EXPLORATION ARC: PART 8 - LESSONS
A/N: Apologies for the delay! I struck a bit of writers block between these last two parts and there was a few weeks there where I was trying to rework them to read well. Thankfully, we've gotten there now! And while this and the next (final) Exploration Arc part were supposed to be one chapter, I decided to split them for better impact and (hopefully) enjoyment.
Please see the notes at the end for explanations of lore mentioned and any creative liberties I've taken with it.
Word Count: 11k
Pairing: Din Djarin/Fem!Reader
Rating: 18+ (NO Minors)
Warings: SMUT! Unprotected sex, mentions of anal play (blink and you'll miss it), language.
Summary: It’s mighty hard to distract yourself from your mysterious and alluring shipmate, so why bother?
AO3 | Stitches Masterlist | Main Masterlist
Okay. Even you could admit that this was a bit immature.
Mando sat on the other side of the makeshift table in the hold with his arms folded over his chest haughtily. Your eyes narrowed dangerously at the obvious challenge he exuded silently—arrogantly, grating your nerves with his confidence and making your fingers twitch where they sat dutifully on your lap.
The child sat happily in the blue crab carapace with a stray credit in a clawed hand, oversized robes puddled around where he sat as large eyes turned from Mando to you distractedly amidst the many items littering the table between you.
“One minute? Seriously?” you scoffed, a critical eye scanning the dismantled blaster laid out before you. A F-11D blaster rifle, he told you—as if you knew the difference between any of them in the first place. Your cool façade easily hid the silent curse you hissed internally as you examined the sheer number of components that made up the rifle. Some of the parts so bizarre and ridiculous looking, you would have thought he threw them in just to mess with you had you not watched him dismantle it so proficiently before your eyes.
It had started when he noticed how long it took you to reassemble your own blaster after cleaning it—the long hours spent in hyperspace driving you to complete even the most tedious of tasks. Granted, your struggle was a direct consequence of how infrequently you actually cleaned the weapon, and Mando had been stupefied as he – quite out of character – paused whatever he was doing to take a seat on a crate close by to watch you.
“How does someone who can extract venom with their bare hands not know how to assemble their blaster in less than a minute?” he had said, abject disbelief and vague horror evident as he leaned one forearm onto the table—fingers rapping irritably on the surface as you huffed. You weren’t a soldier; you were a medic for Maker’s sake. You knew how to shoot, and you knew how to fly—but your time was much better spent tending to people than weapons thank you very much.
“You’re telling me you can assemble every single one of your blasters in less than a minute?”
You threw back pettily, clicking the scope of your blaster back in place – finally – and checking the safety to ensure it was on. Realistically, you knew if anyone could succeed in such a feat, it would be an infamous bounty hunter who had been raised in a culture of warriors. But you wanted to be contrary, simply because you couldn’t assemble your own in that amount of time. You didn’t know anyone who could.
“I wouldn’t deserve this armor if I couldn’t,” he didn’t rise to the bait, pride puffing his chest as his shoulders rolled back in lazy dismissal—leaning back against the wall of the hold with legs spread arrogantly and—you couldn’t help it.
You snorted – “we’ll see” – and stood, the subtle tilt of his helmet in your direction to follow your form as you sauntered to his weapons chamber with the bolstered pretense of confidence you most certainly were not feeling.
Throwing open the doors, you were greeted by the intimidating arsenal. Racks and stands were filled with countless weapons, some you recognized, most you didn’t. You were far more comfortable dealing with the damage these things caused than the blasters themselves. You chewed your lip distractedly; you would take dealing with a blaster burn or an internally ruptured bullet casing any day. Fingers tapping idly on the doors you still held onto as ignorant eyes examined weapon after weapon, the heavy coal of his gaze burned warm and curious on you.
Finally settling on a rifle – black and white and infinitely complex looking – you gingerly removed it from its rack. You may not know a whole lot about weaponry, but you did know the devastation they caused—and therefore, knew to respect them. It was heavy. Much heavier than you thought it would be. It looked so much lighter when Mando so effortlessly pulled it from over his shoulder to load and aim or when he carried it for days on end while hunting. But it weighed frigid and unyielding in your arms as you brought it over to the warrior and set it on the table before him.
“Show me then,” you dared him with a glint of competitiveness shining in your eyes, lips quirking in playful anticipation as his visor turned from your face to the chosen piece.
He ran a hand over the length of it slowly, reacquainting himself with the weapon through the simple touch—greeting it, reaffirming its loyalty. It was a mesmerizing caress; one you might miss had you not been so attuned to his movements—and you were distinctly reminded that it was the man and his skill that made such a weapon dangerous.
“On one condition,” he countered, resting his elbow on the table after removing his hand, “you learn to assemble your own blaster in less than a minute.”
Stubborn, insufferable man—
Mando liked to get his own way. He was making your acquiescence an ultimatum to your challenge that suggested his claim wasn’t possible. Oh, he was too fucking smart, you thought with begrudging respect—the warrior backing you into a proverbial corner where a flare of attraction rippled up your spine at his strategy.
You could practically hear the smirk on his lips when the realization passed visible over your expression.
“Fine,” you agreed, conceding to his condition and not a minute later, he proved you dead wrong.
Your jaw slacked when he dismantled the rifle in a few moments, his hands moving dexterously over the weapon—the metal practically falling to pieces with the simple touch of his gloved, expert hands. You never thought you would relate to a blaster before, but the way that weapon – cold and solid in your hands – seemed to melt under him, was eerily similar to whenever he had you panting under his touch.
Mando didn’t just disassemble the rifle in a minute. No, he disassembled it and reassembled it with time to spare, placing it in the center of the table with a satisfied noise that was captured by his modulator, posture proud as he leaned back.
You gaped, blinking owlishly at the weapon before you fixed him with a glare,
“So, I guess I chose an easy one,”
You knew you were grasping at straws, but he didn’t have to prove you that wrong by completing twice the work in half the time. He snorted, a string of his native language rasping from the helmet before he deigned to give – what you assumed was – a translation, “You try then.”
Fuck.
You rolled your eyes—bluffing, a tug of clawed hands at your pants leg drawing your attention down to scoop up the little green bogwing who had decided to grace you with his presence and sat him comfortably on your lap—large green ears poking over the edge of the table that sat just low enough for him to barely see over.
“You said it was an easy one,” he continued, using your pitiful argument against you and leaned forward slightly on his forearm—his body language open and virile, daring you with rolling testosterone and a decisive tilt of his helmet on broad shoulders, “reassemble it in a minute, and I’ll give you a reward.”
“An orgasm?” you teased coyly, the chuckle of dark, heady laughter sending a thrill of arousal through you as he settled back in his seat languidly, turning a simple crate into a throne,
“Perhaps something else,”
“What something else?”
“Won’t matter if you don’t try.”
He had thrown the gauntlet now and call it a personal flaw—but even knowing you were hopeless at it, you were helpless to refuse such a blatant dare, picking it up with a curt nod. You couldn’t deny that hearing the rumble of “that’s my girl” lift from deep in the Mandalorian’s chest made even defeat an acceptable outcome, the stark pride he displayed stroking your ego and made you want to preen under it.
That was how you found yourself facing off against each other now with the child positioned between you like your own tiny little referee.
In a move of good sportsmanship, Mando had slowly dismantled the blaster—ridiculously slowly if you were being honest. Showing you each part he set down on the table in front of you, your eyes scanning the order, the placement—the movement of his hands and hoping it would be enough.
It wasn’t.
You failed three times.
One minute elapsed before you had even gotten part of the way done and every rasp of, “time,” made you growl in frustration.
“Oh well,” he sighed, not quite masking the amusement at having won the very rare prize of proving you wrong. He stood taller, looked refreshed and shinier in his beskar as he passed you by with a soft chuckle, his fingers spreading around the back of your neck and you lifted rebellious eyes marred with a petulant frown to the obsidian of his visor, “maybe next time you’ll win that reward.”
The swat you sent to his chest plate hurt your hand and your ego more than it affected him, but the husky laugh—warmed with an affection he couldn’t mask, soothed your willful temper, and had you dropping your eyes back to the disassembled rifle parts. He didn’t attempt to rebuild it himself. He knew you wouldn’t let him. His fingers slipped away from your skin, the Mandalorian continuing towards the ladder where he had been heading before you distracted him.
Eyeing the parts, your attention flickered back to the kid, chewing happily on his credit, and cooing excitedly when you caught his eye,
“Keep time for me, cutie—we got this.”
It might have taken hours, and countless pinches and nicks of metal catching the skin of your fingers from trying to work too fast—but eventually, you managed to get the assembly down to a fine art if you did say so yourself. You squealed excitedly, no one around but you and the child anyway—when you slotted the scope in place just as the stopwatch on your comm passed the minute mark.
“Beautiful!” you exclaimed happily, picking the child up to hold up in the air – much to his enjoyment – before you cuddled him close to your chest with a bubble of laughter, pressing a kiss to the top of his wrinkled head while he nuzzled his cheek into the top of your breast, “we did it, shorty!”
Your excitement was infectious, feeding into itself along with the soft chirps from your little assistant as his ears wiggled joyfully, little nose scrunched adorably that you simply had to kiss his head again. There was an innocent joy to the accomplishment, one that granted, started out of spite—but ended in a task that genuinely challenged you. One that ignited the same part of your brain that was so accustomed to triage, just in a different capacity—a fun one.
It was refreshing, and you were proud of yourself. It ignited a familiar hunger for more, to test yourself—you wanted to see how quickly you might be able to complete your own blaster now in comparison to hours earlier. The thought was only tempered by the growl of your stomach—the noise echoed in the gurgle of the child’s.
“Oh… after dinner then,” you chuckled, standing up with the child notched comfortably in your arm to make your way to the small galley. You were completely unaware of the warrior standing just over the ladder on the upper deck—curiosity at the laughter he heard prompting him to investigate. The soft humming as you worked, pulling out a pan to heat powdered bone broth—your happiness exuding in the popular Pamarthan song, lyric-less and casual stirred an airy lightness in his heart and he smiled, unknowing and small, thinking he would very much like to see you that happy always.
That night, you fell onto his chest with a cry—nails curling into the pillows of his pectorals as his hands held the soft flesh of your ass down onto him. Several short, exhaled moans left him as he spilled his seed snug against the nest of your womb, your thighs trembling from the vigorous exertion of riding him before he took over pounding into you from beneath.
Soft rasps of your name—of kitten… so good for me—into your neck where his mouth magnetized with a possessive, steadying hand to the back of your head had you lifting your hips finally with a whimper for his length to fall from inside you. The wet slap of his cock against his navel and the quivering gape of your cunt suddenly lamenting its loss was soothed with the lethargic, burning swipe of his tongue over your sweat stained collarbone.
His free hand pressed up along the arch of your spine, making you feel small with its size—his lips engulfing a taut nipple, breath hot and labored—devouring you with the shattered ecstasy of his desire, unbridled and constant. He would have taken you again already if his body was only able to catch up in time with his arousal, your own – cloud-soft and delicate – sparked with lightning infused caresses that could easily turn into a storm.
“Mm… nice reward—” you purred – proud as the tooka who caught the titterling when he returned to the hold and saw the reassembled weapon – and rocked your hips in slow circles over his groin, his hands heavy and flexing on your ass, that languid—satiated thrum of pleasure indulging your afterglow as you rolled off him.
You relaxed into the nook of his side after several long moments where you basked in the glow of his unrestrained affection, when his mind had yet to wake up from the high of his orgasm and his words fell in a mix of Basic and his native tongue. You loved it. Titbits of translation interspersed for you to piece together praise and non-sensical murmurs he licked onto any piece of your body he could get his mouth and hands onto.
The responsibilities and burdens fell from him – from both of you – in those moments, and you were addicted to it, to each other. Stronger than spice, it curled through your senses until all your nerves were humming pleasantly in response to his ministrations. Your eyes fluttered tiredly, cheek dropping to his shoulder and with a relieved sigh, his muscles sagged – ragdolled and boneless – unable to even brush away the damp locks of hair falling into his eyes.
Beyond your own pleasure, you were addicted to the relief you felt roll off him. He rasped something into the darkness, breathless and foreign—a reverent whisper of words you ached to know.
Sleep took a back seat to curiosity once more, a regular occurrence in your life.
“That language you speak,” you began, words muttered quietly into the small space between where you lay facing him on the thin mat that made up your bed. It was one of those rare, uniquely special moments when you could sense the solid wall of stoicism and taciturn crumble away before him.
Mando felt attainable in those moment.
He had an arm trapped beneath your body, embracing you loosely—keeping you in his arms despite his fatigue. His fingers idled along the dip of your spine, stepping over vertebrae, the sweep of his thumb painting wings to the bone. The air disturbed, his head lolling to the side to look in your direction, the bump of his nose to your forehead making you hum contentedly when he followed his noses’ path with a kiss.
“Mm?” he huffed against your skin.
Ah. Maybe he wasn’t in such a sharing humor then. But you endeavored nonetheless,
“What is it called. That language?”
“Mando’a, you mean?”
Intrigue and perplexity colored his tone—made it light, a refreshing lilt to the husky rasp. His curiosity had been piqued, and that was a rare thing indeed.
“Mandoa,” you repeated, your own accent struggling over the pronunciation. It sounded nothing like Basic, even less like Pamarthan and you were certain you butchered it given the rumble of noise that rose from the Mandalorian as a result. Okay. You were woman enough to admit—it sounded nothing like the way it fell from his lips, like the curl of spice of your tongue, lifting flavors and colors of taste you had never experienced before.
“Hm…” you pondered into the silence, “what language do you think in?”
“What sort of question is that?” he snorted dismissively.
“I’m curious,”
“There’s a surprise,”
“C’mon Mando—you said my reward wouldn’t be an orgasm,” you practically pouted, well aware he didn’t actually owe you anything since you failed the initial challenge earlier in the day.
“Basic and Mando’a mainly—” he conceded with a sigh, knowing you wouldn’t be satisfied until you had the answer to whatever had captured that brilliant mind of yours this time.
His fingers continued their lazy exploration down to the small of your back, the rough pads of his fingers circling your tailbone and making your eyelids heavy. It felt the very definition of luxury, despite being on the floor of a ship with little more than each other for softness and warmth. The decadent brush of his hand on your naked skin, the crackling heat of his chest beneath your palm, the indulgent press of lips to mouth and skin.
You might have been in the Palace on Naboo – the one Biran had told you so much about – and you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Even with all the opulent extravagance and luxuries that would make an Outer Rim inhabitants mind spin.
He had turned his head back to the ceiling after answering you, the faint rumble of comfort vibrating under your hand as you stroked over his bare chest and down to where his free arm was draped over a naked abdomen. Over ridges of scars, the hardness of experience and softness of age, your fingers explored the landscape of his body and Naboo instantly paled in comparison. For all its famed beauty, you knew it would fall utterly short compared to him.
“Mandoa,” you tried again to a snort of derision from your less than enthusiastic lover, the noise daring you with a flare of competitive spirit to wrack your brain for more,
“What about that word you call him,” you recalled, a simmer of residual excitement filling your voice, rich—encompassing, the knowledge important to you in the way you were beginning to understand their significance to Mando.
“Mmh?”
“Adika, that word—what does it mean?” you clarified with a huff of impatience, eagerness dispelling fatigue from your gaze and sharpening your focus. He dropped his head to the side once more – the illusion of sight between you as he painted your features in his mind while your vision remained steeped in shadows defined by messy hair, a strong nose and sharp jaw. And lips… lips that felt full, expressive in their touch—his substitute for words.
A single exhale of a sigh, cavernous—deep, left those lips in the next moment,
“Not adika, kitten—ad’ika,” he hummed in amusement, the word rolling liquid smooth off his tongue. It ignited a shiver of firecrackers to run mercilessly down your spine at the attractive growl his voice always lowered into whenever he spoke Mando’a, primal familiarity that thickened his accent, emboldened his speech, “say it.”
You flushed, put on the spot.
Tongue wet across your lip; you felt his anticipation—his intrigue. His desire to hear you speak his language.
“Ad’ika,” you mimicked his pronunciation, a poor caricature of his fluency but the hand that had migrated from your spine to rest on the arch of your hip squeezed it,
“Good girl…” he purred, the slow grin on his face evident in his tone.
“What does it mean?” you asked to cover the flush on your cheeks, trying to ignore the flurry of butterflies in your stomach at being praised for such a thing. Bantha balls. But his praise affected you, and you should have been more conflicted by the power it held over you—but his words were potent, stronger than aged Port in a Storm and even more intoxicating.
It was a fruitless exercise anyway, to conceal his effect on you.
He had felt your walls clench and flutter around him in helpless bliss, his cock soaked in a flood of wetness whenever he spoke as he fucked you. Heard the keening whines against his neck when he rasped how well you took him and the whimpers for him not to stop. It was no secret between you what talking – him talking – did to you. The filth that fell from those usually reticent lips, how it captivated you. How you captivated him in turn with your reactions.
He didn’t respond immediately, content to mull over his answer—chew the translation, the meaning and whether or not he even wanted to tell you. He spoke rarely, and never without saying precisely what he meant. You had learned to wait, despite your impatience. When the pause stretched longer than you anticipated, and the steady rise of his chest remained consistent—you wondered if he had fallen asleep.
He hadn’t.
“Child. It means child,” he muttered huskily, the treacle thick undercurrent of his voice stalling your fingers trailing absentmindedly along his sternum, finding the tail end of a short scar that stretched up towards his collarbone.
“A child, or your child?”
Silence.
A fiery lick of danger heightened your instincts, a primordial reaction to the sudden stiffness of the man in your bed. You knew you were toeing a line rarely touched let alone crossed, and the immediate tension in the corded muscles of the arm that held you proved it.
As though in tune with that base instinct, came another—stranger spike of instinct you had never encountered before. A sharp thrill settling low at your navel—to mention his child in any capacity where you were naked in bed with him, his cum slowly trickling out of you. The frisson of awareness that rippled through you caught you off guard—but you didn’t have time to regret the circumstances or abysmal timing thankfully as he answered,
“Both.”
It was the tremor of hesitancy when he spoke however, that told you which definition he used when calling the child ad’ika and it plucked at a part of you long since dormant, a fragile recollection of familial love you could recognize in him. You smiled a little, idle fingers dancing down over flat nipples and along the ticklish side of his ribcage, thinking.
“When he learns to talk… what will he call you?”
Whatever sensitivity you worried about before was nothing to the way he marbled beneath you now—as rigid and unmoving as his armor that lay close by, vacant of its master. Every muscle freezing as though cast in carbonite and it was only your knowledge that he was a living, breathing being that stopped you believing he was a statue.
Breath held, you lifted your fingers to graze against the sharp line of his jaw, soothing—gentling, “Just the word, Mando… nothing more,” you whispered with a languid kiss pressed to the tight muscle at his traps, letting your lips linger on pleasure stained skin when you felt him suck in a breath.
“Buir,” he rasped.
“Buir--?” you mimicked once more, lifting your head from its resting place, focused on getting it right. The shaky exhale he couldn’t silence, that tension vibrating from his muscles that felt more at home in the middle of a battle than in bed with you—all pointed to a deeper meaning than what he might try to convince you of.
Father.
He didn’t need to translate that one. You knew.
He swallowed thickly—throat sandpaper dry, and you felt him shake his head,
“Listen to the beginning, kitten—buir,” he emphasized, bringing his free hand up where it lay draped across his stomach to cup your jaw, thumb brushing beneath your kiss-swollen bottom lip. They parted under his caress, his voice a soft growl when he spoke—closer to you now, close enough to feel the last vestiges of his breath disturb the air, “don’t think too hard, and try again… buir.”
You frowned. The roll of vowels was deep, water-logged—rumbling as he repeated it, your lips following the movement silently before trying again, “Buir?”
The growl of satisfaction you were rewarded with was made sweeter by the press of his wide palm into your lower back, bringing you flush against his side—not a sliver of gauze thin enough to fit between you when he rasped against your parted lips, “Again.”
“Buir…”
The word flowed easier this time, your tongue adjusting to the pronunciation as you breathed it against his mouth. He grunted his approval, hand forming around the back of your neck to bring your mouth to his finally in a lingering open mouth kiss. Mewl captured by his lips, his tongue coaxed yours to play with just the right amount of restrained intensity that had your body humming for more. Your mind, however, was more curiously tickled by the idea of a continued lesson,
“Tell me more…” you purred against his lips, heated and inquisitive, the synapses of your brain flaring with an intoxicating cocktail of curiosity and arousal. He shivered under your touch when you cupped his cheek, the rasp of his stubble prickling your palm while you held him in place to convince him with a peck to his lips, “I want to know more…”
“Mm… insatiable woman,”
The familiar chide sounded more like praise falling from his lips as he dragged artistic fingers down the canvas of your neck – decorated in his marks, unseen but known – to your shoulder. He followed a clear path down your arm slowly, the callouses on his hand making small shivers tighten soft skin to goosebumps.
“Irud,” he enunciated, fingers curling around your arm, showing you the translation without needing to be explicit. He knew you had brains to burn, liked to test them—liked to see you show off that sharpness.
Your eyes grew dark, your own smaller hand finding the girth of a bicep to press your fingers into—chewing your lip at the strength humming just beneath the skin, and scraped your nails lightly down to his elbow,
“Irud…” you repeated to a satisfied noise and a nudge of his nose to yours, a whispered “good girl,” muffled by your skin. You tried to repress the shiver. The smirk you felt form against your jaw let you know you failed.
Skilled fingers followed the direction of your arm, dancing over the back of your hand where it lay resting on his shoulder. He lifted it, your own hand engulfed in the size of his as he turned to press his mouth to your scar,
“Gaan,” he sighed the word like a healing balm, your hand turning—his lips grazing to the back of your hand so your fingers could glance down his palm with a softly muttered repetition. That same large hand cupped your cheek to kiss you again, the temptation to resist non-existent as you both lay entangled in the belly of the ship that groaned and buzzed with age and flight.
You laughed quietly when his fingers brushed over the ticklish point just below your breast before the sound caught. His hand pressed flat against your stomach, low and intimate—fingers spread wide across the expanse. It was primal. It was possessive. It made a tightness coil low in your stomach right below his hand. Fuck, you wondered if he could feel it. It remained where it was for a beat, the muscles in his own body tensing before he muttered roughly,
“Epan.”
Instinct made you drop your hand to cover his, a gentle pressure on your stomach making your lips part where his own rose to meet them, “Say it, kitten…” his voice was strained, thick like the gradually hardening length curved up towards his stomach.
“E-epan,” you repeated as his hand pulled from under yours, a slightly quicker—jerky drag up your torso, his breathing heavier. Or was that yours? This lesson was fast becoming a challenge, your mind struggling to retain the sparse few words he had taught you when his hands made your most trusted weapon – your mind – short circuit and fog with arousal and a deep throb of emotion that clawed up your throat.
“Haalas…”
He cupped the weight of one of your breasts in hand, engulfing it in his palm and no doubt feeling immediately how your nipples hardened to peaks beneath it. Loathe to part from the soft flesh, he eventually spread his fingers to the valley between them, pressing into your sternum lightly. Your own hand mindlessly followed—finding the wide, warm expanse of his chest with a sigh of “haalas…”
He remained where he was, the strong flat of his palm pressed against your chest—the rapid thump thump thump of your heart betraying your feelings for him. Your own fingers escaped up his collarbone to his neck with the tremble of an exhale—a startled fawn in the brush.
Mando caught your hand as it moved, and something shifted. You couldn’t be sure of what it was, but the air was suddenly charged. Static, weighted with an electric heat as he pushed himself up onto his elbow to hover over you. Pulling your hand up the rest of the distance, he stalled before cupping your hand over his cheek once more, a grazed kiss to the heel as it met his skin.
“Din,” he whispered quietly.
Your thumb brushed aimlessly over the arch of his cheekbone, eyes tracing uselessly over the darkened shadow that was the only means to distinguish where he was against the backdrop of inky blackness in the hold—constructing the features your fingers touched in your mind.
“Din?”
That fell from your tongue easier, lips curling into a smile at pronouncing at least one of them correctly. You liked it. It sounded… different, at least to the other words of Mando’a he had taught you. It didn’t have the flare or growl or spice of the others. It was… earthy, and yet—wind chimes in a sea breeze—both light and heavy, a paradox of a word. The duality of the sound tickled your interest that you had to say it again,
“Din…”
He shuddered, a full-bodied, soul deep shiver that escaped in a sharp exhale as your thumb brushed over the swell of his bottom lip—his nose turning down into your wrist, and you could hear the dry swallow that forced its way down his throat.
“What does it mean?” you asked for not the first time tonight, the flutter of lashes against your fingers when his eyes fell shut prompting you to speak. The overwhelming presence of him crowding in over you was offset by the heated open mouth kisses he left along your wrist. Your pulse stammered and jumped under his actions and a ripple of affection you struggled to hide in recent weeks reared in you and threatened to spill over.
“Me…” he whispered finally, lifting his head from your wrist to drop his nose into your cheek, “Din Djarin… means me.”
Few things in life ever took you by surprise, and even less rendered you speechless. A strength as well as a flaw for a mind that rarely stopped racing. But yours emptied in that moment. Emptied of everything except the tunnel view focus it had on a single fact, a single truth that meant more to you than you could have ever anticipated as it choked you with an emotion too terrifying to name, every part of you filling with sunlight and warmth amidst the frigid darkness.
The Mandalorian told you his name.
His real name.
A name given to him by a mother, maybe a father too. When life hadn’t yet crushed the innocence of youth that you realized even he must have experienced at one time—when the cruelty of the galaxy hadn’t scarred him with reproval and mistrust for the armor he wore and the Creed he followed.
A name you felt in the runic scriptures he painted on your skin with his mouth and body since the first moment he touched you. They suddenly translated before your eyes, the non-sensical tracing of his tongue in archaic lettering to form a single brand of his name on your body.
Din.
It sounded familiar… it sounded right.
“Din Djarin,” you whispered, the roll of consonants lifting from your tongue smoothly, as though you had spoken it all your life. As the last syllable dripped honey sweet from your tongue, there was suddenly no other name you could imagine him having. Din Djarin. You repeated it again, the shuddering nod you felt from him as his hair brushed your forehead hitched your breath as he cupped your jaw possessively,
“Again…” Mando – Din – rasped hotly, breath mingling and quickening in the adrenaline fueled haze of hearing his name spoken by you. Finally—relief filled him, an ache that had been tormenting him since that first moment he heard you moan Mando from outside the fresher months ago, healed. His real name…
“Din…” you smiled around the name, and he heard it. His hearing pricked as much as the goosebumps on his skin at your breathy sigh of a name he hadn’t willingly offered in decades at-- your fingers spearing up through a mop of shaggy waves, “kiss me, Din Djarin.”
He was a goner. He never dealt in absolutes, but if there was one truth he could ever be convinced of, it was that; he never stood a chance.
His groan was lost in your mouth, a frantic tug of your fingers in his hair to feel him against you. You lost yourself in the hungry curl of his tongue around yours, sucking it into his mouth—the lap of it against your teeth and the way he sank his own into your bottom lip. You found yourself feverishly whispering his name with every break of your lips, a hurried, desperate “Din—” more important than air, to catch up on the weeks, the months of crying out for him, of falling apart under him.
Your fingers clawed down the back of his neck as he kissed you as though he had seconds left to live, desperate to leave part of himself inside you to remember him by always. As if you could ever forget him. As if you could ever be without him…
The realization made you whimper wetly into his mouth, a tremor of fear at the implication of your feelings ricocheting in the hollowest parts of your being, making it whole again. You buried it in the plunder of your tongue in his mouth when he coaxed it in. The hand that wasn’t supporting his weight from crushing you tangled in your hair at the back of your head to keep your mouth on his,
“Never… never stop saying it, kitten—please,” he moaned quietly, the desperate tone of need—a need you had never heard from a man so singularly capable, independent, and self-sufficient. But he needed you, you had something he could never give himself. An acknowledgement, a recognition of his very existence—a desire for him, for Din Djarin. It took you off guard, but you nodded—whispers of “never… never—Din,” mouthed against his parted lips that broke away from yours just enough to speak.
“S-sirbur ner gai, mesh’la—”
The Mando’a slipped from his lips and coated you in hot wax, searing—enticing, awakening nerves you never knew could experience pleasure as he rolled you onto your front. . You panted—propping yourself on your elbows, the delirious weight of his body hovering above you. He braced his arms either side of yours after pulling your hair away from one side of your neck – “so beautiful, ner baar’ur” – so he could graze his teeth over the smattering of marks he left hours and days earlier,
“Wh—what… what do you call me in Mando’a, Din?” you mewled, the urge to hear him speak Mando’a more, to hear that intimacy rasped in unknown words across your skin while you panted his name like a devout response to the prayers that sank to the very core of you, branding you as his.
“So many things, kitten—”
He held his body over you, feeling the hum of power in his arms as they tensed either side of you and the heat that radiated from him. The press of solid thighs settled between the cradle of yours, trapped them open—his lips moving down between your shoulder blades and the heavy, blunt head of his cock nudged between your cheeks. Frissons of arousal spiked lethargically through you; your thighs aching to clench together for friction prevented by the strength of his own when he dropped one hand down to stroke his cock between your cheeks.
“Atin,” he growled, scraping his teeth down the winged arch of your shoulder blade.
You gasped, head falling forward between your shoulders where you held yourself up when the weeping tip ran over your tight, untouched rear entrance—the warrior stalling his movements to let his length hang heavy against it, rocking his hips slowly to your quiet whimpers at the sudden ripple of pleasurable awareness—a hazy mixture of confusion and anticipation before he led himself down to your dripping pussy. You almost wanted to tell him to go back, to take you there too.
That thought vanished the moment he slid into you—swollen and already full of his previous release that soaked his cock anew and dripped from you at the intrusion. You keened, your body welcoming him back into you eagerly despite the tightness of the position and your muscles trembled at the throb of him pulsing hard and thick against sensitive walls.
“Mand—Din…” you whimpered, the thrill of his name making your walls clench impossibly tighter, his gasp muffled against your shoulder where you were arched up under him, “s-so big…” and he pushed in deeper, flush against your ass as he filled you completely with a harsh curse,
“Mirdala,” he continued, pulling out of you halfway and sinking back into you hard, splitting your walls around thick veins and solid inches that grazed over nerve endings that blossomed heady spores of pleasure that misted in your mind. It begged you to push back up against him, to meet his thrusts—but the cage of his body, the iron weight of him he kept mostly off you restricted your movement, trapped you under him and made arousal gush around him at the thought. Every rasp of Mando’a into your ear made your quiver, your clit rubbing mercilessly on the mat under you as you were pushed up with every slow, hard thrust of his cock.
Mesh’la…” he whispered; teeth bared against your ear as rough moans followed.
You turned your head to seek his lips with a whisper of his name—the warrior helpless to refuse you, deny you anything now that you spoke his name so reverently, so desperately. Whispered into his mouth like it was the only word you needed for the rest of your life, a cacophony of meaning etched deep in his mind—into his very soul, making him wonder why all this time—he wanted to erase ‘Din Djarin’, when it sounded like that on your tongue.
“Fuck, baby—” he slammed his hips down onto you, wedging pleasure deep into you with every wet slap of skin on skin and your hand shot out to brace on the closest crate to stop from being completely pushed off the mat – like that, kitten? Yeah? – the grip of his free hand under your jaw keeping you arched back against him, those husky pants into your mouth while damp locks of hair brushed your forehead, “take me so well, fuck—made… made for me—”
You mewled your agreement, a garbled babble of yes yours… yours -- as he released your jaw to spread one of your cheeks wide to let him pound into you faster, harder—losing himself in the tightness of your cunt and pliant body—those incoherent demands for more – harder, Din—please… - and with a purposeful angle down of his hips, he slammed against that devastating spot inside you repeatedly, trapping you with his body from squirming at the sensitivity while you sobbed into the mat.
One large hand, coiled power and devastating strength struck cobra fast to pin your wrists to the mat above your head—both your wrists claimed by the span of his palm, leverage for him to ruin you—to split your walls around him so brutally, his would be the only cock able to satisfy you. Your cheek leaned against the warrior-rough skin of his bicep – irud – you remembered deliriously, strings of moans and matchstick fire spasms of sensitivity wracking you in cries against his skin.
“C’mon, kitten—take it,” he growled, lowering his face to your neck as his thrusts shortened to rapid snaps, hardly leaving your soaked core before he was burying himself back inside you. Rutting into you ferociously, the intensity punched sounds from your throat and snarls from his. Cresting—your orgasm approached quietly, the friction of the mat rub rub rubbing against your swollen clit and the brutal force of his cock blindsided you to the edge you tumbled off suddenly.
Your orgasm took him by surprise—if the choked moan and stutter in his pace that he failed to mask was anything to go by, back bowing over you with the sudden clench—the flood of wetness and snap of pleasure that hit him. His hips slowed, forcing his way through spasming contractions as you cried his name,
“Din!”
You babbled it deliriously, cut off with a sob when his hand tangled in your hair—pulling your head back, back bent deliciously under him, pliant to his wishes,
“Again,” he snarled ferally, voice thin and strained, close, close, so close—your bodies slick with sweat and overheated from the rapid pump of hormones and bliss through your veins that had you begging for him, “sirbur, kitten.”
“Din, fuck—it’s so good…” you whimpered, his thrusts becoming more erratic with every breach of his length through that soaked channel. His slick chest brushed your back, tightening his hold to a bruise on your wrists and prompting you to lean back enough to glance your lips across his jaw, “cum for me, Din-- please.”
He whimpered and released your wrists to anchor into your hip as he stalled. A quiet, rough sound when he filled you, pumping into you with short violent bursts to bloat you with the sheer amount of cum that pushed out of you in a steady trickle around his cock. His muscles shook, forehead dropped to your shoulder as his pelvis jerked up against your ass, the last trickle of release leaving him, air suddenly silent from the wet slaps and obscene squelching—your soft praise and those healing fingers that soothed more than just his physical injuries reaching back to card through his hair.
“Din,” you gentled, the shiver you felt under your fingers melting your heart.
How long had it been?
He shifted enough to ease out the heft of his softening cock from you with a grunt. He was an insatiable lover, leaving you sore and chafed, but it was an addictive ache—one that made you whimper as he left your quivering pussy, slick walls still flexing fluidly to keep him – keep his seed – inside you. A thick string of your combined release dragged between your thighs, leaving you both messy in each other.
“My perfect girl…” he whispered into the crook of your neck when you dropped your cheek back onto the mat, massive body still shielding you as he fought to regain his breath. Your eyes fell to half-mast as you preened, holding him to the welcome hearth of your pulse, nails scraping lazily against his scalp as he tongued against the ruthlessness of his passion—easing the divine throb and ache and stain of his body on yours.
His softening cock passed wetly between your cheeks, making you both acutely aware of the mess—a hot kiss pressed under your jaw, and you released your hold on his hair, locks passing liquid smooth through your fingers as he pulled away to get cleaned up.
A good thing too. Your mind was still playing catch up as your chest heaved. He always left your mind klicks away from where you floated in bliss, the man having a single driven goal of leaving you sated no matter when he bedded you. If it was all night or a quick fuck in the cockpit—you were always left stumbling and dizzy from his fixation on your pleasure.
It wasn’t the first time you thought yourself lucky.
You whimpered as you turned over heavily, dead weight onto your side for your eyes to follow the sound of him walking towards the fresher. You loved the sound of his footsteps, it made ghostly shadows solidify in the darkness, made him all the more real. A fact you wouldn’t need to worry about when he opened the fresher and turned the light on before the door had fully closed after him.
Your heart stalled, tripping over itself in your chest.
It was for less than a second, but the door latching closed before you could even slam your eyes shut.
Harsh light outlined the back of his body before it disappeared behind the shutting door. Rich, tawny skin stretched tight over solid thighs and an attractive ass you hadn’t seen before—scars and sculptors cut defined his back and narrow hips, broad shoulders winged and intimidating.
Your heart hammered guiltily, why didn’t he put it on?
If even for a moment—you caught a glimpse of the mop of waves that curled over the back of his neck, mused and messy from your hands. He had hair that said he had just been fucked. He must have been as out of it as you were, because Mando – Din – never turned the light on before the door hard sealed shut, nearly always pulled his helmet on to be safe. But not this time.
What… what was he thinking?
You thanked the Maker silently you only saw his back, and you reasoned it was gone in the blink of an eye— and when the fresher door whirred open once more, it had already been plunged into darkness, the Mandalorian quietly making his way back to lean back on his hip by your side without a word of acknowledgement regarding that near slip up—his nose finding your damp temple with a rasp of Mando’a muttered into your ear,
“Ner mesh’a kitten…”
He swept the cloth between your thighs, a hollow gasp as it brushed through swollen folds and his rumble of comfort was accompanied by a graze of his mouth over yours, his moustache and sparse beard sanding over your cheek. You sighed his name, lost in the sound of your breathing when you caressed his cheek, the warrior docile and almost vulnerably sweet as he turned his lips to kiss your palm,
“Mm—wanted to hear you say that for months,” he admitted, fatigue slurring his words slightly after he settled in behind you—cloth disposed by the side of the mat.
“Months?” you whispered breathlessly, taken by surprise despite your own tiredness and the constant replay of his back in your mind you were unable to stop if you tried.
“Mmh,” he confirmed with a grunt, pulling you back against his chest—his nose hidden in the tangles of your hair you would no doubt be cursing in the fresher tomorrow—the scent of your shampoo surrounding him, lulling him.
“Why now?” you asked, your fingers folding over the back of his hand that draped over your ribcage, his fingers spreading to lace with yours loosely. He was silent – asleep you believed – and you had accepted you weren’t going to get an answer as his breathing steadied behind you. His thumb rubbing absent circles beneath the swell of your breasts tempted you towards sleep as well, your lids dropping closed while nestling back against the wall of his chest comfortably.
But as you drifted off, mind wandering into the land of nod—his lips parted against your hair, and perhaps it was a dream—or perhaps it was real. Maybe you would remember when you awoke a few hours later, or maybe it would be just another secret the Razor Crest would keep hidden in aged metal and wiring, but in whispered tones—softer than you had ever heard him, he murmured,
“Because I want you to know me…”
Information was the last thing Din was expecting when he woke up an hour after you fell asleep wrapped in his arms. Not used to spending long stretches of time asleep, he often found himself simply resting and relishing the feel of you. The scent of your hair, the softness of your skin—that delicate heat that balanced the inferno of his own body. He spent hours a night like this, enjoying you-- awake or asleep.
The time he spent in bed with you was cut short that day, however, a few hours later—when the flash of the commlink in his vambrace beeped. A message. Seldom few knew Din as more than a fearsome shadow to beware of if there was a bounty on your head, and even less had means of contacting him.
The Guild.
Loathe to part from you, his task was made even harder with the soft, sleepy noise you made as you were disturbed—his arm slipping from under your head and a grumble of his name – Mando? – had you nuzzling deeper under the thin blanket he dragged up your body, your exhausted form settling back to sleep without an answer.
A wry grin tugged at his lip. He couldn’t expect you to get used to a new name immediately, even as he longed to hear you say it again.
The yellow light flickered again from his vambrace, the warrior grunting as tired muscles complained at him for sitting up to grab his helmet, the welcome weight settling comfortably back on his shoulders, and he chanced a glance back at you now that he was able to see. He shouldn’t have. A gentle innocence settled over you in sleep. He was conflicted over whether he wanted to curl back around you or wake you on his tongue so he could have you again. The bitter reality was that he could do neither.
He dragged the pants of his flight suit back on, the rest of his armor following suit. He could don it in his sleep, it was a routine he considered to be an extent on the functions his body needed to survive. Breathing, swallowing—clipping his armor in place, he needed it all.
With a single code for the Razor Crest typed into the central controls of his comm, he directed the message up to the cockpit to be received. Apart from not wanting to disturb your rest, it was likely his vambrace wouldn’t have the technological range to accept a message this far away from the source – if it was coming form Nevarro – and he would need to engage the ships long range satellite capacity to listen to it.
With a last glance at you curled up on a mat that suddenly seemed too vast without him there beside you, he left you to silently make his way through the hold and up the ladder into the cockpit. Had he known what he was about to receive, he would have stayed in bed with you longer, if only to prolong the wait before the inevitable hit.
Hours later, Din replayed the message again.
“Got a lead for you, call me back when you get this.”
His stomach churned nauseously, a bottomless sinkhole that dragged more and more of himself – silt and stone – into it with every word that echoed from the holographic figure standing in a halo of blue and white stemming from the old holo-projector that somehow still worked. That sudden… awareness of an emptiness—a hollowness prompted a panicked clench in his stomach and his mind to go into overdrive; find what was missing, was it important—could he survive without it, how could he fix it.
He replayed the message again instead.
“Got a lead for you, call me back when you get this.”
The transparent miniature of Karga lifted a hand from a slightly rotund middle in friendly greeting, the intel he was eager to share a misguided attempt to rebuild bridges that had collapsed between the two in the past. Little did the agent know, that the gesture sent the Mandalorian into a greater sense of turmoil, a crack of recollection shattering that disillusioned idea Din somehow found himself believing in—that life would continue the way it had been for the last nine months forever.
This lead—like all the others he had followed, might very well be the one to bring that life to an end.
A lead on his ad’ika’s people. A solution.
Din clicked his tongue resentfully—revulsion sneering docile lips. He was startled by the visceral rejection of his mind to the term. Not a solution.
The kid… his ad’ika wasn’t a problem requiring a solution. This was… an option.
A complication, his instincts hissed, the rock that sat heavy in his stomach becoming denser, larger—protective flames engulfing it and making it painfully hot. He had gotten used to worry. It had been his near constant companion since rescuing his ad’ika, but it was joined now by an intense roar of rejection that buckled the foundation of his resolve with frightening ease.
It confused him. Had he not been spending the last nine months – since the Armorer provided him with some information – chasing down leads on the sorcerers already? Following every tenuous connection to the Jedi he happened across? Risked his life for information in exchange for services or credits that always ended up being more trouble than it was worth?
Din tried to find them. He did. But still – even if he would never admit it out loud – in the deepest part of himself, he could accept that he approached news of those leads with increasingly less ardor, following them less frequently, and instead distracting himself with his ad’ika’s gentle chirps as he sat in his arms and your soft eyes whenever you caught him in such a position.
But… this was what he wanted. He had to remind himself every time he obtained any information, had to go the motions again—the logic and reasoning that were becoming harder to justify. This was exactly what he had been hoping for. Ever since he had taken the kid off Arvala-7, his life – his simple life – had been completely disrupted. His covert scattered, his ship in ruins half the time, his life nearly lost more often than he was comfortable admitting and his shoulders aching with the weight of responsibility he felt to do right by his foundling.
Shoulders that were more often than not soothed by firm but gentle hands that stroked over bare skin each night as he found himself burying that frustration, confusion and conflict inside of you.
He tried to remember what it was he had been hoping for again, what he wanted when he set out with such purpose to find the people who a fifty year old baby belonged with. His mind badgered him relentlessly as he leaned his elbows forward onto his knees, shoulders hunched over – tense and suddenly feeling his age – as the shimmering lights of hyperspace danced across the metal of the cockpit, across the frozen impassivity of his helmet.
He had wanted to get back to the way things were before.
Din replayed the message again.
“Got a lead for you, call me back when you get this.”
The way things were before… supporting the covert, protecting the foundlings, upholding the Creed. Din frowned, the heavy line of his brow lowering over tired dark eyes from beneath his helmet, the hard lines of his triceps tight and uncomfortable.
What else? He challenged himself, what else was there before?
Little chirps and soft lips on his—no. No—that wasn’t there before.
Mischievous claws getting into hard to reach places and expert fingers carding through his hair—no. Not that either.
He lifted a weary hand to rub at the tension he could feel coiling at the base of his neck—travelling up in the tell-tale sign of an oncoming headache, a futile effort to relieve the inevitable pain.
Apart from the scarce, coincidental run ins he had with you in previous years, neither you nor the child had been part of Din’s ‘before’, he acknowledged bitterly, a scoff of self-deprecation and cynicism puffing sharp and ugly against the lip of his helmet. Any family either of you had—would despise him. His ad’ika’s for keeping him from them, dragging his feet in reuniting them and yours… yours—he snorted. Yours would hate him for doing filthy things to their daughter, their sister—their niece or cousin, as he wanted night after night. Makers Helmet, he didn’t even know if you had a family.
Din groaned; his helmet buried in the cradle of his hands—that was an entirely different headache altogether.
He replayed the message again.
“Got a lead for you, call me back when you get this.”
Memories of a giant mudhorn and a bloody thirsty Trandoshan played in front of his eyes when his lids closed, and he was helpless to stop the case his mind made against him. A purge trooper caught in the fire of his own flamethrower, the choked gasp of a friend as his ad’ika mistook a game for a threat. Who was Din – a wayward, decommissioned Mandalorian, whose life achievements amassed to the armor he wore and the ship he flew – to think he could raise a foundling with untold powers? Powers he couldn’t fathom, that stretched farther and deeper than anything the bounty hunter had ever anticipated existing in the known galaxy.
He couldn’t raise him.
If he couldn’t raise him in accordance with the Creed… then the kid couldn’t stay with him.
The realization, the truth of the matter made him feel ill, the collapse of walled glass he thought was made of stronger stuff but was as paper thin and fragile as the colorful glass art blown into shapes of animals and flowers; beautiful, useless and so easily destroyed.
There was a list longer than Din’s kill count of reasons why the kid was better off with his own kind no matter what the sentimental part of him might say. A part that had served him better dormant and unobtrusive. But it was the fact that not one of those reasons was illogical that really wounded the Mandalorian, a twist of the knife in the weakest point of his armor. Not one reason could be dismissed as unnecessary or an over-exaggeration.
He hated it.
It only served to reinforce the argument to fulfil his oath to his clan, to his foundling; reunite him with the Jedi.
“What will he call you when he learns to speak?”
Your voice from hours before – like fresh air whispering past his ears – rose in his mind. Din had blatantly ignored the position he had in the child’s life for months. A caretaker—a clan leader, but never a father. Never a buir. Saying that title… like telling you his name—it felt like bringing it into existence, making it a reality.
The kid’s buir existed because you acknowledged it so easily as fact. Din Djarin existed because you knew him, said his name—compelled him to test that possibility, that urge to know more-- flicking that light switch on a moment sooner than normal… He wasn’t sure he was ready to face either of their existence after they both suddenly materialized overnight.
Not overnight, the insidious side of his brain that liked to contradict and challenge him growled, you’ve always been his buir, and she’s always known Din Djarin.
And there it was.
The fear of being something to someone… to multiple someone’s, of being known—that scared the shit out of Din.
And yet, along the way, that’s exactly what Din had grown accustomed to in life. A life that still involved the danger of hunting criminals for the Guild, only now—he had a warm bed – well, a makeshift one – and a beautiful woman waiting for him when he returned. A mischievous little menace who watched him with such rapt awe, Din ached to be the person he saw reflected in those fathomless, wide eyes. A life where he wasn’t cauterizing knife wounds and slapping bacta on blaster burns. Where reprimanding words were countered with concerned, intelligent eyes and expert hands that relieved him of pains he never knew he was suffering so needlessly from.
When company replaced solitude, and the growing understanding that in place of lifeless beskar, and useless credits—Din finally had something worth protecting.
It made the fear that had struck him on Dantooine, strike all the harder now; if the child was gone, would you soon follow?
This was always meant to be temporary.
Din never made plans. Nothing beyond his next hunt—getting from the covert to the bounty to the drop location and back. He had been living his life with you and the kid in the exact same way, day to day—enjoying your company and your bed, your smiles, and your body as if this delicate little bubble all three of you fled the galaxy to maintain, could be sustained indefinitely.
It couldn’t.
All at once, Din knew a plan was exactly what he needed. A plan to reunite his ad’ika with his kind and you… he drew a blank. Would you return to Pamarthe? To another planet that would sap your energy and your talents in the useless pursuit of humanitarianism? To sacrifice yourself for the health of others? Hadn’t you done that enough in that fucking rebellion—
Din snarled, a feral slam of his fist into the arm of the pilot’s char—the creak of metal and leather complaining under the force of his aggression. It was your choice to go or stay, he respected you enough to know your mind was your own, and you never did anything against your will. At least in that he could be reassured.
It felt like the very bones of the Razor Crest were turning to dust around him, a bleak carcass if you both left it. The sanctuary it once offered – the formidable walls that kept him safe and secure and separate from the assaults of the outside world – became a haven, a home. Those walls of durasteel he used to protect himself, became invaluable for the protection they could offer his foundling, offer you—the clan he unwittingly became leader of; the clan he suddenly found grown to three instead of two.
The Razor Crest wasn’t the only thing that would feel like a carcass without the two of you…
What was a clan of one?
Nothing.
A clan of one was didn’t exist.
He tried to reassure himself futilely, the decades he had spent alone—how he proved his buir wrong; that the long loth-wolf could survive without the pack. He could do it again, survive. And yet, Din was made desperately aware that survival might not be enough anymore. Life. Longing. A future worth thinking about instead of merely existing from one day-cycle to the next.
Could he really go back to that isolation after having tasted a feeling he thought he had left to burn with whatever remained of Aq Vetina years before?
Din replayed the message again.
“Got a lead for you, call me back when you get this.”
This was all meant to be temporary, the logic of his former self whispered. This was a job.
His resolve solidified. A job. He always finished the job. And the job was getting his founding back with his people, back where he belonged—where he would at least have the chance to thrive, to live beyond the walls of the Razor Crest after decades spent in hiding from the Empire. The kid deserved that, and Din couldn’t be selfish anymore.
He couldn’t be selfish with either of you.
Erasing the message, he numbly typed in the memorized code into the holoprojector on the dashboard, a thick swallow and stiff fingers belying his hope that Karga might miss the call.
He didn’t.
The link was established with a boom of the agent’s voice, holographic arms outstretched in welcome and a smile. That familiar nausea roiled in his stomach.
“Mando! That was quick.”
Too quick.
Notes:
Mando'a Translation:
Ad'ika - son, child
Buir - parent, father
Irud - arm
Gaan - hand
Epan - stomach
Haalas - chest
Sirbur ner gai, mesh’la - say my name, beautiful
Ner baar’ur - my medic
Atin - stubborn
Mirdala - clever, intelligent
Mesh'la - beautiful
Sirbur - speak
Ner mesh'la kitten - my beautiful kitten
Port in a Storm - an extremely strong, potent fortified wine from Pamarthe. It hasa reputation for taking even the strongest of drinkers to their knees. Native Pamarthans can drink this easily, sometimes even before flying and sip it like it's no more than a fruit juice. Non-natives compared the experience of drinking the beverage "to consuming exploding fireworks, then a fireball that expanded like a star, and eventually settled on a supernova".
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