Actions

Work Header

Worlds Apart

Summary:

Owing to a failed attempt at clairvoyance through the Force, Luke is sent into an alternative universe where everything is the same... except, there are two toothbrushes in his refresher and a Mandalorian in his bedroom.

Notes:

so last night I remembered that the first ever fanfic I tried to write as a kid had a pretty cool concept of characters switching places with their AU selves, and I thought: wouldn't it be fun to try and replicate that with Skydalorian?

(It's not hard for me to imagine that Luke Skywalker could probably accidentally break the universe for a bit).

This is... a mess, to be perfectly honest, and 100% completely self-indulgent. I threw together the outline as a series of jokes and kind of fun dialogue (inspired by the general structure of comedic fan art and comics, i.e. I gave Luke a lot of inner dialogue, which means this is a little different from my regular style), and when I filled in the gaps somehow actual writing appeared. Consequently, this has a tone problem where it flip-flops between taking the characters and the situation seriously, and completely disregarding it all for the sake of a joke.

But in the end, I had a lot of fun with this and I hope that you, dear reader, enjoy it as it is. If I made you smile at any point, do let me know so that I can feel validated for how I laughed at all of these jokes while writing them *sigh*.

(it's also very late, so the final edit might be lacking. I'll try again tomorrow. In the meanwhile, feel free to message me on tumblr or discord with any notable mistakes).

Much love,
Salty ♡

EDIT: Completed a round of edits, it should read a bit smoother now. Thank you for your patience, and please let me know if you find any mistakes!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The universe collapses in on itself, and that’s how Luke knows something has gone terribly wrong.

Or at least that’s what he thinks for the few dreadful seconds the galaxy crumbles apart around him, leaving only him and the aching silence of nothing—and then the Force is born anew, and the world rebuilds itself from its billions, trillions, countless pieces until he sits floating in the middle of the Academy’s main training room and promptly collapses on the floor.

That, he thinks, was probably not good.

He lies still for some time, but he has no senses available to tell him how long. He eventually gathers himself enough to turn his face out from the dirt floor but is still nauseous with dizziness and the sudden drainage of energy when muffled footsteps begin to shake the ground beneath his cheek like a series of tiny earthquakes.

Next thing he knows, the Mandalorian comes running into the room with Grogu hopping hot on his heels (and with all the other things happening in his head, he doesn’t question why they are even here to begin with).

He hears their voices, smothered by the heavy noise that fills his head. He is turned onto his back, and he feels like he’s floating. When he opens his eyes, he’s staring straight into the Mandalorian’s visor.

“Hey, are you okay?”

It takes him a moment to realise the question is for him, and another to remember how to get his vocal cords to function. “Yeah. I think so.”

The Mandalorian is holding him in his arms, and Luke is grateful his sense of embarrassment is still defunct.

“Ok. That’s good.”

Luke is too exhausted to think of an answer that doesn’t make it seem like he’s inhaled too much spice.

Grogu leans over into view, cooing sadly (which, fair, he probably makes for a very sorry sight right now). He carefully touches his clawed little hand to his forehead, sending a pulse of life rushing through Luke’s cells that seems to iron out the wrinkles in a world he’s just… done something to. He just can’t figure out what.

A calm settles over him through the healing touch, silencing the ringing in his ears. He exhales, gratefully. “Thank you, Grogu.” Grogu makes a happy noise and intensifies his efforts until Luke finds enough control in his shaky limbs to reach out and stop him from exhausting himself. “Thank you. Don’t overdo it.”

“There was a lot of light,” the Mandalorian explains to him. “I thought something had exploded. We ran here as fast as we could. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Luke admits, truthfully. “I—I’ll try and find out. If it’s something serious… Let me just… Let me get up—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the Mandalorian protests, but still helps steady him when he makes the attempt to rise to his feet.

He finds his balance, manages to retain the assuring pose of a calm and collected Jedi Master for a grand total of five seconds before his knees buckle beneath him and the Mandalorian’s arms are the only things keeping him from eating dirt, face-first.

“I’m fine—”

“You’re obviously not.”

“I used a lot of energy, channelling the Force like that, I just—I need some rest, that’s all.”

The Mandalorian sighs. It’s inaudible, too low to be picked up by his vocoder, but Luke feels his chest rise and fall through the beskar. “I suppose you and the kid aren’t all that different. I’ll help get you to bed.”

He wants to protest, but the dizziness is still overwhelming him. Grogu whines and claws at his boot, distressed. Two against one, huh?

He really doesn’t have much of a choice. “…alright. Thank you.”

It’s easy to close his eyes then and let himself drift away, only vaguely feeling the hard reassurance of steel give way to sheets and a soft mattress, and then he’s out like the suns.

-

Luke wakes up feeling like he’s ridden on the outside of his x-wing through a jump to lightspeed.

It’s sometimes in the early morning, judging by the way the sunlight hits the wall.

He wakes up some more and sees that, nope, it is definitely late afternoon, his bed is just pushed against the wall opposite of where he remembers placing it, which is… a little weird, but certainly not alarming. Maybe he had Force pushed it in his sleep? It wouldn’t have been the first time he’s done something like that, outside of his conscious control.

He stumbles out of bed with the grace of a new-born bantha calf and is very thankful no one else is there to see it.

Once he has both his feet underneath him, Luke feels for the world around him and finds Grogu and the Mandalorian over in the kitchen, having dinner. He hums for himself, now in mind to wonder what they had been doing at the Academy so early in the morning. He hadn’t been expecting them before tomorrow evening.

They must have arrived early, he reasons, with mixed feelings, because on one hand, if they hadn’t been here, he might have just laid passed out on the floor for the whole day. On the other hand, they wouldn’t have had to find him in such a sorry, pathetic state if they had arrived as scheduled. Way to go, Skywalker. You sure are the finest, most dependable Jedi Master in the galaxy.

Well. Not that there’s much competition.

He intends to wallow in some self-pity for a while longer, but there’s a thermo-heated bowl on the nightstand that he doesn’t recall placing there. He pulls open the lid and hums a pleased sound upon the discovery of a warm, steaming bamboo shoot soup. It must have been left there by the Mandalorian. Right, that’s two I owe him now.

He drinks the soup with the gusto of a starving mastiff, scorching his tongue in the process but feeling a lot better all together.

He chews the last of the crunchy veg and walks straight into the ‘fresher, turns the water on hot, intending to not look like a complete failure of a Jedi by the time he has to face the Mandalorian again and his almost-kind-of-sort-of-first student. It was a bit hard, these days, to make the distinction, since he is not actively teaching Grogu anything… but simultaneously not shying away from showing him something new about the Force—in-between teaching his father how to swing his weird-but-kind-of-wickedly-designed lightsaber around, because it’s not like he can leave the guy to give himself a new series of nasty burns, or worse, a severed limb.

(And that’s not even mentioning the very not-entirely-proper feelings he still hasn’t managed to squash regarding said father of said former-sort-of-student.)

Yeah, let’s not go there today.

Luke sighs, and tries to release his turbulence into the Force, but his attempt is lacklustre at most and spins down the drain like a sudd of foam from his shampoo (some fancy Core-world brand Leia insists on sending him that probably isn’t sold anywhere in the Outer Rim, much less so on the dust ball that is Tatooine, so Luke would likely never have gotten it for himself, but it does make his hair smell really nice).

He relishes in feeling clean, but if the food and the shower and the rest has improved his health in any way, it certainly doesn’t look that way. He is pale and tired, and the whole ordeal of the morning is only partially to blame. There is little left of whatever infectious charm he used to throw around during his time in the Rebellion, and while he’s never been particularly vain about his looks, the changes feel very evident now. His eyes are more sunken, and his hair is matt and dark from lack of long days of exposure to the suns.

All in all, the washed-out Jedi that meets him in his reflection doesn’t look very attractive. Which is a silly thought to have, because why does he even need to feel attractive?

You know damn well why—and nope, we’re not going to go there today.

He has more important things to figure out. Like what exactly happened this morning that drained him to the point of fainting. Why he keeps feeling like something isn’t quite like it used to, like he’s taken apart a spacecraft and put it together again slightly wrong, but still fully functional.

And… why there are two toothbrushes on his sink.

Well. That’s not really relevant to his other, bigger problems. It’s always fine to have extras. The most alarming thing is that he can’t recall which one he’s been using and spends an embarrassing amount of time trying to reason with himself which one to pick. (He picks the grey one).

The sun is already setting by the time Luke walks out of the ‘fresher with his towel draped over his shoulders and has a small heart attack when the door opens before he’s even halfway to his wardrobe.

Quick instincts and proficiency for the Force has his too-small-for-comfort towel wrapped mostly around his waist before the Mandalorian walks in, and he is one hundred percent certain he did not squeak, which counts as a win.

“Hey. You’re up.”

“Yep,” Luke responds, blindly pulling out some robes from his closet with all the nonchalance he can muster before turning on his heels and walking right back into the refresher.

“Did you eat your soup?” the Mandalorian calls after him, displaying no shame at all at having walked in on him, more or less fully naked. Is that a cultural thing? Maybe Mandalorian bathhouses are a thing.

“Yeah, it was delicious. Thank you!” He exits the ‘fresher as quick as he can, bare-footed but clothed and a little more ready to talk to his unexpected guests and saviours. “I wasn’t expecting you here until tomorrow.”

“It was a quick supply run. Nothing to give me any trouble.”

“That’s… good.”

He feels himself struggling for things to say without sounding like an idiot. He sure feels like one, standing awkwardly around in his own room and being such an inhospitable host, his aunt Beru is surely turning in her grave. Glancing around for something to carry on with, he spots his glove on the nightstand, decides it’s a good excuse to move as any. He strides over and sits down on his bed, carefully pulls the leather over the synth-skin.

“Thanks again… for the soup. And for, uh. Helping me not sleep on the floor.”

The Mandalorian nods, takes a few steps closer, close enough to reach out a… gloveless hand, to Luke’s surprise, and rest the inside of a bared wrist against his rapidly heating forehead.

“How are you feeling?”

Like my face is going to melt off.

“Uh, better. Just… tired,” Luke admits, which at least is the truth. “I slept all day, but I could probably fall asleep the second I put my head down.”

Something filters through the vocoder that sounds vaguely like… a laugh. A breathy, barely there sound, but still a laugh. “Grogu conked out the minute I put him down to sleep. I think he spent a lot of energy trying to help you. I had to keep him out of this room all day, keep him distracted… but you know how he gets. Little womp rat tried to sneak in three times before lunch.”

Luke does know how Grogu gets and thinking about the child and his heart that’s surely ten times too big for his little self makes him smile fondly. “I didn’t know what to do with him, sometimes. He cares so much.”

“Yeah. Like this other Jedi I know.”

Luke wants to ask what other Jedi he is talking about but is instead given his second whiplash experience of the last five minutes when the Mandalorian rights himself, reaches up with his un-gloved hand and pulls off his helmet.

Luke turns away so quickly he feels something in his neck strain. He fiddles with his glove while the Mandalorian places the helmet on the nightstand, as if it belongs there, and then proceeds to take off the rest of his armour and weapons, carefully storing them away in Luke’s closet. When every last piece is gone, he walks into the refresher, leaving Luke on the bed with a lot of questions, mainly “what the fuck just happened?” and “he probably still looks good in a drab fucking flightsuit, doesn’t he?”.

He keeps staring at the helmet on the nightstand, the low lights in the room reflecting off the metal like a taunt.

Is this a test? He can’t help but wonder if he’s missed something.

The Mandalorian had never taken it off in front of him again since the time they met, and even then, it hadn’t been for him—it had been for Grogu, and it had been one of the reasons why Luke had begun to think of him differently—until now, that is. Had he decided that it didn’t matter, now? But even that didn’t seem right, didn’t fit with every other time he had come to the school for lessons, with how he’d secluded himself away for meals, how he’d avoided opening any doors to let Luke in before his helmet was firmly back on his head… so what had changed?

Why does he want Luke to see him now?

He is so distracted by the sudden upheaval of the norms set between them that he doesn’t notice that the Mandalorian is back, in front of him, before warm fingers that smells slightly of leather touch his cheek and it’s all too late.

“I know we said we will share all, but…” The Mandalorian makes him look at him then, and he meets his eyes finally, like he’s only done once before, on that light cruiser, and is struck again by how soft they look on a man who by all evidence is a trained killer, a bounty hunter, who beneath all that beskar, taken off and put aside, is now just a man in the galaxy looking for somewhere to lie down and rest. “Did you use my toothbrush?”

-

When Luke wakes up (and it’s actually morning this time, thanks sunlight for reminding him by shining him directly in the face) he immediately knows something is off because he’s far too warm, lying far too much to the right of the comfy middle of his slightly sunken mattress that’s tilting a little too much to the left. Oh, and there’s an arm draped across his waist and a whole other person lying behind him, breathing softly against his neck.

Which, admittedly, would be very romantic if he wasn’t a) very single, and b) recalling that the last time this happened was in a Rebel bunker after one too many shots of liquor of questionable content and quality that Luke to this day is certain had been used as emergency fuel a time or two.

And at first, he thinks that maybe this is one of those dreams, but his own senses quickly disprove that. Through the Force he makes out the world around him, clear and real in a way dreams are decidedly not.

“Hey. Good morning,” says the very real Mandalorian from behind him, voice sleep-rough and un-modulated.

It’s not like he needed any confirmation, but, fuck, the bedroom-voice in the actual bedroom really does it for him.

“Yeah. Morning.”

Is that his hand under my shirt?

“Grogu’s still sleeping,” the Mandalorian murmurs against his ear, low and inviting, and suddenly this really is one of those dreams. “We have some time… if you want to.”

Luke has already concluded that even thinking of wanting this is a very bad idea.

Anything he thinks to say, however, dissolves into a gasp, and he is surprised by how much he wants when a searching mouth closes over the skin of his neck, leaving a trail of sweet, breathy kisses all the way up to his jaw as warm arms close around him and the evidence of his bed-partner’s reciprocation presses against his thigh.

“Ah, mm… I need to use the ‘fresher.”

“Ok.” A last kiss is pressed into his hair, soft and gentle and so loving it makes his heart ache. “Come back to me soon.”

Luke tries not to hurry too much to close the refresher door.

Well, that certainly makes one thing abundantly clear, he thinks to himself, leaning heavily on the sink.

This—wherever this is, because it’s definitely real—is not his reality. Whatever had happened last night must have sent him to another world altogether, and Luke does not belong here.

But chances are, another him—another Lukedoes belong here.

He’s been sent to this other universe and has taken the place of… well, himself.

And this… version of himself… has apparently managed to bag the Mandalorian, holy shit.

“Well done,” he congratulates his other self in the mirror, suddenly feeling vastly more desirable than he had only yesterday, eye-bags and all. “He must have horrible taste in men, wow.”

His reflection looks back a bit shocked. And a bit turned on. Oh no.

He splashes his face with cool water, brushes his teeth (with the green toothbrush this time) and tries to cool out, all the while reasoning with himself that going back into that room to sleep with another Luke’s boyfriend is probably considered adultery in at least a dozen planets’ legal systems.

It takes him a whole two minutes to come up with an excuse that won’t ruin the other, luckier Luke’s relationship for good before he dares to open the door.

“Ah, um…” Shit, I don’t even know his name? What do I call him? “Dar—ling…?”

The Mandalorian’s face turns red, and he stares down at the blankets, abashed. “That’s… new.”

Fuck, should have gone with ‘babe’. “Grogu’s awake,” he lies, smoothly, for once. “I’ll go get him—you just—you can stay and… finish. Or whatever you like, I mean.”

This really isn’t going his way. He’s even more surprised when the Mandalorian agrees.

“Okay,” he says, and stands up, still a little taller and slightly broader than Luke without his armour but is made soft by his sleepy hair and oddly domestic purple pyjama set. He comes closer, leans in, and presses his lips to Luke’s forehead. “Maybe later then.”

“Y-yeah… maybe later.”

He really needs to figure out how to fix this, fast.

-

Luke suffers only a few hours of soft touches and quiet domesticity that even his wildest fantasies had done nothing to prepare him for before he decided that nope, he can’t keep lying and he can’t let this misunderstanding continue like this. He sits the Mandalorian down in the kitchen after lunch, once Grogu has started to dig in on his serving of raw lizard-like eggs, and says, as even as he can, the way he’s practiced in his head:

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you this, but I’m not your Luke.”

The Mandalorian stares, warily. “Are you… asking for a divorce?”

“…we’re married?” Luke shakes his head. “Oh, never mind. No, I’m not asking for a divorce, and I doubt that I could because I’m not—I’m not the Luke you married. Or the one you’ve been with, from the start. I’m a different Luke from a different… universe, I think.”

“And I think,” the Mandalorian starts carefully, “that whatever happened yesterday must have affected you more than you’re telling me.”

“I’m literally telling you right now. I took your Luke’s place—or we switched, but I haven’t figured that out for sure yet,” Luke says, clenching and unclenching his prosthetic hand, only then realising how much smoother it moves, and how the click in the thumb joint is gone. “Huh.” He pulls the glove off, takes a closer look. “This is new.”

“Just a few parts,” the Mandalorian interjects, reaches out and takes the hand in his own, as naturally as breathing. “We changed a couple of nerve fibres and readjusted the join circulators during the last maintenance. You really don’t remember?”

“More like, I wasn’t there.” He ignores the way his face prickles as the Mandalorian’s heating touch register through the synthetic nerve-wiring. “But that means this must be his… your Luke’s body.”

“It is.” Luke raises his eyebrows in question, and the Mandalorian gestures towards him vaguely. “Collarbone. I… left that there. Two nights ago, in the kitchen.”

The kitchen?” Luke refrains from whistling, but it’s a near thing. “Luke really got it going for him, huh.”

The Mandalorian sighs wearily. “Okay. Suppose it’s true, that you’ve… used the Force to transport yourself here…”

“I’ve ruled out time-travel, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“So we’re not… together? In your world.”

Luke pauses, suddenly feeling a little weary himself. “No. We’re not.”

They don’t say anything for a long, quiet moment, and even Grogu stops gorging himself on his lunch to observe, perceptive as always to the changes in the Force, and in the air between them.

“I’m sorry,” the Mandalorian says then, surprising him.

“What for?”

“If I… made you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine.” It was more than fine, if he is being perfectly honest, and looking past all the awkwardness, it was all actually… very nice. “I’m the one who should apologise. You’ve been so open around me, thinking I was someone else. You even took off your helmet.”

“Oh. That.” The Mandalorian shrugs. “I… believe what you’re saying, but. It still feels like I’m sitting here, talking with my husband. You’re still him, in a way.”

That would be something, huh.

Grogu whines from his chair and jumps up on the table, rushes over to Luke to throw his little body into his chest in an attempt to deliver a hug. Luke knows he understands, perhaps better than the Mandalorian, how much those words make him ache.

-

The truth is, Luke has no idea how to get back.

He recounts the morning to the Mandalorian, about his attempt to reach into the Force and let it guide him into the future but leaves out the details leading up to it. How desperate he was for direction. How lost he was feeling when so many of his threads were leading to dead ends.

He is still convinced that letting Grogu go, letting him choose his own fate, had not been a mistake. He is so much happier with the Mandalorian at his side, so much brighter in the Force, even as he still has his own darkness to contend with. Once he saw them together, reunited, Luke had thought that they’d be just fine.

Still, that had left him with nothing, a master willing to teach in an academy with no students.

So Luke had reached out through the Force and asked for the road ahead, for what he would need going forward, and his answer had been a ride through the dimensional grinder that ended him up… here.

In a universe where, apparently… he had chosen differently.

“You said that… in your world, we’re not together,” says the Mandalorian after he gives up on another failed attempt at meditating himself away and back home. They’re sat down in the main room, where Luke had bent space that first time, hoping that recreating the scenario will be enough. So far, no such luck. “But when you look at me… you have the same look in your eyes as he does. Or like he used to.”

“Oh.”

“Are you… with me? Your version of me?”

Oh, what the hell, he’s basically seen me naked. “…Yes. I am.”

The Mandalorian smiles, and Luke feels his heart clench. “Then you should tell him.”

“He doesn’t—I don’t think I’ve given him reason to like me very much.”

“He does,” the Mandalorian assures him, and he wants very much to believe it’s true. “I was already half in love with you when you saved us that second time.”

“—the second time?” Luke asks so that his heart won’t explode in his chest.

“When you and Grogu showed up in Mos Espa. Helped us take out a war droid and calm down a rancor.”

His heart sinks as quickly as it had risen. “Yeah, that never happened.”

The Mandalorian looks a little surprised, but still smiles. Kark, he’s so pretty when he smiles. “Well, if he’s still alive… you should give it a shot. You can practice on me.”

Luke snorts. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“This is sort of embarrassing, you know. What if I can’t go back and you’re stuck with me?”

“Would that be so bad?”

“If I’m too ashamed to even look you in the eyes, maybe.”

“I could go back to wearing this helmet.”

“I’m not sure that wouldn’t make it worse, but okay.” Luke wets his lips, meets the Mandalorian’s stare with his own. It’s both very hard to keep looking and impossible to look away. “Right, I… When I first met you, I didn’t think much of it. From what I saw, I knew you were someone strong… and kind, and that you loved Grogu. He kept thinking about you, you know. Those first weeks, months… he told me a lot about you. His memories from before were so shrouded and dark, but you… every moment with you was so clear, and so… warm.” He surprises himself with how easily the words come to him then, and he doesn’t want to stop. “At first, I thought maybe I was just… reflecting what he was feeling. But I found myself thinking of you, more and more. And with all those stories, and when I realised… what you sacrificed for him… what you gave up so that he could… it was impossible not to feel something for you. To feel that if I ever saw you again, I would want to… do something stupid.”

“Like what?” The Mandalorian hasn’t really moved, but suddenly feels much closer than he was a mere moment ago.

“Like… kissing you.”

“You know, he pretty much said the same thing. Worked out pretty well, don’t you think?”

“…yeah.”

“It’s okay,” says the Mandalorian. “If you want to. I’d like that.”

Kiss him. “You don’t think your Luke would be a bit mad that you’re walking around kissing other Lukes from other dimensions?”

“Would you be?”

Not really, no. He’s riding the high of his confession still, and he wants so very much. “Okay.”

He puts his hands carefully on the Mandalorian’s face, admires the turn of his nose, the softness in his eyes, relishes the soft scratch of hair on his skin that somehow feels a little different on the synth skin and his real hand. He leans in, closes his eyes before his lips touch his, and feels every sensation of the kiss, determined to commit it to memory if this is the last time this happens. He feels like he’s soaring, feels large hands on his waist and thumbs drawing circles into the skin there to anchor hm in place, and feels, for an aching, long moment… loved. The Force is ripe with it, whatever is happening between them, and he doesn’t want it to end.

The thought that it has to—that he has to go home and leave this memory behind—hurts in a way that has the world fall apart around him, die and crumble like dead ashes in the wake of a firestorm, but just as quickly the ashes find the ground, merge with the soil, and within a fraction of a moment the Force rings out and the world is born anew—and Luke no longer feels the Mandalorian’s mouth pressed hungrily against his own because he collapses onto the floor of his Academy, alone, and nearly passes out from sheer exhaustion.

He comes to, sits up, and would have thought it was all a dream if he hadn’t known, as deeply and intimately as he knows the Force itself, that it had all been real.

He flops down on the floor, and exhales.

-

Luke wakes up again to the sound of footsteps by the door, and he knows much time hasn’t passed.

The Mandalorian, his world’s Mandalorian, slowly walks in—with his helmet firmly on.

(At once, he misses his face intensely, but there is also something relieving—something sturdy and true, seeing his beskar where it is, a part of him as much as the flesh hidden beneath it—and Luke knows that wanting for anything else right now is stupidly selfish of him.)

“Sky—Luke,” the Mandalorian says, and Luke has gotten so used to hearing his name in that voice he almost doesn’t register the slip and is too tired to recall why it’s strange that this world’s Mandalorian isn’t calling him by his family name. “…pardon me. Are you…busy? Jedi-ing?”

I’m always Jedi-ing, Luke doesn’t say out loud. He sits up. “Just a bit… tired. Do come in.”

The Mandalorian does, keeps a respectable distance that doesn’t encroach on his personal space as he sits before him. I really am back, huh, Luke concludes. He already misses the familiar little touches, the hands so freely holding his own. Maybe he should try that confession sooner rather than later.

“I…” the Mandalorian begins. “I wanted to talk. About last night.”

Luke frowns. “I’m not sure I follow.”

The hunter shifts a little, and it’s hard to tell with his face hidden away, but the action is almost nervous.

“I, uh… I shouldn’t have left after. It was really good, for me. And I had hoped—if you wanted to, maybe we could… try it again?”

“Oh.” It takes a moment longer for the words to register, and a moment longer to feel aches in his body that has absolutely nothing to do with traveling between worlds through the Force. He looks down briefly and lifts the neck of his tunic and—sure enough, he finds an angry red bruise shaped over his collar bone. “Oh…” Ten points for consistency.

“But it’s not just—that,” the Mandalorian continues. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for some time now that I… have feelings for you.”

The confession barely even registers, because Luke is still processing that he—that the Luke from the other world—apparently had no qualms in using his body to sleep with the Mandalorian while Luke was trying his damn best to abstain from touching his husband for the better part of a cycle.

“Mandalorian,” he begins, and it earns him a sideways head-tilt.

“I gave you my name last night. You are free to use it between us.”

He fights the urge to say, well neither of you ever told me, did you? Instead, he says: “I’m in love with you.”

“Thank you.”

Thank you? Really? Good thing for this man that Luke has already resigned himself to his fate. “But the Luke you were with was not me—we just switched places. The Luke from yesterday was another Luke, in my body, from another dimension.”

“Oh.” The Mandalorian sits straighter but doesn’t seem to weirded out. “Yeah, he said something like that.”

“Wait, you believed him? And you still slept with him?”

“I thought maybe he meant it figuratively?” Staying with the other Mandalorian really had Luke fooled into thinking at least one of them had it together, but he’s quickly learning that maybe it was too generous of him to assume. “So last night… you don’t remember any of that?”

I can’t believe I stole my first time with the Mandalorian from myself. “I should have fucked his husband.”

“…what?”

“Nothing. No, I don’t remember last night, because that wasn’t me. But I’m here now. So please,” he looks into the dark visor with all the sincerity he can muster, “take me to bed and show me exactly what we did last night before I accidentally break the universe again.”

“Okay,” says the Mandalorian on an inhale, and is suddenly dangerously familiar in his breathy, honest, unmistakeable need in a way that makes Luke shiver with want, and he will finally— “…but it’s almost lunch time. Maybe, um, if Grogu needs a nap? Or if we wait until tonight, that’s probably...”

Luke leans his head back and uses every single bit of his Jedi training not to scream.

Notes:

the other Luke, meeting Din: so you’re telling me we haven’t fucked yet?

Din, visibly confused: Um, no—why are you taking your clothes off?

AU Luke, already half naked: why are yours still on? Quick, we gotta set the universe right

Will Luke remember to give his confession to the right Din, and will he ever learn his name?? (Maybe he'll hear Fennec Shand throw it around like confetti or something shkjsdhksh).

Thank you for reading!

I'm StupidFatPenguin on tumblr !

EDIT: There's some brilliant art inspired by this now!

by milkeyway-tired | by pridoo