#mando x reader

The cantina smelled like burnt oil and whatever passed for food out of a fryer that had seen better decades. She sat at the high stools along the bar, a watered-down drink sitting in front of her, close enough to watch the door without looking like she was watching anything at all. Across the room, tucked into a booth near the far wall, Din sat with Grogu balanced on his lap, looking like a father and son who had wandered in for an early dinner rather than two thirds of a surveillance team working the opposite end of the room from his partner. Grogu had thrown himself entirely into the role, methodically working his way through a bowl of something fried that he had already declared, in his own particular vocabulary, an unqualified success. 

Around them the cantina churned with the low, constant noise of a hundred separate conversations, a Twi'lek bartender working three orders at once, a group of off-duty dock workers arguing loudly over a game playing on a cracked holoscreen bolted above the bar. It was the kind of place built to be forgotten the moment you left it, which made it exactly the sort of place someone hiding from the galaxy might end up eating dinner in without meaning to be noticed. 

"Third bowl," she said over the comm, watching Grogu shovel another piece of fried critter into his mouth with theatrical concentration. "He's going to owe someone a very large bill by the time we're done here." 

"He's committed to the cover." 

"He's committed to the critters. There's a difference." 

She caught Din's helmet tilt very slightly in her direction, holding a beat longer than it needed to. "You're staring," he said, then seemed to think better of finishing it, the sentence trailing off into nothing over the comm. 

"I'm working." 

"Focus." 

"I am focused." She did not look away from him even as she said it, entirely too pleased with herself. "I just also happen to like watching you. Call it multitasking." 

"That's weird." 

"You love it." 

He did not answer that one. He shook his head instead, the small motion she had long since learned meant he was smiling behind the visor, caught out and unwilling to admit it to her out loud. 

Two hours in and nothing had moved. She had caught herself checking the chrono on the wall more than the door, and each time she looked back Din was already watching her instead of the room, which she was fairly sure defeated the entire point of splitting up in the first place. 

"We should call it," Din said, voice low over the comm, pitched for her ear alone. "Nobody's coming." 

"Ten more minutes." 

"You said that three times already." He shifted Grogu higher against his shoulder, the movement unhurried, nothing in it that would read as anything but a tired father settling a tired kid. "Just admit you were wrong to trust Rax's tip." 

"His information has been right every time so far." She turned her glass a slow quarter turn on the bar, not drinking it, just giving herself something to do that was not checking the door again. "I'm not writing him off because one lead is running long." 

"And how do we know this isn't a trap? Set specifically for you." 

"It's not." She said it plainly, without hesitation, and let a smile tug at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it, glancing across the room to find him already looking. "Besides. You're right there." 

"I should be closer." It came out fast, almost before he seemed to have decided to say it, the words landing in the middle of the noise like he had surprised himself with them. 

"Oh yeah?" 

He did not answer immediately, and she watched him recalibrate mid-sentence, the particular stillness of a man realising what he had just said out loud. "Or you should, you know... Be here. With us." 

"Careful, Mando." She kept her eyes on her glass, fighting the smile properly now. "Almost sounded like you meant that." 

"I meant it." 

"If you want me over there," she said, low enough that it barely carried past the comm, "all you have to do is ask." 

It was around then that a girl came through the front door, moving in a way that did not draw the eye so much as slide past it, shoulders drawn in, gaze down, cutting along the edge of the room instead of through the middle of it. She watched her go out of old habit, the same automatic scan she gave every new face that walked in, and kept watching as the girl crossed toward the back and folded herself into a table half in shadow, the kind of seat someone chose because it was the one nobody else wanted. 

A server took the girls order a few minutes later, unhurried, and she let her attention drift back to Din in the meantime, checking on the girl only in passing the way she checked on anything that had briefly interested her and then stopped, a glance every so often to confirm nothing had changed. She had nearly stopped bothering to look at all by the time the food came out, a plate set down without ceremony, the girl reaching for it before the server had even finished turning away. 

She felt it before she'd fully looked away again, a faint, uneven pressure settling into the room from that direction, the kind that came from someone bleeding Force energy into their surroundings without any awareness they were doing it. She went still on the stool, the banter gone from her voice entirely by the time she spoke again. 

"Something's changed." 

She turned her head back properly this time, following the pull of it rather than any visual cue, and found the girl eating too fast, the way people ate when some part of them expected to have to run before they finished. Her fork trembled where it sat balanced on the edge of her plate, and a half-empty glass beside it shivered a fraction of an inch across the table, entirely without her hand anywhere near it. The girl did not seem to notice either. Whatever was leaking out of her did so unconsciously, the way breathing did not require a person's attention to keep happening. The two tables flanking her stood conspicuously empty even as the rest of the cantina filled in around them, as if something in the air there had already warned people off. 

Her clothes did not match, layered wrong for the climate, the kind of mismatched practicality that came from taking whatever was available rather than whatever fit. Her eyes never stopped moving, cutting toward the door, then the kitchen entrance, then back to her plate, cataloguing exits the same automatic way Din did without ever seeming to think about it. She could not look away, cataloguing every detail with the same clinical attention she gave any potential asset or threat, filing it all away without yet letting herself feel anything about it. 

Across the room, Din had gone quiet in the way that told her he was watching the same thing she was. Grogu had stilled in his lap, small ears tilted forward, and his arm came up around him without her seeing him decide to do it, not restrictive, just present. 

 "Confirmed," she said quietly over the comm, eyes still on the girl.  

He nodded once, barely a motion at all, and she felt the shift in him from across the room, the stillness that meant the job was done, that whatever came next was simply the business of leaving cleanly and letting the Director's people decide what to do with the information. 

The girl's head snapped up, eyes cutting across the room in a fast, wide arc like she'd felt something touch her and needed to find the source. They landed on her and stopped there, fork frozen halfway to her mouth, the two of them staring at each other across the width of the cantina for one long, unmistakable second. The girl's face went white. She was on her feet before the shock of it had fully registered, chair scraping back hard enough to draw a few irritated looks from the nearest table, and then she was gone, weaving through the crowd toward the kitchen exit like she had already mapped this exact escape a hundred times in her head. 

She was already moving before she had decided to move, some older reflex answering before thought caught up with it, boots finding the gap in the crowd the girl had cut a half second earlier. Only once she was clear of the tables and into the corridor beyond did the rest of it arrive, quieter and heavier than the instinct that had gotten her this far. That was just a kid back there. Terrified, alone, and running from the only two people in that room who might actually have been able to help her. 

"This wasn't in the brief," Din said, already up, Grogu secured against his chest. 

"I know." She did not slow down to say it properly. "Front. Cover the other side." 

He peeled off toward the main entrance without another word, trusting the shorthand of it, and she went straight through after the girl, shouldering the kitchen door open into a wall of steam and shouting cooks who barely looked up from their stations. 

The corridor beyond spat her out into a night market in full roar, stalls packed so tight the walkway barely counted as one, vendors calling prices over each other in half a dozen languages, the air thick with grilled meat and overripe fruit going soft in the heat off the fryers. The girl cut through it like she had run this route before, ducking under a hanging rack of plucked poultry, upending a crate of loose produce behind her that sent two vendors shouting and a scavenging womp rat bolting for cover. She followed the wake of it, sidestepping the spilled crate, catching a stall awning with her shoulder hard enough to rock it, apologising to no one because there was no time to. 

Past the market the alley narrowed and rose, strung overhead with a tangle of maintenance cables and washing lines slung between the buildings, low enough in places that she had to duck under a sagging cluster of them or risk losing a layer of skin off her scalp. The girl was faster through the gauntlet, small enough to slip beneath a line where she had to half crouch, and for a few meters the gap between them opened wider than she liked, cable slack brushing cold and greasy against the back of her neck as she cleared the last of it. 

The alley dropped them onto an elevated transit platform just as a hovertrain was pulling in, brakes shrieking, doors already cycling open before it had fully stopped, and the girl used the crowd surge boarding it as cover, cutting sideways through the press of bodies instead of onto the train itself. She lost sight of her for two full seconds in the crush, working through on instinct more than sight, shoulder first, until she caught the flash of mismatched fabric ducking under the platform rail and down a maintenance stair on the far side. 

The stair let out behind a bank of public laundries, machines venting steam in thick white gouts that turned the narrow passage into something closer to fog than air, visibility dropping to almost nothing. She lost the girl's shape entirely in it for a moment, tracking her instead by the disturbance she left behind, a hanging sheet still swinging on its line, a puddle scattered where a foot had gone through it moments before. She came out the other side soaked through and half blind, blinking the wet out of her eyes just in time to see the girl duck into a narrow alley strung with buzzing neon signage in three different scripts, colour bleeding down the wet durasteel in long smears of pink and green and sickly amber. 

The neon alley dead-ended. She felt it before the girl did, the geometry of it obvious from the angle of the walls even through the haze of colour and steam still clinging to her clothes, and she pushed the last of her speed into closing the gap rather than announcing it. 

The girl found the end of hers in a narrow maintenance alcove behind a row of defunct water reclamation units, chest heaving, back pressed against a wall with nowhere left to go. 

Din caught up a few seconds later from the opposite corridor, Grogu still held tight against him, and stopped a good ten meters back without being asked to. 

"Hang back." she said. 

He did not argue. She felt the trust in that more than she heard it, the fact that he simply planted himself where he was and let her walk the rest of the way alone, hands loose and visible at her sides, the lightsaber deliberately left clipped and untouched at her hip. 

"Hey," she said, soft, stopping a few meters short. "I'm not here to hurt you." 

The girl said nothing. Her eyes darted past her toward Din, toward the exit behind him, toward every possible angle of escape that had already closed off one by one, cataloguing and discarding each in turn. 

"I know you're scared." She kept her voice level, unhurried, the way she had previously used it on wounded animals and frightened children. "I'm not with the people who'll want to lock you up for what's been happening. I promise you that." 

Nothing. The girl's breathing had gone ragged, shoulders drawn tight, every line of her body braced for a fight or a flight that had nowhere left to go. 

"What's your name?" she tried, gentler this time. 

The girl's jaw tightened. She did not answer, did not seem to consider it worth the risk of giving away even that much, and she let it go without pushing, filing the silence away as its own kind of information. Whoever this girl was, whatever had happened to her before this, she had clearly learned a long time ago that names were something you kept, not something you handed to strangers. 

"That's okay," she said. "You don't have to tell me anything. I just want you to know I'm not going to make you." 

She took one slow step closer, watching the girl's whole body flinch at the movement before forcing herself still again, some animal part of her deciding, in real time, whether running was still worth the attempt. 

"I'm like you." she said finally, quiet enough that it barely carried the distance between them.  

That should have helped. It did not. The girl's eyes went wider instead, whatever fragile control she had been holding onto visibly slipping, because now the stranger in front of her was not just dangerous in some abstract, undefined way. She understood exactly what she was, and what she could presumably do to her if she wanted to, and that understanding seemed to strip away whatever thin composure she had managed to hold onto until now. 

"I'm not going to use it on you," she said quickly, reading the shift immediately. "I promise. I just wanted you to know you're not the only-" 

The first burst of energy came without warning, a crate to the girl's left crumpling inward like something enormous had stepped on it, and she did not so much see the panic take hold as feel it, raw and uncontrolled, rippling outward from a source that had no idea how to contain what was happening inside her. It was not malice. It was not even conscious. It was simply terror finding the only outlet it had ever had, the same reflex that had probably caused every incident on the Director's list, and it was accelerating. 

She watched the girl's breathing without meaning to, three short pulls and no exhale to match any of them, the same ragged pattern from the cantina table now doubled in speed. Every fresh burst of debris followed it exactly, a breath caught and held until something in the alley paid the price for it, then released in a shudder that did nothing to slow the next one down. There was no rhythm underneath any of it, no counter-technique, nothing that looked like it had ever been drilled into her the way it had been drilled into the Jedi, over and over, until breathing through it stopped being effort and became instinct instead. 

No one had ever taught her that. 

She thought of the enclave then, unbidden, of her master who had found her before she was old enough to remember it clearly. If he had never come, this could have been her. Her heart tugged hard at the thought of everything this girl must have already survived to end up alone in a cantina on Coruscant, untrained and terrified of her own hands. 

Din moved then. 

She felt him coming before she heard his boots on the duracrete, a fast, hard stride that meant he had read the situation exactly the way anyone would from where he stood, a Force-sensitive person losing control and his partner standing directly in the blast radius of it. She did not think. She did not look. Her hand came up on pure instinct and the Force answered it instantly, a controlled, focused push that caught him mid-stride and sent him back a clean ten meters, nothing violent in it, nothing meant to hurt, only enough to put him somewhere he could not make this worse. 

She registered what she had done a half second after she had already done it, and there was not time to feel anything about it yet, not with debris still flying and a terrified teenager one bad breath away from completely losing whatever tenuous grip she had left. 

"Look at me." she said, steady despite the chaos, stepping closer instead of away. "Just me. Nobody else." She meant it as more than comfort. Every ounce of the girl's attention fixed on her was an ounce not spent on the two people standing ten meters back, and she would rather absorb every piece of flying debris in the alcove herself than have one shard find its way toward Din or Grogu. 

The girl's breath was coming in short, panicked pulls now, another piece of scaffolding groaning somewhere above them, and she kept walking, slow and deliberate, hands still open, still empty, still refusing to give the girl any reason to read her as a threat. 

"You're not in trouble, nothing that's happened this week is your fault. Do you understand me? None of it." She took another step forward, reaching one hand out towards the scared girl. 

Something in the girl's face cracked, just slightly, just enough to show the exhausted child underneath all that terror. 

The debris came without warning, a sharp piece of paneling torn loose by the last uncontrolled surge, spinning directly toward her upper arm. She saw it coming with more than enough time to move. She did not. Any sudden motion now risked reading as an attack, risked undoing every careful step she had taken to get this close, and the girl mattered more in this exact moment than a few centimeters of skin did. The metal caught her arm and opened a shallow gash through her sleeve, and she felt the sting of it distantly, already filed under things to deal with later. 

"I'm okay," she said, before the girl could spiral further over it. "See? I'm fine. And so are you." 

The girl looked. Whatever she saw, steady, calm, entirely unbothered by the blood already soaking through her sleeve, seemed to reach her in a way that nothing else had. The wild, uncontrolled pressure between them began to ease, the Force settling the way water settles once whatever has been thrown into it stops churning. 

She knelt slowly, bringing herself level instead of looming, and held out one hand again, palm up, empty. The girl looked at it for a long moment. Then, shaking, she reached out and took it. 

Din reached them a moment later, Grogu quiet and wide-eyed against his chest, and said nothing about the stretch of pavement he had just been thrown across. She did not look at him yet. She did not look at him yet. She was not ready to face whatever he was thinking behind that visor, not with the girl's hand still shaking in hers. 

They took her back to the NRI. 

The Director's expression, when the three of them walked into his office with a fourth, unaccounted-for person trailing behind, told her exactly how far outside the mission parameters this had strayed. 

"This was not the brief." he said, before she had gotten a full step past the doorway. 

"No." She did not try to soften it. "The girl was the source of every incident on your list. What I found when I got close to her was an untrained Force-sensitive with no control and no idea what she's capable of, panicking badly enough to bring a corridor down around us. I made the call to bring her in rather than leave her on the street to do that again somewhere with less cover." 

"You understand the position that puts me in?" The Director's tone stayed level, but the challenge in it was clear enough. "I have no verified history on this girl. No name, nothing at all. My responsibility is to this station, not to one field agent's read on a stranger." 

"I was standing close enough to feel exactly what she was doing." She held his gaze without flinching. "There was no intent behind any of it. Just fear with nowhere to go. You can log it however you like. It won't change what I felt." 

The Director studied her for a long moment, then let his gaze shift, briefly, to the girl standing silent and hollow-eyed just inside the door, still gripping the sleeve of her jacket like she had not quite decided this was safe yet. 

"And what would you have me do with her?" 

"Structured supervision, not a cell." She kept her voice even, professional, the tone she used when she needed someone to listen past their first instinct to argue. "I can help her with the basics, breathing through it, recognising the warning signs before they escalate. But I'll be honest with you. This is out of my depth." 

It was somewhere in the middle of saying it that she felt the warmth first, a slow, spreading heat down her arm, and only then did she glance down and register the blood, considerably more of it than she had expected, soaking clean through her sleeve. She kept her expression even and did not mention it, filing it under the same category as everything else that could wait. 

"The Force has been running unchecked in her for years by the look of tonight. Someone with real Order training would do a great deal more good here than I can on my own." 

The Director considered that, then nodded slowly. "I'll see what can be done." He did not elaborate further, and she did not push, some instinct telling her this was not a thread worth pulling on tonight. "In the meantime, she stays under NRI supervision. I'll have quarters arranged tonight." His eyes moved briefly to Din, who had not said a word since they had walked in, then back to her. "You have my agreement, on the condition that this does not happen again without authorisation first." 

"Understood." 

A moment later she felt it threatening to drip, one heavy bead gathering at her elbow with nowhere left to go but down onto the Director's carpet, and she brought her free hand up to press against the cut without breaking her sentence to the Director. The Director's eyes flicked once to the movement, then back to her face, and he said nothing about it, professional enough not to interrupt what was clearly still an open conversation. 

Din did not share his restraint. He crossed the room without a word, without asking, and knelt in front of her chair, gently rolling her sleeve higher to check the wound properly.  

"Medpack," he said, flat, to the nearest NRI officer standing near the door, who scrambled to comply without waiting for the Director's confirmation. 

"It's fine, Mando," she said quietly, not breaking her explanation to the Director for more than the half second it took to say it. 

He did not answer. The visor lifted slowly from the cut on her arm to her face instead, and stayed there a moment before he moved, letting her sleeve settle back over the wound without having touched it. 

The NRI agent returned a moment later with the small case. Din took it without opening it, tucking it into his belt instead. 

The Director watched the exchange for a moment, then cleared his throat, gently steering things toward a close. "I think we've covered what we need to for tonight," he said. "Thank you both. Truly. I'll take it from here with our new guest." His eyes flicked to the girl, still silent, still holding onto her sleeve. "Get some rest. Both of you. There's a transport waiting." 

The girl's hand tightened briefly on her sleeve before letting go, and she gave her what she hoped was a reassuring look before Din's hand found the small of her back, guiding her toward the door with Grogu already half asleep against his shoulder. 

The transport ride home was silent in a way that felt different from the ordinary quiet they usually shared. Ordinary quiet had a texture to it, comfortable, something they had built together over weeks of not needing to fill every gap with words. This felt like something being held shut by force. 

Din pulled the medpack from his belt once they were settled, and reached for her arm without asking, folding her sleeve back past the cut with the same careful economy he brought to everything else. She let him, watching him clean the wound and wrap it tight, his hands doing the one thing he still seemed willing to do for her tonight, and neither of them said a word through any of it. 

She tried to bridge the quiet once he had finished, watching his visor for any reaction at all. "The cut's superficial. It barely needed the wrap." Nothing. Not a turn of the head, not a shift in posture, nothing that told her the words had even registered. Just the low hum of the transport and Grogu's soft, even breathing where he had finally drifted off against Din's chest, one small fist curled loosely in the fabric of his cowl. 

She tried again, quieter. "What is it?" 

"Not now." 

Two words, flat and immediate, and somehow that was worse than the quiet had been, because at least the quiet left room to imagine he simply had not heard her. This confirmed he had, and had decided, deliberately, that this was all she was getting. 

She studied the side of the helmet for the rest of the ride, unreadable as always, and felt something shift in her understanding of the quiet itself. It was not irritation. She knew irritation from him, the particular clipped economy of his words when something merely annoyed him, quick and dry and usually gone within the hour. This was different. This had weight to it, something being held very deliberately in place behind his teeth, and the longer it stretched the more certain she became that whatever he was not saying was going to cost them both something significant once he finally let it out. 

She thought about reaching for his hand, the way she usually would without thinking, and found she could not quite make herself do it, uncertain for the first time in weeks whether the gesture would be welcome. That uncertainty alone told her more about how badly tonight had gone than anything he had actually said. 

By the time the transport docked and they climbed the last flight of stairs to the apartment, Grogu stirring awake just enough to blink blearily at the familiar hallway, she found she would have preferred shouting to this. At least shouting gave her something to push back against. This quiet gave her nothing at all, just the growing, sick certainty that she had done something that mattered far more to him than she had understood in the moment she had done it. 

Dinner was dead quiet except for Grogu. It was late so she had made something simple, more out of habit than appetite, and they sat together at the small table, not at opposite ends of a ship the way they had after their last silent stretch weeks ago, but across from each other, close enough that avoiding each other took actual effort. She caught his gaze more than once in the time it took to serve the food, and each time neither of them held it, both looking away at exactly the same moment like they had rehearsed it. Din did not touch his plate at all. He sat with his hands folded near it, still helmeted, food going cold in front of him while Grogu chattered on, sleep forgotten. 

She pushed food around her own plate without eating much of it either, cutting the same piece into smaller and smaller sections until there was nothing left to justify holding the knife. Grogu, sensing something was wrong in the special way he always did, launched into an increasingly elaborate performance meant to close the gap between them himself, holding a piece of food out toward Din, then toward her, babbling something that clearly wanted a response from both of them at once. She managed a small laugh despite herself. Din made a sound that might have been meant as one, low and automatic, and reached out to steady Grogu's hand before he could fling anything across the table. 

They sat like that for a long while, the three of them, quiet stretching everywhere except the small orbit around Grogu, who kept trying, undeterred, long after both adults had run out of things to perform for his benefit. Eventually he gave up trying to bridge it and went back to eating, glancing between them every so often like he was still waiting for the conversation to resume on its own. 

It was Din who finally broke it, though not with anything close to what she had been bracing for. "Let me put him down," he said quietly, already rising, gathering Grogu up before she had finished nodding. "Then we'll talk." 

She did not answer beyond the nod. She waited until she heard the bedroom door click shut over the cot, then went to the fresher instead of the couch, standing under water too hot for comfort long after she'd finished washing. She knew what she was doing, standing there. She unwrapped the bandage anyway checking to see if the bleeding had stopped, peeling it back with careful fingers, and let the water find the cut underneath it, the sting of it sharp and almost welcome, something simple and physical to feel instead of everything else waiting for her on the other side of the door. 

She came out in her towel, hair still damp, and found him already standing in the middle of the living room, unmoving, helmet angled toward the floor like he was still deciding whether to say anything at all. Neither of them spoke. She crossed straight to the bedroom instead, closing the door behind her long enough to dress and paused on her way back out to look in on Grogu, curled up, sound asleep in his cot with one small fist loose against the blanket. She eased the door shut without a sound and came back into the living room, stopping near the kitchen counter, unwilling to be the one who broke first. 

"Why?" 

One word, quiet, but the edge under it was already showing, none of the careful stillness he had managed earlier in the evening. 

"Why what?" 

"You pushed me away." He said it too fast, tripping slightly over the back half of the sentence like he had meant to lead with something else and changed course halfway through. "Back there. Before I was even close. You made it so that I could not get to you at all." 

"Because I had it." She did not reach for the level, reasonable tone she had used on the Director. Her arms came up across her chest instead, defensive before she had decided to be. "I was seconds from talking her down, Din. I felt it working. You would have undone that." 

"You don't know that." 

"I do, actually." She heard her own voice climb and did not bring it back down. "That's the whole problem, isn't it. You weren't standing where I was. You didn't feel what I felt. So as far as you're concerned my read on it doesn't count for anything." 

"That's not what I said." 

"You didn't have to say it." She was already shaking her head before he finished, the motion sharp, almost dismissive. "It's in everything you're not saying right now." 

He did not have an answer ready for that, and it seemed to cost him something to admit it, his hand curling briefly at his side before he found the next thing to say. "I'm not talking about whether you were right." 

"Then what?" 

"I'm talking about you shoving me halfway across a corridor like I was in your way." His voice had climbed too now, no longer flat, no longer careful. "Like I'm something you have to manage in the middle of a crisis instead of-" The sentence ran out from under him, and he stood there a moment with nothing to finish it, jaw working behind the visor like the rest of it refused to come. 

"Instead of what." 

"I don't know." He said it like it embarrassed him, which only made it sharper. "Instead of someone who's allowed to be scared for you too." 

"So what was I supposed to do, Din, let you walk into it and get hurt?" 

"Ask me. Warn me. Anything other than just deciding for both of us." Something harder crept into his voice, an edge she hadn't expected yet. "You've told me that you don't think it's right to use what you can do on someone's mind without permission. That it's a line you won't cross. But you'll use it on my body without asking and somehow that doesn't count?" 

She opened her mouth to argue and found the words weren't there yet, the accusation landing somewhere she had no ready defence for. 

The words sat in the room for a second longer than either of them seemed to want. She looked away first, toward the dark window instead of him, and she could feel where his next sentence was heading before he'd said a word of it, some old dread rising up ahead of the words themselves. 

He said it anyway. "You did exactly the same thing on Nevarro." 

She flinched like she had been struck, all the fight in her going out of her for a single unguarded second before it came back sharper than before. "Why would you even bring that up right now." 

"Because it's true." 

"Can we not." It came out low, almost pleading, nothing like the sharpness she had been using thus far. 

"Are we just never going to discuss what happened?" His voice had gone flat, worn down rather than angry, like he'd been holding the question back for longer than just tonight. 

"No it’s just not relevant. You don't get to bring that up now just because you don't like a call I made in the field." She was pacing now, one step toward the counter and back, unable to hold still the way she usually managed to. "It's not the same thing, Din. It was never going to be the same thing." 

He watched her move without moving himself, and when he spoke again his voice had gone rougher, some of the anger giving way to something underneath it he seemed less practiced at showing. "You want to talk about tonight instead? Fine. Let's talk about your arm." 

That stopped her mid-step. "It's a scratch." 

"It went straight through your sleeve and you didn't even look at it." 

"It doesn't hurt." She rolled her eyes saying it, dismissive, and hated the tone even as it left her mouth, but it was already out and she was not about to take it back now. 

"No?" His voice had gone dangerously quiet again, worse than shouting, and he took a step closer for the first time since the argument had started. "What if it had been a few centimeters to the right. What if that piece of paneling had gone through your neck instead of your arm." 

"It didn't." 

"That's not the point and you know it." 

"Then what is the point, Din, because I genuinely don't-" 

"The point is you don't let me worry about you until you're already bleeding in front of me." His voice broke slightly on the last word, betraying more than he probably wanted her to see, and he stopped there long enough that she thought that might be all of it. It was not.  

"That's when I get to touch you. When I get to matter. When you're already halfway gone." He exhaled hard, the anger cracking for a second into something closer to what it actually was. "I'm scared every single time that the next one won't stop at your arm." 

That one landed somewhere ugly, and she felt it settle before she found anything to say back. "That's not fair." 

"Isn't it." He had not raised his voice, but something about the stillness of him now was worse than shouting would have been. "You want to know when you actually let me close? It's never when things are fine. It's every time you're one bad decision from dying, and never before it. Nine days of you not saying a word to me on the Crest, and I only got close once you were too far gone to keep me out." 

She stood very still for a moment, turning that over, feeling the shape of it settle somewhere she did not want it to. "You want to talk about the Crest?"  

Her voice had gone thin and dangerous by the time she said it, and he must have heard the shift because he did not back down from it. 

"I want to know why you couldn't walk five meters into the cockpit and say something. Anything. Instead of lying there for nine days pretending you were fine." 

"I was avoiding you because you threatened me." The words came out louder than she meant them to, loud enough that she heard herself and did not care. "You told me you'd hunt me down if you had to. Was I supposed to just walk in after that and pretend it was nothing?" 

He was quiet a moment, long enough that she thought he might not answer at all, and when he did his voice had lost the edge it had carried through the rest of the fight, something rawer and less sure of itself underneath it. "I said that because I thought you were leaving us and I didn't know how else to make you understand what that would do to Grogu, to me, so I said the ugliest thing I could think of instead of the true one." He stopped, "I know how it sounded. I know what it sounded like I meant." 

"You never gave me the chance to tell you why I leaving." Her voice had gone thin, something old and unresolved rising up underneath the anger. "I never got to explain any of it, Din, because you jumped straight to threatening me instead of asking." 

"That's not-" He stopped, something in his stance going rigid, the anger faltering for a second into something closer to defensiveness. "I never said I didn't trust you." 

"You didn't have to say it." She crossed the last of the distance between them without seeming to notice she had done it. "You locked me on that ship like I was cargo. You don't lock someone in if you trust them." 

"Because I was terrified you'd disappear the second I looked away." 

"So instead you avoided me too." She had not meant to raise her voice again but it climbed anyway, cracking slightly at the edges. "You could have come to me. You had nine days to say something and you didn't. That's not just mine to carry." 

"I thought you needed space." 

"I needed you." Her voice cracked clean through the middle of it, and she hated that it did, hated that he could hear exactly where it broke. Something uncertain crept in underneath the anger, the memory itself gone soft and unreliable at the edges. "I don't even know how much of what I remember from those days was real and how much I made up lying there half out of my mind. But I remember needing you. I remember that part clearly. And you weren't there." 

He flinched at that, the small, involuntary kind that had nothing performed about it, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all, the silence thick enough that she could hear Grogu's breathing through the wall. 

Then he said it, so quietly she almost missed it. "You stopped eating." 

She froze. 

"I never saw you sleep, I heard you moving around down there for hours.” 

She said nothing. There was nothing left in her to say. 

She had believed, with total certainty, that she had hidden every piece of it. That certainty came apart all at once, standing in her own kitchen while he recited back the small, private collapse she had been so sure had gone entirely unwitnessed. 

"When you found the stims," she said, her voice gone very small, "why didn't you say something?" 

He did not ask what she meant. That alone told her everything. 

"I know you found them." Her voice sharpened, because his silence was somehow worse than a denial would have been. "I know you knew, Din. So why didn't you say anything to me then?" 

"Because I didn't know what I would have said." It came out rough, stripped of whatever composure he had been rationing all night. "What was I supposed to do. Walk in, tell you I'd found stims in your jacket, and demand an explanation? You'd already made it very clear you didn't want me anywhere near you." 

"How did you decide that?" Her voice had gone flat with disbelief, some of the anger draining into something closer to hurt.  

"Then why didn't you just come to me?" His voice cracked on it, something desperate leaking through despite himself. "Instead of taking stims alone in your bunk for nine days like the answer was in a syringe instead of five meters away through a door. If you had come to me, I would have known. I could have done something." 

"Why didn't you?" She threw it back at him with no space left between his question and her answer. "You had exactly the same five meters, Din. The same door. You could have walked through it any one of those nine days, and you didn't either." 

"I tried." It came out rough, almost injured. "I went down to the cargo bay , made up some reason to be there. You left as soon as I got down. I waited outside the fresher another time. You wouldn’t come out." 

That admission landed somewhere neither of them seemed prepared for, and for a moment the argument itself seemed to lose its shape entirely, both of them caught on the same impossible symmetry, two people who had each gotten close enough to say something and lost their nerve at the exact same threshold, over and over, for nine straight days. 

"I don't know what this is." He said it quieter now, some of the fight gone out of him entirely. " Not what it is to you. I didn't know then either and I still don't." 

Her face burned, sudden and unwelcome, heat crawling up her throat before she could stop it. She knew what he was asking her to say, and she knew exactly why she could not make herself say it, why she had never once let the actual words leave her mouth in all the time since. Saying it would make it real in a way she could not undo afterward, and some part of her had always understood that once it was real it could also end, the way everything she had ever let herself want out loud eventually had. 

"How did you not." Her voice broke, disbelief bleeding into something closer to desperation. "After everything that happened on Nevarro? I asked you to stay." 

"And that's how I was supposed to know?" It came out too fast, frustration breaking through the exhaustion underneath it. "You asked me to stay and I stayed. What was I meant to read into that when you made a run for it just hours later?" 

She had not thought she needed to say more back then, because she had never let herself think that far in the first place. She had believed, the same way she believed most things about herself without examining them too closely, that being with the two of them, having a place by the fire with them, was already more than she had any right to ask for. She had never let herself imagine she could have him, not really, not the way she wanted, so it had never occurred to her that the wanting itself might be worth saying out loud.  

Neither of them had anything left to say to that for a long moment. The apartment had gone completely quiet except for the low hum of the environmental system, and she stood there in the middle of it feeling every word they had just thrown work its way past whatever defence she had had ready. 

"You don't think you're allowed to let anyone else carry any of it," he said finally, quieter now, the anger gone out of it entirely. "Not me. Not tonight, not on the Crest, probably not ever. You just decide on your own that the risk belongs to you, and you take it before anyone else gets a vote." 

She had not consciously decided to shut him out either time, on Nevarro or tonight, had not sat down and reasoned her way into shouldering the danger alone. It had simply been instinct, the same reflex that had kept her alive and moving for years before Din had ever entered the picture, and she had never once stopped to consider that it might look, from where he stood, exactly like being shut out on purpose. 

"That's not-" she started, and stopped, because she genuinely did not know how to finish the sentence honestly. 

He did not push. He just stood there, breathing harder than the conversation alone accounted for, giving her the space to either find an answer or admit she did not have one, and the quiet between them stretched long enough that she felt every second of it settle heavy in her chest. 

Neither of them apologised. The argument had simply run out of the energy that had been fuelling it, both of them standing a few meters apart in a kitchen that suddenly felt too small to hold whatever had just been said in it. She felt herself unravelling from the inside, exhaustion and guilt and something rawer than either pressing in all at once, and she knew, with total certainty, that if she stayed in this room another minute she was going to fall apart in front of him in a way she was not ready for. 

"I can't do this right now." she said, voice cracking somewhere in the middle of it, and turned before he could see the rest of her face fall apart the way it was about to. 

She crossed to the bedroom and shut the door harder than she meant to, the sound of it cracking through the quiet apartment like something breaking. 

Grogu's cry started almost immediately, startled awake by the noise, and she felt the fresh wave of guilt hit before she had even wiped her own face clear. She crossed to his cot in the dark, already crying harder than she wanted him to hear, and lifted him carefully into her arms anyway, murmuring something soft and useless while he hiccupped against her shoulder. She sat on the edge of the bed with him curled against her chest, rocking slightly, her own breath coming in the same broken rhythm as his, and stayed like that a long time, unable to stop either one of them from crying. 

The markets of Mos Eisley are bustling with activity. Travelers and inhabitants pack the narrow passageways, making it difficult to move from stall to stall. It’s suffocating and the insufferable warmth radiating from the twin suns overhead only makes the experience more grueling. You’ve always hated Tatooine — you’d much prefer a blizzard in the barren tundra of Hoth to a sandstorm in the Dune Sea. Your only reprieve from the heat in the bustling crowd is the way they wordlessly part in front of you on instinct due to the beskar clad figure looming directly behind you like an imposing shadow — your Mandalorian. He wouldn’t bring you here if he had any other choice, but Peli is the only mechanic he trusts with the Razor Crest’s repairs and Mos Eisley’s salvage stalls are the only place in the galaxy that have parts compatible with the pre-Imperial vessel. 

Your eyes scan the merchandise until you find the familiar shape of an old ST-70 left engine deflector shield. The Razor Crest’s had gotten damaged during your last dogfight and now the engine is overheating while reaching hyperspace. Peli informed you both that if a new deflector shield isn’t installed, then your next jump into hyperspace could be your last. You stop at the stall to inspect the part — it’s a little worn, definitely used, but it sure looks better than the cracked piece of useless metal that is on your ship now. 

“How’s this look, Mando?”

You turn around expecting to meet his visor, but instead, find the Mandalorian scanning the crowd from his position at your flank. His helmet moves slowly from left to right, carefully scanning your surroundings. A small smile tugs at your lips as you watch him observe the environment. Where everyone else around you may perceive him as a threatening force, you only see your watchful protector. Even now as he stands close enough for you to feel the warmth of the suns radiating off his dark beskar, you feel immensely calm due to his unshakable security. Most would call him paranoid for his diligence; however, you understand his reservations with being in such a crowded place. Afterall, you met him because of a bounty placed on your head. 

It was after the Mandalorians had raised hell on Nevarro — after Mando had forsaken guild code in order to save the child that’s currently safe on the Razor Crest with Peli. He was desperate for credits and was offered a job to find and execute a human disrupting trade routes out of Endor. Mando wasn’t in the position to ask any questions, until he found you hiding out in the forest with a tribe of Ewoks. Turns out the man who hired Mando had a team on the planet stealing from the natives in order to profit by selling their goods and resources throughout the system — you weren’t disrupting essential trade routes, you were simply protecting a tribe that had taken you in. He knew the weight of that responsibility well and he’s always had a soft spot for those just trying to do the right thing despite the circumstances of the galaxy. So, instead of completing his mission he accepted a new one: help you take down the band of mercenaries stealing supplies from the Ewoks. In return for his assistance, you vowed to join him in his quest to protect the child from Imperial forces.

It’s been years since your first encounter on Endor and your Mandalorian is still wary of anyone who gives you a second glance. In the time spent traveling by his side, you realized even though he may be a man of few words, the man standing defensively behind you shows his affection through smaller acts of service — which includes watching your back as you look at salvaged parts. 

“Din?”

His visor finally moves to face in your direction at the sound of his name — his real name. A name he revealed in the privacy of the Razor Crest’s cabin late one night about a standard year into your ventures together. You’d been attempting to put Grogu to sleep, a task that was becoming harder as he grew in age and strength. After he finally drifted to sleep, you made your way to the cabin to see if your Mandalorian needed anything from you before you also got some rest. He didn’t need to turn around to know it was you approaching him — he’d memorized your footsteps a long time ago — and yet he still spun his chair to face you. 

“You good for the next few hours?”

He nodded in response — a man of few words. You gave him a tired smile and he was suddenly grateful for the helmet covering his expression because he knows that the cool planes of beskar hide a growing tenderness that makes him increasingly uncomfortable. 

“Alright, y’know the drill — wake me if you need anything.”

Another nod in response and instead of turning around to face the controls like you’d expect, his visor maintains its focus on you. His head tilts up slightly to meet your gaze from his seat, exposing a thin sliver of tan skin between the beskar and dark, wool fabric. Your eyes are immediately drawn to the sight and your breath catches. His head cocks to the side at your silence, exposing even more skin and you’re embarrassed by the way you yearn to know the man that’s underneath the metal. 

You definitely need some sleep. 

“Night, Mando.”

You turn on your heel to leave him for the night, but his voice stops you in your tracks.

“Din.”

His voice is soft, even through the helmet’s modulator. 

“What?”

“My name is Din Djarin.”

Your mouth goes dry at the revelation. The atmosphere in the cockpit of the Razor Crest suddenly shifts into something more intimate. He shifts in his seat slightly as the silence continues. You’re usually the talker, but what he just told you has left you completely speechless.

“Din is my family name.”

His family name. Those words weigh heavy on your heart. He had once told you about his homeworld — the one he knew before his upbringing on Concordia. About the Separatist invasion that occurred early in his youth. About the slaughter of his people by heartless battle droids. It was his first moment of vulnerability with you on the Razor Crest — the first time he let you see beneath the beskar for just a second. Movement rips you from your thoughts and your face softens as you notice Mando fidgeting nervously with his gloves. 

“Din.”

His head shoots up at the sound and his hands still. Beneath the visor, you know his eyes are boring into you. The thought almost makes you squirm — the moment of vulnerability feels foreign in this environment. Still, you allow him the time he needs to process. Afterall, he most likely hadn’t heard that name since he lived on Aq Vetina — yet another thing the Separatists took from him on that fateful night. Your heart wrenches for the man sitting in front of you. For the boy he once was — before Death Watch, before the beskar. 

You say the name again. The word feels heavy on your tongue, but a smile spreads across your features as the Din’s head cocks to the side. 

He looks at you the same way now. Even after the countless rotations that have passed since that night, he still regards you with his head tilted slightly to the right — an affectionate gesture, at least when it comes to you. You bite down hard on your inner cheek to stop the smile that begs to spread across your face at the sight — because despite his best efforts at looking intimidating, the way he’s looking down at you is undeniably cute. 

“How’s this one look?”

Din’s helmet moves slightly toward the object you’re pointing at as he takes a step forward, invading your personal space. Your breath catches when his beskar presses lightly against your back as he inspects the deflector shield over your shoulder. You hear him hum softly, the voice modulator doesn’t pick up the sound, but your proximity allows you to hear it from beneath the helmet. It’s uncharacteristically warm — it makes you wonder how his voice would sound without the helmet on. 

“Looks good enough to me.”

The Mandalorian shrugs his shoulders slightly and takes a step back. You immediately miss the feeling of his body behind you, but shake it off in order to barter for the piece you desperately need. Din appreciates the way you stand your ground in the market — he’s never been good with people, but you always seem to understand exactly what to say no matter the circumstance. You’ve gotten him and the kid out of some tough spots with nothing more than your wit and charm on several occasions, but he was always there behind you with a hand on his blaster just in case things went sideways. Even now, as he watches you haggle the price down with the stall owner, his hand rests against his thigh just above his blaster — you can never be too careful, especially on Tatooine. Once you bring the price down enough for your satisfaction, you turn around and outstretch a hand to the man standing behind you. Din wordlessly unclips a pouch from his belt and drops it into your hand. You smile at him before turning back towards the stall owner, the sight worth more than credits can buy. His head tilts as he studies you, something he’s found himself doing more recently. There’s just something about you that draws him in, something that’s becoming harder to resist the longer he spends by your side. He thought about ending your arrangement awhile ago, but he’s certain he wouldn’t be able to breathe without knowing you’re safe beside him — wherever you go, he goes. 

You turn around, placing the deflector shield in the old rucksack slung across your shoulders before sliding the pouch of credits back into his hand. Din sucks in a breath, immediately wishing that the leather of his gloves would disappear so he could feel the sensation of your hand against his. He wraps his fingers around the credits like they’re his only lifeline, fist clenching tightly in an attempt to keep his resolve. 

“You good?”

You peer up at him and he swears that you can see right through his beskar. His visor hides the smile pulling at his lips as he nods at you. 

“You?”

Your smile matches his own, not that you can tell. You move your hand up to your face, wiping the sweat from your forehead before answering.

“Just tired of this heat.”

Din chuckles at that in understanding. Even though he’s gotten used to the uncomfortability that comes from wearing head-to-toe armor, the twin suns high in the afternoon sky are practically baking him in his beskar.

“You thirsty?”

Your smile grows in understanding. It’s not often that the two of you have time to spare when visiting Tatooine, but on the rare occasion that there is a moment of down time Din would offer to buy you a drink at Chalmun's Cantina. 

“Very.”

Din extends his arm out, motioning for you to lead the way. You brush past the Mandalorian and you don’t need to look over your shoulder to make sure he’s following — there’s nowhere in the world you wouldn’t be able to feel Din’s presence, even the crowded alleys of Mos Eisley. 

The cantina is a welcome reprieve from the blistering heat of Tatooine, but it is equally as crowded as the market. Din finds a small booth in a dim corner and leaves you only to buy a drink at the bar. Your hand settles on the blaster at your hip — the blaster Din gifted you on life day during your second standard year together. Locals tend to leave you alone, they’re aware that you’re under the protection of the Mandalorian that frequents the establishment; however, Mos Eisley is a popular spot for traveling bounty hunters and smugglers. To your dismay, you seem to have attracted the attention of a young, olive skinned Twi’lek in standard bounty hunter gear. The man saunters over to your booth and your hand tightens around the grip of your blaster. He places both of his hands on the table and leans over you, your head tilts up to meet his eyes. He’s attempting to make himself look taller by invading your personal space. You wonder if this is an attempt at intimidation — or worse, an attempt to impress you. 

“Can I buy you a drink, ma sareen?”

Before you can form an answer, there’s already a blaster pressed into the Twi-lek’s back.

“Too slow, vaar’ika.”

Din places the drink down on the table with a heavy thunk and slides it towards you. You wrap your hand around the cool glass filled with neon blue liquid and take a sip before smiling sweetly up at the Mandalorian. Your eyes then drift to the Twi’lek who hasn’t moved an inch. You arch a brow at the young bounty hunter before speaking.

“Looks like Mando already beat you to it.”

The Twi’lek growls, barring his teeth at you. Din presses the blaster deeper into his back in response. 

“Mind your manners.”

Din’s voice is ice cold, the voice modulator of the helmet eliminating the warmth you heard earlier today from his tone, which makes his words even more threatening. It’s moments like this when you realize just how dangerous the Mandalorian truly is. He could drop the Twi’lek without breaking a sweat — and he would without a second thought if the Twi’lek even thought about hurting you. The Twi’lek huffs out a frustrated breath before making his way back to a group of bounty hunters in the opposite corner of the cantina. Din watches him for several moments before holstering his blaster and sliding into the booth on the opposite side of you. You watch his shoulders relax as his visor focuses back on you.

“You ever get tired of being my bodyguard?”

Din’s head tilts at your question, like he can’t believe you’ve asked it and he answers immediately.

“No.” 

You take another sip of your drink, attempting to hide the smile spreading across your features due to his response. Din notices. He notices everything about you — like the way you immediately change the subject. He doesn’t mind. By now, the two of you have established a comfortable ritual at the cantina. You talk and he listens. Occasionally, you ask him a question and he obliges you with an answer, but he’d much rather hear the sound of your voice.

You’re halfway through a story when a commotion from the other side of the cantina interrupts you. Din’s visor immediately moves toward the group of bounty hunters who are now fighting amongst themselves. He scoffs as he realizes that the olive skinned Twi’lek from earlier isn’t with them — he must have left to save himself from further embarrassment. Your head moves to follow Din’s gaze and you sigh as one of them pulls out their blaster, pointing it at one of his fellow men. You finish your drink and give Din a disappointed look. 

All good things must come to an end. 

Din gets up first, allowing his body to block you from the possibility of any misfire. He really never gets tired of being your bodyguard — he watches over you like it’s his life’s sworn purpose. The two of you exit the cantina. The heat has dissipated slightly, but it still hits you like a punch to the face. Still, you smile up at Din.

“You really do take me to the nicest places.”

He chuckles at your sarcasm, leading you towards the sparsely crowded passages that’ll take you back to Peli’s workshop. That is, until your touch stops him in his tracks. His visor moves to his arm, where your hand has found its place between two of his beskar plates. He can feel the warmth of your touch through the fabric of his flight suit. The sensation makes his brain short circuit. He tilts his head back up and finds you already looking at him — the playful glint in your eye has been replaced with a devastatingly beautiful tenderness. 

“Hey, Mando!”

Din groans in frustration as he tears his attention away from you, spotting the Twi’lek from earlier. He must have followed you both from the cantina; however, Din was certain that he had left before the two of you. Either way, he’s tired of the man’s continued presence.

“Who’s too slow now?”

Din watches as the Twi’lek pulls out his blaster. He grabs his in return and aims; however, the olive skinned man beats him to the trigger. Din expects the bolt from the opposing blaster to ping off his armor, but it moves past him in slow motion. He moves on instinct, realizing too late that the shot was never meant for him — the Twi’lek was aiming for you. His hands move to pull you towards his body, out of the line of fire. A sharp gasp escapes your lips. Din hopes that it’s because of the sudden movement, but as your hand moves to hold your side he knows he was too late. 

“No.”

Not you, not now. He cannot lose you. 

His visor immediately finds the Twi’lek, still standing smugly at the entrance of the passageway. A growl rips through his throat as he raises his blaster once more with frightening speed before firing three shots at the Twi’lek. Once the assailant's body is lifeless on the ground, he focuses his attention back on you. His hands cover yours at your side before his visor focuses on your face.

“You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

You nod at his words, though you’re unsure if he’s attempting to convince you or himself. Either way, he seems to relax slightly at your coherent response.

“We gotta make it back to the Razor Crest. Can you walk?”

You take a careful step forward, gritting your teeth through the searing pain. Din moves to your side, wrapping a solid arm around you so you can lean against him for support. The journey back to Peli’s workshop is grueling. Between the pain in your side and the blistering heat, it’s a miracle that you don’t pass out. Din spends the trip carrying the brunt of your weight, mumbling an apology every time you wince. 

“What the hell happened out there?”

Peli questions the Mandalorian as soon as he enters the workshop. He throws the mechanic a look over his shoulder before answering.

“What’s it look like? I have a med kit on the Crest.”

“Well, did you at least get the part I need?”

Din huffs out a frustrated breath before yanking the rucksack off of you and throwing it at Peli. The mechanic catches the bag with ease before eyeing the deflector shield inside.

“Keep the kid off the ship!”

Din yells over his shoulder, but Peli is too busy assessing the part the two of you picked up. He lets out a frustrated sigh before hauling you up the ramp of the Razor Crest. Din places you gently down on the worn bench where you and Grogu eat meals together. He moves quickly, grabbing the med kit from the cluttered supply closet and dumping its contents on the small table beside you. Din kneels down in front of you, glancing up at your face before pulling your tunic up slightly so he can get a look at the wound. He sucks in a sharp breath at the sight. Your eyes follow nervously, but you let out a sigh of relief — the bolt simply grazed the skin on your right side. It will probably scar; however, the injury will heal fairly quickly. Din’s posture, though, is anything but relieved. 

“Din, I’m okay.”

You attempt to soothe his worries; however, it seems that your words fall on deaf ears. He grabs a stimpack from the table — his fingers clutch the container so tight you’re worried it might shatter as he administers it to you. You grimace at the sharp pain in your side from the injection, but are grateful for the way your pain subsides to a dull ache almost immediately. Din mumbles an apology before moving to grab a bandage. He struggles to remove the adhesive backing, fumbling due to the fabric covering his hands. A string of Mando’a expletives escapes his mouth as he drops the bandage before frustratedly peeling off his gloves and unceremoniously tossing them on the floor with the discarded stimpack. Your eyes are instantly drawn to the tan skin he just unveiled — the scars that litter his bruised knuckles and the veins that trail up towards his forearms. And then you notice the way that his hands tremble as he moves to grab the bandage again. You grab them with your own in order to ground him back in this moment. Din immediately stills. Your touch is electric — his skin is buzzing due to the contact. And then you sweep your thumb gently over one of his swollen knuckles and his heartbeat is ringing in his ears. A part of him wonders if you can hear it through the layers of fabric and beskar.

He’s been careful to avoid this — the addictive sensation of your soft skin against his. Every time he’s had to patch you up in the past, his dark gloves have been a barrier between you both. But the heat of Tatooine and the anxiety making its home in his bones had his palms sweating uncomfortably against the heavy leather. The fabric kept sliding against his slick skin, making all fine motor skills damn near impossible. He never expected you to capture his hands with your own. But you did and there’s no going back. He never knew what he was missing, but now he does — he was a man dying of thirst and you're an oasis. 

The adrenaline coursing through his veins has him moving forward without a second thought, resting his beskar clad forehead against yours. The cool metal feels like heaven against your sunbaked skin; however, a selfish part of you wonders what this would feel like without the beskar barrier. The meer thought crossing your mind has guilt immediately clawing up your throat. This should be enough — it’s more than you ever thought was possible when you first started traveling with the Mandalorian. However, every time Din offers you a new piece of himself, you yearn for another. Your hands involuntarily tighten around his and you swear you hear Din whimper through the helmet. He’s desperately trying to regain his self control, but he’s overwhelmed by the fact that your hands grasping his is no longer enough contact.

“Do you trust me?”

You pull your forehead away from his and stare into his visor. He feels infinitely small under your gaze. Once again, he swears you can see through the beskar.

“Of course.”

Your immediate answer relieves some of the anxiety that’s built up in his chest. He trusts you implicitly — more than anyone in the galaxy. He’s glad that he’s earned even an ounce of that from you.

“Close your eyes.”

You do as you’re told. Din’s heart is hammering against his chest as he musters up the courage for what’s next. He pulls his hands away from yours. The immediate frown that accompanies your expression has his lips quirking up into a small smile. His fingers tremble as he reaches up and grabs the edge of beskar under his chin. The helmet slides off easily and a gasp escapes your lips as you hear the metal clang against the floor. Din blinks once, then twice — attempting to adjust his vision to the unfamiliar light. And once his eyesight clears, it feels like he’s looking at you for the first time. And gods, you are beautiful.

“Please don’t open your eyes, cyar’ika.”

Your heart clenches as his voice graces your ears. The Mando’a term of endearment has never sounded sweeter. His timbre is soft and warm without the voice modulator — it’s how you’ve always imagined his voice would sound. The Mandalorian may be cold and intimidating by nature due to necessity. But Din — your Din — sounds like sunshine. You nod at his plea. Although you wish you could get just a glimpse at the man standing before you, you’d never do anything to break the careful, steadfast trust built between you both. 

He moves closer to you, invading your personal space more than he’s ever allowed before. Your breath catches in your chest as you feel the heat radiating off of his body. And then he reaches out, gently guiding your hands to his face. You realize immediately what this gesture means — you may not be able to open your eyes due to his oaths, but this is his way of allowing you to see him. Din’s eyes flutter closed as your fingers roam the gentle planes of his features. A small laugh bubbles in your throat as his short stubble prickles your finger tips. To Din, the sound is heavenly. And then you card your fingers through his curls — the noise that escapes him is vulnerable and desperate. He never knew how starved he was for your touch and now that he’s felt it, his hunger feels damn near insatiable. He moves forward slowly, pressing his forehead against yours once again. Your hands immediately still as you feel his breaths fan against your cheeks.

You’re starting to think that Twi’lek did more than graze your side with his blaster outside of the cantina — that your body is actually unconsciously sprawled against the sands of Tatooine. Because this is a dream — heaven, really — and you never want to wake up. 

“I’m sorry this is all I can give you.”

His voice is impossibly quiet and you can hear the shame permeating through his words. You gently shake your head against his. Doesn’t he know what this means to you? How you know that he’s already given more of himself to you than his creed allows? Your hands move, cradling his face.

“This is everything, Din.”

He laughs — really laughs — at that. The sound is melodic. And with a newfound confidence, Din greedily presses his lips against yours. Your hands find their way to his soft locks once more as his pull your body against the harsh planes of beskar armor, careful of your injury. The kiss is desperate and messy — years of built up tension finally breaking through your haphazard affections. When you finally break the kiss, gasping for breath, Din doesn’t let you go far. His knuckle caresses your cheekbone as he openly admires your flushed features. And when he speaks, his voice is overflowing with unbridled devotion.