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“You don’t have anywhere to go, do you.” It’s not a question - not really. Mando dips his helm a fraction as he says it in anticipation of the shake of your head.
It comes with a bitten lip and a downturned expression. Then it’s the eyes, staring up at him - big and round and helpless. The echo of a ghost of lives past, haunting him with vulnerability.
And he is nothing if not a slave to vulnerability.
The Mandalorian drops his head and sighs, defeated as he knew he would be.
“Come with me.”
“You can dump your stuff over there.” He gestures to the bunk set into the bulkhead - cramped, uncomfortable, full of his stuff. You look at it like it’s a palace, thanking him more sincerely than he expects. He just grunts acknowledgment and ascends to the cockpit without a word.
He doesn’t even tell you to strap in, he figures you’ll sort yourself out - inasmuch as you’re a grown woman with two arms and legs to support yourself with. Which begs the question - why is he helping you ?
He remembers the look you gave him in that alleyway back on the planet. So lost. He recognised that look and he wanted it to go away so badly that he did… this.
And now it’s too late to take back. Like so many things.
That’s how it starts, and it seems so long ago now. You’ve been by his side in some capacity or other ever since, whether it was as a babysitter, liability, doctor, pain in the ass, mechanic, hunter, and even friend .
At some point, that last one snuck in there. Out of nowhere, late some planet’s night. Mando seated across from you in front of a fading campfire, watching you clean his rifle with the same care and diligence you show for every damn thing. Care and diligence he isn’t even capable of and could never hope to be.
He respects you, he realizes. And, later, he realizes that he likes you.
He isn’t sure when he realizes he wants to fuck you.
Maybe he’s always wanted to; maybe it’s always been there in the back of his mind like an open wound. Itching, niggling away at him: the shape of the column of your neck when you throw your head back to laugh; the accidental brush of his hand at the small of your back as you cross paths in the belly of the Crest; the sweep of your eyelashes as you drift to sleep curled up behind his shoulder in the cockpit.
It scares the hell out of him. Him , the kriffing Mandalorian . Scared.
Of you .
You begin to notice, because of course you do. You notice the way he flinches if you get too close where he wouldn’t have cared before; the way he keeps his helmet turned from you when he addresses you; the dismissive tone with which he speaks.
You begin to wonder what you did wrong.
You begin to wonder why he hates you.
You break one ship’s morning after you ascend the cockpit ladder to give him a mug of freshly-brewed kaf. Mando stays turned away from you, his helm unmoving, even though you know he heard your approach. He always does.
“Good morning,” you say with false cheer, and place the mug at his elbow. He grunts in acknowledgment, but doesn’t pick it up. Doesn’t lift his helm to his nose to sip without comment on the occasion, as if it had happened a thousand times before and would a thousand times again. None of that. Not now.
Now it’s like a brick wall.
“For kark’s sake, Mando!” You lash out before even meaning to, knocking the mug to the ground with the frustrated fling of your hands. The ceramic shatters and spills steaming kaf onto the deck. You stand glaring down at Mando’s immoving, immovable shoulder, breathing hard with the effort not to keep yelling.
All this display gets you is a slow turn of his head - a tilt of his helm, as his visor takes in the mess on the deck, then ascends back up to your face as if to say - Really ?
“Good morning to you, too,” he says dryly. As if he hasn’t spent days ignoring you. As if you just knocked over his kaf for no reason at all.
“Fucker,” you mutter as you turn your back to him and stomp towards the hatch. His hand is on your shoulder before you’ve registered the fact Mando moved, and suddenly he’s right there behind you. He spins you towards him, keeps hold of you by your upper arm - but gently, as if he can’t bear to touch you.
As if you burn him, to be so near.
There’s something angry to the angle of his visor. He’s a head taller than you and you’ve never found him scary. Intimidating, sure, but not directly terrifying .
Until now.
“What’s wrong with you?” he demands, almost a growl, and the hand around your bicep tightens perceptibly.
“With me ?” you echo faintly. The puzzle pieces are starting to fall into place in your head, but slowly - the picture’s blurred as if you need to squint to focus on it, and you’re almost... afraid to. “What the kriff is wrong with you ?”
“I-” he starts, then stops, and you hear the exasperated sigh even through the helmet. Then, to your astonishment, Mando reaches up, hooks a thumb underneath his chin and lifts it away.
You’re greeted by an aggravated-looking man - handsome, in a darkly intent sort of way; he looks as if he wears that frown often. He pinches the bridge of his aquiline nose and squeezes his eyes shut in obvious exasperation. He drops his hand after a moment and fixes you with a stare darker than his visor.
“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”
“What?” you manage faintly, unable to stop staring. Staring at his face .
The Mandalorian’s face.
You asked him twice why he wore the helmet all the time - once, he answered “Habit,” and nothing more; the next time he said “Duty,” and told you not to ask him again. You didn’t, and the days turned into weeks and months and he started to lift the rim just a little to drink his morning kaf around you, and you tried not to look.
But you’d always been curious. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t. You wondered what lay under that expressionless silver shell - sometimes you would imagine something sinister, sometimes something soft.
None of your imaginings measured up to this .
“See?” Mando says, the frown echoed by the inward draw of his lips. “Pain in the ass.” And then he kisses you.
It takes you a second to register in both your brain and your body. The latter reacts first - you grab him by the knot of his cloak, your grip white-knuckling as your mind finally processes the fact that the Mandalorian is kissing you .
He’s surprisingly good at it, too, for a man who never shows his face. His lips mold to yours and they’re so warm and he smells like gunpowder and some spice you’ve never smelled before. You inhale him deep as you press yourself to him, the hard angles of his armor intersecting the softer curves of your flesh.
Mando yanks you closer, hooking an arm around your back, pinning you to him. He knew this would happen, that if he got hold of you he would never want to let go.
He’s spent his whole life letting go.
He refuses to do it any more.
Your mouth is velvet warm and inviting as he licks into it, moving on instincts ingrained in his bones, feelings he never knew he had guiding the sweep of his hand up your back, under your shirt. You shiver into him.
When you break apart to breathe, you have a second to gasp - “ Mando ,” - but a second is all he gives you before he’s back on you, kissing you into silence. You don’t mind at all. What would you say, anyway? Besides Don’t stop .
And Makers Above , you hope he doesn’t. His gloved hands are rough, insistent but addictive on your flesh, leaving you rubbed-raw and wanting. He kneads your breasts with long fingers and you thrust yourself into his palm as warmth kindles between your legs.
You slide your tongue against his bottom lip, flick it against the edges of his teeth and yank on his cloak - a wordless demand. Mando breaks away from you, his mouth flushed beautifully, his eyes so dark the irises are almost black, indistinguishable from the wide expanse of his pupils, drawing you in.
Somehow, somewhere - in the shimmering pink, lust-drunk miasma of your brain - you find words. They sound stupid and croaky as soon as they leave you, but you hope they make your point.
“You grab me and kiss me like that, Mando, you better follow through.”
And that’s how you end up thrown over the Mandalorian’s shoulder - squealing as he picks you up as if you’re as light as a sack of rations - and carries you down into the belly of the ship.
You slap his back, forgetting that under that cloak is Beskar, and regret it as your hand stings with the impact against the hard metal. “Mando!” you exclaim, but that’s all you get out before the world upends again and you find yourself flat on your back with the bulkhead swimming above you.
“Din,” says his voice, not even slightly winded, although his words don’t make sense to you at first. “My name,” he continues as you push yourself up on your elbows to look at him, “Din Djarin.”
He looks abashed - ashamed, almost, standing at the foot of the bunk, rubbing at the back of his head and sending his dark, helmet-flat hair into unkempt ruffles. You ache to run your fingers through it.
You sit up on your knees and shuffle over. He doesn’t move, but he stands there not quite looking at you as you draw into his space. He doesn’t move, but he doesn’t flinch away either.
Your touch is experimental as you tuck your fingers into the front fold of his cloak. Mando - Din - stands immobile, still. Slowly, you unwind the heavy cloak, but the man does not seem any smaller as it falls away from his shoulders and pools at his feet. If anything, he feels broader , his mass unobscured by the folds of muted dark fabric.
His armor follows, and he starts to help you, finding latches and fasteners where your fingers don’t, helping you set it all aside carefully in the bunk’s alcove.
And then, all at once, he stands before you. A Mandalorian - and in no uncertain terms, a man .
“Hey,” you say, eloquently. And Din smiles. Actually smiles - his mouth turns up at the corners and everything and you realize, beneath the scruff of his four-day beard, that he has dimples .
“Hey,” he says, and his voice strikes you - unfiltered but no less intense. It makes you unfurl and burn inside like incense, something in your chest igniting and curling away into smoking ash.
“Come here,” you say, and he does. It’s back to mouths, the hot slide of lips and tongue ever more demanding. He kisses the breath from your lungs and when he leaves your lips to trail his down your neck you gasp. You feel his grin against your collarbone.
Din pushes your shirt up, but he doesn’t pause to let you take it off. Just cups a breast in his wide palm and brings it to his mouth, his oh-so-talented mouth, and you realize all over again that it’s good for more than just smart-ass quips.
The tip of his tongue circles your areola as you finally bury your fingers in his hair. You arch to him and groan throatily and Din takes it as due encouragement to slip his free hand down your pants.
His fingers are talented, too - combing through the soft coils of your mound and coasting the hood of your clitoris before you even know what’s happening. Your jaw slackens and your hips arch; you tense from your cunt to your toes as his soft, naked fingertips trail your labia. Your escaping slick makes his touch glide, and when two of his fingers sink inside you and curl , it lights you up and breaks you apart like the shimmering dust between suns.
You clutch at his forearm - blessedly free of any deadly gauntlets - and feel the muscles there shift beneath your palms as he holds you in his. He begins finger-fucking you in deep, lazy strokes, pulling his digits back before filling you again in smooth, sweeping movements. All you can do is groan in his ear and shudder.
When his thumb finds that spot on your clit and he rubs circles into it your breathing stops for a moment as the simmering flame he stokes inside you blazes into a sudden, inescapable inferno. You lift your hips into the rolling wave of your orgasm and sob as you let it wash you away. All through it, Din holds you close, whispering soft, meaningless assurances into your hair.
No one has ever managed to make you come without even taking your pants off before, you reflect dazedly as he withdraws his hand from your waistband. You open your eyes to lazy slits, panting lightly as you watch Din examine his glistening fingertips with interest. You flush, embarrassed - and then flush elsewhere as you watch him bring his fingers to his lips and draw them slowly into his mouth.
He licks his fucking lips after withdrawing them, his voice a rumble against your chest. “How’s that for follow-through ?”
“Fuck you,” you laugh, delirious and delighted. “Actually...no,” you reconsider, looping your heavy-feeling arms around his neck, aftershock abuzz in your veins, “Fuck me , Din Djarin.”
He goes still for a minute, looking into your eyes as if searching for the joke - but when he doesn’t find it he’s quick to get to work, hurriedly, hastily stripping you from the waist.
Your boots clatter somewhere against the opposite bulkhead and with a sudden whip of his hands, your pants are just gone . And then Mando is on you, kissing you with fumbling urgency as he plucks at the fastening of his own pants.
You bat his hand away and let him brace himself as you rip them open yourself. His cock is already weeping, red-desperate and aching. You ease his need with the circle of your hand, and you see the Mandalorian’s composure fail him for perhaps the first time ever as he shuts his eyes and moans as he thrusts forward into your grip.
“S- shit ,” he mutters, and you feel a swell of pride mixed with renewed arousal as little noises you couldn’t have ever imagined escape his throat. You look up at him - at the cords standing out on his neck with the strain of his flexing jaw, his eyes shut tight against the pleasure as if it’s pain.
You need him closer to stop the ache in your chest. So you pull Din into the cradle of your legs, and without need for guidance he settles his length between your hand and inner thigh.
He’s big - no doubt about that. But the curiosity at how he’ll fit inside you outweighs the caution, and you find yourself nudging his length inward - as if by unspoken agreement, Din presses the head against the flood-slick dimple of your entrance and pushes forward..
Your head reels as you part slickly around him, as he squeezes just inside, splitting you inch by inch. You whine against his neck and reach out, bracing your hand against the bulkhead - his knee shifts as he plants a boot against the edge of the hatch and uses the leverage to grab your hips and pull you up onto him.
You gasp “ Din ,” his newly-learned name recited like an age-old prayer, and his fingers spasm and dig into your flesh. He sinks in deeper, so slow you can’t stand it but you have no other choice. He lets go of you with one hand to press the flat of it against your inner thigh, lifting, spreading you open to make room for the weight and shift of his cock.
At last he’s in you to the base - and the close fit has your wet gathering in the coils cresting his groin. Din drops his forehead to the thin mattress by your shoulder, fighting the thunder of his heartbeat as it throbs in his cock. He won’t last long with the rippling squeeze of you so perfect around him like this.
Not for the first time, you surprise him, for instead of waiting for him to move, you hook your calves around his ass and roll your body up against him, insistent. He grunts his approval but presses down, pinning you in place with his hips, his cock. Xz
“Not so fast,” he murmurs in your ear, and the rasp of his voice sends shivers through you, from the root of him embedded in your cunt to the top of your scalp. He waits until you still, until you relax beneath him to move - you expected this to be quick and hard but instead it’s a long, slow slide that makes you whine and your breath hitch.
“Yeah,” he groans above you, almost done in by the sight of you arched and glistening with sweat at your temples and collarbone, “Just like that.” He braces himself for another achingly slow drag of his cock through you, sliding home, the grip of your pussy like a too-tight mold squeezing him in velvet heat. It’s almost all he can do to keep himself moving - his breath shudders in his throat when you grab his shoulders and pull him closer.
He finds your neck with his mouth and your pulse with his tongue, sucking a mark into the canvas of your skin. You coil his hair around your fingers and hold on, moving with him, panting whimpers into his ear.
It’s not long before that shaking heat rises in you again, making you clench around him, and it doesn’t escape you the way Din’s rhythm stutters - the way he holds his breath for just a moment - and it’s that, the effect you’re having on him more than anything else that does you in a second time.
You gasp his name mixed with a prayer or maybe his name is the prayer, tensing through your toes and thighs and stomach as the tension inside you winds to a singing point and snaps . You come like that, wrapped around him as he pistons into the willing, clenching grip of your body.
Din can’t help it; he buries himself deep one last time - unable to resist the heat swelling in his cock and the tightening of his balls. He holds there and throbs his release into you, grunting against the side of your neck.
You bring him back to himself with your lips at his temple, your hands on his face. His face - he almost forgot - forgot all else but the feel of your body against and around his.
Now, softening, he pulls back his hips and slips out of you with a hiss, collapsing onto his side. The dimensions of the bunk, made for one, mean he’s pressed up against your side - nowhere else to go.
It’s the first time he doesn’t mind, and the first time you don’t, either.
You never want to have anywhere else to go but here.