Chapter Text
The watchtower feels entirely insufficient as the wind strengthens, and it’s like Jaster is seeing it with new eyes as he slides in, bent over to fit through the doorway. The holes in the wall, the cracked ceiling, the bed of torn cloth and discarded pillows worn thin feels…painful, in a way he had thought he was long since past.
The near-silent footsteps behind him, steady for all they're slow, make him feel his former descent into mindlessness all the more clearly for the contrast of now.
Jon doesn’t say anything, though, hardly even seems to notice. He slides past Jaster, the drag of his fingertips across Jaster's side as vivid as flame against his skin, and then sinks down on the edge of the bed with a soft breath, reaching up to comb his fingers through his damp hair. Jaster watches him, but he can't see any signs of pain, and for all that Jon let Jaster carry him back across the bay to his sea stack, he seems much, much steadier than he did yesterday.
“I'm all right,” Jon says, looking up at him, and Jaster finds he can't pull his eyes away from Jon's face, his pale eyes and scars and total lack of fear.
Even given that Jaster just had him in nearly every way he’s capable of, the lack of fear is still a bewildering rush rooted deep in Jaster's chest.
Jaster huffs, just faintly doubtful, and slides onto the bed, carefully arranging his misshapen and oversized limbs. Jon doesn’t seem to notice that, either; he kicks his boots off and immediately rolls into the curve of Jaster's body, settling against him like it’s precisely where he wants to be. there's a quiet sigh, a breath, and—
Someone else’s breath, soft and light against his skin, feels like it could shake Jaster entirely apart. He curls his hands around Jon, careful of long claws and too much unpredictable strength, and Jon hums softly, strokes his chest. He doesn’t say anything, just lies there, and it’s like there's nowhere else in the world that exists. Just this, just them, and if Jaster closes his eyes, if he ignores the fact that his hands together span Jon's whole back, he could almost be a man again, lying with a lover in the dark.
The bed is lumpy and torn beneath him, though, and the wind is growing stronger. Jaster can't feel the chill of it, but he’s acutely aware that the chill exists, that only his body keeps Jon shielded from it right now, while Jon is still damp and vulnerable to the cold. Jaster isn't Human any more, but—
But he’s still lying in the dark with his lover, for whatever weight the word has to it after one encounter. He’s still shielding Jon, and Jon's fingers trace patterns of heat across his skin, over flesh that bleeds darkness, like he sees nothing wrong with what Jaster has become. It’s gutting in a way nothing has been in decades, in a wholly different way than the loneliness, and Jaster feels as though something in the very core of himself has been shaken to fragments and splinters by the closeness, by the kindness, by the fact that he has words to put to all of it again.
Gently, carefully, he wraps himself around Jon a little more tightly, curls in and presses the bottom of his mask to the top of Jon's head, and breathes in the smoke and sea and sun of him, undercut with something just a little musky and sweet. It makes Jaster want, want impossible things and unreasonable futures, but when Jon's palms settle against his chest, right where his heart should be, Jaster finds it very, very hard to care about impossibilities.
“I think,” Jon says, quiet in the stillness, “that we should leave the cove.”
The we keeps Jaster's panic tamped down, though it can't quite stop his grip on Jon's back from tightening. He takes a moment to be sure he’s not going to lose control, to be certain that there's nothing dangerous about his own reaction, though the fact that he can think even that much likely means there isn't. Then, careful, he pushes the question at Jon, a little wary of the answer.
There's a stretch of silence that feels like a blade at the throat, but Jon makes a soft sound that’s nothing but thoughtful. “It just feels that way,” he says, and Jaster tips his head to look down at him, mildly disbelieving. Jon looks back, entirely unbothered by Jaster's stare, by the fact that he’s judging things on feelings. “The Force brought me here. Now it’s pulling in a different direction.”
We, Jaster reminds himself, and takes a breath. Thinks, again, of the strange new awareness of this small, drafty place, the purloined bits of cloth that he’s mashed into the shape of a bed, like some scavenger beast’s burrow. Fit for an animal, he thinks, and it grinds against some flicker of self-directed distaste, shame like metal on stone. he wouldn’t have lived like this before. Even in his roughest moments, before the True Mandalorians formed around him, he would have made something better for himself.
He couldn’t, though. Before, when everything else was slipping, all he could hold onto was the passing of days, right up until rumors of a Jedi on the moon broke through the darkness like a thunderbolt across the sky.
What feeling? he asks, and the tug of curiosity that rises is familiar and desperately welcome. He wants to know, and like carving poetry into the scraped-bare earth, it feels as if in that bit of interest he’s regaining something lost.
Jon is silent, silent for so long that without the steady tracery of his fingers Jaster would think he’d fallen asleep. Then, with a hum, he tips his head, closes his eyes.
“Like when you're wandering and you finally turn your feet towards home,” he says softly. “And no matter how far you’ve gone, you always know the way. My home is wherever the Force calls me, and the call of it is shifting. My home is somewhere different.”
Jaster considers that, turning it over in his mind. It’s decent explanation, but it still leaves some part of him…unsettled. Sad, perhaps, because while he understands what Jon means it’s also…startlingly bleak. No set home, no place to return to that he’ll always be welcome in, no mention of the Jedi Temple as the center of his universe. Just a vast galaxy, an ever-shifting call, a life of wandering that will more likely than not see a violent end. Perhaps it’s simply different for the Jedi than it is the Mandalorians, or perhaps Jaster is just more sensitive to loneliness right now than he would have been before, but—
He doesn’t say anything, just croons softly, rubbing his thumb across Jon's back. Jon doesn’t seem to mind; he makes a contented sound, settling closer, pressing himself up against Jaster's chest until there isn't an inch of himself that isn't touching. The acceptance of the gesture is gutting, and Jaster clutches him closer, breathes him in with a rumble, and Jon smiles just a little.
“It’s not strong yet,” he says without opening his eyes. “There's time. And we can come back afterwards.”
Jaster can feel the wind against his back, the lumps in the blankets beneath him. He thinks of that, of a man’s mind in a beast’s lair, and then pictures just…walking away. Leaving this cove, this sea stack, this tower. He’s been marking his days here for almost twenty years, and there's some twinge of fear at the idea of leaving, some restless sort of uncertainty that makes him think of the desperation that drove him to first start marking the days. If he leaves this place, he leaves the marker of his mind, the rote calculation of time that kept him sane for two decades.
But—
But Jaster knows poetry again, knows Human wants, knows words. Marking time is nothing in comparison to that.
The wind is getting stronger, and there's a smell of salt and deep water to it that Jaster knows. He’s weathered plenty of storms in his watchtower, but the idea of subjecting Jon, vulnerable and Human and fragile, to the same thing makes unease curl in his chest. There is, too, the matter of food, new clothes, actual blankets—Jon will need all of them, because he’s not like Jaster, sustained by the magics that created him. At some point, they’ll need to venture towards civilization, and the people in the closest town saw Jaster murder the bounty hunters in their midst too clearly for Jaster to want to risk Jon to them.
Jon is a Jedi. It isn't a certainty that they would try to kill him for his association with Jaster, so clearly a monster. But—the odds are higher than Jaster would like, and he can't lose Jon. If he does, he loses himself as well.
We should leave before the storm, then, he offers, and Jon nods, though Jaster can feel that he’s almost asleep. His mind is something hazy, soft, warm around the edges, and Jaster feels it against his own mind like a careful weight, delicate but strong. So strange, still, to have that sense of someone else so close to his own being, but good. Grounding. It feels like his own thoughts are sliding into place, matching Jon's, mimicking him to make everything easier, and Jaster welcomes the change with a relief he doesn’t think he could put into words even if he had every bit of his Human mind back.
As Jon settles down, as he slides into dreams that are deep and green and calm, Jaster listens, feels the weight of Jon in his arms, and simply breathes. A man with his lover, he thinks, and this time he doesn’t quantify it, doesn’t let himself. Jon is his lover, and Jon is asleep in his arms, and when morning comes Jaster is going to walk away from this cove and not look back.
This is where he fell into something bestial, something almost mad. This is where he came to rest when he’d regained the barest hints of himself, the ability to count days, the memory of Jango and Arla's faces. There was nothing else, nothing beyond the lines in the rock marking each interminable day, and escaping that—
Escape, Jaster thinks, and it’s like a revelation, jarring, gives him pause. Escape, and he hadn’t even considered the word before, but—it fits. He turns it over, tests it out, thinks of those tallies in the stone and of never having to make them again. Of knowing the days, and there's always a greater chance of losing himself when one fragile Human is his tether instead of carved rock, but…
The carved rock was a lament. Continued mourning, a ritual of grief carried out each day with the sunrise. The stone never answered, never changed, never stopped Jaster's slow descent into nothingness, mindlessness.
Jon will. Jon is bringing him back to himself with each second of closeness, with each touch and bit of kindness. It’s a thousand times more than Jaster expected when he went on a mad quest to seek out a kidnapped Jedi, a hundred thousand times more. Jaster touches him, slides the pads of his fingers across the curve of Jon's skull, breathes in the smell of him, the weight of him, the soft, warm breath against skin that bleeds black. He touches Jon, another person, a kind person, whose first words to Jaster were it’s all right even after Jaster nearly killed him. And—
Mandalorians don’t tend towards love poetry. Their gestures are generally physical in a way words aren’t, protective in the midst of lives that are brutal and dangerous. But, on rare occasions, poets who normally speak of duty and glory and family sometimes turn their pens towards softer things, and Jaster isn't in love, not quite, but one line in his memory still burns all too brightly right now.
They said it was one step/but to me it was an earthquake/and there were flowers growing in the cracks.
Jaster feels like a cracked thing, like earthquakes have passed through him, left nothing but ruin. But hope is like flowers, connection is like flowers, and with Jon here in his arms, Jaster is a hundred thousand flowers in full bloom, choking out the shattered concrete.
Jon wakes to warmth and long limbs tangled around him, and he’s smiling faintly before he even opens his eyes.
There's a chill in the air that’s settling, growing harsher as the air gets more humid, but Jon is mostly warm, surprisingly comfortable. He’s pressed up against Jaster's impossibly hot skin, wrapped up in long, muscular arms, a low rumble in his ears, and for all the low-level ache that still rides him, it’s the furthest thing from an objectionable way to wake up.
With a soft hum, pleased with everything and remarkably content given how things started just a few days ago, Jon skims his fingertips over too-prominent muscle, strangely obvious beneath thin skin, but—soft. The sheer heat Jaster gives off makes his scars pull less, even in the cold, and despite the ache of an oncoming storm, Jon feels well-rested. There's a faint, niggling urge that says they should be moving, the way the Force has always pulled at him, but it's nothing urgent, and he feels as though it’s less a driving sort of imperative and more a hint at the right course of action.
Jaster huffs, shifts, rolls over almost on top of Jon, and Jon can't help the sound of amusement that’s pulled from his throat. He opens his eyes—
Stops, because he knows that when he went to sleep, Jaster was over three meters tall, and right now, he’s less than two. The enveloping curl of his body is now something closer to simply surrounding, and some of the bleeding darkness that comes with each breath has eased, lightened. His limbs aren’t quite so long and unsettlingly not-right, either, but something closer to baseline for a Human.
The pressing, choking Dark around him is lighter, too. So light, in fact, that Jon can hardly sense it at all.
Jon lies where he is for a moment, considering the change, considering Jaster. It’s not a thing he saw before, the first few times he woke while Jaster was still sleeping, and—it makes him wonder, a little, just what has shifted. Is this something that happens regularly? Is it because Jaster found his words again? An unconscious thing, clearly, to have it happen while Jaster is asleep, but…maybe there's some connection to his increased steadiness.
They're tangled up so closely, it’s easier for Jon to shift slightly, to reach up and grip sharp-tipped tusks and tug, and Jaster moves with a low, rumbling groan, dipping down, pressing his forehead to Jon's as his hands go tight. He shifts on top of Jon, a mass of muscle that blots out the grey light of the oncoming storm, but—less mass than before. Jon tips his head, kisses the huge teeth of the mask, and it’s more like being pinned beneath a Besalisk or a large Devaronian than Jaster's rancor-sized bulk from before.
Good morning to you as well, Jaster thinks, full of amusement, and the tip of his head says he’s fully awake. He hasn’t seemed to have noticed his change in size, in a way that’s just as striking as the change itself, but Jon doesn’t say anything, just leans into the brush of Jaster's knuckles across his cheek.
“It is a good morning,” he says, sliding his hand down Jaster's arm to find his fingers, then tugging his hand close enough to kiss his palm.
It is, Jaster agrees, soft, and his knuckles skim Jon's throat, drag down his chest. Jon's breath hitches when they rub, slow and intent, against his half-hard cock, and he tries to turn his face away only to have gentle fingers knot in his hair, pinning his head in place.
No, Jaster tells him. Be good.
The shiver that shakes Jon is more desperate than is likely becoming, entirely gutted by that one phrase in ways that knot tight in his stomach. He stills, breath rough in his throat, and only just bites back a whimper as long fingers massage him through his pants, drag and grip and then release. There's no rhythm to it, no way to brace, and he closes his eyes, tries to focus on nothing at all but the drag of Jaster's touch setting heat to knotting up his spine. With a moan, Jon tips his head back into Jaster's grip, feels the long, slow drag of Jaster's fingertips up his cock, and gets out, “Jaster.”
So sweet, Jaster tells him, soft, and the words don’t help, don’t ease the heat coiling through his belly. Reaching up blindly, Jon grabs him, tugs, and when Jaster dips down he kisses the mask, presses his forehead between bottomless dark eyes and squirms, hips hitching up into Jaster's touch.
“Jaster, please,” he says, and it’s been months since he took anyone to bed, two years at least since he got to wake up with a lover like this. There’s urgency and need and something sweeter, softer, all tangled up in the morning light, and when he pushes up Jaster chuckles, low and rumbling.
Undress for me, he orders, pulling back, and Jon sits up, reaching for his sash—
A gust of wind howls past them, shaking the whole tower and sending bits of the bed flying. Beyond the door, the trees groan and creak and whip, and the first splatters of rain pass right through the missing bricks to impact the bed.
Jaster pauses, raises his head. He makes a deeply annoyed noise, and Jon can't help but laugh a little, dropping his hands. As good as he feels, as desperate as he is to continue, it’s likely a bad idea to start with the storm breaking, if only because it seems the bed is about to get very wet and not for pleasant reasons.
“Something to continue when we find a more protected place,” he offers, and after a second Jaster huffs with amusement and reaches for him. He wraps Jon up in his grip, dips down, and Jon leans into the press of the foreheads, then tips his head and kisses the mask again, light and careful.
You would let me have you again? Jaster asks, low, and tips Jon's chin up with a curled finger.
Jon makes a sound of assent, turning his head to kiss Jaster's knuckles again. Jaster is staring, unwavering, and the weight of it is a heady thing, makes Jon brave enough to say, “Whenever you want, Jaster. However you want.”
Jaster makes a low sound that echoes the thunder outside, tugs Jon even closer as soon as he gets his boots on. He gets an arm beneath Jon's thighs, lifts, and Jon grabs one of his tusks as he’s picked up, breath catching.
Difficult to walk right now, Jaster says, just a little teasing, and his hand curls around Jon's thigh, thumb sliding up just close enough to brush Jon's cock. Jon can't quite swallow his needy sound, has to turn and hide his face in the sleek white bone of Jaster's mask. Jaster hums, pleased, and strokes his thigh, then offers Jon an image, Jon on his hands and knees, thighs pressed tight together, with Jaster's cock huge and slick between them.
Jon wants, wants with a desperate heat, and he clutches at Jaster's tusk, doesn’t try to hide his moan, his squirm. Thinks, a little wild, that taking Jaster at this size would be like being taken by two people at once, and he’s done that before, knows he can manage it. Sends Jaster that image, the equivalence, the idea of Jon on his stomach with Jaster slowly, slowly sliding into him, and feels the jerk, the surge of hunger and desire. Jaster turns his head into Jon, clutches him close with desperate fingers, and Jon leans into the mask, into him, lets Jaster feel his own need, stomach-knotting and bone-deep.
Soon, Jaster thinks, dark and soft and hungry as he strokes Jon's cheek. Soon, my sweet.
Jon lets out a breath that shakes just a little, forces himself to nod. No one has ever called him that before, even joking, and—he wants Jaster to do it again. wants to be good for Jaster in such a way that he’ll want to use that term again. Jon isn't sweet, and never has been, but—
He wants to be sweet for Jaster.
Another rattling howl of wind has Jaster turning away, though, tipping his head. There's a flicker of concern from him, worry about crossing the cove with the tide coming in and the waves high, but before Jon can even offer to get them across Jaster is moving. He leaps down the slope, long, powerful strides eating up the ground, then hits the edge and launches himself out, and there’s a difference from before, but—an accommodation of the change in size, made without even acknowledging the shift. Like his body is compensating without conscious thought, and Jon doesn’t have to do anything but hold on as they hit the next sea stack, slide down it, leap again. There’s one precarious moment when Jon thinks they’re going to miss the edge, drop into the choppy sea, but Jaster twists, sinks sharp claws into the side of the cliff, and hauls himself up in a few hard surges of muscle.
At the top of the bluff, he pauses, glances down at Jon like he’s weighing his options, and Jon snorts quietly. “I can walk,” he says, and Jaster huffs, drops forward onto all fours, and boosts Jon up onto one heavy, sloping shoulder.
It is faster, Jon supposes with amusement, and he doesn’t particularly need help to catch his balance, but he puts a hand on the curve of Jaster's neck, shifts faintly to steady himself, and asks, “Are you sure you want to leave so quickly?”
Jaster pauses, looks back at his sea stack and the cover around it, then deliberately turns inland. There's nothing I need to carry with me, he says, and Jon can't help but lean down, press a soft kiss to the curve of his neck. He thinks of all those marks, carved so carefully, and the fact that Jaster didn’t pause to make one this morning, and breathes out slow and careful. It speaks to a deep loneliness, to have lived here as long as those tallies indicate and still have nothing to bring with him at the end. A deep loneliness and a loss, across the years, of anything except the passing of days.
“I think you’re already carrying what you need,” he says, soft, and there's a pause, a flicker of amusement.
Carrying you, Jaster points out, and Jon laughs, startled. Slowly, carefully, Jaster starts forward, one hand half-raised like he’s going to catch Jon if he tilts and starts to fall. It’s a kind gesture, if entirely unnecessary, and Jon snorts, shifts, and feels Jaster jerk like he thinks Jon is slipping.
“Jedi don’t tend to fall from things,” he points out, and Jaster turns his head to give him a pointed look. Then, like he’s proving a point, he bounds forward, a great burst of speed that carries him across the top of the bluff. At the edge of the steaming river, he coils, leaps, lands hard and skids, and Jon hums.
“You’ll have to try harder than that,” he says, and Jaster huffs, somewhere between annoyed and amused. He sends Jon an image of a lizard-monkey hanging off a pirate captain’s shoulder, and Jon chuckles. “Lizard-monkeys are clever,” he says. “If you're intending that to be an insult, you’ll have to try harder there, too.”
Jaster grumbles, low and entirely full of humor, and heads upstream with long, loping strides. He covers an impressive amount of ground, heading for the curve where the hills rise and a forest starts, and offers, There are old buildings beneath the trees.
Jon teases the image from his thoughts, memories of mossy brick buildings halfway overgrown but still standing, paths of old stone steps leading up into the hills, heavily covered with moss and wildflowers. “How much of the moon have you explored?” he asks, and Jaster pauses, considering.
I remember very little, he says after a long second, and there's the weight of grief to those words, something tired that speaks of old tragedy. Jon gets a flicker of something that’s far larger and more animalistic than even the Jaster he first encountered, hauling itself out of the sea, but it’s shut away quickly, and Jaster doesn’t dwell on it. There are years that are…blurred. And after them…
The marks in the rock, counting the days. Jon inclines his head, understanding, and strokes the thick muscle of Jaster's neck in comfort.
“Then it will be new to both of us,” he says, and Jaster huffs, shifts. He slows, putting a hand up to grip Jon's thigh, and Jon lays a hand over his knuckles as the stinging rain picks up.
Yes, Jaster agrees after a moment, and there's something soft to it, something that feels like bare earth with words laid into it in neat strokes. Something that feels like those wildflowers, growing through cracked, mossy stone. Quite new. I'm sure we’ll find somewhere better than here.