Chapter Text
The train car is packed, even more so than when Luke had taken Din for their little jaunt down to the lower city the week before. It’s rush hour, maybe, or perhaps there’s some event going on more widely beloved than the Rodian charity gala— whatever the cause, there’s a veritable crush of people pressing in from all sides as Luke escorts Din along the hour-long ride out of the Senate tower towards the arts district, and more bodies seem to appear out of thin air with each stop the train makes along the way.
All this means, in Luke’s expert opinion, is that he’s able to keep an even closer eye on Din as they trundle along the hover-rail. Din, for as large and imposing a man as he is, seems to be doing his best impression of a hermit crab, flinching away and pressing in close to Luke every time another body jostles into the pair of them. His beskar, bright and eye-catching, is digging into the soft skin of Luke’s hip, has been for minutes with them pressed together like this, but Luke can’t bring himself to care.
And the beskar— oh, the beskar. Luke had hesitated to let Din out of his sight when he had tried to duck away to change, but he doesn’t regret it now. He had hovered protectively around the door to Din’s chambers for near half an hour until the man had reappeared, like a vision out of the filthier areas of Luke’s subconscious, in the same getup he had worn to Leia’s welcome party weeks ago— usual brown flightsuit and leather boots traded for a sleek jet-black undersuit, form-fitting and clearly not meant for anything more strenuous than shaking hands and bumping elbows, his usual unnerving plethora of weapons trimmed down to just the gleaming hilt of the Darksaber at his hip, a blaster strapped to his thigh, and a vibroknife tucked up his sleeve that Luke’s fairly sure only he knows about. Around his shoulders, pinned neatly in place to frame the signet on his pauldron, is a thick, spotted pelt, soft and warm against the skin of Luke’s cheek each time the crush of people behind him shifts and sends him stumbling up against Din’s steady frame.
“Do you, ah—” Din starts, breaking off to steady Luke with a firm hand as the train curves— he’s traded his heavy combat gloves for thin, elegant ones, and Luke very nearly believes he can feel the press of fingertips against his bicep, strong and sure. “Do you know much about this, uh— event?”
Luke shakes his head stiffly, more to clear it than to answer. “Not really,” he replies. “They do this once every few years— some kind of cultural showcase, I think, to get the elite to see them as more than just bounty hunters. Leia usually attends these things, not me— most of the Senators do, we’ll probably see a few there.”
Din stiffens at that, going tense and rigid at Luke’s side, and Luke backpedals as quickly as he can manage.
“Not that we have to talk to them, though,” he says, raising his hands reassuringly. “That’s the nice thing about theater, you know. It’s not really a thing you socialize through.” The train swerves again, the weight of the crowd tipping them both sideways— Din’s hold on his arm shifts, a hand pressed wide-fingered against the expanse of his shoulder blades, pulling him close.
It’s like something out of one of the cheesy holo-dramas Han won’t ever own up to watching, the way Din’s fingers catch in the fabric of his tunic before he retracts his hand altogether, leaving a patch of prickling heat in its wake. Luke’s acutely aware of this, of the fact that he’s here on a mission, and tries desperately not to give in to the tempting fantasy that snakes its way into his mind— himself and Din, on their way to a night on the town, the palm against his back real and meaningful rather than a simple necessity to keep him from toppling ass over tail, returning home at the end of the night to fall into bed or each other—
Luke coughs sharply into his fist. That line of thinking isn’t reasonable, he reminds himself, much less helpful— he’s here for Leia, for a chance to pin down whatever it is in the Senate that’s set her senses churning, not to indulge his ridiculous schoolboy crush on a man that’s been nothing more than perfectly polite in his company.
This time of night, the upper city is gleaming, the lights of the skyline bright enough to drown out all but the largest stars in the sky. It’s pretty, Luke supposes, for someone who hasn’t had the time to become accustomed to the glitz and glamour of the Core— he hadn’t, the first time he had made it this far from Tatooine, and he feels the same soft awe radiating from Din at his side. Absently, he wonders if Din’s ever been around this level of opulence before. Life as a bounty hunter of course comes with the occasional trip to the upper end of the galaxy, but Din had seemed so out of his element in his first few days here, had made more than one off-hand comment about living in the sewage tunnels of Nevarro or bunking in a closet barely large enough to fit into on his old ship. For as much as he’s been learning to fit in among the diplomats and nobles that frequent the Senate, Luke can still make out hints of the bounty hunter beneath the chinks in his beskar, now that he knows what to look for.
Luke inches a little closer, tilts his head up to watch Din out of his periphery, the neon lights of the skyscrapers reflecting in colorful threads across his helmet as the train car speeds past building after building. The ghost of Din’s soft touch against his back lingers, white-hot even through the sticky heat haze of the packed train car— he’s so caught up in the feeling of it, sure and strong, that he very nearly misses Din reaching out again, circling his fingers gently around Luke’s bare wrist and tugging.
“This is it, I think,” he says, leaning in close enough to be heard over the chatter and bustle. Sure enough, Luke feels the train slow to a halt, the low mechanical drone of the engine fading into a quiet hum as the doors open and blissfully cool night air washes its way over Luke’s flushed face.
Din steps out first, the crowd parting like water around his broad frame, his hand still gripping Luke’s wrist like a lifeline. The air is sweet and cold when they finally make their way out of the car and onto the platform, and Luke breathes in deep, slow, gathering himself as best he can—
And then Din’s grip loosens, moves down until Luke feels a gloved hand wrapped around his own— his flesh hand, no less, the sensation clear and aching and unmistakable— and Luke’s last few, fragile threads of composure toss themselves to the night wind.
The opera house, when they reach it, is perhaps the most egregiously lavish building Luke’s seen, all palatial marble columns and thick heavy drapes of green velvet covering the wide windows. It’s nearly as tall as the Senate on its own, the crystalline vaulted ceiling sitting floors above their heads as they enter, glittering refractions of the city light scattered across the plush carpeted floor at Luke’s feet.
Din doesn’t let go of him for the entirety of their walk to the theater, hand warm and sure in Luke’s own as they walk down chrome-plated laneways lined with tufted violet trees, the streets bright as high noon with the searing neon lighting filtering down from windows and billboards. He doesn’t let go when they’re in the opera house proper, filtering in past the little Rodian woman in a pinstripe suit taking tickets at the door, doesn’t let go until the droid gathering coats and bags flags Luke down to take the cloak around his shoulders, and Luke has to pry himself free from Din’s warm grip to undo the clasp at his throat.
He doesn’t know what to make of it. Din stands there, stiff as a board until the droid beeps and rolls its way to the next couple making their way into the entrance hall— Luke itches to reach back out, to offer his hand again, but the need for it has long since passed and he’s still not sure how to grapple with the sudden desire to feel Din’s fingers tangled with his own, so he keeps his hands firmly at his sides and tries not to be too disappointed when Din does the same.
It’s for the best though, maybe, because the second he turns to figure out the best way to their seats, he’s stopped in his tracks by a thin, reedy voice calling his name.
“Master Skywalker— Master Skywalker, sir,” the voice calls, and Luke peers through the line of well-dressed socialites at the door to see Councilman Garr, scourge of his sister’s advisory committee, waving a gaunt hand wildly in his direction. He schools his face into the best imitation of serene calm he can manage, casts an apologetic glance to Din at his side and gets a nearly imperceptible huff of laughter in return.
“Councilman,” he says, when Garr manages to make his way up to the pair of them, huffing like he’s just run a klick down the road. “Enjoying your night?”
“I dare say I am— I thought Senator Organa would be here, no?” Garr cranes his thin neck, peering over Luke’s shoulder and then Din’s, as if somehow expecting Leia to appear out of thin air, hidden behind their backs like a child.
“She was otherwise occupied,” Luke replies easily, fitting a placid smile over his face. “Something about taxi droid regulations, I gather.”
“More’s the pity,” muses Garr. “Well, if you’re here, do enjoy the show. Master Skywalker, your Highness,” he finishes, with a small bow first to Luke and then to Din, who shifts his weight awkwardly from foot to foot, nodding sharply in return.
Luke watches as Garr disappears into the crowd, weaving through a handful of robed Hosnians Luke’s fairly sure he recognizes from one of Leia’s endless charity dinners, a dignitary or two from the Mid Rim, then a quick jaunt to the buffet table covered in little cakes and pastries, where—
He nearly misses it, Beren’s entrance and beeline for Garr at the back of the room, the hushed few words they exchange and the imperceptible handshake nearly lost in the copious folds of Garr’s oversized robes before Beren drifts away to be swallowed up by the rest of the crowd. His usual shadow is conspicuously absent, no sign of Val Aldo anywhere in the room— Luke casts out his senses briefly, searching for the sharp unpleasant tang of her Force signature, coming up empty-handed.
He’s not sure if Din’s seen Beren, his appearance so quick and understated— it’s not as though it’s a surprise that he’s here, not when all the Senators had been given their customary invitations, and he’s loath to spoil Din’s night when it really had been going so well this far.
Besides, Beren is gone for the moment, and Garr seems to be preoccupied chatting with one of the Rodian waitstaff at the table, plucking little sandwich after little sandwich from the plate in the Rodian’s hands— it’s probably fine, Luke thinks, as long as he does his best to keep an eye on them both.
“You’re quiet all of a sudden,” Din pipes up at his side, and when Luke turns he finds Din closer than he had been, head bent close, flickers of movement behind his dark visor. If the lighting had been better, Luke thinks, something brighter than the little oil sconces lining the walls, he might have been able to see a hint of those wide brown eyes behind the black film.
“Just thinking, don’t mind me,” he replies quickly, reaching down to take hold of Din’s hand again, giving in to the urge to lace their fingers together before he can talk himself out of it. “Our seats are this way, I’m pretty sure.”
Leia has a private box at the opera house— because of course she does— complete with a little ice chest full of her favorite fizzy wine and a handful of crude phrases carved, no doubt by Han, into the wood of the balustrade. Din scoffs at the graffiti, Luke cracks the top of a little bottle of the alcohol, and they settle in side by side, Din’s shoulder brushing Luke’s despite the ample room they’ve both got.
He loses the first half hour of the show to the feeling of it, to watching the way Din’s fingers twitch every so often, imperceptible little movements that Luke wants to smother with his own hands. On stage, a lean blue Rodian is hassling another about his sister’s virtue, or honor, or something along those lines— Luke’s lost the train of it, only half-listening as he toys with the bottleneck of his drink, watching Din’s impassive figure from the corner of his eye.
“He’s going to poison the dinner,” Din murmurs quietly, leaning in. He braces his arm against the little armrest between their seats, his cold beskar vambrace biting into Luke’s skin where they press together. “The little bottle behind his back— look.”
Luke looks, doesn’t see much more than a pair of gaudily dressed actors throwing jabs at each other over a laughably fake-looking bonfire, but sure enough— three minutes later, the stage goes dark, the scene changes, and the blue Rodian comes up clutching his throat and wheezing about dirty back-stabbing bastards, and Din huffs a little sound that might very well be a self-satisfied chuckle.
“I told you,” he says, leaning in again, voice a low whisper even though there’s very little chance anyone in the audience below would hear them talking up here, far-removed as Leia’s personal box is. He’s close enough that Luke can catch the faint trails of his scent, leather and grease and the oil he uses to polish his armor, all laid over something soft and sweet that he just barely recognizes as the fancy soap Leia likes to leave out for her guests— honeysuckle and peonies, like the bushes in the garden, the little flowers that Grogu delights in picking and then tucking into the gaps in Din’s armor.
Luke leans away, sinks into the plush back cushion of his chair, and wills his racing heart to calm itself.
The play goes on, Luke half-heartedly attempting to keep up with the plot before calling it quits ten minutes into a thirty minute long sword-fight and turning his attention to the audience instead. From here, he can make out quite a number of faces he recognizes— the Rodian ambassadors, sitting side-by-side in a little cordoned-off section right at the front, Councilman Garr in an aisle seat at the back of the room, craning his neck for a view.
And, of course, Senator Beren, in his own private box across the venue from Luke and Din. It’s too far to see much, with how large the opera house is, but he can just barely make out the shade of another figure in the booth with him, sat back in the shadows behind the heavy velvet curtains bordering the box.
As quietly as he can manage, he reaches back and feels around the chair behind him for the little set of opera glasses he knows Leia keeps in here— Din makes a little noise of confusion from beside him, but Luke ignores it in favor of sticking his fingers into the gaps between the seats, a little a-ha! of victory escaping his lips when his fingers hit cold, rounded metal. He pulls the glasses free and holds them up to his eyes, blinking a couple times to adjust.
Focusing in on Beren’s box, Luke squints through the opera glasses at the figure— still shrouded in darkness, sitting several feet behind Beren himself and, from what Luke can tell, making absolutely no attempt to socialize with the man, not that Luke can blame him. Beren’s a wet blanket on the best of days, downright intolerable on the worst.
All at once, the figure sits forward, his face coming into the light— the Rodian waiter from the entrance hall, the one Garr had been speaking to. His formal livery has been traded for a dark jacket, and it’s sheer dumb luck that a spotlight swings wide and passes over him, beam reflecting over something small and silver and deadly sharp in his hands. He’s speaking softly, mouth moving to form words Luke can’t begin to make out over this distance, Beren responding without so much as a twitch of his body to look back at the man—
And then, without warning, the Rodian’s head snaps around, making eerily precise eye contact with Luke across the room. His grip on the glasses slips, fingers spasming in shock, and they clatter to the floor loudly.
“Luke?”
Din’s there in a second, a steady hand on his arm. He pulls off a glove and presses a hand to Luke’s forehead, soft and cool, and Luke would be rolling in ecstasy at the touch if he wasn’t so preoccupied with Beren and the strange Rodian in the box, years of well-honed gut instinct and every scrap of faith he has in the Force screaming out that something’s wrong, something’s off, and he—
He needs to talk to Leia.
“Luke, talk to me,” Din says, voice full of concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Beren, he—”
“Beren?”
“He’s here, there’s someone with him— I need to comm Leia, I need to tell her—”
Din grabs his hands, gloves still off, tossed forgotten to the floor. His hands are rough, callouses Luke recognizes from piloting and others he doesn’t, from something unknowable.
“Call her if you need to, no one will notice if you do it up here.”
Luke casts a glance at Beren’s box, the Rodian melted back into the shadows, no way of telling whether his piercing eyes are still on Din and Luke. He breathes in deep— he may not have all the answers, but he can keep from panicking where people can see.
“They will,” he says, nodding as imperceptibly as he can manage towards Beren and the Rodian, and there’s a click and whirr from some bit of machinery inside Din’s helmet as he turns to look, focusing in on the booth. He sucks in a breath, sharp and metallic through the vocoder. “I’ll step outside, just give me two seconds. That’s all, I promise.”
Din, because he’s never been anything but kind and understanding and good, just nods without pressing Luke further.
He steps outside, the hallways eerily silent with everyone watching the performance, the foyer vast and cold without bodies and idle chatter to fill it with warmth. He paces the length of it, putting as much distance between himself and the theater as he can manage, patting his various pockets for the little portable two-way comm Leia had given him years ago and—
Coming up with nothing.
Dank farrik, he thinks— he must have left it in his overcoat, abandoned when the droid came through earlier, when he was too busy marveling at the feeling of Din’s hand in his own to remember the entire reason he was here.
The coatroom shouldn’t be too difficult to find, at least— the opera house isn’t a labyrinth of hallways the way the Senate tower is, and he’s managed just fine there. It doesn’t take more than five minutes, in the end, to find the little employees only sign and follow that, down a tiled corridor far less opulent and far more sterile than the rest of the building, and he pushes his way past the doors with ease, not so much as a lock to pick open.
The coat room is at the end of the hall, the door wide open, racks and racks of colorful fabric hung in neat rows beyond. He just needs to find his cloak and commlink and reach out to Leia— it’s only been a handful of minutes, perhaps no one’s even noticed he’s gone, if he can just—
Without warning, strong hands reach through a side door and wrap themselves around him, an arm over his chest and a hand tight over his mouth, pulling him backwards into a dark, cramped closet. The door shuts with a click, and panic sets in— the person holding him is large, solid, armored, a formidable opponent if Luke was a normal person.
Luke isn’t, though, likely to his assailant’s surprise, and he wraps his consciousness tight around the Force—
“It’s me,” a voice says in his ear, raspy and metallic. “Be quiet.”
All the tension spills from Luke in a rush, the tight coil of adrenaline unwinding itself from around his spine, and he collapses bodily back against Din in relief.
“Karking hell, Din,” he hisses, muffled against the warm skin of Din’s bare palm. “Don’t just do that—”
“They’re onto you,” Din replies, terse and short, and Luke falls silent. Slowly, finger by finger, Din pulls his hand away from Luke’s mouth— his other arm, strong and sure, is still wrapped around Luke’s chest in a laughable facsimile of their closeness in the train, Luke’s heart a rabbit-paced mess in his chest for an entirely different reason now. “I saw him leave— the Rodian. He’s armed. He got up the minute you left the box.”
“Bounty hunter?” Luke asks. It’s not the first time someone’s sent a mercenary after him, certainly won’t be the last, but he’s got a sinking feeling in the pit of his gut that this isn’t his run-of-the-mill Guild hopeful.
Din shakes his head. “Not as far as I can tell. Definitely not Guild, maybe underworld. Knows what he’s doing, though—”
Din breaks off, helmet snapping up quick enough that the lip of it catches the top of Luke’s head, and he hisses in surprise.
“Jeez, be careful—”
“Shh,” Din hisses, and this time it’s quiet enough that the vocoder doesn’t even pick it up— just the sound of Din’s voice, unfiltered, beside Luke’s left ear. “He’s outside.”
Luke quiets his breathing, reaches out through the Force— sure enough, there’s a Force signature at the end of the hallway, pushing open the door to the service rooms without so much as a creak. Against his back, Din stiffens, unclips his blaster from his hip with a click that sounds like cannonfire in the pin-drop silence of the closet.
At the sound of it, Luke balks, reaching back as silently as he can to push at Din’s hand— blaster fire isn’t what they want right now, not with half the Senate just a few hallways away, with Beren sitting there doing Force knows what, and if they spook him there’s no telling whether or not Leia will be able to get to him in time to stop him from covering up whatever the hell it is he’s doing with a Rodian from the criminal underworld in his booth.
Din, infuriatingly, doesn’t seem to get the message, just brings the blaster up to chest level, pointing it at the closed door as the Rodian’s footsteps pad ever closer. Luke grabs at his arm again, tugs fruitlessly at it, curses every deity he’s ever heard of that Din’s beskar keeps Luke from reaching out to him with the Force, keeps him muted and closed off—
All at once, a stroke of inspiration comes to him, a lightning strike of thought. He reaches upwards, feeling his way blindly up the firm line of Din’s side, ignoring the sharp intake of breath he gets in response, until his hand reaches the lip of Din’s helmet. Praying Din won’t hate him for this if they live through it, he shoves his fingers as far through the airlock of the helmet as he can manage— it takes some contortion, a sharp spike of pain lancing through his arm from the uncomfortable angle, but the second his fingertips meet stubble and soft, tanned skin, he latches onto the Force and sends a single thought careening through that little point of contact, hoping against hope that it’ll be enough.
No blaster. Saber through the door. On my signal.
A second passes, and then two. Luke pulls his hands back from the gap between Din’s helmet and his skin like he’s been burned, an apology white-hot on his tongue— but after a beat, Din lowers the blaster, holsters it and unclips the hilt of his saber, and Luke throws a desperate thank you to the universe.
The Rodian is closer now, his Force signature taut and dangerous, coming to a brief halt outside the closet door. Luke sucks in a sharp breath and holds it, steeling himself, feeling Din do the same. Quick and quiet, he thinks, flexing his hands and feeling the Force surge through him like blood, like air, like coming home—
“Now,” he hisses, grabbing tight to the tendrils of energy between his fingers and pulling, and Din ignites the saber just as Luke yanks the Rodian back like a ragdoll against the door, the thin wood of it no match for the bright electric crackle of the Darksaber as it cuts through like a knife through sand, drives home into the Rodian’s chest.
Luke feels the telltale flicker of the Force, the little supernova of energy as a life blinks out of existence, bright as a sun and gone in an instant.
All at once, Luke feels like a marionette with his strings cut, adrenaline whiplashing its way through his limbs. He’s a live wire, exposed and sparking, nowhere for his current to go with a dead body against the door and his heart in his throat and the walls of the little shoebox closet pressing in on all sides and Din—
Din, kriffing hell. He seems just as keyed-up as Luke, the saber extinguishing and clattering to the floor beside Luke’s feet, bathing them in thick, impenetrable darkness. Dimly, as if through layers of water or cotton, Luke is aware of the soft pressure of hands against his waist, of the hard taut line of Din’s chest pressed against his back, the cold weight of his helmet dropping to rest on Luke’s shoulder, in the hollow where it meets his neck, Din’s breath shallow and ragged.
“Din—” he starts, tongue thick behind his teeth, voice fizzling out as his thoughts turn to jelly in his head.
“Luke,” says Din, rough and throaty. “Luke.”
There’s a shuffle of movement, a brief agonizing moment where Din pulls away from Luke before pressing back up against him, an arm around his waist, beskar pressing deliciously into soft flesh, and then—
Lips press against the side of Luke’s throat, hot and electric— Luke’s vision goes white as he realizes Din’s taken his helmet off, is bare-faced and breathless and pressing wet open-mouthed kisses to Luke’s neck and shoulder. Shaking, he reaches a hand up, tangles it in Din’s soft curls, fingers finding purchase and dragging a low, broken sound from Din’s mouth, muffled against Luke’s skin. His hand, splayed wide-fingered against Luke’s stomach, slides tantalizingly upward until Din has wrapped himself fully around Luke’s chest, pulling Luke back against him tight enough to bruise, to steal the air from Luke’s lungs in a quick, punched-out exhale.
“I thought—” Din says, dragging his lips up the length of Luke’s throat to nose at the sensitive patch just below his right ear. His breath is cold, icy against the trail of moisture he’s left on Luke’s skin, and Luke shivers bodily at the sensation. “I thought you—”
“I’m alright,” Luke reassures him, grasping for an anchor anywhere he can reach— Din’s hair, his jawline, the rough ungloved skin of his hands where they rest against Luke’s ribcage. “I’m here, Din, I’m alright.” At the sound of his name, Din lets out another hoarse, guttural sound, the scrape of his teeth against Luke’s earlobe reverberating down to Luke’s very bones, and if they don’t stop soon he’s going to—
A door slams open, somewhere deep in the building, and Luke flinches so violently he bangs his elbow against the thick beskar plates of Din’s chestplate, cursing at the pain that lances through his arm.
“Fuck, Din, there’s— there’s a dead person out there—”
“Intermission is in five minutes,” Din says, tapping at something on his vambrace that pulls up a little holographic clock. There’s a soft hiss and click as his helmet slides back into place over his head. “We have to get out of here.”
It takes a considerable effort to open the door, the dead Rodian slumped against it like a pile of bricks, collapsed against the mercifully bloodless carpet. Din hooks an arm under the Rodian’s shoulders, Luke grabs his legs, and together they’re able to heave the corpse up enough to shuffle him out of the hallway and into the closet. They dump him unceremoniously into the corner, lack of time more pressing than any kind of decorum Luke would normally try to show for a life he just extinguished— Din takes a moment to kneel, pulling down what looks like an old, folded-up tarp from one of the shelves and tossing it over the Rodian.
“Luke,” he says after a moment, hands frozen where he had been tucking the corners of the tarp beneath the Rodian’s body. There’s a slow drip of dread edging into his voice, the sound of it drowning out the static in Luke’s ears, the far-off echo of doors opening and chatter spilling out into the entrance hall of the opera house. Din raises his hand, pulls something out from beneath the tarp, from one of the Rodian’s dozens of pockets— Luke peers at it, and his stomach churns when he sees the insignia on the pin.
“He’s Imperial,” Luke breathes, and the floor drops out from beneath his feet.
Luke’s not sure how they manage to leave the opera house without being seen, blood rushing in his ears, tinging the edges of his vision as he and Din weave their way through the opera house service corridors and back out into a dingy alleyway behind the building, the cold night air washing over Luke in an icy flood as they tumble out into the street.
“The comms,” he pants, doubled over with his hands on his knees. “My cloak, Leia, she— she has to know.”
Din’s on his feet before Luke can say another word, peering left and right into the thoroughfare at the end of the alleyway before motioning for Luke to follow. It takes him less than a minute to hail a cab, a little red speeder grinding to a halt beside them with a stiff-looking droid at the controls.
“The Senate,” Din grates out, dropping a handful of credits into the little payment slot. “As fast as you can.”
They bundle haphazardly into the back of the taxi, Din cramming himself as far up against the opposite door as he can and pulling Luke in after him, and the taxi droid speeds off before they’ve even managed to buckle themselves in. Luke can’t think straight, can barely breathe, his heart pounding a marathon in his throat.
Din, looking as composed as ever, reaches out to place his hand gently over Luke’s. Somewhat deliriously, a bubble of half-hysterical laughter spills out of Luke’s mouth.
“You forgot your gloves,” he says, staring down at Din’s bare hands, weathered and soft.
“You forgot your coat,” Din counters. “I think we’re even.”
Luke wants to say something, anything— wants to ask Din what the hell just happened, apologize for making him miss half of the show, for ruining their perfectly pleasant night out together— but he can’t find the words, can’t force them past his lips. Instead, he sits through the ride in silence, the city swimming by in a blur, Luke’s eyes trained unflinchingly on the expanse of Din’s hands atop his own.
When they make it back to the Senate, the taxi pulling up to a screeching halt outside of the wide dark main doors, Luke has every intention of running directly to Leia’s rooms to recount the events of the night. What he gets, instead, is her assistant haranguing him the second he gets out of the car, pacing in circles as they pull up and then grabbing him by the arm, pressing a note into his hand. He unfolds it gingerly, Leia’s pristine handwriting staring up at him from the page.
My office. Immediately. Alone.
“I need to go,” he says, turning to Din and crumpling the paper in his fist. “I’m sorry, I— my sister—”
Din, still only halfway out of the taxi, nods quickly. Luke hates this, hates to leave him after what they’ve just gone through, the lingering electric current that’s still simmering under the surface of Luke’s skin— but this is Leia, and there’s very little in the galaxy that Luke places above her.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, because it’s all he can think to say.
“Don’t apologize,” says Din, and all at once he’s out of the taxi, striding up to cradle Luke’s face in his hands like something tender, something precious, and Luke feels the cold press of beskar against his forehead before he can register what’s happening.
“I—”
“Go,” Din whispers. “I’ll be here. We’ll talk about it when you come back.”
Luke breaks away, turns, strides through the doors and into the empty Senate building before he can change his mind.
He finds Leia pacing when he reaches her office, her hair loose and cascading around her shoulders instead of pulled up in her usual neat braid, frantic concern written in bright ink across her face.
“Where the hell were your comms?” She’s seething, angrier than Luke’s seen her in ages. “I called you at least a dozen times, nothing but radio fucking static—”
“I left my commlink in my coat,” he offers, as if it’s any kind of excuse. “Did you find something? What’s wrong?”
Leia scoffs, snatches a datachip from off her desk and tosses it to him. “We’ve been fucking played, is what. I pulled that from Val Aldo’s office half an hour after finding out she had taken leave, without so much as a fucking word.”
Luke blinks, turning the datachip over and over in his hand. It’s unmarked, conspicuously so— not even a label or insignia to identify it by. Puzzled, he looks up at Leia, cocks his head. “What was on it?”
“What wasn’t on it, is the question— confidential information, trade agreements, patrol routes, banking codes, correspondence—”
“Correspondence?”
Leia stops pacing, looks from Luke to the datachip, back to Luke. “You know I wouldn’t ask this of you if I had any other choice, Luke.”
And he’s known— always known, from the moment he met her— that the tone of voice she’s using means business, means desperation, means there’s no one in the world she trusts more than him with the severity of what she’s about to say. He’s already made up his mind before she opens her mouth again.
“Her contact— it’s an old Imperial base, we thought it was defunct, but— I need you to go, get off-world without being seen, I can’t have this come back to me.”
“Where’s the base?”
Leia’s expression falls, turns hard and stony.
“Leia,” he says, gripping the datachip so hard he thinks his fingers might bruise. “Where’s the base?”
“Dathomir.”
He’s out the door without another word. It’s only when he’s leaving atmosphere, tucked behind the controls of his X-wing like he’s never left, that he realizes he’s forgotten to say goodbye to Din.