DinLuke Nation

The other thing is that he’s so still. Head bent over some papers on the table in front of him, empty plate pushed to the side. Hands steepled in front of his nose, only one hand gloved, brow furrowed. For all appearances, he held himself with the calmness of a man who knew he had all the time in the world and knew exactly what he was going to do with it all.

Din tears his eyes away when Peli sets Grogu down on the seat next to him, along with two covered bowls of stew. He reaches to gather Grogu in his right arm while balancing the bowls in his left, to take up to this rooms to eat, but Grogu rips the covering off one of the bowls and in the blink of an eye is wrist deep in food, half of it already smeared over his mouth. Din stares at him, the grainy feeling in his brain meaning it’s a good few seconds before he computes the fact that apparently, he’s so tired even the kid has faster reflexes than him right now. He’s acutely aware of the way his stomach is cramping with hunger, but he knows getting Grogu to stop eating for the five minutes it will take to move them to their rooms will be more effort than it’s worth.

Peli’s smiling at him, a half-crooked, reluctant twist of her mouth, and Din tilts his head in thanks for watching Grogu as he cleaned up. She nods in return before heading back to the kitchen, and Din settles in to wait for Grogu to finish his dinner. He runs a gentle hand over his head, before letting him grab hold of his thumb and chew on his glove. It’s clean. Mostly.

His thoughts are interrupted when the chair across from him scrapes out with a loud screech, and he looks up to see the dark figure from the corner now sitting at his table.

“Hello.”

Din is suddenly glad that his signature response to people introducing themselves unexpectedly to him is to stare them down in silence, because currently, behind his visor, he’s gawping. The man in front of him, for lack of a better word, is bright, even more so now that he’s right there instead of in the corner. Din feels like he can’t look at him directly, needs to steal glances through his lashes instead, like a bloody schoolgirl. But at the same time, he can’t look away.

“My name is Luke.”

And the last sign that Din has completely lost his mind and is going delirious with exhaustion— and perhaps also that he’s getting old if he’s so easily soft for shiny, pretty boys— is that he answers, before his brain has really caught up to his mouth, “Din.” Not with continued stony silence, not even Mando. His actual name.

“Din.” A smile spreads across Luke’s face. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Din is thankfully saved from answering when Grogu pulls on his glove a little too hard, overbalancing to tip forward and flip the remainder of his dinner over on the table. Din clucks his tongue, and leans forward to clean up the spill.

“Be careful, kid.” he chides, and he’s in the middle of claiming Grogu’s bedtime as his graceful exit from the conversation when Luke holds up his ungloved hand.

“Let me,” he says, and with a wave of his hand, flicks the tissues across the table to clean up the mess, and then sends them flying neatly into the bin across the room.

“What,” Din says, “the fuck.”

That seems to cow Luke a little, or, at least his smile turns sheepish. “Sorry,” he says, even though he doesn’t seem very sorry at all. In fact, now that Din has been staring at him for a couple of minutes and can decipher some of the twitches of his brow, the jut of his jaw, he seems, of all things, a little smug.

Din refuses to think about how the neat motion of Luke’s hand— something he was clearly practiced in, confident, precise— showed the delicate bones in his wrist, which only made him look more fragile, and Din especially refuses to think about how his mouth had watered with the sudden desire to lick over the joint. He has no interest in competing with some wizard in a weird ego game, no matter how attractive he is, so he gathers Grogu more firmly in his arms and makes to stand, but before he can pick up the other bowl that contains his own dinner, Luke speaks again.

“Wait!”

And there’s something in his voice that makes Din pause; a note that wasn’t there before. It’s not quite a cry for help— Din can already tell Luke is too proud for that— but it’s close. That brightness that had first caught his eye before is more apparent than ever, and Luke looks at Din with pleading eyes that rivals Grogu’s.

God, how is he even prettier like this? He curses himself for being weak, and sits back down.

“Sorry.” Luke repeats. His posture as slumped a little, and the bravado from before is all but gone. It’s like he was trying to be someone else before and now he’s exhausted from the effort. “I’m not very good at this.”

Din tilts his head questioningly.

“Making friends, I mean.” Luke elaborates.

Din has to stop himself from snorting. The last friend he made was Cara, about ten years ago. He didn’t need to make friends. He had the kid. He knew enough people.

Luke takes Din’s silence as an answer, and changes the subject. “What brings you to Naboo?”

This, at least, Din knew how to respond to. “Business.”

Luke’s face goes cheeky. Din knows his answer sounds suspicious on a good day, and he knows that Luke knows that. What he doesn’t know is why Luke’s face now looks like a foundling’s on Life Day, momentarily flooring Din with this new, relaxed, open expression. He’s still holding himself incredibly still, but not like before where he was tensed like he was trying to prove something, or even before that in the corner, when he seemed to be propping himself upright with the sheer force of that stillness. Din finds that he likes this version of Luke best so far, bottom lip full with smiling, one dimple sitting on the corner of his mouth, and despite himself, Din finds himself leaning forward.

“What brings you to Peli’s?” he asks, trying to level the playing field. It didn’t seem fair that Luke already had such an effect on Din, when he was still just sitting there, regarding Din slowly, deliberately.

“What,” Luke spreads his hands. His tone is affronted, but the cheeky smile is still on his face. “A man can’t come get a drink?”

“To Peli’s?” Din doesn’t keep the incredulousness out of his voice, and he only lowers his voice as an afterthought. No need to get on Peli’s bad side, but if Luke wants to be secretive, that’s his own business. Din knows what it’s like to hold everything you know tightly to your chest. It would hardly be right for him, of all people, to judge.

“If I’m being honest,” Luke says, after the silence between them has stretched out to the wrong side of awkward, “I came over because I noticed you watching me.”

“I was watching you too.” he adds, when Din doesn’t reply immediately. Din feels his face go bright red under his helmet, and he watches, transfixed as Luke’s tongue darts out briefly to wet his lower lip.

“Why?” he asks, when he remembers how to talk.

Luke gives Din an appreciative once over. “You’re not bad to look at.”

It’s such a line that Din is embarrassed it only makes him hotter. He thinks it’s something to do with how Luke has shifted, bodily, the long line of his legs now sprawled out in his seat like he’s on a chaise lounge, not a creaky chair in a dingy bar. But it’s not just that; Luke has shifted in other ways too, and Din can’t quite put his finger in it, but there’s a hungry look in his eyes that wasn’t there a minute ago, even though that must have been the very reason Luke made his way over to his table. The brightness has dimmed, not like the spluttering out of a torch, but like coals at the bottom of a fire.

The thing is, Din doesn’t do this— doesn’t indulge. The right thing to do, the safe thing, would be to turn Luke down, gently, but firmly, take Grogu back to his room, go to sleep, and head back to Nevarro tomorrow morning.

“It’s my last night as a free man,” Luke says, watching him with those bright, bright eyes of his. His smile is so sad that Din forgets to ask him to elaborate. He wants to wipe away the downturned tick of Luke’s mouth, forget about the dragon, about how the kid nearly died, again.

Luke must sense Din’s resolve caving, because he says, brightening, “So, what do you say you humour someone on his last night of freedom?”

“Who?” he says, pretending to look around, and Luke laughs, the last thing Din can coherently remember is the feeling of his ungloved fingers wrapping around the sliver of exposed skin between Din’s glove and vambrace.

+++++

Din wakes up alone.

Not that he was expecting anything else, but there’s a brief moment while he’s still swimming out of sleep, curled in the warm patch of sunlight that’s filtering through the window, where he can pretend the phantom heat next to him is Luke’s body, bare and soft.

When they’d stumbled up to Din’s rented room last night, Luke’s breathy laugh fogging up Din’s visor as he clumsily bounced his cheek against the beskar in his effort to get closer, closer, Luke’s clever fingers had snuck to the back of Din’s neck, looping to pull him in. And even though there was no indication he meant to pull off Din’s helmet, Din had still flinched, and then marvelled in shock at the way Luke had immediately softened, pulled back, the way he’d been able to read the minute twitches of his body him so accurately already.

“Not the helmet,” he’d said, his voice already a rasp even though they both were still fully clothed.

“Okay.” Luke had said.

And afterwards, when they were both sweaty and Din still trying to catch his breath from quite frankly the most incredible sex he’d ever had in his life, Luke had gotten up without a word, BUT before Din even had the chance to miss him, was back in bed, curled up against Din’s side, finishing off the knot for the blindfold he’d looped around his eyes.

“If you want to take your helmet off to sleep,” he’d murmured softly, and then he was out like a light, leaving Din to stare at him open mouthed for the second time in three hours, stunned at the trust, the thoughtfulness, the vulnerable nape of Luke’s neck.

He’s taken his helmet off with shaking hands many, many times before, but it’s the first time it feels like a benediction.

He shakes himself out of the memory, and rises out of bed. By the time he comes down the stairs, collected Grogu from Peli who is looking at him with a shit-eating grin on her face, he’s mostly convinced himself that he can live the rest of his life with Luke as a sudden flash of brightness, the scent-memory of his skin on the sheets.

Grogu chatters to Din as they walk from Peli’s towards the Naboo Spaceport, and Din makes all the appropriate noises like he can understand him, and he’s concentrating on making sure his kid is getting the enrichment he needs (he read somewhere once it was very important for early development)so he doesn’t notice the unease in the Spaceport at first. But he rounds the corner to where the Razor Crest is parked, and suddenly it’s all there; the prickling silence and sideways glances from the deck crew. Din’s gaze zeroes in on his ship, and he sees the men waiting outside the Razor Crest.

Not just men. Royal guards, from the look of their deep blue uniforms.

They must be on the lookout, because as soon as he steps foot into the hangar, one shouts, “You there!” He keeps walking forward calmly, but he shifts his grip on Grogu to one hand and rests his other hand on his blaster.

“You own this ship?” one of the guards asks once he’s within earshot. The leader, Din notes, spying the gold crescent badge on his breast.

Din nods warily. He’s half-distracted thinking how he can get Grogu to safety, if it all goes to shit, and the other half is mentally running through all of the ship’s modifications. He’s pretty sure most of the illegal ones are well hidden enough that a preliminary search wouldn’t have found them.

“You fought the dragon yesterday?”

Din blinks, jolted out of his train of thought, and he’s too startled to lie. “Yes?” he says, and then tenses, widening his stance a little. Everybody had seemed ecstatic when he’d come back into town yesterday, but the last thing he needed was lord furious about their precious pet dragon being injured.

“Come with us.” The head guard’s tone brooks no argument, and he doesn’t offer any further explanation either. And although his last fifteen years of bounty hunting are all screaming at Din to run, take the kid and get the fuck out of Naboo, there’s a fuzzy feeling behind his sternum tugging at him to follow that makes him feel lighter than a second ago. It’s the same way he’d felt when he’d seen Luke in the inn last night, what had allowed Luke to reach across the table and touch him. And inexplicably, it feels well worn, familiar to him.

Din goes with them.

+++++

Din forces them to circle the speeder back around to Peli’s first, where he drops off the kid. She takes Grogu with a fearful look in her eyes, and Din doesn’t look at her as he presses his forehead against Grogu’s. He doesn’t think about how it could be the last time he sees the kid.

The palace at Theed is built on the edge of a cliff, with domes of gleaming jade and its marble walls carved out straight out of the rockface itself. When they pull over the drawbridge, Din can hear the thundering of the waterfalls, and through the windows of the entrance hall, see the vast ocean to one side, glittering in the sun, and the green of the rolling plans on the other side. It was beautiful and grand and a little bit terrifying all at once, if Din was the kind of person who was impressed by that sort of thing.

The entire trip to the palace is silent, and it’s only when they’re deep into the castle, in front of a huge set of doors, that the head guard finally addresses Din, “Wait here,” before he disappears through the doors.

Din’s stuck outside the grand oak doors, and he briefly contemplates prying one of the rubies or emeralds that are encrusted into the door’s bolts with his vibroknife— could probably get good money for them— and how he could distract the remaining guards around him for long enough to do it, when the doors open.

It’s a throne room, that much is clear, with a lush red carpet and floor to ceiling windows along one wall. The sun is at midday height now, and its glare casts long beams of light across the floor, leaning towards the people at the other end of the room. Din steps through the door and takes stock of his new surroundings.

Seated on the throne is the Queen, who Din understands is well beloved and not at all prone to torturing bounty hunters, although her dark expression says otherwise. To her left, sitting on another throne—although perhaps lounging would be a better word— is a man who Din presumes is the king. In another world, Din knows, instinctively, that he would have been a dangerous opponent, long scar over one eye, shaggy brown hair, gaze sharp and keen. The same can be said for the young woman standing behind him, the same gaze, the same tight line of her lips.

To the Queen’s right stands an old man, white beard and white hair, drab brown robes. He looks mildly more welcoming, mouth drawn up into a soft smile, although Din can still read tension in the way he’s holding himself. And next to him…

Din stops as he looks at the last figure on the left of the room, the warm brightness, the shocked curve of a mouth dropping open. Din remembers how that mouth had opened against his throat last night, hot and wet, and how he’d wanted Luke so badly he thought he might combust.

Luke, who is in front of him right now, in golden robes, nothing at all like the black ensemble he wore last night. Luke, who had disappeared from Din’s bed this morning without a goodbye.

Din feels the mark he knows Luke bit into the inside of his thigh last night throb for a second, and he has to force himself to keep walking down the room. He stops in front of the thrones, and stares at them for a minute, the five of them assembled in front of him.

“What is your name, Sir Knight?” Queen Naberrie’s voice is kind, but there’s a steel underneath. She doesn’t look very happy to be sitting there. Belatedly, Din realises that he probably should have knelt.

Din shakes his head. It’s hard for him to keep his eyes off Luke. “I’m not a knight.”

Her face doesn’t lighten up, exactly, but a flash of humour does cross her face before it’s as gone as quickly as it came. “How would you like to be addressed then, good sir?”

Din tries to hide his grimace at good sir, although he doesn’t think he’s very successful. “Just Mando is fine.”

“Mando,” Queen Naberrie says, all trace of laughter gone from her expression. Beside her, the king’s face goes completely blank, like he’s trying to hide a sudden tide of emotions, and the young woman standing behind him scowls, glaring daggers at Din.

“Naboo is in your debt,” the Queen continues. “We thank you for your act of service.” It sounds like the words are being forced out of her mouth as she says it.

“What?”

The Queen’s expression becomes a little more impatient, a little more sour. Din feels like he’s running out of time, even though he didn’t realise there was any sort of rush to begin with. But before she can say anything, the old man standing the right of her chair speaks.

“You’re Mandalorian?”

“Yes.” Din’s hand goes to his blaster. The old man may not look like much, but Din knew better than to be fooled by appearances. However, the movement doesn’t make him any more tense. If anything, it seems to amuse the old man.

“Padmé,” he says, turning to the Queen. “I don’t believe he knows.”

She turns to her other side to look at her husband, and a silent conversation passes between the three of them, quirking of eyebrows and slight flicks of the wrist. Din takes the moment to drink in the sight of Luke, who is still staring straight back at him, eyes glittering. Din wants to rip those golden robes off him where they’re buttoned up to his neck, run his hands down his sides to the spot where he learnt last night Luke is ticklish, hear the breathy giggle before he firms his touch.

Except Luke is standing next to the throne, not beside him under the coarse sheets, and the distance between them may as well be one of Naboo’s oceans.

“Mando,” the Queen says, drawing his attention back to her. “You slew the krayt dragon yesterday, and in doing so, saved the lives of hundreds of my people. As is tradition, a dragon-slayer is given the princess’ hand in marriage.” She gestures to the girl standing behind the king.

Din’s thoughts come to a screeching halt, and his eyes flicker to follow the direction of the Queen’s finger. The princess’ arms are still crossed across her chest, and her expression looks more thunderous by the second.

“However,” the Queen continues, and Din has to stop himself from sagging in relief, there’s a however, thank god, “my daughter is already promised to another. As such, I hope you will be similarly pleased with my son’s hand in marriage.”

The relief vanishes, and Din turns sharply to look at Luke, who’s practically glowing looking back at him. But all Din feels is the swirling sickness in his stomach.

“No.” He can barely hear himself over the rush in his ears.

The Queen raises her eyebrows. “No?”

“I don’t want to marry him.”

“It is tradition.” The Queen is cool and calm, and it makes Din want to hit something.

“I don’t want him!”

His voice bounces off the ceiling. There’s a shocked beat of silence, and when Din dares to look at Luke, all the light has left his eyes. And no sooner than Din has caught a glimpse of his face, as if Luke senses his gaze— which he probably has— he turns sharply on his heel and leaves the room.

Queen Naberrie watches him, with an eye far too keen for Din’s own liking. “I think,” she says slowly. “We might give these two some time alone.” She stands in a rustle of silk, and gestures for her husband to do the same. She puts a firm hand on her daughter’s shoulders and the old man does the same for the king, guiding them out of the room through a separate door despite the king and the princess’ loud protests.

It leaves Din alone in the throne room, the silence suddenly suffocating around him. The heat from the sun streaming in through the windows no longer feels like an extension of the palace and the view, but instead sharp, urgent, stifling.

Din takes a deep breath, and follows the door Luke had exited through.

It opens out to a courtyard behind the throne room. The air is muggy outside, and he feels the dampness of sweat on his underclothes, the awkwardness of the quiet clank of every movement with the bulk of his armour. Luke is standing on the far side, by a balcony which overlooks the sea.

Din comes to a stop in the middle of the courtyard, unsure if he’s allowed any closer. Last night, he would have said that closing the distance between himself and Luke would have solved any problem between them, healed any miscommunication. He can still feel the phantom strength of Luke’s fingers laced between his, like a balm to his aching joints. Now, he’s not sure if his presence is welcome at all.

“You really didn’t know?” Luke asks without turning around.

Din’s tongue feels clumsy in his mouth. “No.” he says. He knows he’s not saying exactly what he means, because he does, very much, want Luke. Just not like this; passed around like a political jockey, one of the means the end is supposed to justify. Luke, being given to Din like a playing piece in chess, bound to him out of duty, instead of choice. The mere thought of it makes the sickness in Din’s stomach swell up again.

He doesn’t know how to say any of that, so instead, he says, “I wasn’t trying to slay a dragon. I was just protecting my foundling.”

Luke gives a startled laugh. “Of course. Thousands of knights actually trying to kill it and you go and do it by accident.”

They lapse into silence. Din wants to get that awful, stricken look off Luke’s face, but the only way he can think of doing so would be to touch him, just once, softly; cross this vast distance between them and dig until he sees the brightness he’d held to his bones last night. It kills Din to think he’s lost the privilege to comfort him.

“I thought,” Luke says, his voice quiet, wobbly. He takes a breath and starts again. “They told me yesterday that someone had slain the dragon, and I was to be married the next day. Figures the only dragon-slayer I’d actually want wouldn’t want me back.”

He sounds so self-deprecating, none of the soft sureness Din had seen last night, the cocky slant of his smile when he’d wrapped his mouth around Din’s dick. Din wants it back so acutely that he can feel it like a physical weight in his ribs. He doesn’t like this version of Luke, buttoned up tight, uncertain of Din, of the trembling thing they had cradled between them last night.

But he can’t seem to have Luke back without anchoring him to Din, so instead, he says, “I didn’t kill the dragon.”

Luke turns around. “What?”

“I wounded it, sure. But it was definitely still alive when I last saw it.”

“So you don’t have to marry me.” he adds, when Luke just stares at him, but even as he says it, it feels like there’s a crack in his heart. This morning, he’d shored up the hole Luke had left with the curled imprint of his body on the sheets, and now it’s all coming back, all the golden light pouring out with how much Din wants, simply, to hold Luke. Not to marry, not even to fuck. Just to hold.

Luke does not seem to be on the same page as him. “So the dragon is still out there?”

Din nods confusedly, and Luke closes his eyes. “Fuck.” he says.

“It’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Din says. “You don’t have to marry me.”

“It’s still out there.” Luke repeats, but it’s not a question this time, and Din looks away from how he’s wringing his hands, tries not to think about how much he wants to press his palm against Luke’s heated skin, in hopes it would loosen some of this sudden nervous energy. Looking away allows his brain to clear up a little, not completely occupied with the sight and thought and smell of Luke Luke Luke, and it hits him all at once.

“It’s still out there. Oh, god. It’s still out there in the village.” Din feels the dread pool in his heart. “I’m gonna have to go kill it, aren’t I.”

“Well, you don’t have to…” Luke trails off.

Din’s already striding back into the throne room, before a thought occurs to him, and he turns around and goes back to Luke, taking one of his hands in both of his. “If I manage to kill this thing for good this time,” he says, “you still don’t have to marry me. I don’t care about tradition.”

Luke has gone completely still under his touch, just like he was when Din first saw him in the corner of Peli’s, his grip strong under Din’s palm. His eyes are very wide, very blue, and even though Din knows he can’t see through the visor of his helmet, he feels like Luke is reading his face with inexplicable familiarity. With the calmness of a man who knew he had all the time in the world and knew exactly what he was going to do with it all.

Din drops Luke’s hand like he’s been burnt and steps away, his face going red with the realisation of his rash decision in the heat of emotion.

Luke says, “I’m coming with you.”

And Din forgets all about how completely inappropriate it was for him to touch Luke like that. “What? No.” Not Luke, with his soft body and curves and bony wrists, who had a family in the palace who clearly cared about him. Who Din still wanted to hold afterwards, and they couldn’t do that if Luke was dead via krayt dragon.

“I can handle myself.” And there he is, Din can see the man last night who wiped the table clean with his freaky powers just because he could; because, Din realises now, he was trying to impress Din, not compete with him. The relief at seeing the glimmer of that Luke again, without the frills and false airs, almost swallows him.

“Also,” Luke adds, as Din is still marvelling at the appearance of Luke’s brash edges again, “if someone else went and killed it now, I would have to marry them. I’m just making sure you make good on your word.”

Din feels a flare of anger in his chest, way too intense for having only known Luke two days, and resolutely puts it out of his mind, deciding to think about it later. But then Luke grabs his hand again, tugging him through the throne room and back to the speeder, and Din can’t find it within him to pull away. He’s only thinking about peeling his glove off so they can be skin to skin, and then peeling that disgustingly impractical gold ensemble off Luke’s body. He’s thinking about how Luke didn’t pull away when he’d grabbed his hand before, and now, how he’d reached first, and the lucent gleam in his eyes when he’d looked at him, like suddenly everything had become clear to him.

And as the speeder roars to life, the warm shape of Luke in the passenger seat next to him, Din dares to hope, could it really be that easy?

+++++

The dragon, surprisingly, is easy enough to kill, what with Din having mostly incapacitated it the previous day when he’d ripped himself out of its stomach. He’s honestly surprised that the dragon had survived long enough to drag itself back to its lair. Luke almost looks disappointed, and if Din’s learnt anything as a bounty hunter, it’s that as soon as you complain about it being quiet is when things start going to shit.

They’re climbing back into the speeder when the first blaster shots are heard, some very angry knights— real knights— who apparently were banking on slaying a dragon and marrying a princess to get fat and rich off the royal coffers, pissed off that someone else had gotten there first.

Din groans, rolling out the crick in his shoulder— after the dragon (twice!), knights seem as relevant as gnats— but he draws his spear all the same. After all, it didn’t matter what killed you, a blaster shot is just as deadly as krayt dragon teeth.

And then Luke, out of fucking nowhere pulls out a green sword and dispatches them all without breaking sweat. Din hasn’t even moved from his spot next to the speeder. A ball of heat shoots straight through his stomach, and he feels his mouth go dry.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you could handle yourself.”

Luke smiles serenely, sheathing his sword. Din feels his stillness again, this time, the kind that indicates imminent danger. Unfortunately, because Din has now accepted that he just functions on a lower brain capacity around Luke, he can feel certain parts of himself getting very interested in a dangerous version of Luke.

“Luke.” he manages. He knows he has to say this before anything else happens. “You don’t have to marry me.”

And Luke just looks at him, patient, light, none of the heavy sadness Din had seen in the courtyard, and Din knows, then and there, that Luke understands, that he’s been able to read in between the lines: everything Din hasn’t allowed himself to want from fear of losing it. Luke knows what he wants to say— what he’s going to say. He just has to say it.

“But would you like to come with me?” he gets out.

Luke’s face breaks open into a smile, like rain after drought, and this time, Din doesn’t stop himself from crossing the distance between them, pulling Luke flush against him by the waist. Luke knocks his forehead against Din’s helmet, and Din closes his eyes, basking in the sheer sense of rightness.