of the restlessness that was plaguing the rest of the team. They also spoke of what they would do once this last continent was rid of Deviants. They also discussed how much more of this planet there was to see, places they would like to revisit in these new dynasties and eras and centuries.

But the Strongest and Warrior Eternal showed no readiness to separate. If anything, they were more bound together than ever. Ajak could barely look at them without finding her attentions being subconsciously countered.

Thena would catch her looking and lean against Gilgamesh, unsure of what made her uneasy but establishing herself protectively between him and their Prime nonetheless. Somewhat less aggressively but still evident, Gilgamesh would eventually fall out of conversation involving Ajak and look at Thena, assuring that no matter what was decided, that he would be with her.

The two were clear about it, in not so many words: if they were to go anywhere, they would go together.

Ajak had to be more careful about this room than most. The Warrior Eternal was, in many ways, her deadliest--even more so than Ikaris. And with growing tensions and Thena's nearing breaking point, Ajak had no desire to push the blonde further than needed.

It wasn't every night, and it wasn't as set in stone as Ikaris and Sersi, but it was quite easily assumed that Gil would be in Thena's room, or vice versa. It wasn't nearly as spoken of--they weren't married like Ikaris and Sersi. Druig often slept - and ate - anywhere he damn well pleased, and Makkari would join him if she so desired. They were less bound by the room itself.

Thena and Gil, though, were reluctant to be without each other. Even if one was on watch without the other, as rare as it was, and they were forced to rest in their own quarters, it was only until the next sunrise. Then, they would be at each other's side once again.

Gil was the most sound sleeper of all of them. He was stretched out leisurely, one arm thrown up above his head by the pillow. The other, though, sat around the delicate waist of his bloodthirsty partner.

Thena slept quietly, as she did everything else. She barely moved when she breathed. It was frightening. And yet she was curled up in Gilgamesh's embrace, her head more on his shoulder than the pillow he was leaving her so much room upon anyway.

Ajak had no doubts; when the time came for her to set her children free, these two would not go their separate ways.

"Ajak."

Shit. Ajak made a face but came more into the room at the beckoning of her daughter, "I'm sorry."

Thena didn't so much as move, or even open her eyes to look at Ajak. But her hand on Gil's chest released the fistful of his shirt to leave her palm unoccupied. "You hover."

Thena had always been deeply perceptive, and Ajak knew very well why the Warrior Eternal's trust in her had never been in top form. "I...am worried about you all."

"Splitting up," she assumed more than asked, still speaking gently as her companion breathed deeply beside her.

"Yes," Ajak conceded, whispering as she tried to remember the sight of her children at peace. "I just want you to be safe, and to find happiness in your lives."

"You look at Gilgamesh more than the others."

No, she was looking at Thena more than the others. But of course Gilgamesh was always next to her, and her thoughts were also occupied by the Strongest Eternal.

Thena finally opened her eyes, moving only them over to Ajak, like a predator waiting for a sign to pounce. "If there is something concerning him I must know-"

"There isn't," Ajak said quickly, not that it made Thena settle. But she didn't have a cosmic blade pressed to her throat...yet. "I-"

"Ajak." Thena sat up partially, still leaning on Gil, whose arm tightened around her reflexively. She rubbed his chest to send him back into the deeper reaches of sleep. "If you know something, and it concerns Gilgamesh-"

Oh, it would concern him greatly.

Thena looked at her Prime, wide eyes shimmering green. "You must tell me."

If only she could.

"Please," Thena whispered, her voice trembling at the thought of something happening to the man next to her.

"Oh, my beautiful Thena," Ajak shook her head, walking closer just until she could bring her hands closer. She could see Thena's unease, but she let the glow of her hands alleviate some of the pressure in Thena's head. "Do not concern yourself with such things."

Thena's eyes drooped, lulled into sleep by her body's nervous system being manipulated. She eyed Ajak even in her fatigue, "if something happens-"

"You will have each other," Ajak promised, and that at least was not a lie. She pressed Thena's hand to Gilgamesh's heart again, "now rest."

The Warrior Eternal succumbed to Ajak's enchantment, her head falling to Gilgamesh's shoulder again. He tightened his hold on her, not roused from sleep but sensing something not right.

Ajak sighed as he cradled the woman he loved close. Soon it would be solely his duty and ability to charm the dangerous Eternal next to him into sleep. Her care and protection would be entirely up to him, and vice versa.

For now, all Ajak could do was check on her children each night and hope for peaceful days, one at a time.

[antvnger]

((Y'ALL!!

An excerpt from Look Out for the Little Guy just dropped and I am STOKED!! September can't get here soon enough, like seriously. I'm going to devour this book when I get my hands on it. I wonder how my writing on here compares....

See below for the whole excerpt from the book.))

HI THERE. HOWDY. HEYA! Man, I hate introductions.

If you’re reading this book, first of all, thank you! Even though I can make my body as large as the Empire State Building, some days my self-esteem gets, well, ant-sized. Maybe that’s an occupational hazard of being an Avenger and working alongside the mightiest and smartest people on Earth, but the feeling is still there. Even when I remember that I did help save half the world.

Anyway, my name is Scott Lang. You may now or at one time have known me as “Ant-Man.” I’ve been involved in some Super Hero stuff you might have heard about, some Super Hero stuff you probably haven’t heard about, and some Super Hero stuff you might be tired of hear­ing about—at least if you’re anything like my immedi­ate family.

But who is Scott Lang? Well, I’m just an average, middle-aged white guy who went to a fancy nerd col­lege, got married, and landed a solid white-collar desk job. I used to work as a computer guy at VistaCorp, a huge tech firm that deals with security. (Oh, the irony of that, but just wait for it!) My wife Maggie and I had a baby girl named Cassie, and we were heading into an uncomplicated, peaceful suburban life outside of San Francisco.

I mean, sure, on our TVs we were watching the world occasionally coming under attack by strange beings. But we also saw this amazing group of Super Heroes called the Avengers, who always managed to show up exactly when they were needed and send those baddies back . . . away. From our planet. And my life.

However, there were still some baddies right here on Earth. Specifically, in my workplace.

As I began to discover over time, my company was not completely on the up-and-up. Under the (mis)guidance of my boss, the company I was working at, VistaCorp, started using its prowess with security to take advantage of customers. Specifically, someone either overlooked or deliberately created a glitch in the payment-processing software, skimming millions of dollars from customer accounts.

I decided I was not okay with that.

After multiple attempts to push back against the company, attempts that one might describe as “legal” or “reasonable” or “advisable,” I decided to go in a dif­ferent direction.

I’d like to start with the positives: I returned five mil­lion dollars to our customers and exposed VistaCorp’s nefarious dealings to the public.

And, on the other side, I also drove an extremely expensive sports car into an extremely expensive pool, and myself into San Quentin Federal Penitentiary for three years.

Even worse, this was also around the time that my marriage to Maggie broke up. I don’t want to get into the specifics of why—that’s strictly Scott-Maggie stuff—but let’s just say “Husband suddenly going to the pen for three years” wasn’t exactly a marriage-saver.

More critically, though, that divorce, plus imprison­ment, effectively separated me from my dear, sweet daughter, Cassie. For way too many of her precious first few years. I wondered if she and I would ever even have the chance to make a connection.

Eventually, I finished my sentence, left San Q, and attempted to rejoin the world. Even if the world didn’t quite seem to know what to do with me yet. I couldn’t get a job with a conviction on my record. I had no funds or place to stay. Even my one joyful attempt to reunite with Cassie was cut short by Maggie and her fiancé, telling me I had to get my life together before we could talk visitation or shared custody.

Fortunately, though, there was one guy who did have a use for me.

Unless you’ve spent the past few years in a cave (or, say, a subatomic realm), you’ve probably at least heard of Pym Technologies. Or at least, Hank Pym.

If you haven’t, Hank Pym was the inventor of the Pym Particle, an incredible scientific breakthrough. Pym Particles have the power to cause molecular reduction or expansion at great scales in either direction. In other words, they can make anything super-small or super-big. Hank and his wife, Janet Van Dyne, put this to direct use on themselves, performing countless heroic deeds as the original Ant-Man and The Wasp.

And outside of the Super Hero game, Hank started a serious R&D operation known as Pym Technologies. But a few years ago, Pym Tech fell into the unscrupulous hands of people who wanted to exploit his discoveries for use on the battlefield—and to sell the resulting technology to folks we really do not want to be in battle with! By then, Hank had been pushed out of the com­pany that literally had his last name on the door. But he knew what was being planned with his invention, and that it had to be stopped. So he . . . let’s say “hired” me to recover his creations from Pym Tech.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Scott! is probably what you’re saying right now. How did we jump from custody disputes to biotech espionage?

Well, right about the time I was stumbling out of prison, trying to find myself, Hank Pym—whom I didn’t know at the time—found me. Hank had done his research on me and knew I was skilled at both elec­tronics and thievery. And most importantly, he knew that I had nothing left to lose.

Unbeknownst to me, he “tested” me by enticing me to steal the Ant-Man suit from his highly formidable safe. Once I succeeded at that, Hank and his daughter, Hope Van Dyne, kinda “stole” me from police custody, offered me the gig (as if I had a choice!), and then trained me to pull off one of the craziest high-tech heists ever.

So, return the potentially world-threatening military technology to its rightful creator, and it’s back to peace again, right?

Wrong.

Literally no sooner had I pulled off the Pym Tech operation (with an assist from some old prison pals and some extremely skilled ants) than I found myself face-to-face with the Avengers.

Well, two of them, anyway. Captain America and the Falcon. Believe me, two’s more than enough! I’d already had a tussle with the Falcon, but now he and Cap (as I would soon be calling him, no big deal) actually wanted my help.

Wow. I mean, wow! It wasn’t just cranky old semi-retired scientists tracking me down anymore—now I’d caught the attention of Earth’s Mightiest.

So what they wanted me for was . . . a bit messy. Basically, the Avengers had a huge internal divide over something too complicated to get into here, and Cap and Falcon wanted some fresh (and highly size-adaptable) muscle on their side. Especially when all of this culminated in a huge Avengers-vs.-Avengers fracas at an airport in Germany. Germany! I’d just spent three years in a tiny cell. Now I was suddenly “doing Europe”?

I don’t want to get into the details of the conflict (and in fact I am under legal obligation not to), but let’s just

say I might have been on the more “badass” side of it.

In the end, that whole fight got resolved, as I think you know. Otherwise our planet would be a scorched battlefield of never-ending intra-Avengers smackdowns.

So . . . peace on Earth now?

Nope. That’s when—thanks to Thanos—half of all life in the universe disappeared. So no, no peace on Earth or anywhere else.

I wasn’t around for those five years of missing people (you’ll find out why soon), but I came back just in time, jumped to a different timeline, fought, like, every bad guy in the universe on a field in upstate New York, helped the Avengers stop Thanos, and put all the people back where they belonged. Including, last but not least, putting my precious Hope back together with me!

As you might imagine, that was . . . a lot.

So in the time since, I’ve been trying to take things a bit easier. Nursing wounds. Reconnecting with those I’ve missed. Reflecting on what it all means.

Oh yes, and of course, writing this book!

And if you want to really get to know who Scott Lang is, reading this book is where I’d recommend you start.

So at this point, I bet you also have a very serious question—one which I’ve asked myself over a thousand times a day while writing this:

Why on Earth is Scott Lang the first Super Hero writ­ing a book?

I mean, just between us, I’m proud to be an Avenger, but sometimes I also feel like a “latecomer.” Sure, I came through in the ultimate clutch, but in baseball terms, I’m not a starter—I’m a DH (designated hero).

Here’s how I see it: I’m the “everyman Avenger.” I’m the one you could grab a beer with, the one you’d feel okay asking to look after your dog when you’re away or for a drive to the airport. I’m not a Super Soldier or a billionaire (unless this book is super-successful), just a regular dad, a San Francisco Giants fan, and a guy who’s made mistakes I’m still trying to rectify.

In a word, I’m an ordinary guy who’s been thrust—more than once—into extraordinary circumstances.

And I know that still doesn’t completely answer the question of why I wrote this book.

The simple answer is, “The Avengers asked me to.”

One day, Bruce “the Hulk” Banner and Clint “Hawkeye” Barton took me out for lunch. They said they were con­cerned that the world didn’t really know what had hap­pened with Thanos and the Blip and our long struggle to finally put things right again.

At first, as I usually do when confronted with heavy topics, I made a joke: “I’m pretty sure at least half the world knows what happened.”

Bruce responded that yes, of course, billions had experienced these jarring and mind-bending events, but they didn’t know the full story behind them. And ultimately, that’s what people need the most to get through and get past traumatic events: a narrative that helps it all make sense.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Solid plan. So who are you going to get to tell that story?”

Clint answered, “You, Scott. You’re the guy who got scooped up in all this pretty recently. You’ve still got one foot in their world. And you’re a guy everyone likes . . . and trusts.”

And Bruce sealed the deal: “It’s tough stuff, and no one knows how to keep it light like you.”

Well. I still had tons of doubts. I was hardly an eye­witness to almost all that history. I hadn’t been around for the Battle of Wakanda, or any of the events that led to Thanos gathering the various Infinity Stones.

But pretty much immediately, I knew what my answer would be. As far as I’m concerned, when the Avengers ask you do to a job—any job—you say yes. So I did. Two quick handshakes (Bruce—now permanently in his Hulk body—made sure to keep his “not too firm”), and it was settled. They’d supply me all the archival footage and documentation, take me anywhere I needed to go, and let me ask as many questions as I needed.

The only thing is, it wasn’t actually 100 percent set­tled for me—on the inside. From the confidence peak of having two amazing Super Heroes place their trust in you, there was a frighteningly steep plummet into self-doubt. Even with their sensible reasons, the whole affair just stirred up a question that’s been burning inside me most of my adult life:

Why me?

I’ve been asking myself that since before I even met the Avengers. Back when I was working at VistaCorp, why was I the only one who couldn’t sleep at night after learning of all the money they were stealing from cus­tomers? Why did I basically give up my job, give up my marriage, and spend three years in San Quentin, just so I could play Robin Hood?

And finally—and this one still smarts—when VistaCorp’s nasty business became public to the world, why was I the one who ended up going down for it?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. And perhaps I never will.

Not even Doctor Strange can tell me, and believe me, it’s not for my lack of asking. Once the purple dust had settled from the Battle of Earth, I tried bonding with the guy. Let’s just say, he was either unwilling or uninterested in filling me in about any of my 14,000,605 possible pasts.

But here’s what I do know. That VistaCorp/prison experience taught me that our world is broken. And that it’s never going to get fixed unless folks like me—the unlikely ones—step up to the job.

And when Hank Pym plucked me out of the ex-con pool and put me to work as Ant-Man 2.0, I started to see the haziest outlines of a “why” for me. Maybe all those hard years I had just endured were actually preparation for a higher purpose.

Which is a good thing, because right after my first outing as a hero, I was drafted into that aforementioned very scary and sort of confusing business with Avengers fighting other Avengers in Germany, I was sent to an underwater super -SUPER-max prison, and once again, I had to take the fall and spend two more years in deten­tion under house arrest.

Why me again?

Still no perfect lock on the answer, but I was beginning to glimpse one. This is going to sound beyond weird for a guy whose success—and often life—depends on quantum mechanics, but basically, I had a feeling.

Even as I was yanked from one seemingly unthink­able scenario to another, asked to do things I would have never dreamed possible, I began to see that many incredible things were, in fact, possible—and I was doing them. And they started to feel more and more, for lack of a better word, right.

I know this is the kind of feeling my Avengers pals feel mid-mission or mid-battle, and maybe they’ve gotten used to it, but I’m just finally getting there. To the feel­ing that, even when faced with the most terrifying foes imaginable, even with the odds exponentially stacked against you, if you are working side by side with others to serve a greater good, you are in the right place, doing the right thing. For you.

And honestly, that’s the real story behind the entire Avengers saga. It’s the one I thought was most essential to share with all of you. That was the deeper reason I said yes to those two Avengers at the lunch counter. Because I knew that, once again, I was being called to do what seemed impossible (or at least, highly inadvisable)—but instead, I let the feeling take hold, and guide me.

And I realized that I needed to share that feeling with you.

Because at the end of the day, nobody can tell where life is going to yank them, unexpectedly and seemingly beyond their reach. Steve Rogers signed up to fight, imagining he’d only go as far as a scrawny guy can get in wartime. Tony Stark was brilliant and successful, but I know a part of him wondered if he’d ever get out from under his dad’s shadow. Even Doctor Strange in all his professional success could never have imagined becoming a Master of the Mystic Arts—or even that such a thing existed!

And that same unpredictability is just as true for you as it is for me. What would you do if life shrunk you down and tossed you into a bathtub being filled by your former prison buddy? Okay, that one might just be me. But how about when life sends you unexpectedly packing from your gig of three years and straight into a jail cell—because you dared to blow the whistle on your company’s greed?

You don’t ask why. You ask, “Where do I go from here?”

Because that’s the job life has for you, at least right at this moment, and it’s the kind of job you don’t get to quit.

You can run, but you can’t hide—not even if you can shrink yourself down and leap into a bathtub.

Now I know I said before that I don’t, technically, have a super-power. But looked at another way, I actually do. And the even cooler part is, so do all of you.

Having the ability to change my size at will, I’ve seen that the world is full of “big guys” and “little guys.” And unsurprisingly, the former is always stepping on the latter. Sometimes this is by design, but sometimes, just because of their status and drive, the big folks don’t even see the everyday, hard-working folks just trying to get by.

That’s why it’s always the job of people like me—and, as I’m going to show you throughout this book, you—to look out for the little guy. That’s something we all have a super-powered ability to do, if we simply choose to accept the job.

You are in this place and time for a reason, and no one else is. And so—when that next uncertain, unlikely, “impossible” step is revealed to you—I urge you with every particle in my body, Pym or otherwise, to turn that “Why me?” into a “Why not me?”

At least that’s what I tried to do when I promised the Avengers I would tell their story. And the best way I know how to do that is by telling mine at the same time. Because as I’ve learned, whenever I start to talk about something big that happened, I also see the little lessons that can be learned from it, and I want to share that, to help myself and others.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t get the chance to be around my daughter Cassie for so many chunks of her life, to share what I’d learned with her. I’m still working on that, but it’s hard now that she’s a grown-up herself who’s already seen and experienced so much without me to guide her. I missed the boat on that one, but believe me, you are in for an entire book of “Dad wisdom” just burning for a home.

So that’s what I plan to do in this book. I’m going to tell it all, from how I saw it, experienced it, and heard it firsthand from my hero buddies. I’m going to bring you into the hero world.

Along the way, you’ll hear about my story—Scott Lang’s story—from where I started to the (ant-) man I’ve become, and am still becoming. Because I’m so incredibly fascinating? No. Because my life—just like yours—loses half its value if we don’t find a way to share its lessons with others.

And finally, because—if you take nothing else away from my words—what I want to share is that what makes all of us giants is how much we look out for the little guy. How we help out our fellow humans when they need it most. How our greatest super-power can simply be a listening ear, a concerned eye, or an outstretched hand. How we don the “hero’s uniform” by simply showing up and doing the unbelievably unlikely job that life has just handed us.

And speaking of jobs, I’ve got an entire rest of a book to write. Oh, why did I agree to this? WHY ME?

[shadowgale96]

What I Watched Last Month

Thermae Romae

9/10 It's about a roman architect, Lucious, who occasional falls into different Japanese time periods and implements his learnings back in Rome. I laughed so much. Lucious is hilarious to follow. He's so comedically passionate about baths. Only complaint is that the pilot's a bit of a drag, and there's CGI that doesn't look good, but its not constant. Overall, this is a nice watch.

Spy X Family

10/10

It has comedy, action, cuteness and overall its just a really fun anime. Every member of the forager family has a secret they're hiding and there own motives that is hidden from the others. Loid is a top spy, Yor duels as an assassin, and anya escaped a government lab that made her a telepath. The dynamic is hilarious with this 4-5 y/o reading everyone thoughts and secrets but also being a little kid about it, and the paretents being too socially stunted from their own careers to understand normal family behaviour, but anya still loves them all the same.

My only regret is having to wait a whole week for each episode.

This Boy Suffers From Crystallization (2014)

(7/10) Interesting premise with a boy who slowing turns to crystal when he's anxious or depressed. High school's already difficult enough without being a socially anxious kid who's crushing on his teacher that also turns into crystal. The movie's brief but sweet. It's also an lgbt+ romance that's filled with fluff and angst. Very cheesy and cliche, but I knew what I was getting into. It's clear that this movie didn't have much of a budget. it's mostly camera pans on still shots, but it's also clear someone really wanted to make this. <3

War of the Worlds (1953)

(8/10)

Probably don't need to explains this one. I enjoyed this classic much more than I expected. With how dated it is, I wasn't expecting much, but I can definitely see why it's a classic. The looming dread of the alien invasion grows throughout the film, making it an effective horror film even today. That being said, I was also sent laughing plenty of times throughout this film. I wish the characters were more fleshed out as well. but overall nice film.

The Angry Red Planet (1959)

4/10. Explorers go to Mars with no idea what kinds of dangers await them. Why didn't they just send a probe first? Don't ask questions. It's slow going and honestly the best part of the movie are the monsters that pop up albeit briefly. Giant spider bat is 10/10. In a movie like this (where characters are mostly confined to a single location and there isn't much budget or time for Special effects) there needs to be a lot of good character writing, but they all fill fairly basic roles. The movie kept disengaging me with how many times I thought "that not how someone would act." Is it a marvel of it's time? Well, it came out 6 years after WotW and apparently was only given 9 days to film, and it shows. Didn't dislike the film but was disappointed.

Queen of Blood (1966)

6/10

Aliens send an SOS to earth leading a ship of astronauts to a crashed ship and a strange green woman with a beehive hairdo. They bring her onboard and try to establish peaceful communication, but it all goes downhill as they learn the true nature of this alien race.

Half of this movie is them struggling to get to the alien, the other half is them finally bringing her on board. This movie is considered a horror but it's horror elements don't pick up until the last fourth of the film. honestly I wanted more by the time this film was done. A cliffhanger from a movie made in 1966 was also frustrating.

Creature (1985)

9/10

In response to an accident on Saturn's moon, Titan, astronauts are sent to investigate. Horror ensues.

Surprised I don't hear more about this movie more often. it was solid monster flick. Several moments were chilling to watch. how the monster kills and uses it's victims is fascinating and upsetting. The tagline for Creature is 'First you die...then the horror begins' and it holds true. Very satisfying.

Main complaint is that i wish the German guy wasn't so pervy. Why is everyone just okay with his behavior? and the characters should've had some more development before touching down on Titan.

Grave of the Vampire (1972)

7/10 It's hard to give a good synopsis for this movie, since the focus changes so often. First its about a woman who got assaulted by a vampire and a cop trying to catch the killer, than like 40 years go by and a vampire half-ling is taking some college classes and bumps into his vampire father.

Very bleak beginning. it definitely earns it's R. There was a lot of focal whiplash in this film. We focus on the mother and cop until about halfway through the film. It's fast paced and suspenseful. Although, it definitely needed to be condensed down and find it's focus, but It held my attention, and I was curious to see where it was going. Most of the characters were interesting to follow as well. Disappointing that there was a cliffhanger ending. but the movie is mostly wrapped up and chaotic anyway, so it doesn't ruin it for me.

Reptilian (2001)

2/10 This feels like a crack cross between Godzilla 1998 and Independence day, and it boarders between being absolutely awful and laughably bad. horrible effects, bad acting, nonsense plot and characters, but it did get a few laughs out of me so i'll give it credits there.

[aeterna-auroral-avenger]

Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!

An excerpt from Scott Lang's memoir just dropped, and I am so excited!! I can't wait for this book to come out! I'm going to devour this book when I get my hands on it.

Posting it below because I will want to read it again and again and again later

HI THERE. HOWDY. HEYA! Man, I hate introductions.

If you’re reading this book, first of all, thank you! Even though I can make my body as large as the Empire State Building, some days my self-esteem gets, well, ant-sized. Maybe that’s an occupational hazard of being an Avenger and working alongside the mightiest and smartest people on Earth, but the feeling is still there. Even when I remember that I did help save half the world.

Anyway, my name is Scott Lang. You may now or at one time have known me as “Ant-Man.” I’ve been involved in some Super Hero stuff you might have heard about, some Super Hero stuff you probably haven’t heard about, and some Super Hero stuff you might be tired of hear­ing about—at least if you’re anything like my immedi­ate family.

But who is Scott Lang? Well, I’m just an average, middle-aged white guy who went to a fancy nerd col­lege, got married, and landed a solid white-collar desk job. I used to work as a computer guy at VistaCorp, a huge tech firm that deals with security. (Oh, the irony of that, but just wait for it!) My wife Maggie and I had a baby girl named Cassie, and we were heading into an uncomplicated, peaceful suburban life outside of San Francisco.

I mean, sure, on our TVs we were watching the world occasionally coming under attack by strange beings. But we also saw this amazing group of Super Heroes called the Avengers, who always managed to show up exactly when they were needed and send those baddies back . . . away. From our planet. And my life.

However, there were still some baddies right here on Earth. Specifically, in my workplace.

As I began to discover over time, my company was not completely on the up-and-up. Under the (mis)guidance of my boss, the company I was working at, VistaCorp, started using its prowess with security to take advantage of customers. Specifically, someone either overlooked or deliberately created a glitch in the payment-processing software, skimming millions of dollars from customer accounts.

I decided I was not okay with that.

After multiple attempts to push back against the company, attempts that one might describe as “legal” or “reasonable” or “advisable,” I decided to go in a dif­ferent direction.

I’d like to start with the positives: I returned five mil­lion dollars to our customers and exposed VistaCorp’s nefarious dealings to the public.

And, on the other side, I also drove an extremely expensive sports car into an extremely expensive pool, and myself into San Quentin Federal Penitentiary for three years.

Even worse, this was also around the time that my marriage to Maggie broke up. I don’t want to get into the specifics of why—that’s strictly Scott-Maggie stuff—but let’s just say “Husband suddenly going to the pen for three years” wasn’t exactly a marriage-saver.

More critically, though, that divorce, plus imprison­ment, effectively separated me from my dear, sweet daughter, Cassie. For way too many of her precious first few years. I wondered if she and I would ever even have the chance to make a connection.

Eventually, I finished my sentence, left San Q, and attempted to rejoin the world. Even if the world didn’t quite seem to know what to do with me yet. I couldn’t get a job with a conviction on my record. I had no funds or place to stay. Even my one joyful attempt to reunite with Cassie was cut short by Maggie and her fiancé, telling me I had to get my life together before we could talk visitation or shared custody.

Fortunately, though, there was one guy who did have a use for me.

Unless you’ve spent the past few years in a cave (or, say, a subatomic realm), you’ve probably at least heard of Pym Technologies. Or at least, Hank Pym.

If you haven’t, Hank Pym was the inventor of the Pym Particle, an incredible scientific breakthrough. Pym Particles have the power to cause molecular reduction or expansion at great scales in either direction. In other words, they can make anything super-small or super-big. Hank and his wife, Janet Van Dyne, put this to direct use on themselves, performing countless heroic deeds as the original Ant-Man and The Wasp.

And outside of the Super Hero game, Hank started a serious R&D operation known as Pym Technologies. But a few years ago, Pym Tech fell into the unscrupulous hands of people who wanted to exploit his discoveries for use on the battlefield—and to sell the resulting technology to folks we really do not want to be in battle with! By then, Hank had been pushed out of the com­pany that literally had his last name on the door. But he knew what was being planned with his invention, and that it had to be stopped. So he . . . let’s say “hired” me to recover his creations from Pym Tech.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Scott! is probably what you’re saying right now. How did we jump from custody disputes to biotech espionage?

Well, right about the time I was stumbling out of prison, trying to find myself, Hank Pym—whom I didn’t know at the time—found me. Hank had done his research on me and knew I was skilled at both elec­tronics and thievery. And most importantly, he knew that I had nothing left to lose.

Unbeknownst to me, he “tested” me by enticing me to steal the Ant-Man suit from his highly formidable safe. Once I succeeded at that, Hank and his daughter, Hope Van Dyne, kinda “stole” me from police custody, offered me the gig (as if I had a choice!), and then trained me to pull off one of the craziest high-tech heists ever.

So, return the potentially world-threatening military technology to its rightful creator, and it’s back to peace again, right?

Wrong.

Literally no sooner had I pulled off the Pym Tech operation (with an assist from some old prison pals and some extremely skilled ants) than I found myself face-to-face with the Avengers.

Well, two of them, anyway. Captain America and the Falcon. Believe me, two’s more than enough! I’d already had a tussle with the Falcon, but now he and Cap (as I would soon be calling him, no big deal) actually wanted my help.

Wow. I mean, wow! It wasn’t just cranky old semi-retired scientists tracking me down anymore—now I’d caught the attention of Earth’s Mightiest.

So what they wanted me for was . . . a bit messy. Basically, the Avengers had a huge internal divide over something too complicated to get into here, and Cap and Falcon wanted some fresh (and highly size-adaptable) muscle on their side. Especially when all of this culminated in a huge Avengers-vs.-Avengers fracas at an airport in Germany. Germany! I’d just spent three years in a tiny cell. Now I was suddenly “doing Europe”?

I don’t want to get into the details of the conflict (and in fact I am under legal obligation not to), but let’s just

say I might have been on the more “badass” side of it.

In the end, that whole fight got resolved, as I think you know. Otherwise our planet would be a scorched battlefield of never-ending intra-Avengers smackdowns.

So . . . peace on Earth now?

Nope. That’s when—thanks to Thanos—half of all life in the universe disappeared. So no, no peace on Earth or anywhere else.

I wasn’t around for those five years of missing people (you’ll find out why soon), but I came back just in time, jumped to a different timeline, fought, like, every bad guy in the universe on a field in upstate New York, helped the Avengers stop Thanos, and put all the people back where they belonged. Including, last but not least, putting my precious Hope back together with me!

As you might imagine, that was . . . a lot.

So in the time since, I’ve been trying to take things a bit easier. Nursing wounds. Reconnecting with those I’ve missed. Reflecting on what it all means.

Oh yes, and of course, writing this book!

And if you want to really get to know who Scott Lang is, reading this book is where I’d recommend you start.

So at this point, I bet you also have a very serious question—one which I’ve asked myself over a thousand times a day while writing this:

Why on Earth is Scott Lang the first Super Hero writ­ing a book?

I mean, just between us, I’m proud to be an Avenger, but sometimes I also feel like a “latecomer.” Sure, I came through in the ultimate clutch, but in baseball terms, I’m not a starter—I’m a DH (designated hero).

Here’s how I see it: I’m the “everyman Avenger.” I’m the one you could grab a beer with, the one you’d feel okay asking to look after your dog when you’re away or for a drive to the airport. I’m not a Super Soldier or a billionaire (unless this book is super-successful), just a regular dad, a San Francisco Giants fan, and a guy who’s made mistakes I’m still trying to rectify.

In a word, I’m an ordinary guy who’s been thrust—more than once—into extraordinary circumstances.

And I know that still doesn’t completely answer the question of why I wrote this book.

The simple answer is, “The Avengers asked me to.”

One day, Bruce “the Hulk” Banner and Clint “Hawkeye” Barton took me out for lunch. They said they were con­cerned that the world didn’t really know what had hap­pened with Thanos and the Blip and our long struggle to finally put things right again.

At first, as I usually do when confronted with heavy topics, I made a joke: “I’m pretty sure at least half the world knows what happened.”

Bruce responded that yes, of course, billions had experienced these jarring and mind-bending events, but they didn’t know the full story behind them. And ultimately, that’s what people need the most to get through and get past traumatic events: a narrative that helps it all make sense.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Solid plan. So who are you going to get to tell that story?”

Clint answered, “You, Scott. You’re the guy who got scooped up in all this pretty recently. You’ve still got one foot in their world. And you’re a guy everyone likes . . . and trusts.”

And Bruce sealed the deal: “It’s tough stuff, and no one knows how to keep it light like you.”

Well. I still had tons of doubts. I was hardly an eye­witness to almost all that history. I hadn’t been around for the Battle of Wakanda, or any of the events that led to Thanos gathering the various Infinity Stones.

But pretty much immediately, I knew what my answer would be. As far as I’m concerned, when the Avengers ask you do to a job—any job—you say yes. So I did. Two quick handshakes (Bruce—now permanently in his Hulk body—made sure to keep his “not too firm”), and it was settled. They’d supply me all the archival footage and documentation, take me anywhere I needed to go, and let me ask as many questions as I needed.

The only thing is, it wasn’t actually 100 percent set­tled for me—on the inside. From the confidence peak of having two amazing Super Heroes place their trust in you, there was a frighteningly steep plummet into self-doubt. Even with their sensible reasons, the whole affair just stirred up a question that’s been burning inside me most of my adult life:

Why me?

I’ve been asking myself that since before I even met the Avengers. Back when I was working at VistaCorp, why was I the only one who couldn’t sleep at night after learning of all the money they were stealing from cus­tomers? Why did I basically give up my job, give up my marriage, and spend three years in San Quentin, just so I could play Robin Hood?

And finally—and this one still smarts—when VistaCorp’s nasty business became public to the world, why was I the one who ended up going down for it?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. And perhaps I never will.

Not even Doctor Strange can tell me, and believe me, it’s not for my lack of asking. Once the purple dust had settled from the Battle of Earth, I tried bonding with the guy. Let’s just say, he was either unwilling or uninterested in filling me in about any of my 14,000,605 possible pasts.

But here’s what I do know. That VistaCorp/prison experience taught me that our world is broken. And that it’s never going to get fixed unless folks like me—the unlikely ones—step up to the job.

And when Hank Pym plucked me out of the ex-con pool and put me to work as Ant-Man 2.0, I started to see the haziest outlines of a “why” for me. Maybe all those hard years I had just endured were actually preparation for a higher purpose.

Which is a good thing, because right after my first outing as a hero, I was drafted into that aforementioned very scary and sort of confusing business with Avengers fighting other Avengers in Germany, I was sent to an underwater super -SUPER-max prison, and once again, I had to take the fall and spend two more years in deten­tion under house arrest.

Why me again?

Still no perfect lock on the answer, but I was beginning to glimpse one. This is going to sound beyond weird for a guy whose success—and often life—depends on quantum mechanics, but basically, I had a feeling.

Even as I was yanked from one seemingly unthink­able scenario to another, asked to do things I would have never dreamed possible, I began to see that many incredible things were, in fact, possible—and I was doing them. And they started to feel more and more, for lack of a better word, right.

I know this is the kind of feeling my Avengers pals feel mid-mission or mid-battle, and maybe they’ve gotten used to it, but I’m just finally getting there. To the feel­ing that, even when faced with the most terrifying foes imaginable, even with the odds exponentially stacked against you, if you are working side by side with others to serve a greater good, you are in the right place, doing the right thing. For you.

And honestly, that’s the real story behind the entire Avengers saga. It’s the one I thought was most essential to share with all of you. That was the deeper reason I said yes to those two Avengers at the lunch counter. Because I knew that, once again, I was being called to do what seemed impossible (or at least, highly inadvisable)—but instead, I let the feeling take hold, and guide me.

And I realized that I needed to share that feeling with you.

Because at the end of the day, nobody can tell where life is going to yank them, unexpectedly and seemingly beyond their reach. Steve Rogers signed up to fight, imagining he’d only go as far as a scrawny guy can get in wartime. Tony Stark was brilliant and successful, but I know a part of him wondered if he’d ever get out from under his dad’s shadow. Even Doctor Strange in all his professional success could never have imagined becoming a Master of the Mystic Arts—or even that such a thing existed!

And that same unpredictability is just as true for you as it is for me. What would you do if life shrunk you down and tossed you into a bathtub being filled by your former prison buddy? Okay, that one might just be me. But how about when life sends you unexpectedly packing from your gig of three years and straight into a jail cell—because you dared to blow the whistle on your company’s greed?

You don’t ask why. You ask, “Where do I go from here?”

Because that’s the job life has for you, at least right at this moment, and it’s the kind of job you don’t get to quit.

You can run, but you can’t hide—not even if you can shrink yourself down and leap into a bathtub.

Now I know I said before that I don’t, technically, have a super-power. But looked at another way, I actually do. And the even cooler part is, so do all of you.

Having the ability to change my size at will, I’ve seen that the world is full of “big guys” and “little guys.” And unsurprisingly, the former is always stepping on the latter. Sometimes this is by design, but sometimes, just because of their status and drive, the big folks don’t even see the everyday, hard-working folks just trying to get by.

That’s why it’s always the job of people like me—and, as I’m going to show you throughout this book, you—to look out for the little guy. That’s something we all have a super-powered ability to do, if we simply choose to accept the job.

You are in this place and time for a reason, and no one else is. And so—when that next uncertain, unlikely, “impossible” step is revealed to you—I urge you with every particle in my body, Pym or otherwise, to turn that “Why me?” into a “Why not me?”

At least that’s what I tried to do when I promised the Avengers I would tell their story. And the best way I know how to do that is by telling mine at the same time. Because as I’ve learned, whenever I start to talk about something big that happened, I also see the little lessons that can be learned from it, and I want to share that, to help myself and others.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t get the chance to be around my daughter Cassie for so many chunks of her life, to share what I’d learned with her. I’m still working on that, but it’s hard now that she’s a grown-up herself who’s already seen and experienced so much without me to guide her. I missed the boat on that one, but believe me, you are in for an entire book of “Dad wisdom” just burning for a home.

So that’s what I plan to do in this book. I’m going to tell it all, from how I saw it, experienced it, and heard it firsthand from my hero buddies. I’m going to bring you into the hero world.

Along the way, you’ll hear about my story—Scott Lang’s story—from where I started to the (ant-) man I’ve become, and am still becoming. Because I’m so incredibly fascinating? No. Because my life—just like yours—loses half its value if we don’t find a way to share its lessons with others.

And finally, because—if you take nothing else away from my words—what I want to share is that what makes all of us giants is how much we look out for the little guy. How we help out our fellow humans when they need it most. How our greatest super-power can simply be a listening ear, a concerned eye, or an outstretched hand. How we don the “hero’s uniform” by simply showing up and doing the unbelievably unlikely job that life has just handed us.

And speaking of jobs, I’ve got an entire rest of a book to write. Oh, why did I agree to this? WHY ME?

[relax-and-read-on]

I hardly believe television exists in 41st millenium, but what are the prymarchs favorite TV shows? i particurly think Magnus would love CSI and Vulkan would voracioously consume verly sweet soap operas.

Yes yes yes SILLY ASK MOUHAHAHA!!!

I think it wildly vary from planet to planet. Don't they have Holo drama? Didn't Konrad had televisions in everyone's home so they could watch his live flailing???

So, as such!

The primarch and their favorite tv show, 30k pre-heresy style!

Roboute: He watch the very peaceful show about a bunch of guy farming and having Farm Drama somewhere deep in a random segmentum. There's no war and no conflict, but he's DEEPLY invested in knowing who stole Farmer's June prised champion Grox.

Rogal: There is this absolutly factually acurate and very dry tv show that visit the mega structure of the imperium. He watch while nodding approvingly, and occasionally send a message to the local builder about structural flaw he caught on tv.

Corvus: on Kiavahr, there is this weird TV show for kids that is basically a strange 30k rip off of Bill Nye the Science Guy. She love it because it has a weird side character named Mr. Crow Crow, who is a normal human in a shitty foam space marine costume helping to explain how the science help the astartes. It has become a meme in her legions, for when any astarte does something silly.

Leman: actually really like music, and enjoy this surprisingly chill and hyspter show about exploring the sound of the imperium. It's surprisingly deep and relaxing.

Lion: Law And Order: Hives of Terra, running for the 178 season. It is still the exact same structure as our current law and order. Somehow, the "DUN DUN" sound effect survived the age of strife.

Vulkan: oh Nocturne produce the most WHOLESOME love drama between (gasp!) A space marine and a human!! They are on season 13 and they JUST held hands for the first time like, 5 episode ago. In 40k, this show is consider heresy and hunted down by the inquisitions.

Jaghatai: LOVE nature documentary!! And they must be so cool in 30k!!! Giant floating squid around gaz planets, scaly chameleon tigers, carnivorous horses... He does take note of wich planets seem extra cool to visit later.

Ferrus: He REALLY like his weird campy shows. Somehow, some horror franchise have survived to 30k, and he enjoy the 16th Remake of Scream Queen where Ash, Freddy and Michael Myers all show up for a monster brawl. It's extra nonsense.

Sanguinius: "Hi everyone here is Sergent Thunder Megadeath today we are going to KILL. SOME. ORRRRRRKS!!". Watch a horribly MTV style propaganda show where xenos explode like grapes. Eat ice cream directly from the box and is in his pj pants while doing so.

Horus: there is this very mean talk show where the invited people are high ranking member of Terra, and they get into borderline set up debate and more often than not, are humiliated.

Fulgrim: he love creative reality tv, think project runway, inkmaster, Glow up.... He just put it in the background when he's busy tho. The one he does look at more closely is an EC space marine going from chapter to chapter to lovingly engrave space marine armors. He's such a proud dad.

Konrad: actually LOVE children cartoon. The bad guy is punished, the nice people are perfect, everything is good and nothing hurt. He's hunting for the legendary lost media show "My little pony: Frienship is Magic".

Magnus: pretend that he's above such low entertainment as TV, but will gladly watch Perturabo shitty reality tv show. Loose his shit laughing over Ancient Aliens.

Perturabo: He found a vault of og TLC shitty reality tv and hes NOT going back. He has invited Magnus over just so that they could marathon 90 days fiance and scream at the TV. His fav is toddler and tiara tho, Forrix has walked in on him screaming "SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH" at random tv moms multiple time now.

Angron: Galactic equivalent of slow mo guy and those machine press chanel on youtube. It's a big legion party, and they cheers every time something explode.

Lorgar: to everyone surprise... His fav is a baking show. Kinda like the great british bake-off. It's calm and non-stressful and make him forget about all the bad things in the galaxy or his responsability.

Mortarion: very found of Mechanicus romance themed show. They are weirdly charming, and include a tons of cute things like the used of "emoji" and "gifs". Very good humour, once you get over the binary chuckles.

Alpharius Omegon: Animes. Don't ask HOW, but they somehow saved the animes industry. Like their stupid battle shonen.

[dannyphantom-rewrite]

Character reference / Redesign; Plant! Sam:

(Art by; @morning-wolf-designs

Click for higher resolution)

-Alright, first off let's break down that wardrobe update!

-The Dress: Purple Calla Lily. Picked for color and shape as well as the fact that they represent passion, and are notoriously toxic.

-The Cape: Kudzu vine. This plant is invasive in many parts of the world and grows crazy fast- strangling and choking out any other Flora in it's path.

-Belt and Flower crown: A combination of Black Ipomea (sweet potato vine) and morning glories. Sweet potatos symbolize peace and resolve while morning glories are tied to unrequited love or Obssesion.

-Urban jungle plays out a bit differently since I've scrapped Danny's ice powers and may or may not be doing the same for Vlad's Mayoral campaign.

-Undergrowth themselves is also a bit different. While their powers are primarily plant based they happen to be the Ancient Spirit of Flora and Fauna. So they have some influence over animals as well.

-Their appearance is also altered to match this, being built out of animal bones strung together with vines. I fully intend to give them their own character ref but for now I'll let y'all simply speculate as to what that looks like.

-Undergrowth is significantly less "evil" here than their Canon counterpart- and yes they're still absolutely enraged by the destruction of nature, but in inevitably turning Amity into an "Urban Jungle" their goal is a little less about "resetting" the planet and more about getting attention and Recognition, something they don't get from the other Ancients, who are very often disinterested or straight up dismissive of them and their work.

-There are plants and animals native to the ghost zone, but Undergrowth has more of an interest in the Living ones. The other ancients don't see any point to his cultivating human plants when they're just going to die anyway, not understanding that that is part of the beauty of it, the cycle of renewal, the death of one creature allowing the birth of another.

-The episode would start out with Undergrowth, understandably fed up with this, retreating into the human world for a nice long dirt nap. They are very angry and insulted and taking a couple centuries alone in their element is their Version of leaving the room to cool down.

-They bury themselves in the woods somewhere with just their head sticking out and that's that.

-Meanwhile Sam is having a very similar issue. She's used to her parents and other people being indifferent to her activism, but she'd expected more from her best friends. But Danny and Tucker keep Blowing her off to do ghost related things.

-They were supposed to come help with the park cleanup for earth day, but neither showed, just texting her an excuse and an apology. The event had a shit turn out for volunteers and she's already in a foul mood. She storms off into one of the hiking trails.

-she sits down at the base of a tree to catch her breath once she's feeling tired and burnt out, and notices a skull. It looks like it came from a deer- but it's much larger, and toothier. It's the roses vining up the antlers that really catch her attention. Poetic symbiosis, new growth supported on a trellis of bone.

-She digs up the roses at the root and cuts the strange skull loose to take it home, repotting it in her green house.

-Waking up to find yourself decapitated is probably rather shocking. They're annoyed- but they can grow back, given time. And this human that moved them is making sure they get plenty of sunlight and water.

-Sam spends a lot of time in the green house, and Undergrowth watches her. She alone takes care of all these plants. And she cares for them. The plants have names. She talks to them, words of encouragement and praise. Sometimes when she arrives she is sad or angry and she vents to her leafy charges.

-The more Undergrowth learns about Sam, the more he starts to care about her. At times she feels to him like a sapling planted in a bad spot, struggling as she's repeatedly ignored by her peers.

-He especially dislikes his Sapling's parents, because when she rants about them she rages and cries. They are her propagators, they should want nothing more than to see her Thrive and yet they seem to do nothing but stifle her growth.

-And eventually, when Undergrowth has their strength back, to re-grow bone and vine and pull themselves from their pot, and go to their sapling.

-"Do Not Be Afraid, I'm Here To Help You Bloom."

[thebadbatch]

Hii there, sweetheart, can I request reader going around and giving the batchers little rocks with symbols that represent them drawned on it? I just think the thought is sweet. And sorry if I’m requesting too much, I just really like your writing and such

A/N: Aw thank you so much for your request! I love them all, you can request as many as you want! :3 I love this idea! I'm into magic so I was thinking that the reader could have some special force and magic abilities! I really hope you enjoy this! :)

The Bad Batch x ForceSensitive!Reader

Plot: You and the Bad Batch get some much deserved rest on a new planet. You use this as a chance to explore and get some gifts for the boys.

Warnings: None! Very fluffy and fun :3

----------

Runes

Taking a breath inwards, you shut your eyes and allowed the familiar feeling of the force to greet you once again. You had been born force sensitive but no jedi or other force sensitive users had been known in your family, you were the force and you were no Jedi. Order 66 had occurred decades ago and you were yet to bump into a Jedi who would reach you their ways.  You didn't mind though, you had a new family and each of you were unique in your own ways, enhancements or not. This family are known as The Bad Batch and you adore every single one of them just like they adore you.

"Are you still watching me, Tech?" Opening your eyes, you allowed the rocks that were floating around you via the force to fall upon the grassy floor. Tech had sat opposite you, watching intently with his usual serious expression.

"Ah yes, don't mind me." Rolling your eyes lightly he began to type into his datapad quickly before his eyes met your own, "Your abilities are absolutely fascinating y/n." 

"Still? After all of these years?" You replied, dusting off your robes that were coated with dust. He simply nodded, standing with you and showing you the data that he had been so intent on capturing.

"Your skills have been strengthening rapidly without any professional training." You had no idea what the data ment so you just shrugged in return walking toward the others who had set up a small camp.

"I'm just friends with it I suppose." Taking a breath in you smiled, hearing its usual high hum. "I talk to it and it sings this beautiful tune in return!" Tech stopped and rapidly typed in your words into his beloved datapad. Finally reaching the small camp Echo had greeted you with a light hug. 

"Hey kid!" He beaned which made you laugh and wave, a nickname he had used forever but it never grew old. "You alright? Tech annoying you again?" Grinning softly you just shook your head,

"Nah it's okay, he's just like an excited Loth cat." Chuckling at your response he walked toward Wrecker who held two large logs upon his shoulders. Moving your hands gently, you allowed the force to hold them and bring them softly to the floor, Positioning them around the area Hunter had prepared for the fire.

"Thanks, y/n!" Wrecker laughed, messing up your hair as he walked past you with a big smile upon your face. This was your only time to have a break, and this was a perfect plan for you all to be able to let off some steam. Having a break between constant missions and blaster fire did feel strange, but it was the perfect chance for you to finally strengthen your connection with the force and beliefs you held. 

"What now?" You asked, turning toward Hunter who had walked back off the ship that stood before the small campsite all whilst fiddling with his knife.

"Suppose we do whatever we want, it's our break so no more missions for two or so days." His eyes met Crosshair who was quietly tending to his Firepuncher rifle, focused on Cleaning it as per usual. "Try to do what you enjoy and use this time to do something new, unlike Cross over here." You laughed a little before nodding a little, ideas floating around in your mind.

"Well I'm off then! I know exactly what to do." Hunter just laughed and nodded, waring as you wondered where the trees lined the ground.

"Be back by nightfall!" Echo's voice called after you which just brought a smile to your face. 

 Wandering past the trees, Jour fingertips brushed past the rough texture that coated them whilst the wind ran through the deep elven green leaves that clung to the branches. Allowing yourself to walk further, you felt the force pulling you toward the sound of rushing water - a light hum of its song guiding you toward it.  Waking up, you crouched beside the stream which was accompanied by a Strong rush of water - a waterfall Tech said it was called. Dipping your hands into the cool rush, you enjoyed the sounds it made and the calming feeling it gave out. Chuckling you turned behind you, seeing Hunter walking to you.

"I hope you don't mind me joining you? Everybody's doing the usual, I really wanted to do something new." Smiling at his words, you Stood and stepped into the Stream with a shiver rushing up your spine.

"You've come to the right place then!" He laughed at your enthusiasm whilst your hand reached out for his own, "Come on, this is fun!" 

"What are you exactly doing?" He asked, stepping beside you and feeling the same prominent shiver.

"I'm not sure - the force took me here." You paused for a moment, kicking your feet against the water before your eyes fell upon six smaller stones along the stream. "I wanted to make a gift for you all and I have an idea now!" Tilting his head he crouched beside you as you grabbed the stones, stepping out of the river and listening to the force to guide you to the next Step. "Come on!" Pulling him behind you, the sound of the water grew distant as you both arrived at a patch of flowers.

"What are these?" He asked, panting a little at the sudden run.

"These are Ryolahs, you can paint with these." Humming softly he sat beside you as you picked some petals and began crushing them in your hand.

"How did you find out?" Hunter watched you, enjoying Your curious mind. You had never really had the time to have fun or just be curious Or Craft, you were always busy in battle and winning.

"Tech taught me!" Once the flower petals turned into yellow paint against your hand, you used a finger to paint a symbol against one of the stones you took.

"What does that mean?" You couldn't help but laugh at his constant questions, blowing against the paint and passing him the stone once the paint had dried.

"This ones for you! The rune means leadership - a warrior and authority, I think is perfect for you." He held it in his head, fingertips running across the surface. "I'm making them like protection charms for battle, keep it with you okay?" Before you began on the next ones, he pulled you into a hug. 

"Thank you y/n - you're amazing." 

You continued to paint each one with passion, whispering into the force a protection spell for each individual one. Echo had the rune for Protection and peace whilst Wrecker had the rune for Strength and reliability. Techs had the rune for knowledge and inspiration and Crosshair held the one that meant power and courage. Once returning to them all, you had passed them all their gift and explained their meaning one by one. Each member was thrilled, even Crosshair as he pulled you into a hug. Upon your next battle you noticed their individual  runes upon their onmoor in black, the stones  hanging against their armour So it would always be with them.

[acourtofsnakes]

Haalur - Rogue, Chapter 17| The Mandalorian x Force Sensitive! Reader (f)

Summary: Din begins the frantic race for your life, desperate not to lose you. 

Warnings: Swearing, injury, drowning, talks of death, brief mention of suicide, angst, fluff

AN: The good times start from here, folks. I’ve put you all through enough ♥︎

AN: I highly recommend listening to Bruises by Lewis Capaldi for this chapter for the vibes 🖤

Credit to whoever owns the gif 🖤

Word count: 5.5k +

Rogue Taglist:  @snipskixandbeskar​   @weirdowithnobeardo​  @the-bottom-of-the-abyss  @jackgrzs  @sarahjkl82-blog  @boomtownboy @goldielocks2004  @seninjakitey  @what-iwish-you-knew @queenofthefaceless  @rosiefridayrogersunday  @greeneyedblondie44 @itsnottilly  @welcometothepedroverse​

Rogue Masterlist | Introduction| 1: Solus| 2: Arir | 3: Tor | 4: Gaa'tayl | 5: Kyr’am | 6: Cabur | 7: Ret'urcye Mhi | 8: Haran| 9: E’tad | 10: Tome | 11: Aliit ori'shya tal'din| 12: Mar’eyce | 13: Kov’nyn| 14: Ne’tra| 15: Or’dinii| 16: Dar| 17: Haalur| 

Mando’a Translation: Haalur - Breathe

As soon as you were sucked into the water, Din felt a terror so potent that he was sure he had just died. It gripped his heart, pulverising it in his chest and making it hard to think, breathe or even see. 

He was rigid, unable to comprehend what was happening, before Grogu’s repeated warning cry jolted him awake. 

Din hesitated no longer. 

He sprinted across the surface of the lake, going too fast to worry about the huge cracks forming under his feet. 

The stretch to where you had fallen seemed like miles, like you were getting further and further away despite the closing distance. 

By the time he made it, the hole had already begun to freeze back over, and Din frantically smashed at it with the heel of his boot. He couldn’t risk shooting at it, in case he caught you in the firing line. 

With a suitable hole made, he turned on the flashlight on his helmet, sucked in a deep breath, and then dived straight in. 

Immediately, the sub-zero temperature of the water gripped his ribs like a vice, a cold so intense it felt like his bones would snap under the force of it.

Glacial water immediately gushed in under his helmet, choking him with the bitter taste, burning his eyes and rendering him blind for a moment. 

He choked, thrashing around for a moment as he struggled to breathe.

“Calm down.” He snapped at himself, “Stop panicking. Breathe. This isn’t about you.”

 Saving you, that’s all that mattered. 

Din allowed his body to relax, to will his heart to slow down. 

He moved his head around, searching the cloudy, pitch-black depths for any trace of you. 

The weight of your clothes and the force of your drop would have sucked you down quickly, and Din felt the clock begin to tick down, the timer of your life being thrust into his hands. 

He shifted his body around, using the ice above his head to push himself down and begin to swim for you. 

It was just so dark down here, like he’d gone through the ice and emerged up into space, blindly navigating the cloudy abyss whilst searching for the one person he wanted to give everything to. 

Panic and terror fuelled his strokes, the weight of his armour aided him in sinking deeper. 

It might have been hours; it may only have been seconds. 

Din’s lungs burned, and his head throbbed with the pressure of the arctic water. 

Every pound of his heart reminded him that your own may have stopped - 

There!

Sinking slowly to the bottom of the water, looking like you were plucked straight from the stories the elders used to tell him, there you were. 

Eyes closed and lashes brushing your cheekbones… like this, in the dim light from his helmet, you could simply be asleep. 

He nearly sobbed in relief, scrabbling in the water and he tugged you gently to his body, holding you against him and he started to kick toward the surface. 

But it was harder, more of an effort this time.

He was graceful on land, able to move with the ease of a shadow even with the armour but underwater, his beloved protective shell made him cumbersome, the weight combining with your limp body threatening to drag him down. 

He kicked his legs harder, keeping his head focused on the ice above. He was desperate to open his mouth, to suck in air, even though it would only be a mouthful of bitter, icy water. 

Din didn’t have the time to worry about his own rapidly clouding vision. 

Your clock was nearing its end, the thread of your life fraying and unwinding from his own.

Just when he thought he might simply pass out, that the pair of you would sink back down, maybe be devoured by the creatures that he had luckily avoided so far, he saw it. The opening. 

Though it had begun to freeze, it was just visible with the strange light filtering through. He fumbled for his blaster, shielding your head and he shot at the ice, quickly rushing up to the gap it opened. 

He hauled himself up, depositing you gently onto the side of the ice and then he dragged himself over the edge, sodden fingers scrabbling on the ice as he collapsed next to you. 

Din sucked in a few deep breaths for a moment, coughing and spluttering but then he turned his attention back to you. 

He rolled you gently on your back, and his heart constricted at what he saw. 

Your lips were already a purple-blue colour, like a bruise. The water on your skin had already frosted over, giving you the appearance of being encased. Your hair crackled as it froze together in matted knots and you just looked… well, dead. 

He fumbled with his gloves, willing his numb fingers to cooperate and he eventually yanked them off, pressing them against the soft, cold skin of your neck. 

Nothing.

Din blinked a few times. 

That’s not possible… You’re just unconscious, you’re just… you’re not-

He shook his hands out, trying to get the blood flowing in them again, that’s all it was. His hands were too cold. 

He pressed them to your neck again, but… your pulse that usually beat so strongly, so familiarly… it wasn’t there. 

You were dead.

“No, no, no, no, no-“ He burst into a frenzy, ripping your cloak out of the way and he begun to do compressions on your chest, remembering the movement from battles far and wide. When all the tech failed, when the sprays and med-kits didn’t work, this was the last resort. Manually encouraging a heart to begin to beat again. 

But what if it didn’t want to?

No. 

He couldn’t think like that. 

He kept the compressions in time with the counting in his head, pausing every now and then to pinch your nose shut and blow air into your lungs. 

Except the more he did, the more he heard the bubbly sound of the air hitting water. 

Your lungs…you must have somehow swallowed the icy water, which was stopping you from being able to breathe. 

“Okay, okay... lift her up. Get rid of the water.” He whispered the instructions to himself, and then followed them. 

He braced your chest against his arm, leaning you forward so your head was tilted and then he delivered a harsh smack between your shoulder blades. 

The movement jolted your body but did nothing to remove the water. 

So, he tried again, and then again harder. 

He heard it shift, and a small trickle of water just slightly dripped form your lips, so he began a frantic routine of compressions, mouth-to-mouth and then smacking the water from your lungs. 

It might have been hours, or only minutes, but his instinct was telling him what his heart couldn’t bear to acknowledge. 

It wasn’t working. 

He couldn’t lose you. 

He just couldn’t. 

You were everything he needed, every single possible thing. You both slotted together, the cracks and dents in your souls fitting and securing each other. 

This couldn’t be it. 

The relentless hand of the clock was slowing, each tick becoming heavy and tolling, taunting him. 

Din sobbed, gripping you against his chest, rocking from side to side, “You can’t leave me. You can’t do this.” The tears that slid down his cheeks were hot, almost stinging against is frigid skin, “You promised me you wouldn’t leave me. It was supposed to be me, you and the kids remember? A clan of three. Clans don’t just leave each other.” He rested the forehead of his helmet on the top of your head, his chest aching, everything in him just hurting as he held the dead weight of you against his body. 

Grogu’s sniffling sobs, and Duru’s broken yowling provided the only other noise in this barren, frozen land of death. A heartbreaking symphony to the scene unfolding. 

Over and over, Din mumbled to you, “You promised, you promised, you promised-“

How could you do this to him? How could he have let you be ripped out from under him?

He was going to do it. He was going to tell you how he felt when you’d left this planet. 

It was all planned in his head, exactly what he wanted to say. 

He’d even splashed out some extra credits and bought the sweet treats you loved, storing them safely away so they’d stay fresh. 

He didn’t even get to show you his true face…

A frustrated, desperate growl slipped from his clenched jaw, and he braced you over his arm again, delivering one final blow to the middle of your back that he knew would leave a bruise, that even stung his hand. 

Silence. 

Din closed his eyes, feeling his entire being split in two, everything he had built and hoped for shatter in front of him like the ice that had stolen you. 

What was he supposed to do now?

The clock had stopped ticking. 

~~

~~~

You were floating. 

It was quiet here, peaceful. 

There wasn’t a darkness, so much as an absence of light and… things. It wasn’t warm and it wasn’t cold… and there was noise yet… silence, all at the same time. 

You don’t know how long you floated for, just being at peace, but you felt a warm breeze wash over your face, smelling of flowers and something sweet. 

It was a smell from your childhood, one you hadn’t been near in… too long. 

Your mother. 

“Hello, my sweet darling.” 

“Hello, mama… I’ve missed you so much...”

“I know, my dear. We’ve missed you too. We’ve always been watching… So, so proud of you.” 

“Proud of me? Mama, how can you be proud of me? The things I’ve done… the people I’ve hurt... you didn’t raise me to hurt people, mama. You shouldn’t be proud.” 

A new scent suddenly appeared, rich, earthy and a little spicy almost, “We raised you to take care of yourself, starlight. However, you need to. You’ve grown, sweetheart. You’re a warrior.” 

“But papa… I don’t want to keep hurting people. I… I hurt people every day by lying to them. By putting them in danger-” You felt your throat close, tears springing to your eyes even though you were both everything and also nothing in this floating world. 

You felt a phantom caress over the top of your head, the same feeling you used to have when your father brushed back your hair, “My sweet starlight, you do not bring danger to people. You are a joy to them; you help them see the world through a different set of eyes. Through eyes that see wonder and beauty even in the darkest of places.” 

You felt the brush of your mother, stroking her fingers on the back of your cheek, “You have always been such a wonder, darling. You feel everything so intensely. Such happiness that shines from you like sunlight, sadness that drowns you like a wave, anger that burns as fierce as the brightest flame in the darkest night… I know it’s hard sometimes, sweetheart, I know that sometimes you want to give up… But there are people that need you.” 

Your heart ached in your chest, feeling both heavy and light, “But… I can’t help but feel…” 

You might have seen your mother smile in the darkness, her head resting on your father’s shoulder, “You feel that you are a burden… Darling, you’re not. I assure you. People need you in their life… The Mandalorian needs you...” 

That surprised you. “Din… needs me?” 

A gentle, rough chuckle that belonged to your father, “Of course, starlight. He needs you far more than you know. Do not let go of him… The threads of your life are so tightly entwined... you have belonged to each other since the Maker and the stars decided it.” 

“Okay…” 

“It’s time to wake up now, sweetheart…” Your mother’s voice was sweet, fading a little. 

“Can’t I stay here with you and papa? It’s been so long…” 

Your father’s voice faded as well, “I know, starlight… But we’ll see you again. There are other people that need you more now… We love you, starlight..” 

“I love you too, mama, and you too, papa..” 

“Goodbye, my love...” 

~~

~~~

Awareness came rushing back to you with complete and utter sheer intensity. 

The biting cold wind, the ice beneath your limp body.

You could hear frantic sobs, mumbling in a familiar deep baritone, “Haalur, haalur, haalur, haalur. Come on, princess, please… Please. You promised me.” The voice was tight, leashed emotion barely restrained. 

There was a sharp thud on your back, and then another, right between your shoulder blades. 

Something inside your lungs shifted, and then exploded as you erupted into deep coughing, choking up the bitter water. 

That power inside you seemed to me forcing the water up as well, pushing it up out of your chest, aiding in helping you breathe. 

It came pouring out of you, coming out of your mouth and your nose in a vast torrent, choking you and burning like fire despite how cold it was. 

Dimly, you heard a strangled noise of relief, “Oh.” And arm leaning you even further forward, supporting your body and rubbing your back, over the bruise already forming, “Easy, princess…”

Everything hurt. 

But it wasn’t “I’ve just been punched whilst fighting for my life” sort of hurt. 

This was… so much deeper than that. 

This kind of pain lived in every weak thud of your heart. 

The frantic shivering of your body only jolted each broken part, but you couldn’t stop shaking. You were just so cold. 

It ravaged your lungs raw with each gasping breath, but you were unable to slow it down, because you needed the oxygen now that you had emptied half of the lake from your body. 

You needed more. 

There simply wasn’t enough, you were drowning again, sucked under into that deep abyss and trapped beneath the surface, your lungs filling up and freezing – 

“Easy, easy, darling.” A hand rubbed your back, coaxing your airways to open up, “I’ve got you. You’re safe now… Haalur…” 

Of course, it was Din… who else would dive headfirst into a frozen lake to save you. 

You became aware of his arms, one supporting your chest to lean your limp body forward, and the other across your back. His hand continued to rub soothing circles on your back, mumbling, “Haalur…” softly, over and over. You had a feeling he wasn’t just doing it for you, but for himself as well, like he was using the rhythmic motions to hold back some kind of flood of emotion. 

You forced your sluggish brain to focus on the parts of him you could feel, your eyes still a little too blurry and just… so heavy. You were so tired. And so damn cold. 

You tried to speak, to ask him if he was okay, but your aching throat cracked and gave out on the first syllable of his name. A soft whimper escaped your lips, fresh tears rolling down your cheeks and you tapped at his hand. 

Din understood, because he gently eased his arm under your legs, scooping you up into his arms and keeping both sodden capes around you. “I’ve got you, it’s okay.” His voice sounded all funny, all bubbly and full of static, presumably from the water. 

Guilt wracked through your body, and you tilted your head up to look at his helmet. You wanted to touch it, but your arms felt too heavy to move. You swallowed, managing to barely croak, “Y-your helmet…” 

Din shook his head slightly, whistling for Duru and Grogu and he began to carefully and quickly make his way across the lake toward the bank, “Don’t worry about it.” 

Ice sparkled on your lashes as you blinked, dancing across your vision like little sprites lulling you to sleep, “But...” 

Din shook his head harder, helmet focused forward, not looking at you, “Helmets can be fixed. You cannot.” Below the static, his voice was hoarse, from the crying you’d heard before you fully came back to yourself. 

But… there was something else. An underlying note of… anger? 

You decided to keep silent. 

The gentle sway of Din’s body didn’t help the internal struggle you were having not to fall asleep.

With his footsteps as a steady ambience, you allowed yourself to succumb to the darkness, where there was no pain. Only peace and the scent of leather, metal and something woodsy that was distinctly him. 

~~

“Cyar'ika?”

That familiar voice was reaching through the darkness again, pulling you back toward the surface.

“Hey, open your eyes…” 

A gentle tap against your face tugged you upward, and you struggled through the veil for a moment before it all came rushing back in at once. 

The fuzziness cleared and you saw that Din was looking down at you, the planet too dark to allow you to see your refection in his visor. 

His shoulders seemed to slump in relief when he saw you awake, and he looked away quickly. He fiddled with something and then you heard the ramp open, “Keep your eyes open.” There was a trace of command in his voice, enough that it riled you just a little. 

You had just died after all. 

“Why? I’m freezing and I’m tired.” Your voice was still hoarse, but the rest he had dragged you out of seemed to have helped. 

Din walked up the ramp, closing it behind him, “Because I don’t want you dying on me again. That’s why.” His voice was thick, a little ragged. He propped you up on a low crate, leaning your back against the wall of the Crest. He reached into a box, and then removed the two sodden cloaks, and replaced it with a thick, dry blanket. 

Duru jumped up opposite, with Grogu in her mouth and pair watched you with large, worried eyes. 

The warmth surrounded you, making you audibly sigh in relief and it perked you up just a little, despite the shivers that still wracked your body – and the strange atmosphere coming off of Din. You tugged the blanket a little higher, leaning into the wall. 

Little did you know, now that you were… somewhat okay, his fear had turned into absolute seething frustration. Not directly at you, more the situation. 

You watched silently as he rummaged in the med-kit for something, the line of his shoulders taut beneath the frosty armour that was slowly beginning to thaw. 

Din turned to face you, holding a bacta-injection in his hands, “Show me.” He motioned to your side, where Haran had driven his lightsaber through you. 

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled out of your chest, “You’re kidding, right? There is no way you’re coming near me with that.” You would have crossed your arms, if you’d had the energy. But you didn’t, so you settled for raising your eyebrows at him in a disbelieving manner. 

He walked over to you, stopping in front of you. “I need to make sure it isn’t infected. I know it’s already cauterised but who knows what you picked up in that lake. Show me.” His voice was firm, no room for argument. 

You swallowed, watching the frost on his armour melt and roll down the armour in rivulets. “We might need it some other time. It’s expensive… I don’t need it. I’m fine. Truly.” You shivered again, a wave of cold washing over your body as water ran off of your hair and down your back. 

Din sighed, “You’ll face off against a creature four times the size of you, but you won’t face one tiny injection?” That strange, clipped tone was back in his voice and you started to realise he might be mad at you. 

Still avoiding his stare, you nodded once, still watching those water droplets. 

Din muttered something you didn’t hear from the static in the modulator and made as if to turn around. 

You relaxed, closing your eyes but then suddenly, you felt a sharp stinging just under your ribs and then a push of liquid being forced into your body. 

That bastard!

A snarl worked its way up from your chest and your eyes snapped open. “Hey!” You glared at him, eyes spitting fire and a little hurt, “What the hell did you do that for! I said no!” 

Din growled himself, pointing a finger in your direction, “You don’t get to make the decisions tonight. I do.” He threw the empty syringe to the side, and then scooped you back into his arms. 

Struggling slightly, you made a noise of dissent, “So, you’re going to lock me up somewhere now, are you?” 

He practically stomped through the levels of the ship, making his way to the living area, “No.” He walked down the hall and opened the door to the ‘fresher, “I’m warming you up considering you’re still shivering so hard I can hear your teeth grinding.” He swiped the small collection of cleaning supplies off of the ledge, and then set you down inside, leaning you against the wall and the small ledge. 

Okay, so he had a point there.

But that didn’t mean he had to be so… Din about it. 

“I can get myself in here you know.” 

Din turned his attention to the taps, “Mmhm. I’ll believe you when you can take off your tunic.” 

Your cheeks coloured just slightly at that, but ever the stubborn one, you reached down and fumbled with the ties that held the outer tunic together. 

It was just a simple knot holding the lacing together, but your hands were still numb and uncooperative, and you couldn’t gather the strength to grip the string. 

You clenched your jaw, knowing Din was watching you and you absolutely hated it when he was right. 

Almost as much as you hated being this weak and helpless. 

Gloved hands gently pushed yours out of the way, and within seconds, he had freed the laces and tugged the tunic off of your body, leaving you in the long-sleeved undershirt. He threw it out of the shower with a wet thump, “You were saying?” He fiddled with the taps again, and then warm water cascaded down over your body. 

Despite Din’s frustration with you, you sighed in delight. The water probably wasn’t even that warm in reality, but compared to your icy body, it felt like absolute heaven. 

After a few moments, you couldn’t bear the tense silence. 

Peering at Din, you saw that he was leaning against the wall watching you, overly tense and you realised he was trying to hide the fact he was shivering himself. The armour would have been like cubes of ice on his body, trapping the cold in the damp underclothes that clung to his skin. 

You cocked your head, feeling coming back into your body now, “You should be in here too… You must be as cold as I am.” 

He shook his head, “I’ll wait.” 

Stubborn. 

“Din, you and I know both know the hot water won’t last. Stop being a stubborn ass and get in here.” You pointedly closed your eyes, to show you wouldn’t look. 

You heard him hesitate, but a few seconds later, you heard the sounds of metal on the floor as he shed his armour, and then felt his presence as he stepped in with you. 

A soft sigh escaped his lips, and you couldn’t help the smile that just tugged at your lips, “See, I told you.” 

Din snarled again, very quietly, “Shut up.” 

Surprise filtered across your expression, making you raise your eyebrows, “Excuse m-“

“I said, shut up. You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to make jokes after what just happened. Not this time.” There was something behind his words, the sense of that breakdown that he had been holding back on the ice. 

But still, how was this your fault? “Why am I getting the blame? What could I possibly have done wrong? I didn’t ask to be stabbed with a lightsaber, or fucking drown! If you have a problem, go and sort it out with Rena, Haran – whatever the fuck his name is. Not me!”

Din laughed, but it was cold, almost somewhat hysterical, “Oh don’t worry, princess. I plan to.” He moved closer to you, creating a darker shadow across your darkened eyelids. “But I am mad at you. I am… furious with you.” He stopped just in front of you, the slight raggedness of his breathing audible, “I warned you not to call him, or get involved with him. And you didn’t listen to me.”

You opened your mouth in protest but felt his bare finger press against your lips. 

“No.” There was that tone from that night, in the kitchen when it was all command and pent-up emotion. “You talk when I say.” He removed his finger, but stayed close, “You went ahead and called him anyway. I don’t know why, and I’m not going to ask, but how could you not think something would happen? All I knew, was being in this damn shower, and then everything exploded. I felt the Crest go down, I heard you scream. By the time I got my armour back on and got out of here, I didn’t even know which way was up. I couldn’t get to you.” 

His words were slowly getting a little quicker, and it floored you because in the entire time you had known him… this was the most he had ever spoken. 

That was the only reason you bit back your retorts and stayed silent. 

You heard him suck in another breath, “When I woke up, I searched this whole ship, this whole fucking ship three times over. I couldn’t find you, or Grogu, or even Duru. You were all just… gone. I didn’t know if any of you were alive, if you’d been hurt, if you were stuck somewhere, if someone had taken you. 

I went out straight away, and all I could think was… what if I couldn’t get to you in time?” His voice was choked a little, still mixed with frustration and you heard him pace across the tiny area of the refresher. This had really shaken him, allowed him to feel a fear so potent he didn’t think it was possible. 

If you opened your eyes, he would still have his helmet on, but you would see the rapid rise and fall of his armourless chest, see the way he held his body, like he was preparing for battle as all of these emotions and words tore out of him, like he could no longer stop them. 

The water still poured down over the pair of you as all of this emotion cascaded out of him, “When I saw your arrows on the floor and the dead Trooper, I knew you were alive.” He paused for a breath, or maybe to try and stop his outpouring?

Either way, you took the advantage, “How? How could you know I’m alive just from arrows and a dead Stormtrooper?” 

You felt him look at you, his voice softening for a moment and sounding sort of… proud? “Because if you were killed, there would have been a hell of a lot more mess. You wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. It was too clean, so I knew you were hurt. And then… Then I felt it. A pull toward you. I ran, so hard, so fast and when I saw you, trapped on that lake-” He cut off with a soft noise, “My entire world stopped. He had you. He had you there and I couldn’t do anything to stop It without risking you or the kid. And I shouldn’t have hesitated like I did, I shouldn’t have sat there and let him dictate his terms. I should have just killed him as soon as I saw you and none of this would have happened.” 

He was starting to spiral into guilt, you could feel it, and it physically pained you to hear him blame himself, “Din, stop. Please. None of this was your fault, none of it at all.”

“No! It is my fault!” His cry was so different to his usual lower baritone, that for a moment you thought he was someone different. “The only reason you went to him, is because I haven’t made you comfortable enough to trust me. To trust me with… whatever it is you went to him for.”

He carried on too quickly for you to register where he was going with that. “You were kidnapped by him, because of me. He hurt you, and did Maker knows what to you, because I couldn’t protect you. You went into that lake, you nearly died… because of me.” His voice cracked on the word ‘died’ and broke to a whisper at the end. 

It tore straight through you, and you pushed off from the wall, stumbling the few steps to him blindly and you rested your hands up onto his helmet, “Din…”

His hands flew up, grasping your wrists by instinct but then they softened, holding them gently, “Please don’t tell me otherwise.” You could barely hear him over the sound of the water. 

Ignoring him anyway, you forged on, willing him to understand with your words since you couldn’t let him read your eyes, “None of this was because of you. You have made me feel comfortable and safer than I ever have before, in my entire life. I trust you, completely. What happened to me, today, it was my fault. My foolishness, so please, please stop blaming yourself.” 

It was like Din didn’t even hear you, like your words floated in one side of his helmet and dropped out the other, “Do you know what I would have done? If I hadn’t been able to save you on the ice?” 

Tightness gripped your heart, and you shook your head, “Don’t.”

He grasped your wrists a little tighter, “I would have hunted Haran down and killed him and then I would have taken Grogu and Duru to Peli. And given her the Crest, she’d look after it. Or sell it for parts. Either way, it would have been in good hands. And then I would have lain you to rest, somewhere beautiful and peaceful, like you always talked about.” 

You tried to pull your hands away, but he held fast to you, gently, “Din, stop. Please don’t say it, please-“

“And then I would have laid down next you, taken off all my armour and I would have driven a blade into my own heart.” 

A hard flinch ran across your body, and you shook your head fiercely even though the action made your head swim, “Don’t you dare say that again. I don’t even want to think about you doing that, Din. Why would you even do that? Why wouldn’t you just live out the rest of your life in peace? Go to that Sanctuary planet you talked about and be free? Don’t throw away everything you’ve been through because of my own stupidity.” You yanked your arms free, backing up a few steps and stumbling up against the wall again. 

The shadows shifted and you knew Din was following you forward, “Because I would have failed you. I do not deserve to live after it’s my fault you died. Grogu shouldn’t be brought up by someone who can’t save the people he lo – cares about.”

You made a noise of frustration, turning away so your back was to him, opening your eyes and you glared at the wall, tears stinging your eyes, “Just stop!! I don’t deserve that! How can you talk so easily of throwing your life away for someone like me! Just stop, Din – it’s ridiculous.” 

Even though your parents words echoed in your mind, you just… couldn’t believe them. 

Din’s hands rested on your shoulders, “It’s not ridiculous, cyar'ika. It’s the truth.” He said it so simply, so easily and that just made you even more frustrated. 

“No!” You shook your shoulders, ignoring the bolt of paint hat ran through your side, “It’s not the truth. You can’t just leave the kids without a father; you can’t just lay down and die just because I’m not here. I don’t mean that much to you, Din, honestly.  I’m a pain. All I’ve done since I came here is cause you more grief. So, if you say one more time that you’ll die for me, I’ll – I’ll..”

“You’ll what?” 

You swallowed, a tear rolling down your cheek, “I’ll leave.” The words stung, low words that hit below the belt, but Din had to understand. “You have to understand, Din. I am not worth that.”

He remained close but didn’t touch you. His words were in that rumbly baritone again, the one that shot straight through you, “You have to understand, princess, that I can’t stand here and listen to you talk about yourself like that. You are worth everything. All of this, all these people after us, the old and the new, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t care.” 

You groaned, raking your fingers through your knotted hair in frustration, “You’re not listening to me!!” 

Din’s voice rose, equally as riled up again, “No, you’re not listening to me! I’m trying to tell you what I’ve been thinking about for… fuck, for months. And you’re not hearing it, you’re not listening to what I’m saying!! Just like always.” 

Without thinking, you spun round, eyes blazing, and you waved your hands in the air, even if it did make the floor feel like it was swaying, “Then what do you have to say, Din? What are you so desperately trying to tell me? Huh?” 

Din didn’t react to you seeing him in his helmet and black underclothes. It was like he didn’t care. 

His hands were shaking at his sides, curling and uncurling into fists, “I’m trying to say that – that I..”

You rose your eyebrows, “Well? Come on, spit it out if it’s bothering you so much that I won’t understand. The floors all yours, Din. You have something to say-” 

Before you’d even finished speaking, he cut you off, shouting above you and the water, 

“I love you.”

Previous| Next

[pedrosbish]

the king

summary: the new ruler of Mand’alor, Din Djarin, needs to marry in order to be fully accepted as the ruler and you happen to catch his eye (*fem!reader)

warnings: SMUT 18+ (soft, unprotected pinv, creampie, oral (m and f), cockwarming, dirty talk)

word count: 3.2k

taglist: @over300books​​ @mouthymandalorian​​ @ordinarymom1​​ @zapsalis-d​ @goldielocks2004​ @whore-for-anime​ @ilikethoseodds​​ @withasideofmeg​​ @theamuz​, @obsessivelysearching​ @bellreads03​ @parkjammys​ @ajeff855​ @persie33​  @thatonedindjarinfan​  @jedi-jesi​  @pinkninja200​  @boomtownboy​  @chaemaire​  @softly-sad​ @liltangerineart​ @grogusmum​ @em-thechaoticplant

CHAPTER NINE

The palace hallways bustle with enthusiasm, some maids carrying baskets filled to the brim with various traditional foods from Mandalore and your home as well, while other maids decorate the rooms with bright flowers, the sweet smell filling the air. It looked so different to when he had first arrived on the planet and claimed the throne, the light seeping in through the windows making it brighter and filling everyone with hope. 

Din wishes you were here to see the preparation for the ceremony but it wasn't allowed, tradition mandating that neither of you see each other before the vows are said. He wonders if you are nervous, wonders if you had changed your mind in the following days since he had last seen you and you didn't want to marry him anymore. He wonders if you are as excited as him, his love for you consuming his whole being that he knows will only grow when you marry. 

The furs draped around his neck scratch at his skin and he desperately pulls at them, sighing in relief at the brief moment of peace, the sound of his people filing into the throne room travelling through the hallways. A knock sounds at the door and he grants them access, his voice scratchy with nerves and he clears his throat as Paz enters, bowing his head. 

“I have an update on the Bo-Katan situation, my king.” Paz starts and Din feels the nerves, first starting at his toes and moving up through his body. “My contact on Werda says she is there, restocking, and her plan is to come here. She also has a message for you.” 

He watches silently as Paz reveals a small holoprojector from behind his back and when he clicks a button, the holographic image of Bo-Katan Kryze appears, holding her helmet by her side and her lips set in a thin line. Din’s ears ring, a sharp noise that covers most of what she says but he manages to catch the few odd words of how she plans to come to Mandalore to take the throne back, her lip flitting upwards slightly when she tells of how the right ruler to the throne is coming. 

He doesn't say anything as the image fades and Paz places the holoprojector back in his pocket, his visor directly aimed at him, and he feels like he can't breathe, his lungs failing him as he tries and tries to breathe in. Turning his back, his gloved fingers rub against each other, the leather material creaking softly and the sound grounds him, his eyes closing as he tries to focus on trying to breathing again. In. Out. In. Out. 

“The ceremony is ready to commence, my king.” 

A maid slowly peeks her head through the door and instantly shrinks in on herself as Paz makes a sound deep in his chest, almost a growl, before grabbing her by the elbow and leading her out into the hallway. Din barely hears his warning, the ringing sound in his ears slowly but surely fading until the bustle of the people becomes clearer. 

Paz comes back into the room, a sigh escaping him as he bows his head at Din. “I apologise for her, my king. I told them to not disturb us.” His visor studies him silently, scanning him and Din wonders if he could see how worried he is about Bo-Katan but he doesn't say anything if he does. “Everyone is ready for the ceremony to begin if you are.”

The walk to the throne room is silent, Paz following behind Din as he steps in and surveys the throne room. Mandalorians are cramped in tightly together, and he feels a swell of brief pride at the sight of so many of his people present at his wedding, their helmets glinting as the sunlight filters in through the open windows. Flowers line the floor, their petals swaying with the warm wind, leading up to the thrones and he slowly walks, tilting his head at his people as they bow theirs. 

As soon as he stands on the steps, they all turn their heads to watch as the doors open, revealing you standing there with a wide smile directed at him. He feels the air escape his lungs, this time good, at the sight of you and he watches with bated breath as you walk past the Mandalorians, each bowing their heads as you smile at them. 

You take his hands as you stand before him, a shy but bright smile on your face as you look into his visor. The vow falls easily out of his lips, slow to make sure you hear the proper pronunciation before you repeat them with such conviction that his eyes tear up. When finished, he gently places his helmet to your forehead and when you smile at him, he can't help but smile back at you underneath the helmet. He gives a gentle squeeze to your hands, his head tilting to glance at his people out of the corner of his eyes, and you follow, cheeks heating as they cheer loudly. 

He wishes that he could have kissed you in that moment. But for now, he clasps a Mythosaur necklace around your neck, this one similar to the one he gave Grogu.  

A lot of them congratulate you as the two of you pass, Din’s hand squeezing yours occasionally when he sees the nerves playing out across your face at the attention and the need to fit into the role of queen. 

It’s late when the two of you finally have a moment of peace to yourself in the comfort of your own home, Din insisting that you both have a bit of privacy for a while. The area is quiet apart from the occasional murmur of insects from the outside or the faint buzzing coming from the lights on the wall and he knows it should make him feel relieved to be alone with you but he can't help but feel tense. 

You notice of course. Studying him was the only way of seeing how he was truly feeling and having spent so many moments alone with him, you know that he's tense, can see it in the way his visor is tilted away from your direction, the way his shoulders tense whenever you make a noise while moving around the small kitchen as you prepare a meal. The smell wafting from it makes your stomach growl as you set a plate of it in front of him, offering a gentle smile before picking up your own. 

“Just let me know when you're finished.” He glances up at you, the first time he's looked at you since you had gotten back from the ceremony. “Enjoy your meal.”

“Cyar’ika,” he says and you stop, turning around to look at him as he lets out a small sigh. “Please sit with me.”

“But,” you start and at a loss of words, you sit down in front of him. You notice the way he fiddles with his gloves under the table, before slipping them off and placing them on the table. “What about your Creed?” 

“Riduurs are allowed to show their faces to each other.” He points to the necklace settled on your chest and watches as you delicately lift it to look at it. “You are now a part of my clan.”

Nodding your head slowly, you watch as his shoulders tense tighter than before as his shaking hands reach up to his helmet, the small hiss it gives seems to emanate around the room. 

You smile, encouraging him when he hesitates and with a shaky breath, he steadily lifts it up, revealing a chin covered in stubble then the lips that you had kissed multiple times, then a crooked nose that made you want to trace it with your finger, then a pair of deep brown eyes, ones that you had always imagined looking at you without the helmet until his hair, something that you had accidentally saw once and had instantly wanted to card your fingers through, is the last thing to be revealed. 

He places it down on the table beside him, his eyes averted from your gaze until you reach across the table to put your hand on his own, the curled fist instantly relaxing at your touch and you smile at that. His eyes finally lift up to meet yours, his lips curling into an awkward smile when he sees the glazed over look in your eyes as you stare at him. 

Clearing your throat, you let go of his hand and turn to your meal, not missing the way his fingers lay flat on the table as if trying to chase the feeling of the warmth of your hand. He pauses before picking up the spoon and digging into the food, occasionally looking at you. You know that it must be strange eating in front of someone, can see it in the way he second guesses how to hold the spoon, how he looks at you before putting the food in his mouth and chewing, so you try not to look at him too much, just the occasional glance to satisfy your own curiosity. 

It isn't until the two of you are finished, Din quietly thanking you for the meal before you decide to speak up. “What did our vows mean?”

“Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde.” He says it so softly to you that you can't stop the smile that spreads across your face. Pausing, he leans forward and rubs his hands down his thighs, licking his lips and avoiding your gaze. “We are one when together, we are one when parted, we will share all, we will raise warriors."

“That’s beautiful.” 

He smiles at that, looking up at you and nodding his head. His eyes widen when you get up, coming around the table to stand next to him and when he tilts his face to look up at you, your hand is placed on his cheek. Lips parted, his eyes flutter shut at the warmth of it on his face, a part of his deep inside rejoicing at the comfort that floods through him.

When you bend your head down to place a gentle kiss to his lips, his hands fall to your hips, fingers digging into the skin through your trousers and pulling you closer until in-between his open legs. Your free hand comes up to card through his hair, tugging gently, and forcing a deep groan to reverberate through his chest. A surprised gasp escapes you when he suddenly stands, pulling you into his chest and he takes the opportunity to kiss you more deeply. 

He slowly backs you up until the two of you stand just before your bed tucked into the corner, hands trailing beyond your hips and reaching your tunic, slowly lifting it up. You help by lifting your arms, the top falling to the ground beside your feet and you copy him, hands reaching out to him to take off the furs that sit around his neck. 

It feels more intense, being able to see him watching you and you blush under his strong gaze. He can tell you're nervous so he gently takes ahold of your hand and brings it up to his lips, placing a comforting kiss to your knuckles and thumb softly stroking the skin, taking the opportunity to pull you closer into him. You smile at him, a silent thank you, and he lets go of your hand, bending his head down to take a nipple into his mouth. 

He smiles around the bud at the gasp that leaves you, mouth sucking it further into his mouth as his eyes moving up to your face. Gently letting go it go with a pop, he stands to his full height and as he takes a step towards you, you take one back. 

“Lie down, riduur.” His voice is gruff and you swallow thickly at the way it sends a shiver down your neck. You lie down, body heating up as he watches you. “Want to taste you again. Will you let me?”

He doesn't need to convince you. As soon as you nod your head, he quickly takes his trousers and underwear off, chucking them to the side and your mouth parts when you see the glistening tip of his cock. He lies down between your legs, forcing them apart with his shoulders, and bends his head down, fingers coming up to press your clit through your trousers. 

“Can feel you.” You watch as he presses a light kiss to your mound and you jolt your hips upwards making him chuckle. “Eager, aren't you my riduur?”

“Yes, Din.” You sigh out in relief as his fingers move to tug down your trousers. “Want your tongue.”

He makes a sound at the eagerness in your tone, tugging your trousers and underwear off until you're fully exposed to his intense gaze. You watch with bated breath as he lays down on his stomach, tongue coming out to flatten against your folds, hips pressing down into the mattress at the taste. Your hips jolt when his lips encase around your clit, teeth nipping softly and his arm comes down around your hips to hold you down. 

Head falling back against the pillows, a whine leaves your lips when he lifts his head away, his hand grabbing yours. “I want you to look at me, cyar’ika. Can you do that for me?”

When you nod, he immediately returns to sucking your clit into his mouth before flattening his tongue. You open your eyes and lift your head to stare down at him, only to find his eyes already on you. You can't stop the lewd sounds that escape you, hand squeezing his when he flicks his tongue up to meet your clit. The feeling of him and the way he stares up at you, brown eyes boring into your own, is all too much and you come apart, a deep groan leaving him as the taste of you floods his mouth. He reluctantly stops when you whine, moving up your body to kiss you softly. 

“My turn.” 

The smile on your face is wicked at the look on his face, mouth parted and eyes wide when you flip him over and slowly move down him. You stop at his chest, fingers trailing over the many tattoos so delicately that he smiles in that moment, widening when you lean down to press a kiss to the one of the Mythosaur before continuing your path. His cock twitches at the feeling of your hot breath on it and when you look up at him, he swears lowly under his breath. 

Your smile turns sweet at the way his breath hitches when you hold him in your hand, the heat pooling in his stomach molten as you bend your head down to take the tip of his cock into your mouth. Tongue swirling around it, he gasps, and his hand reaches down to tug at your hair when you bob your head up and down, your hand doing the same for what you can't fit into your mouth. 

He doesn't mean for his hips to thrust upwards into your mouth, the warmth of it making his brain fuzzy, but when you make a choking sound as his cock hits the back of your throat, a part of him lights up. 

“Is-is my cock too big for you to take, riduur?” He doesn't expect an answer but is pleasantly surprised when you hum around him, the vibration making his hips jolt further into your mouth. 

He feels the tightening of his balls as your hand and mouth continue to work him, your eyes coming up to meet his and he has to place a hand on your head to push you away before he comes. He wants to but as you sit up and smile at him, his eyes travel down to your pussy, the need to come in you overpowering. He sits up and reaches his hands out to you, lifting you slightly and you sit on his lap, squirming at the feeling of his cock pressing into your lower stomach.  

Sitting up a bit farther, you reach down and take your cock in his hand, squeezing lightly before slowly lowering yourself down onto him. The two of you gasp in unison as you fully sit down and Din glances down to where you're connected, a part of him lighting aflame at the sight of your pussy fit snug around his cock. He shallowly thrusts up into you, a gasp leaving your lips at the movement and the way you jar upwards. 

“I love you,” he whispers against your skin, his eyes closing when you lift your hand to his cheek. 

“I love you too.”

Wrapping an arm around you, he gently lifts his hand to tuck your hair behind your ear before thrusting deep into you again, making sure to hit the spongy part inside of you that has your eyes rolling into the back of your head. His pace is slow, driving his hips into yours after a beat but it’s still oh so brutal, slowly making you fall apart in the most delicious way possible. 

The way your pussy clenches around his cock has his breath hitching and he rests his head on your chest, warm breath brushing against your stomach. He whispers words of praise, often switching between Basic and Mando’a but the message is still the same and you shiver in delight, carding your fingers through his hair. 

“Please, Din.”

You don't really know what you're asking for, the room feels too hot, the feeling too much and when he looks up at you, deep brown eyes staring into your own, you fall apart. He groans at the way your walls hug him, at the way you go slack in his arms, eyebrows scrunched together, eyes shut tightly and mouth parted. He thrusts once, twice, thrice before coming inside of you, seed spurting deep into your walls. 

He can't help but glance down at where your pussy hugs his cock, a primal side of him pleased at the way his some of his cum escapes and trickles down your legs. As soon as you catch your breath, you bend your head to place a kiss to his lips, smiling softly at him. You squeal in surprise when he lays the two of you down, cock still inside of you.  

“Din,” you begin and pause as he looks down at you, your head tucked in the crook of his arm. “I need to clean up.”

“Just a little longer, riduur.” 

You nod your head, the nurse’s words still ringing in your ears and you smile, laying your head back down while your fingers traces over the tattoos on his chest and arm. He quietly watches you, fingers softly combing through your hair and as your eyes start to flutter shut, he lets his own do the same, allowing sleep to wash over him.

[lumosandnoxwriting]

Maple Syrup Kisses - Harry Potter

Title: Maple Syrup Kisses Pairing: Harry x Fem!Reader Warnings: NSFW!! Dirty talk, male receiving oral, fingering and unprotected sex Summary: Y/N just wants Harry to feel special on his birthday! A/N: For the anon who wanted Harry and the reader feeding each other strawberries with it ending in some smut!! Feedback is always welcome and requests are open!!

----------------------------------------------------------------

Y/N moves as quietly as she can as she pushes the bedroom door open with her hip, as to not wake Harry. Not only is today his birthday, but it’s the first day in weeks that he doesn’t need to be up and out of the house early, and Y/N wants him to sleep in for as long as possible. She’s already been up for hours, wrapping a few more presents and making him some of his favorite breakfast foods for him to enjoy in bed.

She heads into their room quietly, placing the tray full of food in her hands on their dresser. It’s well after 10 am, and although she’s sure Harry could sleep for a few more hours, she’s ready for their day to begin. Y/N slowly crawls up their bed, admiring how peaceful Harry looks when he’s asleep. She settles on her side next to Harry and starts to press light kisses all over his face.

“Harry, love,” she coos, gently rubbing his arm. “It’s time to wake up.”

Harry starts to stir in his sleep, his eyes fluttering open slowly. “Y/N?” he asks. He turns slightly so he can look at Y/N, and a sleepy smile appears on his face. “Mornin’ love. What time is it?”

“Nearly 11,” Y/N murmurs, kissing Harry briefly. “Happy birthday, love.”

Harry grins, stretching out his limbs as he starts to wake up more. “My birthday and a lie in? Best day ever,” he says. Harry grabs Y/N’s chin and presses their lips together in a slow kiss. “What a wonderful way to be woken up. Thank you.”

Y/N chuckles and kisses Harry again, just letting their soft lips move together for a few moments. “You’re welcome, Harry. But let me make it even better.” Y/N sits up and motions for Harry to do the same. Once he’s settles back against the pillows Y/N grabs her wand off of their night table, and casts a charm so the tray full of food starts to float over towards them.

“Breakfast in bed?” Harry asks happily. “This day just keeps getting better and better.” Harry settles the tray onto his lap, giving Y/N a look when she laughs at him. “What? It’s nice to enjoy the simple things in life.”

Y/N shakes her head and presses a kiss to Harry’s cheek. “That’s one of the things I love most about you, Harry.”

“What’s that, love?” Harry asks as he drowns his pancakes in syrup.

“You’re Harry Potter,” she teases. “You have the entire world at your fingertips. You could ask for anything and have it an instant. And how do you choose to use that power? Sleeping in and having breakfast in bed.”

“Who needs the entire world at their disposal when they’ve got you?” Harry compliments after swallowing his first bite. “You made these the muggle way, didn’t you?” When Y/N nods Harry groans in appreciation. “You have truly outdone yourself, Y/N. These are amazing.” He leans over and presses a sticky, maple flavored kiss to Y/N’s lips. “Thank you.”

“Anything for you, Harry.” Y/N sits back, and watches Harry eat, her hand coming up to run through his messy hair. It rarely looks tame when he tries to do something with it, and Y/N loves how it looks in the morning. It always sticks in 100 different directions, and it’s silky which makes it the perfect texture for her hands to run through.

“So, what have you got planned for the rest of the day?” Harry asks as he takes a sip of orange juice.

Y/N grins at him. “Sleeping in and breakfast in bed isn’t enough for you?” she teases.

Harry rolls his eyes playfully. “Just sitting here next to you is enough for me. You know that.” Harry takes another bite and chews slowly before swallowing. “But I know you, and you go above and beyond for even the simplest things so there’s no way this isn’t the start to an amazing day.”

“You know me too well, Harry,” Y/N laughs. “We’ve got a late lunch booked in at your favorite restaurant with Andromeda and Teddy,” Y/N starts, giggling when Harry beams brightly. “And then dinner tonight at The Burrow with all of the Weasleys, an amazing cake made by Molly herself and loads and loads of presents.”

“You’re the most wonderful human being on the planet, you know that?” Harry compliments, pulling Y/N in for another maple syrup kiss. “You’ve managed to plan the perfect day for me. It’s like you crawled inside of my brain or something.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Y/N insists, her cheeks tinted pink from Harry’s praise.

Harry is always doing little things to make Y/N feel special. Whether it’s surprising her with dinner at her favorite restaurant or bringing her home flowers. He’s even been known to send her an owl during the middle of the day just to let her know he’s thinking about her. Harry’s birthday is the only day of the year he lets people spoil him, and Y/N is sure to take full advantage of that so she can make him feel just as special as he always makes her feel.

“Here, love. Try a strawberry,” Y/N says to avoid getting any more praise from Harry. She loves his sweet words, but today is supposed to be about him. She picks a strawberry out of the bowl by its’ bright green leaves and slowly brings it up to Harry’s mouth. Y/N watches in awe as Harrys lips wrap around it, and she strangely starts to feel a little turned on.

“Mmm,” Harry moans as he takes a bite. “Those are really good.” He grabs his own strawberry out of the bowl and brings it up to Y/N’s mouth. “Try one, love.”

Y/N takes a bite of the strawberry Harry offers her as he takes another bite of the one in her hand. They both make noises of appreciation in the back of their throats, and the sound goes right to Y/N’s core. As Harry takes the final bite of the fruit is mouth just barely grazes Y/N’s fingers, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from moaning.

They sit there in silence just feeding each other for a few minutes, both Harry and Y/N starting to get more turned on as they go. Each time they reach the end of the fruit they let their lips brush the other’s fingers. One-time Y/N even goes as far as to suck Harry’s fingers for a moment, smirking when he lets out a quiet moan.

As Y/N takes the last bite some of the juice drips down her chin. Harry reaches out and wipes it away with his thumb, and before he can do anything else Y/N has wrapped her lips around the digit and is sucking it clean. When Y/N releases his thumb Harry lurches forward and presses their lips together hotly, too turned on to continue teasing. Y/N moans into Harry’s mouth and fumbles for her wand. As so as her hand grips it she waves it, casting a silent spell that makes the tray float back onto their dresser. She throws her wand off the bed and grabs Harry’s shoulders, pulling him on top of her.

“Y/N,” Harry moans as she starts to bite and suck at his neck. “Let me show you how much I appreciate you.” His hand starts to trail down her body to the waist band of her shorts. But before his hand can dip underneath the band, Y/N is shaking her head and flipping them over so she’s now hovering over Harry.

“It’s your birthday, love,” she starts, trailing kisses down Harry’s neck and bare chest. “Let me make you feel good.”

Y/N moves down Harry’s torso, occasionally stopping to bite at his skin and suck marks into his pale flesh. When she reaches his crotch Y/N presses hot, open mouthed kisses to his cloth covered cock, letting her hand slowly palm at him.

“If you insist,” Harry groans, letting his head tip back. He threads a hand in Y/N’s hair, lifting his hips up to aid her in taking his boxers off. “You spoil me too much, love,” he says as he looks back down at her.

Y/N wraps her hand around Harry’s cock, starting to stroke him as he moans for her. “Don’t get too used to it,” she jokes, letting her warm breath ghost over his length. She smiles as he twitches in her hand, and she presses a slow kiss to the swollen tip. Y/N makes eye contact with Harry as she sucks the tip between her lips, moaning around him as he lets out his own noise of pleasure.

“Oh,” Harry gasps as Y/N starts to take him down further, his grip on her hair tightening. “Feel so good wrapped around me, love,” Harry compliments. “You always know how to make me feel good.”

Y/N blushes at Harry’s words, and brings a hand up to stroke the part of his cock she can’t quite fit into her mouth. She starts to bob her head up and down slowly, letting her tongue rub up against the underside of his cock. As Harry starts to pant and groan above her Y/N increases her speed with ever stroke, her hand twisting at the base of his cock. She hums as her mouth reaches the tip, pausing for a moment so her tongue can lap at the precum gathering there.

“Fuck, Y/N,” Harry moans, his hips involuntarily bucking up slightly. “Doing so good, Angel,” he praises.

Spurred on by Harry’s encouragement, Y/N bobs her head eagerly, taking as much of Harry down her throat as possible. As her nose brushes the area of skin just above Harry’s cock the tip jabs the back of her throat and she gags as Harry moans loudly.

“Gonna cum in your pretty little mouth if you keep doing that,” Harry warns as Y/N gags around him once again.

Not wanting him to finish just yet, Y/N slowly pulls off of Harry with a wink. He whines at the loss, and she lets her hand slowly stroke him. “As much as I love the taste of you, Harry,” she starts, wiping away the spit on her chin with her free hand. “I’d much rather have you finish somewhere else.”

Harry chuckles and brings Y/N in for a brief kiss as he flips them over. Harry kisses her again slower as he gets rids of all of Y/N’s clothes, letting his hands run over every inch of skin he reveals. He settles in between her spread legs, and trails kisses down her neck as his hand starts to trail up her thigh.

“Oh, Harry,” Y/N moans as his fingers start to rub her wet folds.

“Look how wet you are, Angel,” Harry teases as he sinks a finger into her entrance. He’s rewarded with a beautiful moan when he curls it, and he immediately brings another in alongside it. “You’re already so turned on just from having my cock in your mouth.”

Y/N shivers as Harry’s thumb starts to rub slow circles on her clit, her hips moving to meet his thrusts. “Harry please,” she begs. “Wanna feel you inside me.”

Harry smirks as Y/N squirms underneath him. “Thought today was all about me and what I want to do?” he teases, curling his fingers again. “Maybe I just wanna use my fingers.”

Y/N’s fingers dig into Harry’s shoulder and she whines as he slows his movements down. “Need you in me Harry, please,” Y/N pleads, her walls clenching and twitching around his digits.

“Since you asked so nicely, Angel.” Harry fingers Y/N for another few moments, relishing in her moans and whines. He curls his fingers one last time before removing them from Y/N’s heat, and he grips a thigh in each hand. “Ready for me?”

Y/N nods wildly, “God Harry, yes. So ready for you.” They both moan lowly as Harry enters Y/N, his hips pushing into her until his cock is fully buried inside of her. “Oh fuck,” Y/N gasps, her toes curling. “Fill me up so good, Harry. Always stretch me out. Feels so good.”

“Y/N,” Harry groans, starting to slowly pulls his hips back and fuck into her. “Always so tight for me, Angel. Feel so good around me.” Harry starts to fuck Y/N at a moderate pace, and he throws one of her legs over his shoulder so he can fuck into her deeper.

“Right there,” Y/N moans as the tip of his cock brushes her g-spot. “Right there Harry don’t stop.”

Harry starts to rub Y/N’s clit, wanting her to finish before him. “Come on, Angel. Show me how good my cock makes you feel.”

Y/N back arches and her eyes flutter shut as Harry starts to rub her clit harder. “So close, Harry, fuck,” Y/N moans. Her hips move up to meet Harry with every thrust and she can feel her walls clenching and fluttering around Harry’s cock. “Oh fuck, I’m gonna-“ Y/N’s warning falls from her lips as her orgasm hits, Harry’s name falling from her lips instead.

“So good for me, Angel,” Harry praises as Y/N comes down from her high, his hips still relentlessly moving into her. Her walls are like a vice grip around him, and when Y/N drags her nails down Harry’s back his hips stutter, and he’s spilling into Y/N with a shout of her name. Harry continues moving inside Y/N as they come down, and once his cock has stopped twitching he slowly pulls out and falls onto the bed next to her.

Y/N runs a hand through her sweaty hair, letting Harry pull her into his side. “How did you like your present?” she says playfully, pressing a few kisses to his jaw.

“It was absolutely brilliant, love.” Harry grabs Y/N’s chin so he can press a chaste kiss to her lips. “And I’m very happy that you decided to give it to me know instead of in front of all the Weasley’s tonight after dinner,” he jokes.

Y/N laughs and kisses Harry deeply. “I’m sure they all would have enjoyed that,” she teases with a wink. Y/N looks at the clock on their bedside table, groaning at how late it is. “We better hop in the shower, love. Or we’ll be late for lunch.”

“Ugh, do we have to?” Harry whines, pulling Y/N on top of him. She giggles as Harry tickles her sides, and he presses their mouths together to muffle the sound. “I could just lay in bed here with you forever.”

“Me too,” Y/N agrees, pressing a kiss to Harry’s cheek. “But I spent a lot of time and effort planning this day for you and I’m not going to let you miss any of it.” Y/N places one more kiss to Harry’s lips before she crawls out of bed and starts to head towards the bathroom. “And I may or may not have a few more, private presents for us to use tonight after dinner.”

Harry immediately perks up at that, and he jumps out of bed. “Race you to the shower!” he shouts, laughing as Y/N chases after him.

[cal-kestis]

You Will Never Be Alone Again | Din Djarin x Fem!Reader

(Epilogue of The Aftermath of Losing Everything)

moodboard/sketch/gifs made by me, please don’t repost :)

Summary: Each morning, he’s there, holding you with his smiling lips pressed against your neck and his heart beating against your chest.  (Set after S2) Rating: M   Word Count: 3018 Warnings/Tags: Soft!Din, FLUFF, no use of ‘Y/N’, suggestive content

[PART I] // [PART II] // [PART III] // [Read on AO3] // [Series Masterlist]

xi. 

It’s strange not waking up by yourself, strange to feel blanketed in a kind of warmth and comfort, not even the early morning suns could radiate.

Sometimes, you think this must be some wild fantasy, a sweet sublime dream that could evaporate into smoke if you dare open your eyes.

But each morning, he’s there, holding you with his smiling lips pressed against your neck and his heart beating against your chest. It’s no secret you love him, it’s written all across your face even with a peripheral glance. Falling for him happened fast and a long, long time ago. Yet in these quiet moments when you’re in the place between wakefulness and sleep, you think you’re still cascading over the crest — falling for the tiniest pieces of him that others would need a magnifying glass to see.

Like those delicate wrinkles that frame the corners of his brown eyes when he looks at you, the way they deepen as he smiles. It’s hard to describe how beautiful those lines are… what they mean. Wrinkles don’t develop overnight. No, he’s smiled enough times for those creases to permanently etch themselves into his skin. It makes your heart soar knowing that, despite all he’s been through, he’d allowed himself those sparse moments of happiness. You’ve hopelessly fallen in love with the lines beside his eyes, evidence that a bright side can exist even in the darkest of hours. 

And still, perhaps something you love even more is the way he kisses you until you forget every night you’d ever lay awake feeling alone in the universe.

It’s all so strange in the best, most beautiful way.

Din has given you so much and you only hope he can see your heart, the words carved on it — poems about him, his eyes, the charming lines that tug at the corners. You hope he can see how you’ve kept every word he’s every whispered against your skin, how you’ve inscribed them onto your beating soul: secrets and promises only the two of you will ever get to know, your own name scribbled by his lips a thousand times. You’ll treasure the invisible markings forever. Your heart’s covered in him and you just hope he can see.

With Din, life seems more meaningful, peaceful, beautiful… full. And though frightening shadows still lurk, you know you don’t have to face them alone.

Of course, there are times you worry, moments when he still seems trapped in his head, sinking into deep waters with that silver ball clutched in his hand. But he has you now, his liferaft, one with patched up holes and dents that will always come to pull him back up to the surface.

On those nights when he gets lost in the treacherous tsunami of his mind, you try to give back to him everything he’s so generously offered you. And even as you draw rasped sighs and choked cries and broken moans from his lips, your fingers painting patterns across his body… you know what heals him most are the moments after: the way your breath slows down to match his, how your lips press so gently over his eyelids until they close and project dreams of you as he sleeps.

Meant for me, he’d once said. Or maybe, meant for you.

—

xii.

In the sacred moments you and Din have to yourselves — no quarry to chase, no demons to face — you find yourselves on beautiful secluded planets like this one, surrounded by towering trees and lush rolling hills and long blades of grass and calm creek cadences. Somehow, each new system is more stunning than the last, and every time he opens the ramp to his ship, he intently watches your wonderstruck reaction as your eyes take in a fantastical new planet and gorgeous environment.

Visiting new planets off-duty comes with its own routine. He walks with you as you explore with wide eyes, sits beside you when you find a colorful plant to draw, lifts his helmet ever so slightly when the desire to kiss you — your cheek, your temple, your shoulder — becomes too overwhelming. And when night falls, you both retire to his ship, where he can freely remove every piece of armor and kiss every inch of your skin until it’s all you can dream of.

Since the confrontation at the Imperial base, Din’s also taken it upon himself to train you. Not in the ways of the Jedi, of course. That, you’re learning to study on your own. Din trains you like a Mandalorian — a zealous approach to weapons and warriorship. He’s a patient and compassionate teacher, and it only ties your heart to his in a tighter knot. With his gentle guidance, handling a blaster is hardly an obstacle and it only takes a month or two before you become well-acquainted with the darksaber he’d hidden in his storage cabinet for so long.

When he’d finally told you the story of the ancient weapon of legend, gravity had seemed to press harder against his back, making his shoulders slope and his head hang even lower. Because, on the day he’d parted with his son, he’d not only removed the mask of his Creed, he’d also acquired the crown of a cursed planet. And he still doesn’t know which one weighs heavier atop his head.

After that, you’d dedicated yourself to training with renewed vigor — wanting to be prepared if ever the target on his back brought upon old Imperial enemies or new ones who sought to usurp him from the throne he never wanted.

Today, much like the other times you’d trained with him, it’s mostly just chopping at trees and bushes. You can’t deny how much stronger you feel just holding the Mandalorian weapon and knowing you can defend yourself even without the Force.

There’s a part of you, however, that feels like Din’s holding back. Whenever you’d asked when you’d be ready to spar with him, eager to test your newfound skills against something that can actually fight back, he’d simply readjusted your stance with gentle hands and asked you to show him the different sword strokes he’d taught you.

“Very good,” Din praises as you step forward and swing the darksaber through the air, slicing clean through a thin branch.

“Well, that tree had it coming,” you scoff, crossing your arms with over-exaggerated toughness. “I’ve had enough of your bark, tree. It’s about time you leaf.”

“Puns. You’re upset,” he says, not a question.

“I’m not upset,” you lie, trying to put on your best sabacc face. But his helmet tilts in a way that’s far too knowing for a darkened, T-shaped visor, and you sigh in defeat under his scrutinizing stare. “Fine. I just… I just think I’m ready to up the ante here. And I feel like you’re holding back.”

He stares at you for a moment, studiously looking you up and down.

“Your posture is too slouched,” he explains, changing the subject again. “Go back to ready position.”

“Don’t do that,” you heave out another exasperated sigh.

“Ner kar’ta...”

“No, don’t ‘ner kar’ta’ me. Just because you’ve got this shiny sword,” you argue, the glowing saber humming in your hand as you brandish it back and forth, “and you’re technically a king or whatever—”

“Mand’alor,” he interrupts. “And I’m not.”

“—doesn’t mean everything you say is law. I want you to fight me. I’m ready,” your voice softens, stepping closer to him as your pleading hands wrap around the back of his neck. “I want to really learn from you.”

“We’re not doing this,” he answers, despite willingly staying trapped in the cage of your arms.

But you don’t back down. Instead, you lean forward, lips barely a hair's breadth from his helmet before you boldly kiss the spot where his mouth would be, lingering and watching how the tinted panel fogs up. The print of your mouth marks the dark visor and it makes you grin. 

“Fight me, Mando,” you whisper, all sultry bravado laced with a tease that prickles the skin beneath Din’s armor.

“Ready position,” he rasps like he’s annoyed at himself. 

A metallic, musical sound rings in the empty forest as he unsheathes the beskar spear behind his back. And like a giddy child, you bounce on your feet and step backward, swinging the darksaber in your hands before taking your stance. 

Din stands sturdy just a few feet away, spear gripped tightly in his gloves. He slowly lowers himself, knees bent just slightly, an air of strength and confidence surrounding him. Then, hardly perceptible, he nods.

You dig your heels into the soil, your boots squashing the grass below your feet. With your legs spread wide, you draw the darksaber up to the side of your head, the blinding glow casting a white halo on your cheek. Narrowing your eyes and taking a deep breath, you charge forward at lightning speed, zeroing in on the shiny armor in front of you.

At the last second, Din dodges your attack, stepping to the side and watching as you rush past him. You somehow manage not to trip over your own feet and hastily twirl around to face him again. But Din’s already got the point of his spear aimed at the side of your throat.

“You’re relying too much on your speed,” he explains, spear hovering just below your ear. “Size up your opponent first. Figuring out their weakness is more valuable than using up all your strength. Go again.”

You huff at him but get back into ready position, breathing deep in through your nose and out through your mouth. This time, you take a moment to assess him for weak spots. There aren’t many of course, not visible at least. But you decide the side of his stomach is your best bet.

The moment he nods his head, you take a leap forward and twist your wrist, swinging the blade toward his waist. His spear spins swiftly to block the strike, your weapons meeting in a clash of sparks and high-pitched whistles. You summon all your strength to push the saber against his spear, watching as the silver metal turns orange under the intense laser’s heat. And just when you feel like you’re gaining the high ground as Din’s body bends under your advance, he sweeps his boot beneath you and you fall backward, losing grip of the darksaber.

“That was better,” he says with approval, scanning your body as you lay on the ground and groan loudly. “You okay?” He gently wonders, coming closer and extending a gloved hand toward you.

With shaking fingers, you reach for him. And the moment you feel his grip tighten around your hand, an idea sparks. Without another thought, you yank him forward onto the ground beside you. He lets out a surprised grunt when he hits the dirt and you take full advantage of his shock, straddling his hips and trapping his arms beneath your legs. You extend your hand out to the side and, within seconds, the darksaber comes flying back into your fist. With a bright flash, you ignite the laser blade near his throat.

“That’s cheating,” he says, but you can hear the proud smile in his voice.

“I simply assessed my opponent’s weakness,” you grin, retracting the saber into its hilt and leaning down until you’re nose-to-nose with his helmet. “Just so happens, his weakness is me.”

“Good girl,” he says, and you can’t fight the way his praise sends a fluttering warmth to your belly.

You kiss his helmet again with an exaggerated smacking sound before getting off of him and saying, “Let’s go again.”

Din spars with you for nearly two hours, offering gentle advice each time he bests you (which is most of the time) and showering you with praises whenever you find a way to get the upper hand. It fills you with unmatchable strength and confidence.

“That’s enough for today, verd’ika,” he says, slightly breathless as he brushes dirt off your clothes. “It’s getting dark. Let’s head inside.”

You smile at him, filled with an intense urge to kiss him. So, you reach for his helmet, slowly, just in case. His head turns left and right, checking if the coast is clear, before nodding. You lift the beskar slightly, just enough to reveal his mouth and his neatly-trimmed mustache, and press a gentle kiss to his lips.

“Thank you, Din,” you whisper as you set his helmet back in its place. You can almost see the bemused look on his face as he stares at you.

And as you walk back to the ship, a re-energized bounce in your step, you decide to tease him one last time, turn around, and smirk. “Meet you in the fresher.”

— 

xiii.

Din’s hair hangs in waves over his forehead as he gazes down at you, leaning on his left forearm to stay suspended over your body. 

He smells delicious, like his herb-scented soap and the delicious meal he’d cooked for you tonight. His skin is glazed in a radiant sheen and his eyes somehow glow in the dim lighting of your shared quarters.

You’ve learned to appreciate rare nights like this, when there are no jobs to keep him away from you for days at a time. When your eyes get to unabashedly roam over the golden expanse of his skin, without heavy armor or layers of cloth in your way. When you get to listen to his voice for hours on end as his hand traces lines and circles into your skin.

“What are you thinking about?” You ask him, noticing how his entranced stare focuses on your lips when you speak.

He strokes a calloused finger over your cheekbone, then under the curve of your lips, until his thumb finds a resting place over your chin and gently swipes back and forth.

“You,” he answers honestly, leaning down to kiss you, tasting your smile on his tongue. He lingers there for a long moment, hanging from your lips like a man on the edge of falling though he’s already fallen countless times before.

“That’s all?” You whisper, feeling his hot breath brush against your mouth.

He rests his forehead against yours, his nose rubbing along the side of your own.

“And how much the kid would have loved this planet,” he continues wistfully. “Running through the grass and catching frogs or whatever he could eat.” 

Your soft laugh is bittersweet as he reminisces over his son, the corners of his eyes wrinkling mere centimeters from your face.

“Thinking about how he would have liked watching us train together. He’d probably cheer for you to win,” Din chuckles when you scrunch your nose and shake your head doubtfully. Then, his face softens and his eyes glisten. “Grogu would have loved you.”

An errant tear falls from Din’s lashes and drops onto your cheek, and there's little you can do to keep your own from getting mixed in — a tiny melancholy river forming atop your skin. Your hands cup either side of his face, and you lean forward to kiss the spot where the tear had left a small trail right below his eye.

“In some ways, it’s like I know him now,” you murmur against Din’s cheekbone. “Because I know you. I can feel it — the pieces of you that will be part of him forever. I would love him too. I already do.”

He whispers your name again and again, and each time, it’s like he’s making a wish on a star. 

“Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum,” you whisper, kissing his lips sweetly.

When you draw backward against your pillow, he latches onto your mouth once more and kisses you until you’re breathless.

“There aren’t words, ner kar’ta, ” he says quietly, fingers brushing gently over your hair. “Nothing can explain what you mean to me.”

When Din makes love, you can feel nothing else but him — his body, his soul, his heart. Every touch and movement is energized by a deep intention to let you know what he sometimes struggles expressing in words. But you’ve become fluent in him, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt how each kiss translates to: I love you.

Each thrust of his hips means: I want you.

Each ragged moan reveals: I need you.

Each soft caress says: I’d do anything for you.

And each time his forehead meets yours, he declares: I have found my family.

As you both try to catch your breath, he flops back down onto the bed beside you. He hums happily when he feels you hold tight to him, squeezing his middle with your arms and placing a kiss over his heart.

“Good night, Din,” you mumble, yawning as you nuzzle your face against his chest and bury yourself deep beneath the covers.

“Sweet dreams,” he says, pressing his lips into your hair.

You tilt your chin up just slightly, wanting the last image you see before you drift off to be his beautiful face. But his stare is far away, lost in thought once again. You follow his line of sight, beginning at his shining eyes and landing on the collection of drawings hung beside his door. And the pictures that reflect in his glossy irises are the finished portrait of him beside the sketch of you and Grogu displayed proudly in the center.

Someday, you swear to yourself, those images will be more than just pencil scratches on parchment. Someday, your small chosen family will be whole.

When you close your eyes — your head resting over the warm skin of his chest, his heart marching steadily under your cheek — you dream of the day Din and his son finally reunite, with you standing by his side. And even if that’s still a far-off fantasy, you can rest easily knowing two things for sure:

Tomorrow, you’ll wake up wrapped in Din’s arms. And, for as long as you live, neither of you will ever be alone again.

End Note: Thank you to anyone who's read this story. It's been a labor of love for me and I'm especially grateful to readers who left encouraging feedback. As for me, I'll be around. I'm working on another Javi x Reader story (inspired by yet another TS song — off evermore this time). If you haven't read my other one, please check it out! It's called "If I Could Never Give You Peace." Talk soon! Mando’a Glossary: Ner kar’ta = My heart (kar’ta = heart [kah-ROH-ta]; ner = my [nair]) Ni kar'tayli gar darasuum. = I know you forever [nee kar-TILE garh dah-RAH-soom] ⎿ “It's the same word as 'to know,' 'to hold in the heart,' kar'taylir. But you add darasuum, ‘forever,’ and it becomes something rather different.” — Republic Commando: Triple Zero Verd' ika = Little Warrior (affectionately) [vair-DEE-kah]

Please reblog & comment to show your support! I’d love to hear your thoughts!!

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[sserpente]

A/N: October fluff! Request from @jokersqueenofchaos. Enjoy! 🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂

Words: 1372 Warnings: pure fluff

Loki sighed, for the third time in a row now. You had learned the hard way that if there was something weighing heavy on his heart but he was yet unwilling to speak plainly about it, he would react hissing like a cat trying to protect her kittens.

His sighs suited the crisp autumn air, every step you both took causing the dry leafs to your feet to crunch as you ruffled through them with your boots.

The last time Loki was on a peaceful stroll had been before he had known he was a Frost Giant. He had told you he would go picking flowers and plants with Frigga for potions and healing creams—and you were surprised by how well he knew the vegetation on this planet. If anything, he knew the trees and plants better than you did. It was almost a little embarrassing but then again, despite of what you had heard about the incidents in New York, he had never treated you in a condescending way.

“Loki, what’s wrong? You keep sighing like your life depends on it.”

He smiled faintly. “Perhaps it does.” He sounded sad too, melancholic almost.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Would it help?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes you feel better if you confide in someone.”

He chuckled. “And I suppose you should be the person I confide in?” It was strange, having these normal conversations with him, both for him and you. But you would not deny how nice it felt to be chatting to him like that—without any suspicion, fear or mistrust. Besides, so you figured, Loki needed more reasons to laugh.

“Yes. And if you don’t, I will throw…” You looked around, spotting the leave pile a garden caretaker must have raked not so long ago. “…those leafs at you!” You concluded, raising an eyebrow in a both threatening and playful manner.

Loki raised both of his in response. “Will you now?”

“Would you like to find out?”

His laugh was short-lived. “Look…” He began suddenly then. Your heart skipped a beat. “It has been almost ten months since the destruction of Asgard. I wonder… what is my purpose here?” His tone was bitter, making you frown.

“Purpose? What do you mean?”

“Thor took me here presuming the humans would just accept me. After everything that happened I was naïve enough to believe that would be the case.” Swallowing thickly, you looked up at him, compassion spreading in your veins. “In the end, I did exactly what I swore to myself I would never do again—run after my brother and his affection like a lapdog.

“And for what? They all despise me on this planet. I do not blame them. Nor do I particularly care. I do not, however, see why I would while away my life in a place I am not welcome in.”

“I like you.” You suggested, a sheepish smile playing on your lips. Heavens, you had known how unwelcome Loki felt here on Earth. No matter where you went, the looks he received were almost unbearable, not to mention the way the Avengers, especially Tony, treated him. But this? In fact, there was an elderly lady walking her dog a few feet from you right now too, seemingly disturbed at the sight of Loki enjoying the light autumn breeze in the park despite the more or less casual clothes he was wearing.

Removing your hands from your warm pockets, you stepped in front of him, hindering him from walking on. And much to your surprise, Loki reciprocated your smile.

“Yes. You do. Yet I am unable to tell whether you genuinely like me or merely pity me.” He paused. He sounded so insecure it almost broke your heart. You did pity him, in a way. But that was not why you spent time with him—quite on the contrary. You admired him for his strength and cockiness. The thing about Loki was that he never showed his fear, always hid his weaknesses. He was incredibly smug about you wanting to be around him and preferring his company over Thor’s in front of the Avengers but whenever the two of you were alone together… whether he wished to or not, you knew he did not understand why you would be with him voluntarily.

“I found myself considering leaving.” He said.

Your face fell. “Leaving? Leaving where? A-another country?”

“Another planet, actually. Jötunheim, perhaps. I am the rightful king of this realm. I could make true what I had promised after all—that I would restore Jötunheim to its former glory.” His blue gaze started to drift away, making your heart beat even faster.

“But… W-what about me?”

Loki frowned, seemingly confused as his eyes locked with yours again. “What about you?”

“Can I come?”

“Jötunheim is hardly a safe place for a mortal like you, my dear.” Once more, he paused and then added, “Why would you want to join me in the first place?”

“No one should have to be alone, Loki. And you’re gonna have to accept that you’re stuck with me. If you’re going, I’m coming.”

He hesitated. “You are not. It’s too dangerous. I will have no time to babysit a mortal.”

“Hey!”

“Jötuns are savage, my dear. Their laws do not care for personal space or basic human rights.”

“Well, if you are going to be king, you can just change those laws.” He chuckled in response—it was a sound which made pleasant shivers run up and down your spine.

“Promise me you will at least think about it. In the meantime, I’ll tell no soul you are thinking about leaving.”

Loki sighed—for the fourth time now. “Very well. I promise.”

“Good.” It was then you bent down, gathering a few dry leafs in your hands. They crunched a little as you picked them up and then threw them at his face. Loki blinked.

“What was that for? I did tell you, did I not?” You could tell he was trying hard to appear irked by your vicious attack—instead, he cracked a cheeky smirk.

“And you believed me?!” You cried out, feigning shock in your voice. “Come on, Trickster. It’s October. Time for some Halloween mischief.”

Loki looked up at you—and it was in this very moment that you realised just why he had been such an intimidating villain back in New York.

“Run.” He growled darkly, making your heart beat faster. You giggled, then spun around on your heels and legged it, laughing out loud in the process. Before you could even make it more than ten feet away from him, leafs began to rain down on you—and there were so many of them you were, unceremoniously, swarmed by them to the point you lost your orientation. Screaming and laughing all at the very same time. It was more than just obvious that he was using magic for his sweet revenge but before you could once more spin around and complain, Loki, appearing out of nowhere, wrapped his arms around your waist, sweeping you off your feet and throwing you straight into the pile of leafs.

You landed softly, with his strong body still tightly against yours. When his warm breath brushed against the back of your neck, you shivered. The sound of his blithe laugh warmed your heart.

“Hey… let’s head home, make a fire and roast some sweet potatoes and marshmallows. Actually, we could also pick up some sweet chestnuts from the store on our way back.”

Loki raised an eyebrow, making you realise just how close his face was to yours right now. For a brief moment, you simply admired his features—the high cheekbones, the sharp jawline, the long dark eyelashes, the thin lips, the mesmerising blue eyes with mischief sparkling in them—Loki was not only handsome. He was downright beautiful.

“If I get to light the fire…” He eventually responded, his smile devilish.

The old lady who must have been watching you alarmed ever since you had let out that scream almost fainted when you leaned forward and gently kissed the God of Mischief on the cheek, watching his face light up like a Christmas tree.

-

A/N: If you enjoyed this story, I would appreciate it so much if you considered supporting me on Kofi! Caffeine is essential as a writer, I guess. And red wine. A lot of red wine. ko-fi.com/sserpente

[di-kut]

Baar Bal Runi Chapter Thirteen

Series Masterlist

Pairing: The Mandalorian x Force Sensitive!Reader

Words: 5K

Summary: (Body Swap AU) The journey to Barab I through hyperspace gives Din and the child time to heal from the attack on Oseon, and time for you to talk. 

Rating: T

A/N: We’re getting so close to the end now I can’t believe it. Thank you again to everyone who has been sending messages, or responding to any of the other chapters! I see you and I love you! And if I haven’t gotten around to responding to your lovely messages yet know I have seen them and I am getting there! I hope you are all happy and safe wherever you are in the world. 💕

At light speed Barab I is three weeks from the Oseon cluster. There is enough reward money for you to pay the woman who runs the dock on the small moon, and to restock with food and fuel and water. You leave quickly, and Din forces himself to rise and sit with you in the cockpit while you steer the Crest into the hyperlane. Sits pale faced and swaying in the co-pilot chair, bloodless knuckles gripping the console as you manoeuvre. You have to help him back the short distance to the captain’s quarters for him to rest next to the sleeping child. He moves more and more every day, but you feel the pulsing of his frustration in the air all around you – unable to stand without growing pale, unable to climb the ladder without growing breathless and weak. You change the bandages with him every day and the bacta helps the pinkness of the skin around the mangled scar to fade to a mottled white and purple, but it does not seem to help with much more.

You sit up in the cockpit at night with the child nestled in your lap, only the sound of his soft, sweet breathing against your stomach and his tiny weight. You flick through article after article on your holopad, away from Din so the light from the screen doesn’t disturb his sleep, looking for anything – any mention of green planets, of the child and his people, of souls. But there is nothing, nothing more solid than the Barabel and his stories. Beside you the ship computer shows the distance to Barab I and on the screen next to it the glowing light of the green planet, its coordinates getting further and further away. You watch the measure as it ticks over, eyes glassed and unseeing, until you reach out and snap the screen off. Turn back to your articles. But you can’t make yourself focus on that either, on anything. You are thinking about the endless blackness inside the barrel of Din’s blaster, pointed between your eyes. At the murky dust in the cave room on the green planet. Feel the panic begin to rise in your chest and fill your throat like bile, taste it on the back of your tongue.

And then it ends.

The lingering of the panic makes your hands shake, and the movement in your lap is so small you think it might be nerves. But the child coos and you feel the little hand which has slipped under your light undershirt curl against your warm skin. Two dark eyes blink up at you, reflect the rippling of hyperspace like molten silver. You almost miss the console when you push your holopad aside, nearly send it clattering to the floor. Bundle the child tightly in his blanket and lift him beneath your uncovered chin. Feel his hand find a grip in the scratching beard along your jaw. Feel the panic still there in that tiny touch, and the relief.

“Oh, my poor boy,” you murmur to his head. Close your eyes and breath in the familiar smell of him. Feel more things settle and begin to make sense. “It’s you. It’s you dreaming about that awful place.”

The child makes a little cry, and his feet kick against your arm. His hand tries to pull closer at your face and you lift him higher, so you can look at his eyes. So he can see you. The child’s chin is wobbling, his ears quivering. Even in the dim light you can see he’s pale, that his cheeks have none of their usual heat, and your heart breaks for him. His hands reach out, grabbing and imploring, and the emotion he shares with you is so needing and sore that you obey without thinking, lean your forehead against his and sigh when his little hands rest against either of your temples. Fill with bubbling, gentle warmth. You stay with him, hunched in your chair, feel the nubs of his forehead pressed against yours. Let everything finally fall into a place of contentment. Din is alive, and healing, and the child is awake. The thickness at the back of your throat now only from some overwhelming happiness, the press of the child against your forehead not lost on you. An acceptance which you had never thought to get.

The child coos quietly, eventually, and you lift your head from his. Know without him having to ask what he wants. You wrap him again in his warm blanket and let him curl against your chest and the crook of your elbow. Leave the cockpit and the rippling of hyperspace behind and slip quietly into the dark room where Din sleeps. Wait until the door is closed again and settle at the edge of the cot, stare at the faded shape of him beneath the covers, rolled onto his good side.

“Din,” you whisper.

The child begins to wriggle in your grasp, so you set him down on the cot. You rest a hand on Din’s leg and shake him very gently, mindful of his scar, mindful of how tired he is. Know he would not want to miss the child waking again. You say his name again when he doesn’t rouse, and this time he shifts, burrows himself deeper into the covers. Reaches for you – still half asleep. His hand grasping blindly at your fingers against his leg until he manages to tangle them together. Mutters your name and tugs at you. Tries to pull you with him into the bed as he begins to drift again. The child bounces himself along the mattress, slaps both of his hands down against your thigh impatiently when Din’s breathing becomes slow and heavy with sleep again.

“Din.” You tug at his hand, shuffle along the covers to sit closer. “The baby is awake.”

Din mumbles something into the pillow.

You smile, lift the child up from where he is climbing back into your lap to press a soft kiss to the top of his head and let his hands grip the collar of your shirt. Listen to the baby babble as the child squirms in your grip. And then you set him down again on the bed next to Din. He rolls and kicks and clambers to his feet. Waddles the distance to Din’s shoulder and sinks against it, catching the blanket in his fingers and tugging, kicking, trying to climb higher and only succeeding in slipping along his belly.

It’s the child’s giggling which finally wakes him. Din moves, his head turning and then slowly his shoulders, so he doesn’t roll onto the child. Chuckles weakly when the child finally hauls himself up and squirms up higher onto Din’s chest. You lift him a little from below his feet to help him, and to keep him away from the scar at Din’s side. But the child only giggles again and squeals as he slips down towards Din’s face, reaches for his hair and his jaw. Cooing louder when Din laughs with him and babbling more, turning back to look at you as well. Bounces in excitement when you tweak the end of his ear playfully and pat his back.

“Ad’ika,” Din sighs. Brushes his finger down the child’s round little cheek.

The child bounces again when Din speaks. You tighten your hold at his back. “Careful, little guy.”

“He’s okay.” Din lets out a watery laugh and lifts the child up, lifts his head from the pillow to press his forehead to the child’s as you had. He rests one hand heavy on the child’s back and the other seeks yours. Din holds your hand so tightly that your knuckles crack in his grip. “He’s not hurting me.”

You settle down against the bed with them when Din pulls your hand again, and you stretch yourself against his side. Tuck your head to his shoulder and listen to the babble of the child speaking. Feel Din unwind his fingers from yours only to brush them through your hair, along your scalp. Soothing and absent. Din murmurs back to the child sometimes when he pauses, sometimes in basic and sometimes in Mando’a, sometimes asking you what you think as well, laughing when you mumble against his shoulder.

“He let me do it, Din.” You fiddle with the edge of his shirt, yours eyes closed as his finger’s work gently at the crown of your head. “Kov’nynir.”

“Of course he did.”

You sigh. “He never used to.”

Din hums quietly and his hand stills behind your ear, resting against the nape of your neck. Wraps the hair there around his fingers and makes your skin rise in goosebumps over your back. “You’re his family,” he says quietly.

You say nothing, can’t think of anything. Only nod slowly and burrow closer against them both. Fist your hand into Din’s shirt as he starts to move his fingers against your scalp again. The thrum of the engine and the warmth of Din makes it easy to drift, listening to the nonsensical conversation between father and son. Heart full and warm and easy in your chest.

There is a peace in hyperspace. Everything moves a little strangely, a little sideways, but Din begins to heal. You roll away the ruined bedcovers and mattress in the hull, stained black with Din’s poisoned blood, and shove them into the bottom of an empty crate. But you do not try to find replacements, at the end of each day crawl in beside Din to sleep. In the darkness of the captain’s quarters there is an easiness that happens between you, in each other’s arms. An almost which hovers in the air and presses into the space around you, outside of you. Rises in the feeling which sinks from his skin into yours in the quiet moments before sleep, before properly waking, while his fingers trail the skin of your arm, from your wrist to your elbow. You ask him as his fingertips catch against the old scars, what they are, when they are from. And he tells you the ones he can remember, although there are many he can’t. And it begins to bleed through the walls into the rest of the ship. Easier to laugh, easier to talk. Even in Din’s body you start to feel more comfortable, find yourself lounging. Notice him lean against you, shove at your leg playfully if you stretch it too close to him, his eyes shining with laughter.

And Din begins to heal. Every day which passes he moves around the Crest with more ease and soon you stop bandaging his side. The scar is still pink and puckered but the bacta doesn’t seem to have much effect. He climbs the ladder without having to sit down as well, keeps out of his tiny quarters as much as he can, sick of the four walls caging him in. And the child shadows him everywhere, toddling behind his feet, and sitting in your lap when he tires, making games of clambering up your chest and tugging at your shirt. Barab I getting closer every day, a dark murky planet in the distance.

The planet is under constant rain, covering the surface in black clouds, and the surface of the planet crawling with a species deadly enough to snatch the Barabels and force them into underground caves, tunnelled beneath the surface. Din is well enough to walk, to stand and to fly when you are ready to drop out of hyperspace. He steers the ship through the space around Barab I and despite the spaceport hidden in a large cave system beneath the ground it is almost empty. Cavernous and echoing it must once have looked spectacular, shining and new. But the technology has long since been outdated, and there is no Barabel waiting to greet you, no droid scuttling the floors. The corners are filled with dark, murky water, creating a reflection of the decaying ceiling above. Din glances back at you as he lets the ship down to land. The thud of it echoes around and back like the sound of an Empire Freighter landing on Coruscant, impossibly loud.

“Where is everyone?” You lean forward over the console, peer out into the empty spaceport. Somewhere in the shadowed distance, a light flickers.

“I don’t know,” Din mutters. Flicks switches in the ship and the lights around you go out. There’s a moment of darkness and he switches on the ship’s external lights, flooding the port around you with bright, white light. “I can see lifeforms on the radar. Not far. They must be hiding in the tunnels.”

You stare up at the blackened ceiling, eroded with mould and dripping water. The floor, a grim reflection. Great pillars, easily ten times the Crest in height, seem to shift in the thickness of the air. Your stomach rolls, clenches. Something in the air, tight and familiar about the place. Din flicks the lights off again before you can place it and the sudden brightness inside the cockpit makes you squint. Flinch away from it.

“We should stay here tonight. We’ll have to trek through the tunnels.” He begins to lock the ship down, moves sharp and efficient. You notice he favours his left arm, sometimes pressing his right arm against the scar at his side. “We should rest tonight.”

“You need more rest before we go anywhere.”

He finishes, sits back low and deep in his chair and turns it to look at you. “It’s healed, Gotabor’ika.” You must look sceptical, untrusting, because his face softens, and he pushes out of the chair. Crosses the tiny space between you and crouches at your feet. Rests his hands against your knees, right before the dozing child in your lap. “I’m going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I promise, ner kar’ta.” You feel his thumbs dig in against the insides of your thighs.

You scratch at the hair along your jaw in irritation, and again the feeling. Something unsettling and familiar. But it slides before you can catch it, slips and tilts and scrambles when Din taps against you knee. His eyes burning when you focus on them again, and his thumb lifts, pinches lightly against your jaw. Laughs when you make a light grunt.

“You were meant to remind me.”

.

“This is weird, isn’t it?”

Din wipes the razor off, rinses it in the sink. His hand stays on your jaw steadying you. He looks back to the task of grooming your facial hair. He is crouched in the narrow space of the ‘fresher of the Crest and you sit on the closed lid of the toilet, waiting as he readies himself.  

“Everything about this is weird,” he says.

“Yeah, but this is…”

He breaks and you finally meet his eyes. You’re getting used to looking back at yourself in moments like these, almost able to separate yourself from your own body. You can almost see Din behind them. You can certainly feel him in there, you think. More now than ever. Every day a little clearer.

“Weird,” you say together, neither of you barely above a whisper.

He sighs and his hold on your jaw tightens ever so slightly. A slight warning. “Don’t move,” he mutters. “No talking.”

“I think the real reason you suggested this was to get me to shut up.” That almost coaxes a smile out of him. You start to laugh, and he squeezes you. “Okay, okay! Being quiet now.”

He holds the razor up but you can see the glint in his eye which tells you it’s all play. You’re tempted to tease him again but he’s already resting the razor against the hollow of your cheek and scrape down the length of it. The feeling is alien and strange, one of many to adjust to. The coolness of the blade almost makes you jump. Din finishes his stroke, wipes, rinses, lifts the razor back to the spot next to it and repeats. You find yourself watching him as he works. His face contorts with each stroke, lifting his eyebrows, scrunching his nose as he follows his work. Sometimes pulling his top lip back slightly as he curves around a tighter spot on your jaw. You must make a face back at him because –

“What?” He looks up into your eyes.

You smile. “Nothing.”

“Then stop smiling.”

“Okay.”

He waits. “You’re still smiling.”

You try wrangling your expression into something neutral and the effort only makes you giggle. Din makes a face in response which just sets you off further until you are letting out full, hearty laughs straight from your belly. The deep sound of it shocks you into silence. You stare at him, crouched in front of you in the cramped room of the ‘fresher, almost accusingly because it was his deep full laugh which had just erupted from you. His laugh which you realise you’d never heard. He stares at you blankly and then his lip twitches. And he’s laughing too. And then you’re both laughing together. You have to lean a hand on his shoulder you’re laughing so hard. He’s barely making any noise he’s laughing so hard and drops his head down into your lap to hide the redness colouring his cheeks. You can feel tears pooling in your eyes, can feel the puffs of his laughter hitting your hand. You have to lay forward, press your forehead into the space between his shoulder blades, because you feel as if you can barely hold yourself up.

“I’m never going to finish shaving your stupid face.” Din’s voice is muffled against your thigh.

Your stomach hurts. Your cheeks hurt. “It’s your stupid face.”

“Shut up.” He chuckles again.

You untangle yourselves slowly. He nudges at you until your lift your head off his back and you have to extract your hand which is caught under his shoulder. You both giggle every time you catch eyes. He shoves at you gently with an elbow, but he’s still trying to fight off a smile. You wipe a track left from tears off your face.

“You better hurry up or the kid is gonna’ start crying.” It’s almost breathless. “And you’ll end up with half a beard.”

He mutters something under his breath in Mando’a.

“What was that?”

“Just let me work.”

He has to spread more shaving cream over the side of your face he hasn’t done. It takes some time, and his face stays just as expressive. You don’t have the heart to tell him, worried if you bring it to his attention, he’ll make some effort to stop. You think under the helmet he must make faces all the time. He seems so stoic and his tone is so even you always assumed he must look the same underneath it. Something subtle about the way you understand him shifts slightly, infinitesimally small and indescribably huge all at once. You feel a pulse in your chest, and you try to catch his eye. Calmness. Peace. His gentleness seeps through the air around you and fills you up until your fingers tingle.

“Din,” you whisper.

He finishes his final stroke and drops the razor onto the rag he’d been using to wipe it. Looks up and you can see it there in his eyes too. It shifts into curiosity, and you feel it in your chest too. You almost tell him, but at the last second drop your eyes to your hands folded in your lap.

“What?” He grabs your hand lightly. Squeezes once.

You look up at his eyes, look at the razor, at his hand on yours. Lick your lip. Feel the tickle of facial hair there, and you lose your nerve. “You have a moustache?”

He laughs softly and shakes his head. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

You go to touch it with your free hand but stop halfway there. “Oh, I – “

“It’s okay,” he’s whispering too now. “I… I-If you… want. Wanted to.”

Your eyes widen. “Really?”

He can’t look at you. His head drops to his chest but you can see the movement of a nod. You aren’t sure if you should, at first. Whether he really wants you to, whether he’s just let you because he feels obliged. You wait for him to change his mind. But he just keeps holding your hand in your lap and staring at a spot on the ground in front of his feet. So slowly you lift your hand, still suspended in the air until you reach your face. Din’s face.

It tingles slightly when your fingers meet your cheek, the skin sensitive from the shaving. You let your hand flatten out against his cheek, feeling the cheekbones and the firmness into the jaw. You drift back until you reach his hairline, and then forward, first over his cheekbones and nose and over his other cheekbone. Your breath catches. You trace his jaw, his browbone, the shape of his eyebrows. His moustache makes your grin and your fingertip slips against his tooth. You close your eyes and try to add the shape of them to the hazy map of his face you create of him in your mind. You find yourself trying to translate the pieces of him you’ve known outside of his body into this. The expressions you’d learned are his. How his face would move when he’s concentrating; following a razor; cleaning his Beskar; comforting his son. Laughing. Smiling. Sleeping. You must have wrapped your hand around his too. He’s holding it so tightly they’re shaking, clasped between your bodies. You squeeze him back.

“Din.” You aren’t embarrassed by the way your voice breaks. “It’s okay, Din. It’s okay.”

He nods, but he doesn’t lift his head to look at you, just continues to stare at the same spot on the ground, somewhere between your feet. “When we – If we… change back,” he starts. Haltingly, abruptly. The unfinished thought hangs between you, makes your heart thump hard against your chest.

“When we change back?” You ask. Soft. Squeeze his hand in yours again.

His swallow is so grating you hear it. “When we change back would you – ”

There’s a light thump from the hull, echoes into the ‘fresher through the open door. You both turn to look and see the child, woken from his nap and somehow made it from inside Din’s quarters upstairs to the hull. He has a wrench in his hand and it bangs against the grating of the floor as he walks, the rhythmic thunk thunk thunk breaking the rising feeling between you in the ‘fresher. And before Din sighs you feel for a brief moment some bright, shining thing from him, an emotion you have felt a few times before – on the dead desert planet, in your hotel room on Garel. Aches in your chest and lingers, but then he begins to pull his hands from yours and it starts to fade.

“Ad’ika, put the wrench down.” He pushes himself up and goes to the child, takes the heavy tool from his little hands and scoops him up. Sets the wrench back in the open tool box only a few feet away. “Gar ganar jate ca’nara.”

You stare at them both, feel the almost in the question Din hadn’t asked, feel it settle along the back of your shoulders and you sigh. Begin to pack away the razor and the cannister of shaving cream. Din bounces the child in his arms to distract him from his demanding cooing and reaching for the wrench again, and you feel the wave of impatience from the child, sense the temper tantrum starting and you call to Din to warn him. The Mandalorian only rolls his eyes and turns away from the tool box, ignoring the petulant cries of his son. You chuckle as you move things to clear the ‘fresher before you sleep. The next day you will travel into the settlement on Barab to search for the Old Ones. To ask them stories of the Jedi and of the Sith, and the child. But it seems far away from you now, wrapped in something soft and warm with Din in the Crest.

You clamber the ladder after Din, follow him to the bed you share. The child takes time to settle, clambering around and around in the room. Over your legs and between you both, restless and playful, but eventually he tires and crawls beneath the blankets under your arm, nestles against your chest. It’s easy to pretend there is nothing waiting for you when you wake, almost a month of empty space with Din and the child and no looming threat has made you easy against the covers, against the feeling of the rise and fall of Din’s chest near to yours. The occasional mumbled sounds from the child as he rolls in his sleep between you. But the morning does come, the same cold and dark and damp as it had been the night before. You dress in silence, don the armour grimly. Din settles the child into his crib, fills your packs with enough for three days, unsure of what waits outside. You hand him your warmest jacket as you stand with him in the hull and he slips it on, nods his thanks. And then there is no more reason to delay. Din lowers the ramp and you set out. Not as cold as you expect, but you see the way Din flinches back into his hood and you think outside of the amour the air must have a bite. At the bottom your feet splash through puddles, disturb a coating of dark matter resting on the surface of the puddle.

It’s not until you step into the tunnel, swing your torch around to check the ship behind you that you recognise the feeling. The pillars, and the dripping water. The thick smog of moisture hanging and clinging to the back of your throat.

It reminds you of the green planet.

. 

Kov’nynir: A Keldabe kiss, the action of pressing foreheads together in a headbutt action.

Gotabor’ika: lit: little engineer (’ika is used as a term of affection or endearment, and this is used as an intimate nickname)

Ad’ika: daughter, son, child. Used by parents to their children. 

Gar ganar jate ca’nara: You have good timing 

. 

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