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“Could I talk to you a moment?”
Cara, flushed and smug from winning a spar against one of the Covert’s warriors looked up at her buddy and wondered why he sounded awkward. “Yeah sure Bud, let me just wipe the blood off my face first.”
“If you wore a helmet, you wouldn’t have to worry about split lips,” Mocked her opponent from where she was stretching and flexing the arm Cara had wrenched. Cara shot her a smirk and a rude gesture that earned some laughter from the Mandos who’d been watching the match. “Or the broken nose I was aiming to give you!”
“I knew it! You’re just trying to draw me in and make me put on the gear,” Cara accused good-naturedly. “You think I’ll pick up your Creed just ‘cause I lost a little raspberry juice?”
“Worth a shot!”
Cara shook her head, snickering. Din was hovering a little and she gave him an odd look. “Sup.”
“Talk. Please. Privately.” He said quietly, sounding oddly strained, almost uncomfortable. Cara frowned slightly at Din’s odd syntax, but nodded. Din gestured for her to follow. “You should probably have Korm’rk look at that to make sure Zita didn’t actually break your nose.”
Cara snapped her fingers, making Din start. “Korm-Rhhak… Damn it. I know exactly who that is, but his name just doesn’t stick in my head.”
“ Korm’rk ,” Said Din in a tone of amusement. “His name is a Mando’a drift, there’s a few noises in the back of the throat in our tongue that are hard to pick up in adulthood.”
“Yeah I can hear the noise, I just can’t say it. My brain keeps trying to call him ‘Corn,’ though.”
Din let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a nervous giggle. “Just… just call him ‘doc.’ He’ll respond to that.”
They turned a corner and Din brushed aside a long hanging curtain, stepping into some kind of chamber. Cara blinked, looking around. Sure, she’d heard offhand mention that the Mandalorians had their own medical ward, but seeing it was quite a surprise. She’d been in rebellion medbays with less organisation and stock. “Good to see you folks are just as fanatical about your organisation and cleanliness when it comes to your doctoring as you are with your weapons.”
“Why thank you,” Said a voice from behind a privacy screen at the back of the room. Cara recognized the voice as belonging to exactly whom she’d thought of when the name she couldn’t quite hold on to in her head, and was pleased by that. His voice hadn’t had the slightly mechanical quality that came with wearing a helmet with vocoder, so she supposed he’d had it off in there. After a moment, the Covert’s chief medical officer emerged from behind the screen, helmet in place, his all-copper gear shining dully under the lights. “Fist to the face?”
“You know it,” Said Cara cheerfully. “Nothing broken though.”
“I was.. Hoping to.. Talk to her in here. Privately… for a couple minutes after, too,” Said Din, still sounding uncomfortable. Both Cara and the medic turned to look at him. Din spat out a sentence in Mando’a that had Kor-mark (nope.That wasn’t right, Damnit.) tilting his head curiously.
“Hm, yes,” Said the medic, turning towards a counter and picking up a swab and a couple jars. “Well, you’re welcome to do that in here, probably better than out in the hall. It’s just Satrina and I in here.”
“Satrina?” Cara blinked in surprise at hearing that name. It’d been a while since she’d met someone with it, and she would’ve never expected to find a Mando using it.
“Yes?” Said another man’s voice. He poked out from the same privacy screen that the medic had. He was taller than the medic, but not as stocky or overtly muscular. He moved with a similar lithe grace as Din. Cara had spotted him around a few times, including affectionately headbutting at the Doctor’s helmet or shoulder, and knew that this was the medic’s husband, who she’d seen on occasion, but never met.
“Sorry, haven’t heard an Alderaanian name in a while,” she said. Satrina’s shoulders tensed slightly and Cara grimaced apologetically, thinking she might’ve inadvertently crossed a cultural line she hadn’t been made aware of. She made an indignant noise as Doc (that was his name now in her head because she would Remember That, and it was apparently appropriate to call him it.) used an antiseptic wipe on her cut lip before spreading what smelled like good bacta over her whole upper lip. Once he was done, she kept talking. “None of my business of course, just surprised. Don’t meet a lot of Satrinas, Carasynthias, Evaaans or Nashes anymore.”
“No, you don’t,” Said Satrina agreeably. He tilted his head at her. “I don’t have much connection to Alderaan. Just my name.”
Cara nodded her understanding. He didn’t owe her his story, and it was one thing she’d really come to appreciate about Mandalorians as a whole; they didn’t pry about your history. They were a gregarious group overall, they reminisced and told tales of times past, but they usually skirted personal history with delicate redirects of conversation, and she’d made a point to follow that example. It was something of a relief. She sighed, leaning on the nearest bunk and turning to glare at Din, who was no longer hovering, but still managed to radiate discomfort. “So. What’s got you worked up?”
“You need to stop sparring the way you have been,” he said in a rush. Cara raised an eyebrow at him, completely ignoring Doc’s snicker. She crossed her arms, leaning her hip heavily on the bunk. Din folded his hands in front of his mask and sighed. “You’re not… doing anything wrong, exactly but you’re missing out on some… cultural context.”
“Uh oh,” she said, because while she couldn’t tell where this was going, combining Din’s discomfort with the information that she’d been missing out on some social cue, likely for some time, was concerning. “What did I do?”
“Be yourself,” Interjected the medic cheerfully. Cara glanced over to see that he’d perched on the other bunk in the room, and was inspecting his husband’s vambraces, one of Satrina’s hands clasped between both of Doc’s. Cara scowled, at him, and he chortled. “Nothing you’ve done wrong, just a few Dikut’la in the Covert have been taking advantage of a few gaps in your knowledge because you’re nicer than asking questions.”
“Oh,” She said. “Yeah the only time any of you have taken advantage of me is cheating at the card games you’ve taught me, and I note that you’re one of the fuckers guilty of that.”
The medic laughed at her. Satrina shook his head, giving off the impression of a smile while looking down at what his husband was doing to his vambrace. Din let out one of his world-weary sighs. Finally he spoke again. “The problem is that, well... Mandalorian flirting looks and feels a lot like fighting to outsiders.”
“Okay?” she questioned. Then the meaning of his words and the probably context dawned on her. “Oh. Wait, are you saying your people have been hitting on me? While hitting me?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” she said eloquently, considering if she believed him. There were soft snickers from the couple across the ward, and she glanced over to glare at them, though neither Satrina nor his husband were actually watching the conversation. “Explain that.”
“You’ve seen me actually fighting,” Din said slowly. “First time we met we about killed each other. When Mandalorians spar, we spar the same way we fight. Cheap shots are fair game. Kicking someone in the balls doesn’t mean you lack honor, it’s just practical.”
Cara nodded agreeably. Made sense.
“But,” Din said, gesturing with his hands. “When we’re trying to impress a… romantic prospect and we’re sparring against them, it’s not quite automatic to fight… cleanly.”
Cara blinked, reflecting on a few of the matches she’d had against various Mandalorians. There’s been an absolute mauling of a match between her and Din the one time, she recalled punching for his groin, but he’d gone down so her fist hit his cuirass instead. That had been a brutal knock-em-down battle between them, moreso than the first fight they’d ever had when they’d each thought the other might be out to kill them. After that match, she had started getting more sparring offers from the Covert, but she’d just figured that she’d proven herself a worthy opponent.
Apparently her confusion was obvious, because Satrina spoke up with a tone of amusement. “Speaking as someone who learned the culture as an adult, our fighting is easily mistaken for flirting, and our flirting for fighting. Fighting means winning through almost any means, including grabbing your opponent in the genitals roughly to hurt them if you must. Flirting, you want to show off your warrior prowess cleanly, because that is the general metric on which we judge attraction,” He spread his arms cheerfully. “Since looks are a hard judge. You’ve seen Korm’rk and I spar, haven’t you?”
Cara laughed at him, though she was grateful for the explanation. She could detect a faint Alderaani accent under the harder Mando notes when he spoke now that she was listening for it, and she found herself very curious about him, but it wasn’t her business. It did make sense when he put it that way though, and she had, in fact seen him and Korm’rahk spar. She’d been impressed by the precise viciousness displayed between them, twisting around one another, each intimately familiar with how the other fought, and trying to bring damage despite that. Finally, the shorter, studier medic had lunged and brought his taller mate to the ground, and it had devolved into wrestling and punches, their helmets grinding together violently, but the shots remained within generally acceptable boundaries; no headshots, no groin shots, no aiming for existing weak points.
That was accepted sparring rules back when Cara had been with the Rebellion, so she hadn’t questioned it when Mandalorians sparred against her the same way, even though she had witnessed some absolutely vicious, dirty, smack-down bouts between them, and even participated in a couple against Din or Vizla. (Damn the big guy, last match he’d literally just used his size to smother her into submission.) But when they fought nicely against her, she’d just assumed it was because they didn’t know her as well, and she’d returned the favor.
“... your uh… people realize that I wouldn’t get the social cue, right?”
“Eh,” said the medic, who she’d long ago recognized to be a bit of a chaotic shit-disturbing personality. He was the kind of good-natured who could have you on your ass in the heartbeat that you blinked, something she suspected was necessary for someone who had to doctor people as averse to baring their skin as Mandalorians. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean certains don’t enjoy it anyway.”
“Harmless flirting,” Cara concluded with a long sigh, rolling her eyes to Din. “Because I wouldn’t pick up on it.”
“Yeah… Except a lot of people are starting to do it,” He said awkwardly, fingers tapping together. “And… well you are, uh…”
“Just spit it out, please.”
“What Djarin is too embarrassed to tell you is that you’re more or less the Mandalorian ideal of feminity and you need to take it down a couple notches,” Said Kerm-ark . “Before most of the Tribe tries to propose to you.”
Din bristled. “Korm’rk that is not what I was going to say to her and-”
“Its your own fault,” the Medic cheerfully retorted. Cara shook her head at them both, though she was a bit flattered by the general concept.
“Why is it Din’s fault? ‘Cause he brought me here?”
“No, it’s because he made it obvious that you two are only friends when someone asked how serious a relationship there was between you two,” said the medic with the utter glee that only came from a person who was telling the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help them God, knowing it would cause chaos. “If he’d indicated otherwise, you’d have been left alone.”
“Well I-”
Cara spoke over Din’s indignance, torn between consternation and amusement. “So what do you call what Zita and Savii do?”
“Youthful mooning,” Satrina replied, tone quite relaxed as he took his hand back from Kor’m-rock , his vambraces now shining in the light. He caught his husband’s hand and pulled it closer to himself and began to polish the other man’s gear as he spoke. Cara shrugged agreeably at the statement. Fair enough; most of of the Covert’s adults were in their mid thirties or above, as best she could tell by voice. Savii and her best friend were in their twenties and had, from what Cara had witnessed, permanent status as everyone’s baby sisters. She’d wondered about that near decade-long gap in age from the main group of adults, and then the fact that there were only two young adults with any other youngsters being mid-teens or less.
She hadn’t asked about that because she suspected the answer was very depressing. She hurriedly redirected her thoughts to the subject at hand. “Oh, so they think they’re being subtle with their crushes, huh?”
“Unfortunately so,” replied Kom-rhk regretfully.
“Zita was the one who split my lip here,” Cara motioned at her healing face. Both the Doc and his husband laughed good-naturedly at that.
“Yes, that’s… why I figured now’s the time to bring it up,” Said Din uncomfortably. “Because Zita… once she puts her mind to something, she will follow through on it.”
“Duly noted,” said Cara with a grin. “Thanks for the warning.”
He let out a long sight that might’ve been relief at her non-reaction to all the information. “And well, if she really gets into trying to court you, then you really should know what’s going on.”
“Sure. But riddle me this then, Djarin.”
“Yes?” He asked, tone and posture immediately wary. Kam’rak’s head swung around like a hound with a scent.
“Have you been telling me this whole conversation, that if I play my cards right, I could have a Mando harem?”
There was an indignant noise out of his vocoder, like he’d started to speak, but then couldn’t figure out what to say. The room’s other two occupants burst out into surprised laughter, the shorter lightly bonking his helmet’s forehead into the taller’s chestplate. Din cleared his throat several times, radiating embarrassment. Finally he managed to get his voice under control.
“Would you survive that harem, Dune?”
“Fair point, but what a way to go.”
“Cara.”