“Well best in the parsec before I was the second best in the parsec I was a fight ring gambling enforcer and I mean… Black Krrsantan was definitely one of the big guys around. Plus, I know you can’t see it right now, but he has a lovely singing voice and would always shoot me a drink if he won.”

Din’s helmet cocked to the side and he exhaled, “That right?”

“Yeah he’s a goofy little furball once you get through the murder.” You smirked and pointed finger-guns at Din, “Who’s driving to go recruit the Marshall?”

“Me.”

“But he liked me.”

“That’s true but I’ll still drive.”

“I’m a good driver.”

He chuckled, “And yet I’ll still drive.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, “See if I help you with negotiations now.”

__________________________________________________________________________

“I think he was flirting with you Red.” You teased Din, “Did you hear how he liked your smile?”

Din snorted, “He had his eyes on your chest the whole time.”

“I mean, who wouldn’t? They’re perky and amazing.” You laughed and hopped into the back pod of N-1.

Din got in slower, “Yeah…I mean you wouldn’t let just anyone paw at them. Not like. Creatures with actual paws or anything. Right?”

You hooted, “Don’t you worry shiny, rights have been assigned to one metal covered moron.”

“And to be clear–”

“You, you idiot.”

__________________________________________________________________________

While you were reviewing assignments everyone except Fennec was trying to keep the general demeanor light. Fennec looked like she was aiming to give herself or someone else a mild stroke and didn’t understand why the rest of you weren’t as uptight.

And you did not do uptight. You liked to have fun in the near-death circumstances because, otherwise, really, what was the point?

You elbowed Fennec, “Hey braids, you need Santo to help you take the stick out of your ass?”

And you thought you were funny.

And SO DID THE WOOKIE!

Who laughed.

And roared.

And slapped your butt and said Only if you let me stick your ass.

Which was not the most suave thing but he was a Wookie and you wagged your finger at him and laughed and said Not Again and it was funny.

Funny.

To most people.

Except Fennec.

And Din.

“Questions?” Boba said at the end, eyeing you in particular.

“Yeah, what’s your rebuilding plan?”

Fennec was miffed at you, “Let’s win the war first.”

“I’m just concerned for Garsa her margins are reliant on a tab system and that’s been blown to shit! How is she meant to have liquid capital to fix this mess?” You pointed to Santo, “I know you didn’t square with her before it got blown.”

The Wookie laughed and chirped at you Why don’t you blow me first?

“Shave.” You snorted and he laughed harder.

He laughed, and the Mandalorian fumed.

And as everyone in the meeting broke to go to their required positions Din pulled you into a bombed out corner.

Din's hands shot to his hips and he leaned over at you in intense agitation, "Did you fuck that Wookie?!"

"Not recently! Or...well. We were both really drunk so it's not clear ho--"

"You fucked a Wookie! I can't believe...when were you going to bring this up?"

"I'm sorry do you need a score card?" You huffed, “And like neither one of us know exactly what happened so ….”

Din threw his hands in the air, “So did you or didn’t you…?”

“You really going to let this be the reason you catch a blaster bolt right in the old undercarriage? Will you focus we have shit to take care of.” You tried to shut it down.

He had no response to that but he seemed wired. He was almost pacing.

Even when it was clear a trap was breaking out and Fennec ran to go intervene while the rest of you sat there anticipating your inevitable doom.

“So was it uncertain or unlikely?”

“What? Surviving this fuck up? Both.”

“No. You and Santo. Was it uncertain or unlikely that you two–”

“We are outnumbered and outgunned and this is the question you are asking right now?”

“IT’S ON MY MIND IS ALL AND I FEEL LIKE YOU’RE AVOIDING IT!”

Boba chuckled, head shaking back and forth, “Hard to follow a Wookie.”

Din groaned and you pointed at both of them, “You are children we need to focus or we are going to die.”

Boba smirked, “About that…if you two want to head out, I understand.”

“No I’m in. Said I would help, I meant it.”

You shrugged, “Where this moron goes I follow or he runs the risk of being stupider.”

Din snorted, mumbled so low the vibrocorder didn’t catch it, but you swore you heard not stupid enough to fuck a Wookie.

The nerve of this man.

_____________________________________________________________________

There were…a lot of blaster bolts all about. You were as nestled between Din and Boba as you could be but it was not your favorite day of all the many days.

“So it’s just us right?”

“Depends on how big a hit Santo can take!” Boba growled, “Sting? Insight into that? Do you think he takes big hits or are they more or less average for a Wookie of his age?”

“I will find another sarlacc to feed you to Fett.” You hissed and Din fell to a knee because his thigh got clipped.

“Red!”

He pulled you under his arm and took a bolt to his pauldron that would’ve gone right to your ribs, “Fucking duck will you?!”

It was all looking bad.

At least when the mechs showed up it seemed marginally better.

And then Santo…Santo wandering in the scene with five men hanging off of him, tossing them around like they were sandbags, Boba chuckled darkly, “Bringing back memories Sting?”

“Fucking Maker Fett, really?”

Boba laughed as he ran out to get Santo back who hummed an amused little offering to you: Want to kiss it and make it better?

Din tightened his grip on his blaster and at least when the shooting stopped you had an ounce of hope.

But the big ass shooting droids sorta took that away.

“Go with the others you don’t have beskar.” He growled at you and you flipped him off, “Oh fuck right off with that, where you go I go you thick skulled nerf herder. Now. I’m going to duck and run and you’re going to do the thing where you absorb blaster fire.”

__________________________________________________________________________

Fights had gone better.

To be fair they’d gone worse too, but they had gone better.

“You don’t have like…anything in there that can take out those shield generators that you just…forgot about?”

“No.”

“Fuck.”

“Sting?”

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry about the Santo stuff, it doesn’t matter.”

“I know it doesn’t matter.”

“....I’m apologizing–”

“--yeah well you were in the wro–”

“We are probably going to DIE out here and y–”

You pulled him and made him roll on top of you as a giant blaster mark took out your cover and nearly his big dumb head. You smiled up at him, “Let’s continue this later?”

“Yep.” He pulled you up to your feet and was dragging you along trying to find somewhere to go.

__________________________________________________________________

You and Peli didn’t always “mesh” but you thought she had the sense the Maker gave a womp rat and now you were concerned she really didn’t.

“THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?” You bellowed.

“TURN AROUND!”

She screamed as she saw the droids and as her little litter turned and skedaddled which made you and Red run after it and grab on the back.

“Faster please!” You shouted.

“Is that what you said to the Wookie?!”

“FUCK! STARS! WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU TO DROP THIS?!” You tapped on Peli, “Faster please!”

She chucked a wrench at the droid in front, “Move faster!”

“Hey you two! Got a surprise for ya! Fresh off an X-wing!”

“X-wing?” You craned your neck around and couldn’t see anything until Peli swept back a blanket.

“What are you doing here?” Din’s voice broke and the baby hopped directly into his arms with a dexterity you’d never seen before.

“It’s ok…it’s ok, I missed you too little guy.” Din was patting his back and holding him snug, “I missed you too–”

The little bug jumped over to you and nuzzled into your chest with a phrase that sounded suspiciously like mama and you wrapped an arm around him tightly, “Oh hello demon spawn, little carnivore, how’s my big green guy? Huh? That Jedi wasn’t mean to you right?”

He shook his little head deeper into your chest and you felt Din haul you up by your pants and plop you over into the seat right next to Peli with a grunt, “We missed you buddy. We didn’t know when we would see you but…we are in a little spot of trouble right now and you need to stay here, keep your head down. Be careful ok?”

You looked from the baby to him and said, “You need me to give you cover.”

“He needs you to give him cover, what’s she got over there a fucking wrench?”

“Hey!” Peli looked scandalized and pulled out a large sawed off shooter. The baby reached for Din and Din’s fingers caught on the baby’s tunic and it pulled revealing the shiny beskar underneath.

“It’s the shirt!” You slapped Din’s arm, pointing at it.

“You got the shirt.” You could hear the emotion in Din’s voice and squeezed his elbow but then pulled your blaster and aimed behind him.

“Let’s put a pin in this and return to it when there’s less shootiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!”

You were flying through the air.

Holding a baby.

Trying to hold a gun.

Why were you in the air?

Where was the ground?

Din managed to grab you and the baby and take the brunt of the fall on his back but when you stood up and faced the droid…there was no cover, no nothing.

You snorted, “Well darling…we all get to go together when we—”

A roar.

“Oh don’t tell me it’s the fucking Wookie.” Din grumbled.

________________________________________________________________

It was not a Wookie.

Hot damn was it not a Wookie.

You had seen a lot of fighting creatures in your life but this? Big ol’ beautiful rancor being ridden majestically into battle and ready to fuck something up. Poetry.

“HOLY SHIT!” You hooted, “You didn’t say he had a rancor!”

“I didn’t know about the rancor.”

"Oh baby just look at her!" You were shouting in unrestrained glee, "Oh she's beautiful! I think I'll call her Tina! Thatta girl Tina! GET IT!”

"Tina? Why Tina?" Din sounded exasperated to the point where the chaos was all just as sensible as anything else. A rancor? Of course. Why not? Let’s go.

You laughed at him, “I have met some mean Tinas.”

He pulled you and the kid off to the side and gave you a pleading gesture, “Listen, you should let me handle this. The armo–”

You set the kid down by Peli, “Yeah buddy, stay here and don’t come out. Daddy and I have some droids to disassemble. Be back soon. That’s a good boy.”

You held up your stingbeam with a smirk, “Alrighty Red, you go high and I go low?”

“I’m not even going to ask if you went low for the Wookie.”

“You kinda just did.”

__________________________________________________________________

You were not a doctor but you were vaguely sure you had some head trauma because your ears were ringing and you weren’t entirely sure how you got where you were standing.

Standing?

Were you? Nope.

You looked down.

You had feet which was a positive sign.

You put your hand to your head. Blood. Not a positive sign. But not as much blood as you thought so that was tentatively ok…now what had—

You looked around.

A giant rancor was sleeping and your baby was nestling into the ground next to it to snuggle.

You looked over at Din who seemed like a pile of metal plates and you poked him sturdily with one finger and he moaned, “Are we dead?”

“Don’t think so.” You tried to sit up, everything was very very spinny and your head hurt but pain meant life, you looked at Din and tried to recall what had happened, “Did you…did you almost get eaten by a rancor?”

“Yeah. Let’s see your Wookie survive that.”

“Oh my fucking stars.”

Then he gently slapped your arm and pointed to the rancor, “Did you see? He stopped it.”

“What do you want? Our boy’s impressive.” You tried to get onto your feet, “Now let’s go check on him and Tina.”

“Still on the Tina thing?” Din reached out and pushed you up onto your feet before slowly getting onto his, "Well she's not yours to name anyway so call her whatever you want because it's not staying. Lucky we didn’t kill it."

You scooped up the baby, rubbing his ears, reaching out to stroke the rancor’s nose.

"Tina didn't mean to do anything wrong."

"Tina?" Boba limped up and then nodded, "I don't mind it."

Din just sighed. You laid your head on his shoulder and let the world stop spinning, “You were great out there Red. Some might be tempted to say best in the parsec.”

“Some?”

“Well you’re no Wookie.”

He barked a laugh and wrapped an arm around you to steady you both, “Well some might be tempted to say you were, plausibly, adjacent to the best.”

“Some?”

“I dunno. Ask the Wookie.”

___________________________________________________________________

You were holding the baby and walked him over to the N1 and let him crawl all over it, “Check it out short stack, because you gotta share a seat with me and I’m going to be honest it’s fun but it’s a tight fit so you will be sitting in the upright position and not moving all around, get your exploration out now.”

You smiled and checked the supplies you had. A miniaturized tent, small enough to fold up and attach to your belt. A few rations, small.

Din walked up behind you and a gloved hand hovered over the small of your back, “It’s not the lap of luxury but it’ll do.”

“Is that what you thought the Crest was?” You were smiling widely, it was all playful, and you leaned against his pauldron making his hand come down on you firmer, pull you close.

“You need to get anything else before we go?”

“Don’t think so…what about you?”

He shrugged, “He gave the bacta tank to Vanth, so we have to make do with what we have.”

“I mean, fair.” You exhaled, “Do we have a …course plotted?”

“I dunno. We can’t sleep in the N-1 for long and we can’t carry much food so…we will have to stop soon enough.” It sounded like an apology and you waved that off.

“It’s a nice little bottle rocket. It won’t kill us to camp out.” You looked off into the sky, “I always liked camping when I was little. Time off the ship in different places is good.”

Din made a noise like he was dissatisfied with that, unconvinced, but decided to let it go. He squeezed your hip.

“Towards Mandalore eventually.” He offered instead and you bit on your lip.

“I…I’m sorry. About that. About the punishment.”

“I’m not.” He was watching the kid crawl all over the ship like a little loth-kitten and chuckled.

“Alrighty well–” You went to go climb into the ship with the kid but Din pulled you to face him and quick as lightning he had the helmet pushed up and darted down to kiss you.

You wrapped your fingers around the exposed back of his neck, letting the wisps of his curls dance over the backs of your hand.

You hummed lightly against his mouth and pulled back only when a loud Wookie roar heckled you from the crowd and you had to see where Santo was just to flip him off. Din pulled the helmet down low and turned with a laugh at the Wookie.

Santo and Din shook hands and you smirked, "So did you two uh...hug it out or whatever?"

The Wookie waved at you and headed off back towards the rest of the gang.

"He said you're far too crazy for him to put up with and offered me a bowcaster but...let's face it, I have nowhere to store a bowcaster which is deeply disappointing because I have always wanted one."

You blinked at the helmeted menace for a moment.

"He said I was what?!"

Din laughed it off, “Get in.”

“Can I drive?”

“I’ll think about it.”

_______________________________________________________

A/N: I could not help myself.

Not beta read!

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