#monster!din

He came-to curled in the fetal position on the hard metal floor of his tiny compartment on the humming public transport. Before he’d even opened his eyes, he knew his body felt wrong. Uncomfortable and unwieldy, heavy and strange.

When he did open his eyes to the harsh, artificial light, the first thing he noticed was the sharp clarity of his vision. He wasn’t wearing his helmet, but it felt like he was looking through one of the strongest filters of his visor. He blinked hard. No change.

He unfolded his arms and studied his hands, splaying too-long fingers, and his thoughts tangled and snagged as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. 

The glint of cruel silver claws. 

In his periphery, he caught the movement of a dark shape over his shoulder.

He tried to scramble away from it. It followed, a shadow.

Wings.

The word felt absurd. But it was…right. Silver that matched the half-moons of those claws, a structure of bone sprouted from both of his shoulder blades, a hooked joint forming the apex of each inky black, bat-like wing. Colossal and dark.

Piece by piece, in a haze of disbelief, he discovered new parts of himself.

The sheer size of this body, the power coiled in his changed muscles. 

He ran a finger along the edge of his teeth, catching the pad on an elongated canine. Blood welled.

The wound on his thigh, where he'd burned himself with the saber the night before, was largely healed. There was only a trace of it, a fading pink scar.

Din stopped there. He couldn’t bring himself to look in a mirror, to see himself like this. He wasn’t ready for it to be real, to know if his face was still his own.

Instead, he picked up his chest plate to start collecting his armor, and his claws bit gently into the perfectly smooth surface. He was stunned.

What scratches beskar?

Beskar.

Of course.

The silver of his claws, of his wing joints was beskar. Virtually indestructible.

Din sank back to the floor and closed his eyes. He sat against the cold metal wall with his clenched fists pressed against his eyelids, the tips of those talons cutting into his palms. He wanted to escape the prison of this body, of this new reality; to wake from this nightmare; to blink himself out of existence altogether. 

He forced himself to slow his breathing, holding it at the top of each inhale, until some of the tension in his chest eased. He let his thoughts go, focused on the cadence of his breath. Preparing himself as he did before a fight.

A slow, creeping sense of relief spread through him gradually, growing so palpable it turned physical. Like a cool wash of water over his aching muscles, a full-body shiver racked him. The tremble and quake of his broad frame was fleeting but intense. A release. His bones shifted in a pinch of discomfort. His mind drifted.

And then, stillness.

He’d opened his eyes minutes later, and his vision was blessedly, beautifully blurred—just barely. As it always was. As it was supposed to be.

Sitting there, staring at his hands and his blunt, human nails, Din might have been able to convince himself he’d imagined all of it. A fever dream. A delusion. An exhaustion-fueled moment of insanity, his mind addled by the fight and the pain and the life-altering dismissal from his covert. 

Except, etched into his chest plate…those damning marks.

A mechanical voice announced the imminent arrival of the transport, interrupting his moment of existential crisis. Tatooine. The local time and weather blared through the speaker.

Tatooine. He couldn’t go back there. Not like this.

He made a choice. He dressed and readied himself, deboarded and found his way to the baggage claim. A droid unlocked his case, and Din methodically reattached each of his weapons. He reached for the dark saber last. The metal hilt felt hot, even through the thick leather of his glove. Nothing else had—not his blaster or his charges. Just the saber, warm under his touch. Warm like something alive. Like something warm-blooded, something with a thrumming pulse. Like something pleased to be back in his grip.

Like it knew.

He clipped it to his belt and let it drop, relieved to not have it in his hand.

Din turned, looking for the closest screen of departures, and scanned the list for the least populated destination.

*** Now, months later, he wakes to a fantasy.

He hadn’t meant to sleep. He didn’t want to risk it, even in the armor—not after he felt his body start to shift under his beskar last night. He didn’t think that was possible. Then he’d sucked your taste off his fingers, and his head had snapped to the side, his spine straightening. He’d felt the pop of vertebra and the sudden tightness of the skin across his back, the warm tension in his muscles straining for the change, but he’d managed to stave it off. 

Just barely.

No, he hadn’t meant to sleep last night, but he had. And he wakes now, well rested, to the feeling of your warm body curled into his side, your head nuzzled into his neck, your breathing slow and deep. Watery morning light, as light as this dark forest ever gets, is visible through the trees outside the window.

He’d tried to move away from you during the night, to give you space, sure that you’d be more comfortable without the hard edges of beskar digging into your soft body, but every time he’d started to extract himself gently, you’d grumbled and tightened your fingers wherever they happened to be—caught in the folds of his duraweave, gripped around armor, tangled with his own. The leg you had hooked over his thigh had tensed too, your foot tucking itself under his other knee. You twined yourself around him, like a tenacious little climbing vine, and refused to let go.  

He likes it. You’re possessive too.

The realization hurts a soft spot under his ribs—you want what he wants. To belong to someone. To claim and be claimed. To know that closeness. Skin-to-skin, joined and sweaty, without all these fucking layers between you. That hopeless, dangerous thing he can never give you.

That thought is unbearable when you’re asleep on his chest, your hand still curled over the top of his chest plate, fingers clinging to the sharp cut of metal. When he can smell the faint tang of your blood as it pumps idly through your veins, detectable even under the layer of your delicate floral scent, even from beneath his helmet.

His mouth waters.

It’s the catalyst that finally gets him moving. He carefully but forcefully unfastens your hand, inches your leg off his, and slips out of bed. You readjust but don’t wake.

As soon as he’s standing, looking down at you, he regrets it. The space between your bodies is intolerable, and he has nothing to do but wait for you to wake. So he waits. He waits, and he seethes.

He thinks about the mistakes he’s made.

*** He’d spent yesterday angry at himself, fuming at his own idiocy. He’d ruminated on how to proceed, how to scare you off again after he’d all but courted you the previous night when he’d given you a com link. Had invited you to use it. Fucking encouraged it. He’d been drunk on you—on your presence, on your forgiveness, on your smile. On the headiness of your scent as you’d stood so close to him outside your house. And it had messed with his fucking head, made him do stupid things. Dangerous things.

He’d worked through the steps of his drills while he thought, slashing the saber through the air as he’d tried to decide what to do. How to retract his offer of the com. He didn’t think he could bring himself to be cruel to you, to reject you outright. He’d imagined your face, imagined the hurt there, and he’d just…known he couldn’t do it. He’d have to leave. He wouldn’t let himself see you again. He'd jam the frequency of the com link. A clean break.

It was the only option.

He’d decided he’d let himself change early then, before the sun had dipped below the green horizon. One last hunt before he found a way off this planet. 

He’d been minutes away from letting himself shift, minutes away from heading out completely uninhibited, when he’d caught your scent. You were close. The timing of it had made him want to break something. That was exactly the problem with all of this: one misstep, one instance of bad timing…and you could end up dead.

Why hadn’t he thought about you finding the bodies? How had that not occurred to him? 

He’d left a perfect trail from your house to his. His animal brain had thought protect and nothing else. He’d gotten sloppy, comfortable. Maybe some part of him had wanted you to find it, to follow.

This was how it would end, then, he’d thought as he waited for you. Not in the easy way he’d planned, not a quiet exit—a coward’s exit. He’d have to face you, to turn you away and tell you he was leaving. 

Then you were in front of him, and all of that was gone—the struggle and the resolve, the determination and decency. He’d fought to get it back for a few minutes, scrabbled against his own desire. Had tried to deny himself—to deny you. It was futile.

You’d asked him if he thought you were weak, if all of this was somehow your fault. And that was it.

He’d refused to punish you for his sins. 

*** And now you’re in his bed. Warm and soft under his comforter, your head pressed into his pillow. A dream. Something he could wake up to tomorrow and the next day, if he wanted. A string of perfect, untouchable days stretching before him like a beckoning temptress.

He can’t let himself think like that.

Your life, he reminds himself. Your life is what matters most. Keeping you here wouldn’t just be selfish, wouldn’t just be a temporary balm, it would be a gamble. Your life pitted against his own self-restraint. Your life pitted against the self-restraint of a monster he doesn’t trust.

If he can just get you out—out of his bed, out of his house, out of his head—he’ll be able to think straight, and then he can go.

He watches you stir, aware suddenly that a fully armored Mandalorian looming over you might not be the most comforting sight for you to wake to. But you crack open sleepy eyes before he can move, and a lazy smile spreads across your face. His heartbeat stumbles.

“Morning,” you yawn, stretching your arms over your head.

“Morning,” he replies, clipped as he tries to expedite this process.

“It’s early,” you muse, your gaze trailing to the window. “I think you should come back to bed.”

Din’s thoughts stall immediately. You look so cozy, so comfortable snuggled in his bed. In his bed.

“Please?”

Din’s helmet follows the path of your hand as it begins to wander: as it slides languidly down the column of your neck, molds over the swell of your breast, lingers along your waist. You know you’ve snared him right away. You always know.

He just stands there, silent and yielding, as you kick the blankets away and shimmy out of your clothes. He wants to tell you to stop, but his mouth isn’t responding to his brain, his jaw dropped open slightly behind the helmet as he surveys the bare lines of your body. He didn’t get to enjoy this yesterday, didn’t get to luxuriate in the view, to drink in every detail. To commit it to memory.

His visor catches where your fingers stroke the curve of your hip.

“I can’t—” he starts.

You slip your hand between your legs, run your fingers through the soft hair there.

He was going to get you out. To regroup. That was his intention.

One of your fingers slips lower, dips into the seam of your sex. His cock responds.

He barely knows his own name, let alone any sense of reason when you’re looking at him like that—touching yourself like that. Begging him to touch you. His nervous system jolts from freeze directly into overdrive, and immediately he can feel himself brushing up against some physical limit, teetering on the edge of his control.

He watches you drop your knees open, and a low, pained sound passes through the modulator when you use two fingers to part yourself, putting yourself on display for him. You roll the pad of one finger over your clit, and your head drops back onto the pillow, your eyes closing in pleasure. Need claws at the inside of him. 

“Stop,” he commands, but there’s no bite in it, his mouth watering at the sight of your stroking fingers.

You smile and widen the spread of your thighs, moving your hand lower.

He tries to sound firm, but his words come out like a plea: “Don’t—”

“I wouldn’t have to touch myself if you’d do it for me.”

You keep your eyes on his visor as you press two fingers inside yourself, frictionless as they sink inside the warm clutch of your body. He’s fixated on the flex of your wrist as you fuck yourself gently—his rapt attention suddenly a shivering, living thing throbbing under his skin. When you ease them out, he can see the shine of your arousal coating your skin up to the knuckle, a clear thread strung between your fingers for a brief moment when you slowly separate them.

“Your fingers feel so much better,” you breathe.

His blood pulses loudly in his ears, a too-slow beat. He knows what you feel like, clenched around his thick fingers—how slick, how hot. He knows what you taste like, licked off his own skin. Din would like to say that some greater primal force takes over, hijacks his body, that the monster in him doesn’t give him a choice, but that would be a lie.

He decides to let go.

Without changing forms, Din silences the part of his mind that’s protesting. He lets the animal of his hindbrain take control, a predator submitting to the call of its prey drive. It feels good to give in—a rush of blissful quiet overtakes him. He looks at you, and it’s simple. He wants you.

Time slows, but his hands move quickly—going to his belt buckle. The weapon-heavy leather thuds when it hits the ground at his feet.

You watch him disarm himself, poised like a willing sacrifice on his bed with your hand caught between your open legs, a naked eagerness on your face that pleases the possessive, hungry thing in his chest. His vision is tinged red, the severed thread of his control a distant memory as he thinks of all the things he wants to do with you.

To you.

He condemned himself to this the moment he let himself touch you. There’s no going back. He’s going to taste your nectar from the source. He’s going to fuck you with his tongue and gently suckle your clit between his lips until you sob. He’s going to eat you out until you come on his face, your hands tangled in his hair.

And then he’s going to do it again.

He tries not to think about how much easier that would be with his other tongue, his tongue when he’s transformed—long and dextrous as it is. He could get so deep inside you like that. Taste you from the inside out.

Later. He appeases himself with the promise of later. The promise of tomorrow and more more more.

His gaze settles on your mouth. There’s something else he wants now.

He approaches the bed and stands at its side, waiting patiently. That desperate sense of urgency drops away, and his shoulders relax. He can decide to have all the time in the world with you if he only lets himself. 

When he hunts, when Din really truly hunts these days, he finds that he likes to draw out the indulgence of it. The tease and the chase. The kick of adrenaline before the slaughter. He understands why a predator plays with its prey before it makes the kill. 

Because it can.

Because it feels good.

You’re expecting him to join you on the bed. He can see it in your expectant gaze.

“You want it so bad?” he asks, dipping his helmet down. “Come here.”

A wicked look flashes across your face at the change in his voice, at the invitation. There’s a beat of anticipation as you decide to play along, and then you crawl to the edge of the bed on your hands and knees. He watches, an imperious tilt to his helmet.

You perch on the edge, looking up. Waiting.

“Go ahead,” he nods. “Take it out.”

Your hands move to the button on his pants, but you don’t pop it open right away. You let your hand mold to the hard bulge there, feeling the heft of him.

He tilts his helmet the other direction, impatient, and you go for the zipper. 

Before you’ve even pulled his cock out, before you’ve even touched him, Din thinks the sensation of your hot breath on the expanse of skin exposed by his open fly might be the most erotic thing he’s ever experienced. 

He rips his gloves off and locks a hand around the nape of your neck. 

He thinks for a fleeting moment how obvious it must be—his obsession with your mouth. The edge of mania he’s shoved toward when you let your tongue drag up his hip bone. That he’d slit his wrists at the altar of your perfect lips if you asked.

Your eyes drag upward slowly as you lick across his skin, gaze catching on the armored lines of his body before it meets his visor. You peer up at him as you inch the fabric of his pants down just far enough. And then your eyes flick down to watch a pearly bead of precum slip down the length of his shaft at your closeness.

“You want it?” he rasps. “Open your mouth.”

He grunts in satisfaction when your lips part immediately. Again when your hand curls around the base of him and your tongue darts out to circle his head, a touch so infuriatingly delicate that it makes him want to hold you down and fuck your throat raw.

He doesn’t, of course. He lets you set the pace even though your teasing lick across the underside of his cock and another over his slit feel as much like torture as they do like pleasure. 

Finally, finally, you take him fully into the heat of your mouth. You start up a steady rhythm, and he’s more than satisfied to let you take the reins. 

You’re less satisfied with that though—you settle a hand over his on your neck and press down, your eyes skirting upward as you nod subtly, your other hand urging his hips forward, urging him to fuck your mouth. 

Use me. 

He wishes you could see his face in this moment, what you do to him. Din’s eyelashes flutter shut at the perfection of your request. But immediately, he snaps them open again, needing to see.

He thrusts forward, and you whine in approval, your fingers tightening on his hip—taking him deep again and again, until he watches a line of saliva slide down your chin. Until your lashes grow wet, eyes watering at the effort of taking him over and over. 

It’s too much. It’s too good. 

The tight, hot constriction of your throat as you swallow around the head of him, the hard suck of your cheeks hollowing out around his shaft. His helmet rocks back, and a growl reverberates through his chest. But he’s not about to let himself come without knowing what it feels like to fuck you.

His hand drops away from the back of your neck; he forces his hips to still. “Enough,” he grits.

When you surge forward again, taking him deep, he closes a hand gently around your throat and eases you backward, off him.

“I said stop.” He thinks the words would be menacing if the fractured restraint in his voice weren’t so apparent. If you couldn’t see the steady leak of precum from his cock, the drizzle of opaque liquid on his dark pants. He’s teetering right on the painful edge of orgasm, and you know it. 

“Need to fuck you,” he says, his hand still settled over your throat.

“Then fuck me,” you reply, your voice hoarse as you shift backward on the bed. 

“You want my fingers first?” he asks, his hand drifting down the inside of your thigh. “You want to cum on my hand again?”

“No,” you say, catching his wrist and pulling him onto the bed, over you. 

“No?” he says. “You want it to hurt?”

“Yes.”

His fingers tighten on your thigh. Too hard. “Turn around.”

You flip over and settle on your knees in front of him, and Din can see how much you enjoyed sucking his cock in the glossy spread of your cunt. 

He catches a drop of your arousal with two caressing fingers. “You want to be fucked hard? Is that what you want, you greedy little thing?”

You press your hips back, rubbing yourself into the cup of his hand. And for a moment, his mind buzzes with blankness—with the thought that he could be tasting you instead of just touching you. He satisfies himself for now by lining up his cock with the soft heat of your pussy, by pressing his sensitive head against your arousal-slick flesh. 

But when you whine and start to shift backward into him, he waits. Savors. “You need my cock that bad, huh?”

“Please, I need it. I want it—”

It’s that thing he fantasizes about—the daydream he strokes himself to in the shower after he hunts, when he’s sticky with blood and the leash on his desire has long been snapped. Your whined plea for him, your need so stark and bright that he couldn’t ever possibly deny you. Your need for him so heightened it threatens to match his for you.

“Take it then,” he pants. “Take what you asked for.”

He sinks his cock into the welcoming heat of your body, pressing slowly against the tight resistance of little preparation—hears the soft, drawn-out oh of your pleasure—and he knows there’s no coming back from this.

*** So he doesn’t fight it. He keeps you.

Days turn into a week. Into two. You bring life and sound to this desolate place—the creak of your steps on the hardwood floor, the sound of your humming, the quiet clanks of your movements around the kitchen in the early morning light. The quiet, steady tick of your heartbeat. All those pretty little noises you make when he has you in his bed—the moans and the whimpers and the pleas. His pillow smells like mellow spring flowers, and there are rose colored skirts and silky blue pajamas in his dresser.

He likes it.

He likes the noise and the tightness of the space and the company.

When he heads outside to chop wood for the fireplace, you follow to watch him roll up the duraweave sleeves of his flight suit and swing the ax—again and again until a thick log splits down the middle with a crack—and the attention pleases him. 

The weeks stack up, and there is a bar of soap speckled with lavender flowers in his shower. There are sweet strawberry preserves lined up in his cupboard, a colorful wool throw blanket tossed over the back of the couch that you insist is a necessity. For sitting in front of the fire, of course. You poke fun at his ascetic choices, at the lack of coziness in his house, but you don’t seem mad at all to be the one to provide it. 

He thinks you know instinctively that home isn’t a place or a concept he’s familiar with. He thinks you love being the one to show him what it could mean. 

He can tell you don’t mind that you have to face opposite directions when you eat. He thinks you like the sound of his voice even more when it’s not passed through the modulator. You draw out every meal with questions. He draws them out with his answers.

He tells you about the little green bounty that changed his life, the soup his mother made for him when he was sick, being adopted by the Mandalorians, the fact that he used to love swimming as a child. That sometimes he thinks about how good it would feel to strip off his armor and swim now. You tell him about your dreams, your childhood, your plans, everything.

When he slips his helmet on again and you turn to face him, he can see that the gulf between what he does tell you and the whole truth is obvious, though.

There is a question—are many questions—swimming in your eyes. The intention to get answers too. He’s not sure which exactly questions they are: Why the armor? The helmet? The Creed? Why this place? Where is he going next? When? What happened to him? What is he? Why the isolation and the fear and the hesitation and mile-high walls and why why why?

What the fuck happened to the wall of the shower?

Valid questions, every one. Many are things he asks himself regularly. All are questions he doesn’t know how to answer without shattering this perfect moment, without ruining the lovely domesticity you’re cultivating together. So when he sees that look and your lips part, Din speaks before you can. He’s not ready, yet, to go there. He reaches for your hand or strokes a gloved finger over your cheek and deflects. 

Just a little longer, he thinks, please. And you’re not fooled—he knows that. You understand the request and allow it for now, and he’ll take what he can.

“You want to learn how to shoot?” he asks instead. 

Your eyes light up.

He helps you pick a blaster from his collection—“How many blasters does one man need, Mando?”—that’s well suited to you, that fits your grip. He sets up targets outside, scattered on trees at varying distances, and stands close behind you, a solid wall against your back. He adjusts your stance and the placement of your hands, letting his touch linger on your waist in a way that makes your heart rate readout on his helmet spike. 

“Are you going to let me focus or not?” you quip, peering at him over your shoulder. “I thought you were trying to teach me something here.”

He raises innocent hands and steps back. “I didn’t realize I was distracting you.”

You smile slyly at him. “Sure.”

He lets himself enjoy it, the ease between you, the way you can read him even through the armor. Standing a short distance behind you, he talks you through the process: how to aim and shoot, how to breathe.

Hand-to-hand, next, he thinks to himself as he watches you practice. Then blades. Tracking.

He’ll teach you anything and everything that will protect you.

For when he’s no longer here to do it for you, he doesn’t let himself think. 

He watches you practice each day, watches you focus on the target, your lip caught between your teeth in concentration, until you nail the bullseye. You run to the tree where the target is hanging—a hole singed through the middle—letting out a triumphant cry, and he follows.

“Look,” you grin, so proud it makes his heart trip. You point at the perfectly placed burn mark. 

“Good,” he praises. “Do it again.” 

You roll your eyes, but you do. You return dutifully to the line he’d drawn in the pine needle strewn ground and shoot until you get the hang of it, until a miss is rare. And then he fucks you up against that tree, your dress bunched up around your hips, the blaster abandoned somewhere by your feet. 

You leave for a day, maybe two, here and there to check on things at home, that little fawn you love. As soon as you’re gone, he spends a couple hours getting as far in the opposite direction as he can, changing, hunting whatever he can find in the shortest time, and then after he’s washed every trace of blood away and donned his armor, he waits for you to come back. He tells himself it’s a perfectly workable arrangement.

It’s fine. It’s safe. Safe enough.

With his attention elsewhere, it takes him a few weeks to notice that those prints, the ones he’d been tracking so obsessively, have started to show up closer to his house, to yours. They mark a quiet, slow encroachment into his territory—inching just barely past that boundary he’d been so careful to hold until recently. Their bravery is returning, their local numbers rebounding, because he hasn’t been pushing them back by culling their pack with regularity.

He makes a mental note to keep a closer eye on things, reassured by the fact that there are miles of buffer between their progress and you. And, more importantly, that more often than not, he’s by your side these days—like the times you ask him to come with you when you leave. He’s not going to say no to you.

Every night, he gets to undress you and pull you into his bed. To touch you and fuck you and make you come. He gets to learn what makes you cry, what makes you scream, what makes you beg.

All in the armor, still. In the beskar prison that keeps you safe from him. That line he manages, somehow, to maintain. The monster in him hasn’t wrested it from him yet, and he clings to that last safety net, that final border between risky and reckless. 

He wonders every day when you’ll hit your threshold. When it’ll all become too much—the secrets and the questions and the armor. Every day you don’t ask or push or leave, he breathes a sigh of relief, knowing full well it just means the next day is more likely. That worry is so dwarfed by the pleasure of having you that he barely notices it, though.

It helps, too, that he’s well rested for the first time in a long time.

Din doesn’t dream when you’re in his bed, isn’t haunted by the nightmares. He slips into sleep, and it doesn’t fight him like it usually does. He sleeps soundly with your warm, soft form tucked against his side, your face pressed into his cowl. Your presence, your touch, your scent—they soothe him.

He’s always known—even before he admitted it to himself—that there would be no halfway with this. No measured approach to having you. And he was right, of course. Here you are, living with him… and happy, he thinks. He doesn’t like to think about what would happen if that changed, if you left. What he'd do. What he'd have to stop himself from doing.

Din loves hard, with teeth, and all of his are sunk deep in you. If he really thinks about it, though, the opposite is true. Yours, sunk deep in him. You have a bone-deep hold on him, a fatal bite that severed something vital upon first contact. If you decided to let go, he’d bleed out.

And he feels lighter than he has in months. Maybe years.

It scares him so much he doesn’t want to think about it.

So he doesn’t.

YOU

It’s not intentional. You don’t sit down together and make a decision, but you don’t want to leave and he doesn’t want you to go. So you just…don’t.

Slowly, with time, your most essential things migrate from your place to his. You bring a bag of clothes here and your favorite blanket another time. Your shampoo comes along with other bathroom essentials, and some kitchen supplies find their way into his drawers and cabinets.

Within a few weeks, you all but live with him.

You know instinctively that the opposite arrangement—staying together at your house—isn’t possible. Whether or not it’s actually necessary, Mando takes his self-imposed exile seriously. It’s another of the many things you don’t push him on.

Yet.

You visit home on a regular basis, of course, to keep an eye on things. Town, too, for supplies. You make the long walk alone—or sometimes together when you can convince him to put off whatever mysterious, imperative thing he has to do when you’re gone, and it feels shorter then. He’s not so hard to persuade.

You check on Luna, who is happy and well fed in the warmth of the barn, kept company by the chickens and the handful of braying goats. 

You find that she’s terrified of other people—or at least of Mando. You’ve never brought anyone else around so it’s hard to know if it’s something about him specifically. Maybe it’s the armor or his size. The first time she sees him, she goes rigid, the picture of freeze, and it takes twenty minutes to calm her down after you nudge Mando back out of the barn and close the door behind him. Even after several visits, she remains wary of him, barely willing to tolerate his presence.

A detail, like so many others, you file away for later.

It's one of many that you don't mention—anything that might prompt impossible conversations. Instead of souring the moment, instead of asking the hundreds of questions that are piling up in your head, you tacitly agree to avoid those things, skirting around any topics that elicit unanswerable questions or suggest an expiration date. Again and again. For weeks.

Then months.

It’s easy enough to rationalize. Might as well make the short time you have together pain free. Only good.

And, fuck, is it good.

You wake in his bed each morning and fall back into it each night. You wait for your lust for him to abate, for the initial need to be sated. Two months in, though, it hasn’t so much as begun to subside. If anything, it’s grown. It’s fed, you think, by the fact that you still don’t get all of him—what you do get just makes you want more. 

You get his hands, his cock, the expanse of his lower abdomen and upper thighs when he unbuckles his belt and fucks you. The sound of his unfiltered voice when you eat together. The sight of his thick, veined forearms when he chops wood. Snatches of golden skin dusted in dark hair.

Never his mouth, his eyes, his chest, the rest of him—his face. His face, that you think you might already love without having ever seen.

The why of it all—of the pace, of his nature—doesn’t feel so urgent any more, now that you’ve had the opportunity to soak him in, in more than just brief interactions. You can sense the why on him when you start to appreciate the weight of his past and his creed. There’s a layer of pain and loss calcified under his armor: you can all but feel it when your fingers work past an edge of beskar. He starts to tell you about it, too; he starts to untangle the complicated knot that is Mando. It’s usually during a meal when you’re faced away from each other and you get to hear his real voice that he starts to open up. You untease his past question by question, answer by answer.

When you do almost slip, almost ask a question that is too present, he helps you put it back. Offers a distraction that you gladly accept. An unspoken agreement of not yet.

He just needs time. You just need more time together.

You try not to think about the fact that you might not have time. No, you package that thought up with that list of forbidden questions, the ones that would threaten to crack the ice you’re standing on together, and tuck them all away. 

You take the things that he does offer, accept his baffling limits. You satisfy yourself with the reminder of progress. If you think back to a few months ago and draw a line from those cordial interactions at the Saturday market to the current reality of living with him—to watching him welcome all the ways you insinuate yourself into his space, to witnessing the way he seems to soften for you—you can’t help but feel hopeful about what the next few months will hold.

*** Winter comes early this year, sneaking in on quiet feet. It descends around you slowly—in brisk mornings and frozen dew drops strung along twigs like pearls—and then it comes all at once in a sudden blanket of white. You wake up to a thick layer of snow on the ground, the tree limbs and roof frosted and glittering.

He teaches you how to protect yourself—how to shoot and fight and track. You think there’s a part of him that’s certain if he only teaches you enough, you’ll always be safe. You can feel it in his palpable sense of relief when you master a new skill. As if he has a mental list of things to impart on you before he runs out of time.

When you’re consistently nailing the center of his targets again and again, Mando outfits you with a blaster of your own, tells you to keep it on you at all times—that it’s yours. That day, he drops to one knee in front of you. 

“Lean,” he says, patting his pauldron.

You listen without really thinking about it, bracing a hand on his shoulder.

“Up,” he says, gesturing to your foot and offering his armored thigh.

You comply, and he slips two loops of leather up your leg, the fabric of your skirt catching on his forearm as he inches them up, until the tips of his fingers brush your inner thigh. A holster. A holster he made for you.

He tightens the straps and then slips the small silver blaster into the leather sheath. 

You graduate to hand-to-hand combat next—well, not so much graduate as add it to the schedule. He’s visibly pleased when he discovers that you already have some skills with a knife, when you know how to disarm him of his vibroblade in certain holds, how to make an attacker bleed freely with one well-placed slash. How to sever a tendon or an artery. But he finds plenty of ways to stump you, ways to overpower you, and you practice those until you know how to get out of them too. 

A few weeks in, you’re more than satisfied with your skill level, ready to move on. Mando, on the other hand, is ever insistent on more. He holds you with your back against his chest, caught and pinned, a purring vibroblade at your throat. 

You’re exhausted, sweaty and sore from breaking out of his grasp again and again. You’re supposed to be doing it once more right now. But you’re limp in his hold.

“Go on,” he grunts.

“I’m actually fine with this,” you decide, letting your weight go even more leaden in his arms.

He scoffs low in his throat. “Is that right.”

“That’s right. I surrender. Do with me what you will.” You drop your head back, looking up at his impassive visor.

He considers. “Anything?”

The word slithers up your spine. “Anything,” you repeat, letting your eyes go heavy-lidded.

He closes the blade and tosses it away, releasing his hold on you. When you lurch forward at the unexpected freedom, your knees buckling slightly, he catches your waist to steady you. 

You spin to face him, pointing a finger at the diamond-like center of his chestplate, staying far enough away that he can’t encircle you in his arms again. “Technically that counts as me getting out of that hold.”

He plants a hand on his hip. “Disagree.”

“Emotional manipulation is a weapon. You’re just mad I’m better at it than you are. Maybe I should give you lessons. You know what, yeah, I think it’s only fair that we also start practicing scenarios where I’m the one in control.”

He cocks his head suggestively. “Are we still talking about training?” 

“Yes.”

He stares at you silently, adjusting his weight from one foot to the other. It speaks volumes.

You scoff. “Are you implying that I could never have the upper hand in a fight? That there’s no chance in the galaxy of that ever happening?”

A damning beat of silence and then: “No.”

“You are!”

He gestures at his chest, shrugs. “Beskar.”

You roll your eyes. “I’d just need to catch you at the right moment—sleeping or showering—and take you by surprise. Or have the right weapon. Like poison. I know plenty of plants that would kill you—plenty of plants I could find out here or maybe…yeah…those.” 

You gesture at the row of detonators lined up on the side of his belt as he reattaches it around his middle. He always takes it off before you practice hand-to-hand, along with the vambrace that apparently emits flame.

“Yeah, they’d be effective,” he admits, clipping the buckle together. “The problem is you don’t have any.”

“You don’t like me enough to share your detonators with me?”

“To kill me? No.”

“How about this one?” you ask, reaching toward the mysterious hilt that’s always clipped next to them.

He steps out of reach before you can touch it.

“What is it? Can I see it?”

“I don’t use it,” he says. You know him well enough now to read the lie in his level voice.

“Then why do you always carry it?”

“It’s…a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” you press, curious.

He looks away. “I can’t.”

And you realize it isn’t just stubbornness or stoicism. It’s pain. A bruise he isn’t ready to address, and you’re prodding it.

You wonder how many secrets can simmer between you before they boil over.

“Alright, come on,” you say, grabbing his hand and turning for the house. “I’m starving.”

*** It’s deep winter when Mando starts to take you into the woods, away from his house, to teach you the basics of tracking. Each time, when the forest lightens around you and you can hear the titter of birds overhead, he tells you to pick the tracks of a deer or a fox to follow. It’s easier now that the snow is thick on the ground, a continuous blanket of white.

He instructs you, as he always does, to disregard the larger prints—the clawed ones—that you come upon occasionally. Too often for comfort.

“I’ll take care of those,” he says, unconcerned. 

Each time, you think back to that bloody trail and know he’s more than capable. And then you wonder when he’s away from you long enough to actually do that. 

Never, it turns out.

You’re on the tail of a stag when he holds out an arm unexpectedly, stopping you in your tracks.

“What is it?”

He turns his head slowly, scanning the quiet forest. Listening, waiting. You can’t hear a thing—not a rustle of leaves or whisper of wind. The stag isn’t close.

“They’re coming.”

“The sta—?”

Mando drops his arm and grabs your hand, hauling you back in the direction of home. You follow on instinct when he breaks into a jog with you in tow, heavy boots crunching through the snow. He twitches as he moves; he groans and presses his shoulders back, rolling his neck, his hand too tight around yours.

He’s in pain.

“Mando—” you say, trying to slow him down, to understand.

“Run,” he interrupts, pushing you ahead of him, urging you toward the house. “I can’t stop it."

You halt in front of him, a hand raised to his chest plate. “I can’t— I won’t—”

He growls when you hesitate, the sound not entirely human. His hands are shaking.

“I can help—” you start, not even entirely sure what you’re offering.

“I won’t risk you.”

“But—”

A gloved hand settles over your mouth, the other gripped tightly around your bicep. “We don’t have time for this. I won’t let you—I can’t—just go home and lock the door. And promise me you’ll stay there until I come back.”

He drops his hand and starts stripping off his gloves and vambraces. “What are you—?” The pieces click together belatedly in your head. Those colossal prints, the clawed ones.

They’re coming.

“Promise me,” he says, forcing them into your hands. “Take this too.”

He reaches for his helmet and rips it off his head, pushing it into your arms. Your jaw drops open in surprise. You don’t even have time—or the free hands—to cover your eyes or the sense to shut them tight.

“It’s okay,” he says, responding to the fear in your eyes. “I wanted to—been wanting to.”

You only have a moment to take him in. He’s just as handsome as you imagined—maybe, impossibly, more. His dark hair is wavy and tousled, falling across his forehead. His eyes are brown and wild with fear, his sharp jaw peppered with gray-flecked stubble. His perfect lips are set in a half-smile. He looks a little bashful for a moment, a little boyish as you study him.

He holds your face between his warm hands. “Promise you won’t leave the house until I come back.”

You nod.

“Say it,” he prompts, his dark eyes serious. He knows you didn’t really mean it the first time.

“I won’t leave the house until you come back,” you repeat, a little dazed.

You’re looking into his eyes. Your brain is struggling to process it.

There's fear there that doesn't just belong to the threat to your safety. It's more: the fear of being seen. Wholly.

You’re waiting for more words to come to you—something that will express the feeling that’s blooming in your chest without relying on words it’s too early to say.

“Be careful.” It’s the best you can manage.

He presses his lips to yours in a quick kiss. It’s too fast, not enough. If your arms weren’t full of beskar, you’d grab him to keep him close, to kiss him deeper. Instead, he’s pulling back and turning you on the spot with an iron grip.

“Go.”

He urges you forward with a gentle push, and you break into a jog, glancing over your shoulder as often as possible without running face-first into a tree or slipping in the powdery snow underfoot. He’s stripping off his chest plate, his pauldrons, his thigh guards. Leaving them haphazardly on the forest floor.

The last time you look back, his back is to you, and several pairs of yellow eyes are emerging in the dark spaces between the trees.

One, two, four—too many to count.

You’re tempted to stop. To turn back. To bring him the rest of his beskar. It feels so wrong to leave him out here, alone and unarmored. He’s stripping down from metal to man, and it feels unbearably vulnerable. Maybe you could help—

But just as you’re thinking that, Mando turns his head and bellows, “Go!”

You’re far from him—too far to truly make out the details—but you swear, even across the vast distance, that the whites of his eyes look black.

*** You drop the pile of beskar onto the kitchen table, unholster your blaster, and drag a chair to the window. You study the intricate line work of ice on the frosted pane, tracing cold veins with the pad of your finger. You fidget and shift, but you don’t dare leave your spot.

You stare at the place between the trees where you emerged, straining to hear any sound, knuckles white where they’re wrapped around the edge of your seat.

It’s silent.

Minutes pass like molasses—they stretch and sprawl, leisurely and unhurried, while you wait.

You steal glances at the clock on the wall. You swear it’s been hours since you slid the dead bolt shut behind you, but the clock tells you you’ve been sitting here for eight minutes.

Ten.

Twelve.

Seventeen.

He’s out there, outnumbered and alone.

Fuck it.

You get to your feet.

You wrench open the front door, but before you can break into a run, you catch a subtle movement between the trees. The blaster slips out of your hand. He’s staggering back to you—stripped and injured. His flight suit is unzipped to his waist, the sleeves tied around his hips. One hand is gripping his ribs, the other trapping pieces of his armor against his side. He’s barefoot and limping through the snow.

You run to him.

His hair is sticking to his sweaty forehead, and there’s blood on his face—so much blood—coating his lips, smeared across one flushed cheek. Lines running down his neck. It covers his hands, forearms. It’s splattered across his muscled chest. When his lips part in a pained grimace, you can see the inside of his mouth is bloody too, red lining his white teeth. 

You don’t have time to process it, to think about what it means because he’s hurt.

He must see the terror on your face when you register the state of him because he shakes his head and says, “Not mine. Just this,” jerking his chin down to gesture at his side. 

A row of deep lacerations is seeping blood down his ribs, over his tense fingers and down his stomach, where it’s soaking into the dark fabric bunched at his hips. You shudder at the sight of it—even through his spread fingers, you can see that his flesh is torn open in a way that makes your stomach pitch.

Behind him, there’s a sporadic trail between the trees, red dripped on virgin snow.

You want to hold him, to pull him into your arms, and, most of all, to fix him and put him back together. You start by taking the pile of armor from him and slipping under the arm of his uninjured side, pulling it over your shoulders to support his weight. He accepts the help wordlessly, leaning on you as you stumble forward together.

“They’re gone,” he pants. “Dead. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” you scoff. “Are you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’re bleeding.”

He grunts.

You limp the rest of the distance to the house together and pull open the front door, kicking it shut behind you as you help him inside. He reaches behind you to lock it, his shoulders dropping in relief when it clicks.

You drop his beskar on the floor as gently as you can while you’re half holding him up. It clatters.

“We need to get these closed up,” you say, gesturing toward a kitchen chair. “You need bacta. Sit down.”

When he doesn’t move to sit, you look up at his face, and he’s staring at you with an intensity—a soft, quiet intensity of creased brows and bright brown eyes—that takes your breath away. 

“I’m fine,” he protests, gently gripping your shoulders and pushing you back in the direction of the bed instead. He fumbles with the hem of your shirt, trembling fingers slipping under the fabric to caress your skin. “I’ll heal. Just let me touch you.”

His hands are hot on your waist.

"You’re not okay,” you protest, trying and failing to redirect him. “You won’t heal if you bleed out.”

“I just need to hold you.” His words are starting to slur, running together. The blood loss is tipping him into delirium.

“After—just let me—”

He ignores you and curls himself around you, crushing you against his body, a heavy hand holding your head to his chest, the other arm locking yours to your sides.

“Mando, please—I really need to stop the bleeding—”

“Din,” he says, nestling his face against your neck sweetly. His forehead is sweaty and feverish. He brushes gentle lips over your fluttering pulse. “My name is Din.”

You’re speechless.

“I want you to call me that,” he says. “Please.” There’s a heartbreaking vulnerability behind his words, like he’s worried you won’t accept the offering of something so precious.

“Of course. Of course, I will.” His grip slackens, and you wrap your arms around his middle reflexively. The heat of his throbbing wound and the hot slip of blood against your forearm make you recoil.

“Shit—sorry—”

But Din doesn’t react to the pain.

“Din—hey—”

You try to pull back, to extricate yourself from his hold and get a better look at him, but the arms draped over your shoulders go leaden, and he sways on his feet, forcing you backward a couple faltering steps. The backs of your calves hit the bed.

“Din—” You try to steady him, but he’s getting heavier by the second, his weight shifting unexpectedly as he tries to keep his balance, half-conscious and fading.

Your knees threaten to buckle when he grunts and goes completely boneless, slumping against you.

“Fuck—”

You’re just barely able to angle your body so that you can gently—and awkwardly—use his momentum to guide him face-first onto the bed. It’s a miracle you both don’t end up in a crumpled pile on the floor. You hoist his legs up too. It takes all your strength to haul his dead weight over to flip him onto his back so you can access the slashes across his ribs.

Your heart jumps into your throat when you see how rapidly a crimson stain is spreading on the comforter underneath him. You run for the med kit, dumping it on the bed beside his prone form and digging out all the necessities.

He doesn’t flinch when you clean, close, and dress the wounds. Not even when you prick him with a bacta shot. You work as quickly and carefully as you can, keeping tabs on his breathing all the while. Any time you have a free hand, you rest it on his chest, soothed by the shallow but steady rise and fall. 

The whole time, you think about all those questions, those details, those secrets. You turn them over again and again in your head in a feverish loop—all those things you’ve been stacking on top of one another all this time, a teetering pile of essential pieces of him, ready to topple with a gentle nudge. Kept at bay by distractions and diversions and half-truths. All the ways you’ve both been keeping your relationship in stasis to postpone…what? Loss? Something that’s inevitable, something no one can ever truly prevent. It feels undeniable when your hands are covered in his blood. When you almost lost him anyway.

It seems obvious now. Obvious that in the end, it will be more painful to have only stayed in this place with him than to have at least tried to give yourself wholly to whatever this is.

Before you secure the final bandage over the wounds, you check your work once, twice—terrified the simple expansion of his ribcage as he breathes will force them open again. You press edges of the bandage down and watch closely, dreading the red seep of blood on clean white. It doesn’t come. You breathe a sigh of relief.

You clean him up with a moist towel, wiping the blood from his skin, his face, his rumpled hair. 

If he hadn’t chosen to take his helmet off before any of this, you’d feel like you were invading his privacy by being able to see so much of him. It still feels that way, just a little, as you admire the taut lines of his biceps, the broad spread of his shoulders, and thick muscles of his pectorals. As you gently swipe over the soft expanse of his middle, feel the hard abdominals underneath. As you study the slope of his nose and the grays threaded through his stubble, his long eyelashes fanned over his cheeks. The soft pink of his lips. 

You rinse that stained-red towel until the water runs clear, until there’s no trace of blood left on him. 

The bloodied sheets and blanket and pillow underneath him will have to wait; it doesn’t even occur to you to be bothered by them when you climb in next to him, when you sweep his damp hair back off his forehead and press your lips to his warm skin and settle against his non-injured side.

You fall asleep like that, your head on his sternum, the subtle rise and fall sweeter than a lullaby.

*** He’s healed by the morning.

He’s healed.

When you wake after a fitful sleep, you scramble out of bed to pull back his bandages and find that the wounds slashed across his ribs look like they’ve had several weeks to mend, the skin knitted back together seamlessly. You run your fingers gingerly over the tender flesh in wonder, in relief.

Another one of his secrets. Something else to ask.

He rouses at your touch, starting as he blinks open bleary eyes. He must be immediately aware of the absence of his helmet because his whole body tenses as he recoils, his eyes panicked as he tries to decide to attack or to flee, jerking away from your hand on his arm. 

“It’s okay,” you say, holding up your hands in placation. “It’s me, Din. It’s just me. You’re safe—you’re home.”

He calms somewhat as he meets your gaze, as he registers your face and his surroundings, settling his head back against the pillow. The tension in his body remains.

“How are you feeling?” you ask, resisting the urge to reach up and brush his tousled hair off his forehead. Touch, you think, is his to initiate in this moment.

“Fine,” he croaks. He’s visibly uncomfortable like this, still not used to being so unguarded around someone else. Holding eye contact for longer than a moment seems almost unbearable for him, his eyes shifting around the room so they don’t have to stay settled on yours. 

You hand him a glass of water, and he sits up against the headboard to drink it. He winces a little as he maneuvers, his jaw ticking. He’s sore.

“You’re the worst patient, you know,” you gripe, trying to lighten the mood, to give him something to focus on. 

He scoffs, lifting an eyebrow over the rim of the glass.

You give him an unimpressed glare. “I couldn’t take care of you until you fainted from blood loss.”

He has the audacity to shrug a little.

You blow out an exasperated breath, distracted, maybe, by the movement of his throat as he swallows. By every detail of his face that you can’t seem to memorize quickly enough—a privilege you’re more than willing to relinquish if it means easing the tension in his shoulders, the wrinkle of concern etched between his brows.

When he sets the glass down on the bedside table, you retrieve his helmet and offer it to him wordlessly, a show of nonjudgmental understanding, a willingness to back-pedal if that’s what he needs right now. His eyes soften when he takes it.

The urge to say something before he disappears behind beskar jumps up your throat.

“I was scared, so scared,” you admit quietly. “Din, I thought—I thought you…”

He sets his helmet beside him on the bed and jerks his chin. “Come here.”

You make to settle next to him, but he pulls you onto his lap instead, guiding you until you’re straddling his thighs. 

You try to wriggle away. “I’m going to hurt you like this—just let me—”

“Shhh,” he breathes, hands locking down on your hips. “I’m fine, okay? I’m not going anywhere.” He hesitates for the briefest moment before he leans forward and presses his mouth to yours.

His lips are soft, tentative. His first, you realize. Of course.

Your mind snags on the way he tends to be in bed—directive, commanding, sure—and holds the two up side by side. This hesitation, the halting press of his lips, has something in your chest going soft. Between your legs going molten.

You cup his jaw and lick into his mouth when his lips part—an it’s okay, I want you to take—and his breath goes ragged against yours. He leans into you, an arm slung low around your back to keep you close as he starts to tip you backward.

“Don’t move,” you say, attempting to ease him back gently.

He ignores the command, responding to your open mouth with the slip of his tongue.

“Or I’ll stop,” you threaten.

He sits back, chastened, a subtle pout to his lower lip. It disappears when you lean back in. 

He makes a low noise of protest when you don’t meet his lips, but it turns into something pleased when you move your attention to his neck. You lick over his thrumming pulse, across the faint saltiness of his flushed skin. Your hands roam the planes of his chest, over his pounding heart, and down the swells of his muscled arms—greedy for so much warm skin, for so much of him you’ve never seen or touched or tasted.

Even with the helmet set beside you, the fear that you’ll have to go back—to concede gained ground—that he’ll revert back to full armor again, rankles at the back of your mind. You dig your nails lightly into his shoulders, and he growls.

You can tell it’s taking all his restraint not to move, to keep totally still aside from his wandering hands. You know he’s hard underneath you, that he’s aching to wrest control from your hands, to put you on your back and fuck you like this, with no layers between you. And he knows you won’t let him when he’s still healing.

You try not to let it escalate, to keep things from getting out of hand. But then his mouth is on yours again, your lip caught gently between his teeth, his hand locked possessively around the nape of your neck, and you can’t help the quiet moan or the subtle grind of your hips in his lap.

Din jerks back, hands braced on your shoulders to keep distance between your bodies, his head tipped back against the headboard and eyes closed as his panted breath gradually slows.

And you know it’s not just the injury. He isn’t humoring you or in too much pain. He’s fighting it—the transformation, the change that keeps him in his beskar. What he wouldn't let you see in the forest.

“It doesn’t bother me,” you say—quiet, serious. 

He pauses, understanding despite the sharp turn. The energy in the room shifts as he waits for you to continue.

“Your…you—?” you stumble over the words, struggling to find the right ones. It comes out badly. “What you…are.”

His eyes are downcast, fixed on the silver shine of his helmet.

He doesn’t ask how. Of course you know—it’s an open secret between you, has been for months.

“I want to see,” you press. An honest plea. “To know. Just let it happen.”

A tight, subtle shake of his head. No.

“Please, Din,” you say, laying a hand on his chest. “Show me.”

He looks away, his eyes full of some unnameable emotion, something soft and fragile, a sharp edge that might be anger. He slips away so easily, even without the helmet.

“Please,” you beg, framing his face with your hands to guide his gaze gently back to yours.

He still won’t meet your eyes.

Suddenly, you know this was a mistake. That this is the thing that’s going to break what’s between you. He’s given you his face, his name—they should be enough. Yet, here you are, pushing him for more. There’s no coming back from it, no swallowing the words, though. You find you don’t want to anymore, even when you can feel him slipping out of your hands.

“It’s not safe,” he says.

“How? It’s you.”

“No,” he says, “it’s not.”

“I don’t understand, Din,” you say, a hint of desperation laced between your words. “And I need to. I need to understand. We can’t avoid it any more—look at what happened. I just—I can’t do this when I know I don’t have all of you. I can’t do this anymore. All these walls, all these secrets between us.”

His head snaps to you, a flicker of panic kindling in his eyes. But he doesn’t deny it, the skirting and avoidance, the game you’ve both been so willing to play. His eyes settle on your joined hands. 

“I want all of you. I need all of you. Can you understand that?”

“Yes,” he says, his voice low, and the panic in his eyes is swallowed by a deep, hollow want—a yawning blackness that expands and disappears so quickly you think you must have imagined it. “I do understand that.”

“Then let me see you.”

Din wears a helmet — as Mandalorians do. You never thought anything of it. It's his creed, why would you ever question that?

You never could have imagined that the helmet was for your protection.

There are times that being near Din is like being exposed to a live-wire. Your hair stands on end and that fight or flight instinct that you thought you stamped down screams for you to run, but you ignore it. you're with Din. He'd keep you safe.

You never thought that Din would be the one you need to be kept safe from.

There have been jobs that put you in danger. Par for the course, but Din always seems to take it personal. He becomes like a feral animal the moment you're in harms way and you could have sworn you heard an un-humanlike snarl echo through his helmet's modulator.

Din is religious in taking his meals in a different room. You never see exactly what he puts on his plate, but it smells fresh and raw in a way you've never heard of a human eating. At least, you're pretty sure Din is human. You've seen slips of skin that have you biting your lip and clenching your thighs.

You think Din notices. His hands will twitch towards you, fingers outstretched before he pulls away. Those are the nights you hear Din grunting in the assumed-privacy of his bunk and the slapping of skin. Those are the nights you hear even more snarls coming from him.

You wonder if he can hear the way you moan and fuck yourself with your fingers that just aren't long enough — definitely not as long as Din's.

It comes to a head one night when you barge into Din's bunk.

You knew you shouldn't have done it, but he makes you so mad sometimes.

He treats you like a child. Like you're incapable of taking care of yourself.

On the bounty you had just gotten back from, he picked you up literally by the scruff of your neck and put you down behind him before taking the bounty down with extreme prejudice. Its a good thing this bounty puck didn't specify it was wanted alive.

You don’t think about the bolt of lust that shot through you from how easily Din manhandled you. He barely broke a sweat — he lifted you like you weighed little more than a baby and by the Maker you wanted him to do it again.

"Who the fuck do you think you — Shit!" you curse furiously and whip your head around, facing the door that closed behind you.

You've seen his face.

Well... not his whole face. The only thing you saw was a defined nose and scruff along his jawline.

Still, you know he's beautiful.

"Fuck, Din, I'm so fucking sorry, I didn't mean to —"

"Look at me."

You freeze. Is he insane? "Din, I won't make you compromise your —"

"I said," his voice is barely more than a growl, like there's an animal he's trying and failing to tame in his chest, "look at me."

This time it doesn't seem like you have a choice. You would have looked even if there was.

Angry vermilion dreams, fractured dreams—a flurry of images as sharp as shattered glass—played any time Din so much as dozed. He couldn’t make much sense of them, but the visuals seared into his mind. Pearly white incisors caught in thick, hot viscera. Rent flesh. Deeply gouged burns. The smell of scorched skin.

A war-ravaged planet. An empty gray-washed throne.

A pile of discarded Mandalorian helmets coated in ash.

As soon as they began, Din knew something was wrong with him. These weren’t normal nightmares, not like the quiet, melancholic blue of the dreams he’d always had about his parents, the ones that stayed tucked safely in his sleep. No, these…lingered. They slunk past the edges of his sleep to haunt his daylight hours. He’d wake up and taste blood on his tongue. All day, he ached in strange places: his shoulder blades, his teeth, his hands and feet, a spot behind each of his temples. Every one was a concentrated, bone-deep ache, like the growing pains he remembered vaguely from his teenage years.

The kid was gone, and something was wrong with him.

Din knew loss too intimately to mistake it for grief alone. He knew this was something else too. It was physical. He was ill. He told himself it needed to wait. He had to find the covert. Then, he could deal with whatever was happening to him.

So he put his head down and did what he does best: he hunted.

For two months, he searched. He took jobs for credits and jobs for information. Finally, finally, he tracked them down on Glavis.

He can still remember the fetid reek of the butcher where he went to find the final bounty, Kaba Baiz, the key to the covert’s location within that ringed maze of a city. Even through the filters on his helmet, the smell was an assault—raw flesh and congealed blood, singed bone and burnt marrow. All at once, it made him sick…and, to his own horror, ravenous. He should have been disgusted, but his mouth watered even as his stomach soured. Cold sweat beaded between his shoulder blades. He itched to peel off his armor.

He was most definitely ill.

The last thing he wanted was a fight. The last thing he needed was a fight. He wanted to take the bounty and leave, to find what remained of his covert and be still. But the Klatooinians closed in around him, and he knew he wasn’t going to get what he wanted.

It was the first real fight he’d been in since the dreams had started, and it was…different. He was different.

One of the Klatooinians lunged forward and bit him. The pain was sharp, and as he tried to wrench his wrist out of their grasp, all Din could think about was how much he wanted to sink his teeth into something that bleeds. Behind his beskar, he bared his teeth.

It only devolved from there.

He slipped so far into the flow of the fight that it felt like a fever dream.

He didn’t make an active choice to reach for the saber. It just happened. His blaster had been knocked out of his grasp, and there were too many of them. The beskar spear was strapped to his back, but his hand fell to the saber’s hilt as naturally as it falls to his blaster; his finger flicked the activation as naturally as it finds a trigger.

He lifted the humming blade, and for one short moment, it had sung for him.

The saber slipped through living and dead flesh alike, rending breathing bodies and hanging animal corpses just the same. He felt good. He felt strong. He moved with an ease he hadn’t felt for years, not since he was younger, before he had a tight back and knees that cracked. He felt distant from himself, distant from the fight, as his body fell into a controlled sequence of moves.

Somewhere in the back of his fogged mind he finally asked himself why? Why was it suddenly easy?

Then the saber grew heavy in his hand, and he faltered.

He stabbed one of the Klatooinians straight through the gut, and when he wrenched it back, the flat of the saber sizzled and spat against the flesh of his own thigh. The searing pain pitched him into a red haze, and he dispatched the rest in short order. He cleaved through two, took a hail of blaster fire, and stabbed Kaba Baiz between the ribs with his vibroblade. He lifted his dead weight with one hand on the hilt, and Din knew he was different.

Without thinking, he took up the saber and sliced clean through the Klatooinian, even though he was already dead, and Din knew he was different.

*** He was half delirious with pain and exhaustion by the time he found the Armorer.

“What weapon caused such a wound?”

“Paz Viszla, bring it to me.”

The moment Paz touched the hilt of the saber, Din’s body went cold, every part of him snapping to high alert. His hackles raised.

He knew then there’d be a challenge. A duel.

Sure enough, after he’d given himself enough time to assess Din’s state and skill with the blade, Paz had thrown the gauntlet, and something reared in Din’s chest in response. Something eager. 

The fight passed in a blur of scarlet. Smoke encroached on the edges of Din’s vision as they grappled, and something outside himself took control. By the end of it, by the time he had Paz on his knees with a blade to his throat, Din was barely conscious. He felt far away in his own body.

He heard the Armorer’s dismissal faintly, an echo of words through his hollow ribcage.

“Then you are a Mandalorian no more.”

He could barely stand, let alone process the devastating reality of her words.

He doesn’t know how he made it back to the surface of Glavis and all the way to the public transport. He has no memory of stripping himself of his weapons, signing them over to a droid, and stumbling on board. He has no memory of upgrading to a private room.

He remembers the room, though.

By the time he got there, he knew he was going to be sick, his insides roiling and churning. As soon as the door closed and locked behind him, he ripped his helmet off and paced the tiny space, massaging his temples and willing himself to calm down. His blood pumped hot and furious through his veins as he replayed the duel, as he remembered the Armorer’s words. 

He felt trapped, pent-up and weighed down; he needed to be out of his beskar in a way he hadn’t felt since his first days of wearing armor—back when he was just a kid and the weight was stifling and restrictive and unfamiliar.

And then the real pain came. Like a fever, it took him.

He buckled to the floor of his private room, collapsing to his hands and knees, his thigh guards clattering against the durasteel floor. Against his better judgment, slouched pathetically on the ground, he peeled off each of his layers—his beskar, his soft underarmor, his flight suit. He stripped to his boxers and stretched out in a prone position, face turned to one side. The shock of the cold metal floor felt good on his feverish skin. Din lay there and counted.  

He lay there and tried to compose himself.

Over and over, he watched his hot, panted breath leave a temporary shadow of condensation on the gelid floor and dissipate. Spread and evaporate. Spread and evaporate.

Just when he thought he was starting to get control of himself, it felt as though two hot blades pierced his shoulders, and he reached back reflexively, rolling onto his side as he convulsed in agony, his spine curling and straightening. He shoved his clenched-white knuckles against his teeth to muffle his scream, and he felt something hard protruding from his back.

Paz must have followed.

He writhed and pitched.

The door was locked. The room was empty.

Nothing made sense.

I’m dying.

Two points of white-hot pain sprouted behind his temples, his vision going gray and bile rising in his throat.

Then, blissful darkness.

*** Things are good. Things are calm.

Din has fallen into a routine, a sustainable routine for the foreseeable future. It will get him through the time period between now and whenever you leave—whether that’s a few weeks or a couple months. And that’s all that matters.

He lets himself hunt once a week. He’s finally accepted that concession lends him more control. He’s less on edge after he allows himself to turn and feed. So, once a week, he sheds his armor and changes. It’s just enough freedom to quash the urge to go armor-less when he shouldn’t. Plus, he has a clear purpose for it now. He stalks through the forest, kills a beast, and reinforces his territory.

He’s picking off the pack one by one, just as he planned. They’re onto him now—they’re wary and hyper-vigilant. They move constantly, retreat higher and higher into the hills. They place scouts along their flanks. Din picks off the scouts.

First, it’s a gray female.

Next, a tawny male.

The third, its mate.

And so on.

He hunts. He keeps tabs on you from afar. He trains with the saber.

Yes, everything is good.

You haven’t sought him out again, not since the market. His rejection was enough, apparently. He’s relieved.

He’s miserable.

Truly, he’s sick with it, and his regret is showing up in all sorts of tangible ways. 

All the tiles of his shower, every single white square at his eye-level, where he leans his weight on a clawed hand once a week, are scored now. The deep lacerations don’t bother him anymore though. Each one is a mark on stone instead of flesh, a tally of his self-control.

He breaks things more often, when he’s changed and when he’s not. He feels like some kind of adolescent animal, just learning the limitations of his own strength. It’s ridiculous. He figures it’s the incompatible combination of his new strength, his burning frustration, and the age of the house.

He’s had to repair his headboard, the door frame to the bathroom, and two door knobs. He’s had to fully replace his front door, hinges and all. He came back from a particularly grisly hunt, pent up and brimming with violent energy, and pulled the thing clean off.

It’s been weeks since he’s talked to you. Summer has had enough time to wane into fall, but this unexpected penance he’s enduring for the way he treated you doesn’t seem to be going away.

*** The next time he goes out for a hunt—in the early evening because he can’t seem to make himself wait out the few hours until nightfall—Din can tell you’re out walking in the forest before he’s even a mile from you. The wind shifts, and he can smell you as if you’re standing right next to him.

He could turn for home. He could skirt you completely. He could follow you from a distance until you make it home safely. He could do anything that ensures you have no chance of seeing him like this.

He’s not in the condition to make a rational decision.

Din continues on the same path, until you’re so close that in full daylight you’d be able to see his towering shape moving beyond the lattice of low tree limbs, and he scales the largest tree he can find, pulling himself lithely up into its high branches.

He waits, silent and still, as you wander through the trees far below him. You look so tiny from up here, like something too insignificant to draw his attention on a hunt, the perfect prey for some creature that’s one rung lower on the food chain. 

Possessive longing embeds itself somewhere tender behind his ribs and tugs: You look like something that needs to be protected.

The little fawn is trailing behind you like an obedient duckling. She notices Din’s presence right away, her tiny head craning upward to find him in the murky gloom. She goes skittish and fragile when she sees him, blundering ahead of you on precarious legs.

You look after her with mild concern. “Where are you going?”

If you were to glance up too, you might be able to make out his hulking shape, crouched in the tangle of the canopy, but you wouldn’t be able to discern the details. You wouldn’t see his face. His silhouette would be obscured by the wide, swooping contours of his wings, all detail lost to shadow.

There’s a part of him that wants you to look up, a part of him that wants to leap down and block your path—to make you look at him like this. He needs to know what you’d do.

You’d scream.

And then what?

Would you freeze or fight or flee?

You’re not one to flee on instinct. You’re too smart to fight something more than twice your size. His credits are on freeze.

And when you stood there staring at him, how long would it take you to tear your gaze from his clawed hands and pointed wings and sharp teeth to meet his eyes? How long would it take you to look up from the threatening bulk of his body to his face? Would you put it together? Would you recognize the unzipped flightsuit tied loosely at his waist? 

Would you hate him?

He doesn’t want to think about the possibility of disgust reflected in your features. As hard as he’s tried to convince himself that it would be easier if you feared him, he despises the idea of you seeing him like this and being scared or repulsed.

It would be the final confirmation that he’s a monster.

You’re almost out of sight. You could still look up. All you’d see is a dark void—a space that swallows more light than any of the surrounding shadows.

You don’t look up, though; you wander on. You’re close enough to your home, headed back in that direction, that he’s not worried about you. He’ll be attending to the potential threats elsewhere anyways.

He jumps down when you’re a safe distance away, falling gracefully and with control, and the thick bed of pine needles muffles the thud of his landing. But he’s so heavy like this, so dense with muscle, that the forest floor vibrates just for a moment when his feet touch down.

Din turns for the hills, where he knows the pack is waiting. 

He thinks he’ll kill two tonight. 

When he returns home hours later—sweaty and fed and sticky with blood—he heads right for the shower, reaches for the knob, starts the hot water…and the metal snaps off in his hand. 

Fuck.

*** All the necessary repairs mean that Din is in town more often than he wants to be.

The next evening, fuming, he heads there for the replacement part for the shower. With the newly purchased knob slung in a bag over his shoulder, he starts for home. He’s skirting the main roads in town, sticking to the side streets and alleyways to avoid people, but Din pauses when you step out the door of the cantina. 

Alone.

No, not alone.

A quiet growl escapes the modulator when that boy that bothers you at the market comes stumbling out the door behind you, tripping over his own feet as he calls your name. Din has noticed every time this boy lingers too long by your stall on Saturdays. You always have the same vague, disinterested smile plastered on your face until he leaves. He annoys you, and that annoys Din.

Din waits in the shadow of the alley, out of sight, to ensure this boy doesn’t do anything more than annoy you.

The urge to protect you isn’t a want for him anymore. It’s a physical imperative.

“Wait, wait up,” the boy pants when you turn at the sound of your name. “Let me walk you home.”

You turn and give him a pacifying smile. “I’m good, Terek.” You wave him off amiably and keep walking.

Terek follows.

Din starts forward as soon as Terek reaches for you. He covers the short distance in a few strides, coming up behind both of you. Neither of you hears his approach.

“Don’t,” Din says, his voice low and threatening, just as Terek grasps your wrist.

You and Terek freeze and whip your heads around, surprise apparent on your faces. When you both register Din’s presence, Terek’s surprise melts into fear, yours into…disappointment?

That stings.

In an attempt at chivalry, Terek hesitates for a moment then steps all the way in front of you, putting his body squarely between yours and Din’s, swallowing audibly as he looks up at his visor.

Din sighs.

“What do you want?”

“Release her.”

Terek splutters for a moment, trying and failing to form a sentence that expresses his utter disbelief, but you save him the trouble by wrenching your hand from his and stepping away.

“I’m fine,” you say to no one in particular. Then, to Terek, “Go home.”

“I’m not leaving you with him,” he says, disgusted, eyeing Din warily.

“I’m fine,” you reassure him, adding, “Just go,” when he hesitates.

Terek leaves, his pride sufficiently wounded by the dismissal. He mutters under his breath as he does, disappearing around a corner. Then it’s just you and Din.

You look up at him for a moment then turn abruptly on your heel and stalk away.

You waited to be alone with him just so you could leave first. The pettiness of it almost amuses him.

You’re upset with him. Hurt. For good reason. He doesn’t blame you, and as much as he should be thrilled that you want nothing to do with him, he’s suddenly desperate to fix it. Now that you’re standing in front of him again, he can’t help himself.

“Wait,” he says, following you instinctively. “Let me walk with you.”

As soon as he says it, he regrets it. He sounds just like Terek, who obviously annoys the shit out of you. Sure enough, you reject the offer. 

“No,” you reply, tossing the word carelessly over your shoulder.

Din watches you walk away, disappointment coiling in his chest like thick smoke.

He makes an impulsive decision, overtaking you in a few strides, turning around in front of you to force you to stop walking. “Please.”

You’re surprised, caught off guard by his plea, but you recover quickly. You deliberate for one painful, infinite moment.

“Alright,” you say, your expression softening. “Come on.”

He’s so relieved he sighs audibly. He’s so relieved he doesn’t even let himself think about what a bad idea this is—how it’s going to completely erase the progress he’s made in keeping you away from him. He shoves those thoughts aside and falls into step beside you. 

Din looks down at the reluctant smile pulling at your lips, and he smiles behind the helmet.

In that moment, everything changes. His resolve evaporates. Nothing about this could be wrong, he decides. It feels too good. Even more importantly, you look happy. 

That means he’s doing something right.

YOU

Summer gifts you a final handful of warm days as fall pushes in.

Your weekly harvest shifts from the best of the summer fruits and vegetables to what fall has to offer—pears and apples, squashes and pumpkins, leafy greens and broccoli crowns. A chill slips in at night, first a light breeze, then more insistent until it’s enough to necessitate shut windows and drawn curtains.

In the forest, the deciduous trees are just starting to turn. The tart greens of summer have waned to a muted olive in the heat and the drought, and they’re beginning to give way to the first golden hues of autumn, heralding the oncoming winter months. It’s your stark annual reminder of the transience of the growing season. In a few months, the weekly market will all but close, reduced to a handful of stalls selling preserved and prepared foods. Your part in it will be over for the year. 

You’re even more relieved than usual. You’ll miss the finer weather, of course, but not the work. Or the weekly slog to the market…and the constant reminder of the Mandalorian’s rejection.

The memory tastes like sweet cherry gone sour on your tongue.

You try not to think about it—how stupid you made yourself look, flirting with him when he wasn’t interested. Pursuing him outright and cajoling him to come to your stall when he’d made the choice to avoid you. You’d made some bold moves, and they hadn’t paid off. No, they’d backfired rather spectacularly. 

You’re grateful that the Mandalorian’s constant radius of solitude—the area around him that his intimidation keeps clear—means that no one else witnessed the whole embarrassing scene up close. A small blessing.

The last Saturday markets of the season pass without event. Just like the previous handful, Mando walks by. You see him coming and avoid his gaze; you avoid looking at him altogether in fact—you don’t even sneak a sidelong glance to see if he’s willing to spare you a nod. You don’t want to know.

You both act the part of the strangers you are. Whatever nascent thing flickered between you for a moment has been snuffed out completely.

You pack up your kiosk and head home from that final Saturday, knowing it’s time to get to work on the necessary preparations for winter: some repairs, the work in the orchards and gardens, tending to the chickens. The final push feels extra hard this year.

You’ve never been more ready to leave this planet. 

So naturally, when you head into town a few days later to check on the progress of your ship, you find out that the last few parts are back-ordered. Everything slows down here when the first chilly winds start to pick up the fallen leaves—everything. People hunker down preemptively, incoming shipments of all goods slowing to a trickle. It doesn’t help that your ship is an old model, out of production. It already takes extra time to find the right parts.

The mechanic estimates an early spring completion date.

You’ll have to wait out the cold months patiently. Knowing he’s still out there. A small comfort is that you probably won’t see him at all now that you won’t spend hours at the one place you reliably crossed paths. Maybe you’ll pass each other when you’re visiting the tiny winter market briefly for necessities. Likely not, though, when you know exactly the time he shows up and therefore just how to avoid him.

You wish he’d leave the planet entirely so you could stop thinking about him.

No, you wish he’d seek you out. Just so you could reject him.

Who are you kidding? That’s not how that would go. 

What you really want is for him to seek you out, explain that the whole thing was some kind of misunderstanding, whip his helmet off to reveal his handsome face, and kiss you full on the mouth.

It’ll probably happen. Any second.

*** Right away, you’re proven wrong. It’s not so easy to avoid him. But you don’t run into him at the market—no, you’re in town, coming out of the cantina, when you see him next.

A slightly drunk Terek is trying to talk you into letting him walk you home, and the Mandalorian appears out of nowhere.

Again, the absurd idea that he follows you seems not entirely improbable.

“Release her.”

The protective tone of Mando’s voice makes your stomach clench. Terek is perfectly harmless. You’ve dealt with him for years, and he’s never done more than offer his company, sometimes too insistently. Some deep, vicious part of you wants him to get uncharacteristically angry and brave right now—to escalate the situation by refusing to let you go.

You want to see how effortlessly Mando would put him down. 

Fuck, what is wrong with you?

The man does things to your head. 

You pull your hand out of Terek’s loose, sweaty grasp and step away. He protests when you tell him to leave, but eventually, reluctantly, he listens. And then it’s just you and the Mandalorian. As you wanted.

He got protective over you, and your curiosity is unyielding. You have to know how this is going to play out.

He stands there like a metal statue and says nothing.

So you turn and walk away.

“Wait,” he says belatedly, his footsteps picking up behind you. “Let me walk with you.”

It’s embarrassing how easily the request makes your irritation disappear. The reality of just how much his attention means to you cinches uncomfortably in your gut. You remember your last encounter, and the combination makes you defensive.

So you say the opposite of what you really want, an ugly satisfaction settling in your chest: “No.”

He rounds on you. “Please.”

He sounds well and truly fraught—even though the modulator, the sharp emotion comes through.

The Mandalorian seems to be someone else entirely tonight: you think he’s the man you’ve glimpsed behind the armor, sweet and real, the one he usually tries to keep hidden. It’s intoxicating.

“Alright,” you say, relieved. “Come on.”

He falls into place beside you quickly, a little eagerly.

You pass the entrance to town, and the wind whistles through the dry leaves in the forest, tugging the last few hold-outs from their branches to join the rest. They skitter across the hard-packed dirt road.

As much as you’d rather avoid the topic altogether, it feels necessary to address the awkwardness between you before diving into anything else. It doesn’t feel so daunting at this moment. His energy tonight has changed the dynamic completely. 

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable that day at the market. I didn’t mean—”

He surprises you by stopping abruptly in his tracks and turning toward you. You pause too. He extends a hand like he wants to reach for yours then decides better of it and lets it drop.

“I was rude,” he says. “I’m sorry, it had nothing to do with you.”

You scrunch your nose. That doesn’t seem true. “Really? It seemed like—”

“Forgive me.”

It has the quiet desperation of a plea, and he says it with so much sincerity that you don’t feel any qualms about agreeing.

“Of course,” you say. “It’s forgotten.”

He nods once, decisively, then turns to keep walking. Apparently, the matter is settled. You let him change the subject when he tries.

“How’s the progress on your ship?” he asks.

You let out an annoyed huff. “Delayed. Again.”

You explain the specifics to him.

It feels like a gift to be alone with him for this long, to finally have an uninterrupted, prolonged, one-on-one conversation. You’re learning so much about him, his quirks, already. He has a way of keeping you talking without saying anything. He gives you a look, cocks his helmet, hums. Not talkative but not aloof. He wants you to keep talking, and he communicates that openly.

You like it—like learning him—and at the same time, you can’t help but want to wheedle more out of him. You want the man behind the mask, all of him. You tell yourself to settle for this. This is easy. This is comfortable. You’ll give him time. You’ll let him unravel you a little before you start in on him.

So for now, he goads; you answer.

Ten or so minutes pass like that.

“So, it looks like I’m stuck here through the winter,” you conclude. 

That fact is starting to feel less bleak by the minute.

“Yeah?”

Either there’s a faint glimmer of potential in his question or you want it to be there so badly you’re projecting. It feels real, though—real enough to press a little.

“What about you, Mando? How long are you here for?”

“Still deciding.”

“And what’s informing that decision?”

He looks you over for a long moment. Leaves crunch under his boots, and you feel exposed under his naked attention. 

“Several…factors,” he says finally, perfectly cryptic.

You roll your eyes at him playfully, prompting him to expand with an open hand. 

“I’ll…be here through the winter too.”

It feels like he’s just deciding right now. And you want to believe that—that your timeline is somehow, improbable as it is, affecting his. 

You can’t help but smile at him. “Good.”

You walk in companionable silence for a few minutes—until something howls mournfully into the night.

“You walk this alone at night?” he asks. There’s concern there.

You shrug. “I’ve lived here all my life—long enough that I know what to expect, long enough that nothing on this planet really scares me anymore. I know how to deal with it.”

A grunt of acknowledgement, then he goes thoughtfully quiet.

You’ve reached the turn-off for your house. You expect him to leave you here. He doesn’t. He walks with you all the way down the path, all the way to the stairs that lead up to your front porch.

You turn to him, he turns to you, and you’re painfully aware that in any other situation, walking home with someone you’re interested in might culminate in a kiss. If you wanted it to.

You look up, meeting his visor, feeling shy under his gaze again. “Thanks for walking with me.”

He nods and reaches into a pouch on his belt, fishing out something small. He hands it to you. “In case.”

You look down at the little silver device, closing your fingers around it. A com. A direct link to him, given freely. You’re surprised. And pleased. “I—thank you.”

“Use it if you need it.”

“I will.”

“...if you want to,” he amends, a little hesitantly.

“I definitely will.”

He bids you goodnight with a final nod, but he waits to leave until you let yourself in your front door and lock it behind you.

From the window, you watch him go, watch him turn and melt into the syrupy darkness like he’s always been part of it.

*** The next day, you’re buoyed by the hope of last night’s conversation. He was friendly. He wanted to spend time with you. He was protective. You float through your work mindlessly, daydreaming. 

The little silver com feels heavy and significant in your skirt pocket.

The air smells earthy, and there’s a chilly bite to the morning breeze. Luna follows you as per usual, moseying behind as you graduate from one task to the next. Her ankle is fully healed. She wanders in your vicinity, searching out the best food sources without leaving your sight. 

You replay your conversation with Mando—the questions, the interest, the amiable silence—while you work. 

You pause in the middle of pruning an apple tree, clippers poised over a branch to be cut: you might actually be friends with the Mandalorian.

Of course, what you really want is to be fucked raw by the Mandalorian every day. But being friends is probably a good first step.

When you’re done in the orchard, you move the chickens from their outdoor enclosure inside, counting each feathery butt as they titter their way through the door of the barn. The last one meanders away, pecking at the ground in search of bugs, and you have to herd her back toward the waiting warmth. 

“Come on, silly.”

You usher her inside, check the feed levels, and latch the door behind them. All accounted for. You haven’t lost a chicken in months. 

It’s odd, honestly.

It’s usually a constant battle to keep them from being picked off. You always factor in an expected loss each year. But for the past few months, you haven’t lost a single one, haven’t seen a single offending footprint of a predator—large or small—anywhere on your land. Even the rats have stopped coming for the eggs.

It makes you curious.

You venture into the forest early that evening, slipping under the patchwork of fall colors: amber and olive and burnt orange. Luna follows close at your heel. You’re not sure what you’re looking for until you find it.

A ways into the forest, quite far from the edge of your clearing, you come across a large tree, its trunk wide and thick, and the bark is shredded. It’s cut with long, deep lacerations. And lying at its base is a sizable ladder of vertebrae. Mammalian. Something big. The bones have been picked clean, left almost pristine by the elements and hungry critters.

You’ve never seen something like this so close to your house.

And you haven’t seen any live predators lately. You’ve heard them, far off.  It doesn’t make sense.

You circle the trunk and notice a little way off, there is another tree just like this one—ribboned bark, an offering of bones gathered at its foot. And then, from that tree, you spot another. There’s a series of them, one after another. You follow one to the next, marked tree to marked tree, and find that they form a massive ring around your property. 

A halo of slashed trees hemming you in. 

You can tell they’ve each been marked repeatedly, newer lacerations scored across older ones, newer kills piled atop older ones. There are scattered bones everywhere—husks of shattered skulls and splintered femurs, the pristine skeletal structure of a paw as big as your hand. Some are stripped, but decaying muscle and flesh still cling to others.

Dread has dropped into your stomach like a stone, growing heavier by the minute. Something is…stalking you?

Has been stalking you.

For weeks. Maybe months.

Something that’s large enough to kill the largest predator on this planet.

Something new.

Someone new.

You know.

You’re almost back to where you started; you’ve almost completed the full circuit when you find one spot that’s more disturbing than the rest. The kill that sits at the base of this tree looks fresh, maybe a day or two old. It hasn’t rotted yet, and you can smell the coppery tang of dried blood. You can see it too, dripped like black ink across dead, curled oak leaves.

There’s something else in the air too—something strong and alluring—

You turn abruptly when you realize you haven’t heard the quiet crunch of Luna’s steps in a minute, haven’t felt the gentle press of her nose and the warm chuff of air when she exhales against your leg. Your tiny companion is several steps behind you, completely stricken. She looks as terrified as the day you took her home—trembling legs splayed, eyes huge, ears alert.

She is not pleased with the grisly scene. For good reason.

You scan the area, listening intently. There’s no movement, no immediate threat you can discern. You know this kill is abandoned.

But you’re not going to subject Luna to this fear. You scoop her up, trudge back through the forest to bring her home, and put her inside. And then you head back to the spot.

Something aside from the macabre mystery of it all brings you back.

The smell of blood is overpowering, but there’s that other scent lingering on the still forest air, something warm and pungent and vaguely familiar. You can’t put your finger on what it is, but it smells good. Mouthwateringly good. Not like fresh baked bread, not something benign like a food or flower or early morning. 

It’s something overtly sexual, something personal.

You can’t remember ever being this attracted to a scent, but it conjures images of intense coupling. It smells like tangled limbs, like burying your face against the hollow of a sweaty throat. Like skimming the tip of your nose up the inside of a thigh. Like having two thick fingers thrust into your mouth, pressing in, pressing down on the wet muscle of your tongue until you choke. Like those same spit-wet fingers slipping out of your mouth, streaking a glistening trail down your chin, and closing around your throat.

It’s leather and sex and smoke and salt and…so many more unnameable things.

It has you wet between your legs.

It has you following a faint trail of dripped blood and remnants of dismembered carcasses across the pine-needle strewn ground—a path that leads away from your property. You wander from one trace to the next, a little dazed, searching the forest floor for more signs of the violence that took place here.

Every step you take has you moving a little faster, until you’re all but running through the maze of tree trunks.

You pass cracked ribs, stripped almost completely clean.

The smell is getting stronger, more magnetic. You barely have to seek out the trail of the blood and scattered viscera to find your way; the smell itself is enough. It keeps you on track.

You know it’s crazy. But you need answers.

Halfway there, you’re sure of where the path leads. There’s nothing else this far in the forest. You know who will be waiting at the end of it.

You step over the sharp angle of a jaw bone, shiny teeth lined up like snow-covered mountain peaks.

No wonder the nights have been loud with desolate howling.

You’re vaguely aware that dusk is gathering quickly, spun like silk between the tightly packed trees. It’s dangerous to be out this late, in this part of the forest, in the dark.

You keep moving, fingers clutched tightly around the com in your pocket.

*** The Mandalorian is waiting for you.

He’s standing comfortably, leaning against a tree, as if he’s been expecting you for some time, like he’s known you’ve been on your way. His house lurks somewhere in the blue mist behind him.

How could he possibly have known?

When he straightens, his body language is stiff. Something is off.

He greets you with a gruff, “You shouldn’t be out here.”

You hesitate. “What—why?”

“It isn’t safe.”

“It’s not—”

“Don’t come here again.”

The contrast to how he spoke to you last night is jarring. You’re speechless for a second. He turns on his heel and starts to walk away. He’s gone mercurial on you again—retreated fully behind his armor.

You find your voice before he’s disappeared between the trees. “I told you—I’m not afraid of anything on this planet.”

He stops in his tracks and turns slowly to face you, his silver armor glinting dully in the gloom. 

“I know,” he says, “but you should be.”

You bristle. “Why are you acting this way? Yesterday—just yesterday you gave me a com link.” You pull the thing out of your pocket and hold it up. “And told me to use it. You wanted me to.”

“That…was a mistake.”

“Don’t say that. It wasn’t.”

“I shouldn’t have been so familiar. It won’t happen again.”

He turns and is almost completely lost to darkness, the looming outline of his roof just barely visible beyond the trees.

“Why is there a trail of carcasses leading from my house to yours?”

He stops in his tracks. Silent.

“You owe me an explanation,” you press. “I’m not leaving until I get it.”

He stands there for a long moment.

“Come in,” he growls finally, jerking his helmet toward his front door.

You follow him inside. The house is old but beautiful—hardwood floors and sky blue walls. It’s clean and uncluttered, just as you expect his space to be. He nods toward his kitchen table, offering you a chair, and leans against his kitchen counter, thumbs tucked into his belt.  

“Explain the bodies.”

He’s not looking at you. He chooses his words carefully. “They…were a threat.”

“They were a threat…?”

“So I eliminated them,” he says simply.

Eliminated feels like a generous euphemism for the way the beasts were obliterated, ripped to shreds and scattered. To be honest, though, you’re less concerned with the details than you should be. You care more about the reason. You want to hear him say it. 

“Why?”

“I’m a hunter. It’s what I do.”

“There was a bounty on those creatures?”

He tilts his helmet in a way that feels like an eye-roll.

“They weren’t bothering anyone,” you say. “It wasn’t necessary.”

“They were stalking you.”

The lake. The fight. Here it is, finally: the truth. You’re going to have to drag it out of him.

“And how do you know that?”

He tips his helmet up, his visor finally meeting your eyes, but he says nothing.

“You’ve been following me.”

Again, nothing. He fixes his gaze downward again.

“Why, Mando?” you prompt, some mixture of dread and desire pulsing through your veins. “Tell me. You owe me that.”

“You know,” he says quietly.

Your heartrate kicks up. “I know what?”

He says it begrudgingly, like it’s an ugly reality: “That I want you.”

You laugh. He can’t be fucking serious. “How would I know that? Should I have guessed when you stopped talking to me? Or when you refused to look at me? How could I possibly have known when you can’t seem to decide whether to let me in or push me away?”

“You’ve known,” he says, addressing none of your questions. “You flirted with me.”

“I did,” you admit. “But that had more to do with my feelings than anything I assumed about yours. I didn’t know what you were feeling. I just knew what I wanted.”

“Mmm.”

You’re going to kill him if he doesn’t start giving you more than monosyllables.

“If you want me, why do you keep pushing me away?”

He rolls his helmet to the side, annoyed. As if he has any right to be annoyed. You can hear how tightly his jaw is clenched when he speaks. “Because I can’t have you.”

“Shouldn’t I be the one who gets to decide that?”

“Not in this case.”

“And why is that?”

“It’s…complicated.”

“Fine. Explain it to me.” You make a show of settling back in your chair. “We have all the time in the world.”

He bunches his shoulders, rubs a heavy hand down the back of his neck, uneasy. “You’ll get hurt.”

“What does that even mean? How would I get hurt?”

He ignores that, deflecting. “This isn’t your decision to make,” he spits. “It’s mine.”

“That’s insane—we both want the same thing—”

“I won’t let you get hurt.” His voice is low, his visor pointed at his boots—almost as if he’s talking to himself, trying to convince himself.

You stand, frustrated, your chair squeaking on the hardwood floor when you shove it backwards. “Why would I get hurt, Mando—how? What are you going to do? Or is it me you’re worried about? Is this how you really think of me? As something fragile? Do you just think I’m that fucking weak?”

He breaks.

The sound he makes is brutal and anguished, a dull roar, and you can’t help but flinch when he slams his fist against the counter behind him. The windows shake with the impact. He laughs when you flinch, something low and dark rumbling through his chest, a sound tinged with vindication.

“Good,” he says. “I said you should be scared.”

“That sound startled me,” you say, rolling your eyes. “It doesn’t mean I’m scared of you.”

He moves like a gunshot. 

He shoves your empty chair away, and his massive metal frame forces you backwards with faltering steps. You stop when your back hits the wall, looking up at his visor defiantly. He’s trying to provoke you, to orchestrate a situation that forces you to push him away, that justifies his own worry. 

“What will it take?”

He gets so close that his chest brushes yours, so close that you can feel the cold metal of his armor through your clothes. He looms over you, dropping his helmet toward your ear.

“Hmm?” he prompts. “What will it take to convince you?”

“Of what?”

“To leave this—leave me—alone.”

You open and close your mouth, at a loss for words, overwhelmed by his closeness.

He dips his head again, his helmet nudging your temple, his voice pitching low and dangerous. “You want me to hurt you?”

“You won’t hurt me.” You say it so quickly, with such conviction that it surprises even you.

Mando lets out a quiet sound like a wounded animal and looks away, his visor fixed on the ground as his chest heaves in deep breaths. You’re about to speak again when he looks up and cradles your cheek in his gloved hand.

He’s gentle suddenly. Reverent.

“You’re right, sweet thing. I won’t hurt you. Not on purpose.”

“See?”

“Not on purpose,” he repeats, the words heavy with significance.

“I trust you.”

You reach for his helmet with a tentative hand, waiting for him to stop you—fully expecting it. He doesn’t. You trace the sharp relief with light fingers, running them down what would be his cheek.

“I want you. Let me want you.”

A low growl rumbles through his chest, but this one is different from the others. This one sounds pleased. You’ll take it.

You tuck two fingers into the soft leather of his belt and tug his hips forward those last few inches, guiding him close until his whole body is flush to yours, until you’re caught between his unyielding metal and the wall.

You let your hands wander to the spaces between his armor, let them run up his sides, let one slip under the layered fabric at his neck. Your fingertips find warm skin, and you sigh at the feeling.

He’s real. He’s here. He’s not moving away. 

He’s leaning into your touch, his breath coming thick and fast through the modulator. His hands, though, are hovering by your hips, uncertain.

“Touch me,” you beg, grabbing them and moving them to your sides. 

His fingers tighten against your middle, and he presses the solid length of his body harder against yours. He’s half hard against your hip.

“Please.”

He’s considering. He’s drawing out the longest moment of your life.

You can feel the moment he decides to give in, to let himself have what you both want so badly. He sighs and curls himself around you, dropping his helmet toward your shoulder, slipping his arms around your waist to hold you tight.

It’s achingly tender. Intimate in a way you weren’t expecting.

You breathe together.

And just as suddenly, everything shifts again. He pulls back and fixes you with a hard look. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You need to be sure.”

“I’m sure. Just—please—”

His fingers follow the line of your jaw, his thumb settling on your lower lip. At the merest hint of pressure, you open your mouth.

“Bite,” he whispers, pushing just the tip of his thumb past your lips.

You graze your teeth lightly over his fingertip, catching the seam. The potent taste of leather and blaster residue invades your mouth, sitting heavy like ash on your tongue. You want to taste his skin, not his glove.

You’re desperate to know what sound he’d make if you wrapped your lips around his bare thumb and sucked. But before you have the chance, he eases his hand out of his glove—revealing golden brown skin—and drops it to your side, squeezing your hip so hard it makes you gasp. The leather slaps quietly against the floor when your jaw falls open. He yanks his other hand free and lets that glove fall too.

Your hand slips down his chest plate, skates over his belt, to settle over—

His bare hand covers yours, clamping it in place over his cold metal buckle.

“No.”

You look up at him. “What—?”

“No,” he repeats.

“Why—?”

“Are you sure you want this?” he asks again. “Are you sure you want me to touch you?”

“Yes,” you gasp. “But why can’t—?”

Before you can finish your question, Mando is spinning you around and ushering you backward toward the table. When the edge nudges your back, he turns you again, pushing your shoulders down until you fold forward over the oak top. 

He arranges you to his liking: a boot kicks your feet wider, and rough hands grip your hips to shift them backward so he has enough space to work open the button on your skirt, shove it down, and let it pool at your feet. He takes your underwear with it. 

Your gasp melts into a moan when he fits himself behind you, bent over you with his hips bracketing yours, and drags his warm, dry hands up the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. You can feel him through his clothes—his cock is hard against the small of your back—and you’re on fire with the thought of trying to fit him inside you.

You’d take it. You want that burn.

But he doesn’t reach for his belt. He stays like that, folded over you, the edge of his helmet sharp on the back of your shoulder, and slides one hand further up into the v of your legs. He grunts and presses his hips harder against your ass at the first feeling of your wet heat on his fingers as he parts you. 

The pad of his finger finds your clit and skims it, applying barely any pressure. Teasing.

He speaks softly, his helmet close to your ear. “Is this what you wanted? Is this what you needed?”

You push your hips back against him, seeking. “Please, Mando—I need—”

“You’ll take what I give you, pretty thing. And you won’t ask for more.”

He goes torturously slow, clearly unconcerned with your urgent need. He’s enjoying the build-up, you think, enjoying feeling you squirm against him. He lets you whine for a couple minutes while he plays with you as he pleases. Until finally, he decides to give you the pressure you need, two fingers rocking gently against your clit, his other hand dipping lower.

Out of all the things that have happened tonight—all the weird, improbable shit—what shocks you the most is this: Mando can be a talker. As soon as he sinks two fingers into the warmth of your pussy, he starts to run his mouth. And he doesn’t stop.

In his sinful voice, he tells you how much he’s wanted this, how good you feel around his fingers.

He groans deep. “I’ve thought about this tight little cunt every night for months.”

With both his hands between your legs and a steady stream of filth murmured in your ear, he takes you apart in minutes. He pauses only to rip your shirt over your head, palming your breasts with a quiet oh fuck, and then resumes.

“I’ve imagined the sounds you’d make—the way you’d cry for me when I make you come.”

He fucks you with two thick fingers, stretching you open in a way that’s making your arousal seep down his palm.

“Fuck, you’re even wetter than I thought you’d be—hngg—you’re dripping on me.”

He flicks your clit with his other hand, a little mean, then soothes the sting with just the right touch, the right rhythm. You come like that, spasming around his fingers, and he growls when he feels it. 

“Oh fuck, come for me, just like that.”

He pulls his hands away too quickly.

“Let me—just let me—”

He guides you into a new position with gentle but hurried movements. There’s a frantic air to them that has you obeying without a second thought. He draws your shoulders up and spins you around; his hands slide down your back and over the curve of your ass, gripping the backs of your thighs to lift you onto the edge of the table.

He presses you backwards until you lie flat for him, and he parts your knees and slides his palms up the insides of your thighs, forcing your legs apart so you’re completely spread for him. You don’t have time to be startled by the depravity of it because he does something you’re not expecting. He drops to his knees with a clank of beskar and lets his helmet fall forward into the v of your thighs.

You gasp at the cold shock of metal, flinching away instinctively, but his hands curl around your thighs and keep you in place.

He presses the front of his helmet against your sex.

There’s no way he can see anything at all with his visor shoved up against your skin, no way there’s enough light to make out the details of your cunt.

Then you realize, he’s smelling you. His fingers are digging into your thighs as he tries to drag you closer to his face—as if he could drag you any closer when you’re already pressed up tight against him, as if he could pull you straight through the mask of beskar if he tries hard enough.

He’s making sharp, animalistic sounds: growls and huffs and desperate inhalations.

You watch in fascination as his shoulder starts to shift and roll, the dim light glinting on his pauldron, and you push yourself up onto your elbows and drop your head to one side to discover he’s palming himself over his pants where he’s kneeling, rubbing the erection straining against his zipper.

He’s touching himself to the smell of you.

It makes you desperate to touch him. You reach for him.

“Mando, please.”

He lets you pull him up, but when you go for his belt, he swats your hand away. Instead, he grips your thighs and yanks you further down the table; you slide easily over the wooden surface until the solid weight of his body stops you—until you can feel the hard bulge of his clothed erection against your core. You must be leaving a gloss of slick arousal on the front of his pants, but something tells you he likes that.

His hands cup your breasts, run roughly down your stomach, and pause at your hips. His helmet snaps up to your face.

“Can I taste you?”

You don’t even know what he means—don’t know how that will be possible with the impediment of the helmet—but you truly don’t care. You’d let him do anything he wants to you. 

“Yes.”

Mando slips a hand between your bodies and teases you open again, easing his fingers inside where you’re hot and leaking for him. He gives them a few leisurely pumps, curling them against you in a way that makes sparks skitter up your spine. And then he pulls them back.

He shoves his hand under the lip of his helmet and lets out the filthiest groan yet, his head tipping back in bliss as he sucks your taste off his fingers.

You brace yourself on your elbows to watch. It’s a deeply erotic sight. It makes you throb for him.

You’re about to reach for him again, to pull his body down over yours when he steps back and suddenly looks…disoriented. Caught off guard. His hands hang loosely by his sides, like he’s… waiting. Something foreign wracks through him—a shiver, no, more violent than that. A tremor shakes his body; he jerks his head to the side sharply and pulls his shoulders up tight, tensing, resisting something. It passes in a moment, and when it does, he leans his weight on slightly bent knees, catching his breath as if he just sprinted up a hill.

What the—?

“Are you alright?”

He shakes his head in a quick jerk. “I’m fine.”

He brushes past it as if nothing unusual has happened.

You don’t have time to question it because he takes his place between your knees again and leans over you, bracing a forearm above your head, the side of his smooth helmet sliding against your cheek. His fingers are still wet with his spit when he slides them home. He presses in close, and you can see the evidence of your slick smeared across his usually pristine visor. You can smell yourself on his helmet.

And you like it, like seeing him undone for you. By you.

He knows it’s there. You’re sure he can see the hazy smudge that extends across the vertical line of his visor.

“Fuck,” he says, breathless, resting his forehead lightly against yours, his hand moving between your tense thighs, “taste it.”

It takes you a moment to understand. His fingers press deeper, the feeling of him curling and stroking radiates outward.

“Lick yourself off my helmet.”

You don’t even think about it. Your mouth falls open obediently, and you drag the flat of your tongue up the glass, cutting through the taste of your own arousal.

He loves it. He lives for it.

You’re not sure if it’s the fact that you’ve just shown him you’re wiling to do whatever he says, without question; or if it’s the idea of you tasting yourself; or if it’s the filthy visual he must have of your mouth, up close and personal—maybe the closest thing he will ever get to a kiss; or if it’s something else entirely.

Whatever the reason, he likes it.

He mutters a string of praise so panted and broken that you can’t follow it. It somehow manages to communicate his meaning even better than if it were intelligible.

Mando shifts the arm braced above your head lower so he can press the pads of two fingers against your lip, a question.

Just what you wanted earlier.

You part your lips, and he coaxes another orgasm out of you. With one hand, he moves two fingers inside you, his thumb slipping over the tender pearl of your clit, and the other is cradling your chin, his fingers pressing down on your tongue as you moan around them.

It takes no time at all to work you back up to that same precipice.

“You’re—fuck—you’re choking my fingers.”

The broken pant of his words is enough to push you over the edge.

And all you can think about while you’re coming on his hand is how impossibly full you’d feel if he was fucking you with his cock instead of his thick fingers. And how much you want to know what that feels like.

You lie there, trying to catch your breath for a few moments, Mando braced over you, his breathing just as labored as yours. Eventually, he straightens.

“Up,” he invites, offering a hand.

You take it, and he pulls you into a sitting position on the table, your spread legs snug around his hips. You both look down between your bodies, and you hope he’s thinking the same thing you are.

This table is the perfect height for him to fuck you.

He could take himself out and sheath himself inside you so easily. Or you could do it for him. You’re hesitant to reach for him again, the echo of his unyielding no still loud in your head.

But you can see the rigid outline of him straining against the dark fabric of his pants. Your mouth waters at the sight. You’re itching to touch him—you can almost feel the weight and heft of him against your palm, hot and hard. He must be riding the edge of painfully aroused by now, absolutely aching for relief. And based on where his gaze is fixed—on the inches of space between your body and his, the meager distance that feels like a gaping chasm—he’s definitely thinking the same thing you are. 

He wants it.

You’re seconds away from throwing caution to the wind and reaching for his zipper when he clears his throat, and you look up to his visor. His tentative fingers brush your cheek, and your filthy thoughts are successfully derailed by the only thing that could possibly derail them: Mando being sweet to you.

“You’ll stay here.”

It’s neither an invitation or a question, just a fact. Stated warmly and firmly.

He finds your discarded clothes for you then leads you to his bed and waits for you to climb in. You settle under the thick quilt at the far end so he has enough space to lie down beside you. Which he does. Awkwardly. On top of the covers. In full armor. He’s even pulled his fucking gloves back on.

You’ll push him on that at some point—the armor thing. Not now, though. You’ve just barely gotten this far with him. You feel like you’ll spook him if you push too hard.

He leaves a gulf of empty space between your bodies when he settles on his back, his hands clasped together over his belt. A safe, respectful distance away. Hands completely to himself. As if he hasn’t just made you come on his fingers twice, buried knuckle-deep inside you as he whispered filthy things in your ear. As if he hasn’t just tasted your cunt.

If it wasn’t already perfectly clear, this drives the point home: He doesn’t know how to do this—how to be close to someone. If you want this to be anything else, anything more, you’ll have to show him.

You close the space between you, shifting toward him, guiding him closer with a hand on his arm, and he makes a quiet, surprised sound as he turns onto his side, into you, his arm instinctively circling your back. The instinct is there—the desire too—just not the how.

You curl into his metal chest, and one of the very good reasons he had for staying so far away from you on the bed becomes immediately apparent.

Ow.

He murmurs what you’re thinking: “I know the armor can’t be comfortable for you either.”

He makes no offer to take it off, extends no apology for its presence, just acknowledges that you’ll want to move away because of it. It’s not that he doesn’t want this; it’s that he’s accepted he isn’t suited for it.

“It’s fine,” you murmur, afraid he’s going to pull away. 

You tighten your fingers in the duraweave at his side. The hard lines of his beskar press into the front of your body, cold and pinching, in all the wrong places. He’s right. It is absolutely uncomfortable. You try to adjust subtly, try to get more comfortable without confirming that you’re really uncomfortable in the first place. You nudge your face further into the fabric bunched around his neck, chasing one of the few soft, warm parts of him that you can reach.

The tip of your nose brushes skin, and he sighs.

That scent. The one that lead you to him. It’s strongest here, heady and potent. You think you could get drunk on it. Live in it. Right now, though, it’s not so urgent. It doesn’t compel you; it’s not the catalyst it was before. It’s simply…comforting. Sweet and soothing, like the cloying edge of a sedative. No, it’s less demanding than that. More of a gentle suggestion, a reassurance.

The warm embrace of safety.

“It’s fine,” you mutter again, and this time you really mean it. “I don’t mind.”

His arm tightens around you, his hand traveling up your back to cup the nape of your neck, holding you in place where you’ve nuzzled in close. The gesture feels protective. Intimate and familiar.

Somewhere in the back of your mind you register how difficult it will be to give this up, but you release the thought as soon as it comes. No good can come from thinking like that. The end is inevitable: neither of you are meant to stay here forever.

You’ll enjoy this while you have it. Enjoy him while you have him. However brief that is.

You start to doze off, tucked comfortably against him, your thoughts spreading out and losing their shape, like ink bleeding across a wet page. It allows several things to click into place at once, settling into a recognizable pattern like puzzle pieces.

The bloody path. The dismembered carcasses. His unwillingness to let you touch him. The trees around your house. His inner conflict—his worries about hurting you. The armor. The odd physical reactions. The scent. Luna’s fear.

You’ve suspected for a while. You’ve known for sure since you saw the bodies, and in the liminal space on the edge of sleep, you finally let the truth surface.

Before he’s even left the ring of the forest that surrounds your clearing, he can hear your humming. A sweet lilting melody. He’s relieved that he can’t hear or smell anyone else. He stands at the edge of the trees for a moment. You’re alone, but instead of asleep in bed where he expected you to be, you’re moving about the kitchen. From the sounds of clanking pans and scraping utensils, of the shuffle of your bare feet over the hardwood floor, he can tell you’re cooking—something sweet and chocolatey by the heady smell—in the middle of the night. Fuck, what he wouldn’t give to watch you lick your fingers clean of whatever batter you’re stirring. To lean in and lick the taste out of your mouth. He doesn’t approach; he knows he doesn’t have the self control to get any closer to you—not when he’s already teetering on the edge of his restraint. He opts for a wide path, skirting around the back of your house so he doesn’t alert you to his presence, so you don’t catch his hulking shape, the towering curve of his wings moving past your kitchen window. He steps around the well-kept flowers that tickle his shins, careful not to trample any of the fragrant blooms that you tend so lovingly. On the opposite side of the house, your bedroom windows are flung open, the curtains pulled away. Inviting. He steps closer. Your bedroom door is closed; you're safely two rooms away. There, on your unmade bed, your bed that is pushed up against this outer wall—maddeningly, tantalizingly within his reach—tangled amidst the rumpled white sheets are your clothes from the day. A cornflower blue dress. He knows it well, the way it cuts a line across the top of your cleavage. He’s thought about dipping his tongue between your tits when you wear it, about biting the pillowed swell of each one. About rucking the folds of the skirt up your hips. He leans past the windowsill and reaches for it before any sense of decency can stop him. Din picks it up and thumbs the soft material. Silken and sumptuous under his touch, luxurious. It’s a practical, everyday dress, nothing fancy, but it feels precious in his rough hands because he knows it has hugged the curves of your body. Because he knows what it looks like clinging to your perfect silhouette. When he brings it closer to his face, something small falls from within the folds and lands on the windowsill. Panties. Light purple like the heather that grows along your front path, a simple cut of soft fabric. He drops the dress back onto the bed, back where he found it, and closes a big, clawed hand around that tiny scrap of cotton instead. Without an ounce of hesitation, Din brings his hand up to his face, finding the narrow strip of the crotch where your scent is most potent, and inhales deeply. He buckles—his back bowing as he tries not to groan, just barely suppressing a feral sound that is dying to break free into the quiet night. The claws of his other hand dig into the soft wood of your windowsill, marring the green paint, as he struggles to keep himself upright.

Fuck.

He turns to leave. Immediately. He stalks back the way he came and makes it five long strides under the cover of the forest canopy before he’s leaning against the trunk of a tree and bringing the bunched panties back up to his nose, his other hand palming the hard, aching length of him trapped within the confines of his too-tight flight suit. He rubs the rigid curve of his cock, massaging himself as he takes in the musk of you, drinking it in greedily—the scent he's coveted, the one that has haunted his dreams and his waking hours.

It Will Come Back, Hozier

You know better, babe, you know better, babe Than to look at it, look at it like that You know better, babe, you know better, babe Than to talk to it, talk to it like that

Don't give it a hand, offer it a soul Honey, make this easy Leave it to the land, this is what it knows Honey, that's how it sleeps

Don't let it in with no intention to keep it Jesus Christ, don't be kind to it Honey, don't feed it, it will come back

You know better, babe, you know better, babe Than to smile at me, smile at me like that You know better babe, you know better babe Than to hold me just, hold me just like that

I know who I am when I'm alone I'm something else when I see you You don't understand, you should never know How easy you are to need

Don't let me in with with no intention to keep me Jesus Christ, don't be kind to me Honey, don't feed me, I will come back

It can't be unlearned I've known the warmth of your doorways Through the cold, I'll find my way back to you Oh, please, give me mercy no more That's a kindness you can't afford I warn you, babe, each night, as sure as you're born You'll hear me howling outside your door

Don't you hear me howling, babe? Don't you hear me howling, babe? Don't you hear me howling, babe?

Don't you hear me howling?

Don't you hear me howling?