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“It’s a Walkman,” The junk dealer huffed in front of you.
You blinked out of your stupor to release a stunned, “Sorry?”, much to the chagrin of the impatient merchant scowling across from you.
“That thing you’ve been staring at for the past millennia, girlie. The Earth folk call it a Walkman,” The dealer pointed a dirty finger back down at the culprit of your daze.
Sitting amongst the haphazard display of disheveled and rusty metal parts was a single device that seemed to glint in the Nevarro sun against the pile of rubbish: a small, rectangular silver and navy blue box that was connected to a pair of orange head-listening devices. As you picked it up, curiously turning the light object over the palm of your hand, your thumb ran over indiscernible words that decorated the side of the box but had been faded by the cruelty of time and weather.
“What does it do?” You asked, giving a few experimental pokes to the triangle printed buttons on its edge.
The junk dealer glared. “Not much. It’s more of a collectible. It comes from the Outer Rims, off Terra. Earthlings used it for listening - to what I don’t know. That’ll be fifty credits.”
You dug into your leather bag, cursing under your breath. You wouldn’t have enough to pay for both the Walkman and your share of the meal that the Mandalorian had been planning on buying at a cantina nearby.
“Thirty credits,” You negotiated. The junk dealer recoiled.
He narrowed his eyes at you. “Forty-five or nothing.”
Tight-lipped and elusive as ever, the Mandalorian suddenly approached from behind you, a feather-light glove resting over the small of your back. The junk dealer’s eyes boggled, immediately shriveling in intimidation at the aggressive sight of glaring Beskar steel and the menacing arsenal of blasters draped over the bounty hunter’s armor. The Mandalorian tilted his helmet forward, briefly glazing over the merchant’s outpost of metal parts with little interest before focusing on you.
“We have to get back to the ship,” The Mandalorian said discreetly. “My ex-client might spot me, and we can’t risk him knowing that the Child is with us.”
And without a word, he turned and left for the Razor Crest.
You stifled a sigh before slamming your credits down on the junk dealer’s display, declaring rigidly, “Fourty,” before taking the mysterious device and leaving.
You caught the Mandalorian falling behind to walk alongside you. There were rare moments like these – the subtle brush of his gloves against your own fingers as you strolled and the fleeting hand that rested on the bottom of your spine when navigating through strange crowds – that you liked to keep to yourself.
When you returned to the ship, the Child’s ears raised as he heard his two guardians return to the ship and squealed from his pod, arms reaching out to you from beneath the blankets of his sleeping cot. You greeted him with a smile as the Mandalorian settled in his seat at the cockpit, scanning over some maps and settling the ship in companionable silence.
You removed the device you bought from the merchant from your bag and let the Child fiddle with the wires of the headphones that dangled over him. The Child giggled in delight as its almond eyes blinked at the strange object, attracting the attention of the Mandalorian.
“What is that?” The Mandalorian asked.
“Dunno,” You said. You pressed a button that said ‘PLAY’, and watched what looked like a rectangular tape roll inside the device. “Some kind of listening gadget called a Walkman. It looked interesting, I thought it might be a nice toy for the kid.”
Reserved and stoic as always, the Mandalorian simply nodded with the dip of his helmet before punching in some coordinates to set the ship in navigation.
You pretended not to notice the contemplative gaze your Mandalorian would send from his seat, or the way he would quickly look away whenever you glanced back to meet his eyes.
/
The Walkman plays music - you discover - just before your eyelids closed and you drifted off to sleep.
When you settled in your sleeping cot and wrapped the orange headset around your ears, letting your fingers run over the ambiguous buttons and clicking on the one with a triangle, the cassette tape rolled and music croaked into your ears like the mellow reverberation from a dusty record player.
The songs from Earth are in the same language that you and the Mandalorian share, albeit the music was a bit different. The instrumentals and vocals are alluring and romantic and soothe you to sleep as you lied against the blanket of your bunk, watching the sprinkle of stars shine through in the windows above as the Razor Crest cruised through the galaxy and a woman’s longing voice swirled and held you through the journey. The Child slept soundly in its hidden bunk across from you.
a few stolen moments is all that we share
you've got your family and they need you there
You glanced over to the cockpit where the Mandalorian sat, silently concentrated on directing the ship through the charts.
Your Mandolorian is quiet. He’s gruff and formidable and brutally unyielding. Or at least, he tries to seem so.
You’ve seen him wrangle his bounty without an ounce of feeling, shoot his targets directly through their chests, drag their body against sand and muck – all with the barest bit of sympathy and his trademark threat, “I could bring you in warm or I could bring you in cold.”
Whenever the two of you would stop to rest at a random bar during stops on your trips, strangers would ogle and shift uncomfortably in intimidation, whispering about the fiercest bounty hunter in the galaxy between bated breaths. If one was cocky enough to approach him and taunt in his face, the Mandolorian would simply remain seated, unbothered and oblivious to the provocation.
But one time, a Twi’lek had jeered at you from across a bar and you noticed the Mandolorian slightly cocking his head to the side, listening to the stranger smirk, “Now what’s a pretty girl like you tagging along with a warrior for? You keep him company, huh? Oh, I bet you keep him nice and warm.”
The bar had erupted in nervous laughter. You learned to be as unwavering as the warrior sitting across from you. The Mandolorian remained dangerously still.
“How much does he pay you for a single night? 400 credits? 500 credits? How much does it cost for a night with me, darlin’? I bet I can make you feel real g–”
And in a blur, the Mandolorian as out of his seat and sending the Twi’lek flying across the room, crashing into another table and left surrounded by broken glass bottles.
love gives you the right to be free
you said be patient, just wait a little longer
The warrior was rough around the edges, but you knew he could also be surprisingly considerate when no one was looking.
In few conversations, when you attempted to be playful with him, he’d simply scoff light-heartedly or let out a tut that resounded behind his helmet’s modulator. There were times when he’d reprimand you curtly, and would follow with a sigh whenever you stuck your tongue out at him childishly. On some occasions, he’d bite back with a sarcastic comment, harmless but snarky and making the both of you stifle the chuckles under your breath.
His laugh is quiet, and just as dark and smoky as the sound of his voice. Aside from the music, you think it’s one of your favorite sounds in the universe.
so i’m saving all my love
yeah, i’m saving all my lovin'
yes, i'm saving all my love for you
Before you fall into your slumber, the Mandalorian whispered, “Good night,” just as the tape continued to roll and lull into a song with a wistful voice singing of a small-town girl, a city boy, and a midnight train going anywhere.
/
“You’re going to catch a cold,” The Mandalorian advised after the both of you landed on a particularly breezy day on Sorgan.
Both of you were already making your way down through the rocky trek to rest at a nearby common house, but the jacket you kept for warmth was left forgotten on the ship. The Child floated alongside you, peacefully napping in its closed pod and cruising through the brisk bite of the wind from the valley. You hadn’t even realized you had been shivering until the Mandalorian paused on his way, turning with a slight nudge of his helmet to chide you carefully.
Before you could open your mouth to protest that you would be fine without your jacket, the warrior paused to remove his cape from beneath the black wool and overlap of his armor to drape the cloth around your shoulders. You whispered your thanks, and he held onto your eyes for a brief moment before offering a slight nod in return. You trailed behind, tugging the ragged fabric closer to you and hoping it would hide the way your pulse jumped and face turned awfully hot.
The Mandolorian, you realize, was as kind as he was unmerciful.
After a brief rest stop and meal at the common house, the Mandalorian instructed you to return to the Razor Crest first.
“What about you? Where are you going?” You asked from across the table.
The bounty hunter’s stare seemed preoccupied at the other end of the muddled ruckus of the room. Across the commotion of bickering strangers and lonely travelers, he seemed to focus on a particular table in the corner where a lanky-looking droid of tarnished alloy seemed mutually fixated on the Mandalorian. It blinked challengingly back at your table. The Child seemed unbothered by the tenseness of the warrior’s shoulders and the curled fists against the table’s wooden surface, instead opting to sip the rest of its hearty bone broth stew.
“I have some...business to attend to,” The Mandalorian told you. “Take the child. You both head out first for the ship. I won’t be long.”
He moved to stand, but before he could leave, your hand instinctively reached up to hold onto his arm. The bounty hunter froze, clearly unexpecting your touch against his beskar armor. His helmet declined, and if you could see beyond his scuffed mask and tinted visor, you could feel the heat radiating from your skin at the way his eyes would pour fire into you.
“Don’t do anything reckless,” You whispered before letting go.
He remained mute for a while. Then, with a brief nod, he left you.
Alone, you walked back across the rocky terrain with the Child carefully tucked in your arms. The Child cooed sleepily in your arms as you carried him beneath the wrapped cloth of the Mandalorian’s cape. Secretly, you dipped your nose to breathe in the scent. It smelled of smoke, earth, and something vaguely masculine.
By the time you tucked the Child in his sleeping cot back on the Razor Crest, he was already yawning beneath the blankets. But the Child refused to let you leave his side and squealed in protest each time you turned away. He reached out a tiny, clawed hand in your direction, making grabbing motions and squirming until you sighed and leaned beside his cot.
“What’s it gonna take for you to go to sleep?”
The Child chirped, a finger pointing in the direction of the Walkman attached to the leather belt against your hip.
The music player became an omnipresent feature of your daily routine. You let the music sing you to sleep and follow you along the charts of wherever the Mandalorian took you. The Child would chirp with glee each time you lowered the headset onto his eager ears, and you’d watch the green child coo in delight as his ears twitched and hands raised in the air to the joyful sound of fingers running across keys and tambourines shaking.
“You want to listen to it?” You reached to grab the headset, but the Child shook its head at you.
Instead, blinking its wide, dark eyes at you, the Child pointed directly towards your mouth and cooed.
“You...want me to sing for you?” You asked uncertainly, and the Child giggled joyfully.
You furrowed your brows, unsure at his unusual request, but the Child seemed adamant. Carefully, song pours out of you and softly drifts from your lips, slow like duskfall. The song is of your favorites from the tape - a soulful yet lively and lovely number that you liked to listen to whenever the ship sailed across the sunsets of visiting planets.
“isn't she lovely? isn't she wonderful?
isn't she precious? less than one minute old,”
Despite being sure that your voice trembling, the Child’s eyelids nevertheless had already begun to fall as you tucked him in closer beneath the blankets. As you continued to sing - privately and with fragility - he finally began to drift off to sleep.
“i never thought through love
we'd be making one as lovely as she.
but isn't she lovely made from love?
isn't she pretty?
truly the angel's best – ”
A slight noise cut through the air. You immediately turned around to the door hatch, where the Mandalorian was standing there, watching you.
He was leaning against the frame of the ship’s doorway, his body lax and arms crossed over the steel of his chest as his helmet leaned down to lock his gaze on you. Even behind the helmet, his eyes seem to burn as they did back at the common house, and you feel vulnerable all over again.
Your breath was cut short, and you’re certain the bounty hunter could feel the heat rising from your cheeks, but he makes no acknowledgment of your discomfort. The Child gurgled in his sleep, cutting all of the awkward silence in the ship entirely.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“You left the door hatch open,” The Mandalorian replied nonchalantly as if it was an open invitation. His jaw was cocked towards you and his stare was fixed between your lips that were parted mere seconds ago in song. Even with the line of his body leaned against the doorframe, he seemed like a shadow to you - alluring but dangerous.
Finally, he moved from his position against the door, back facing you as he headed toward the control deck. You followed him to the cockpit, situating yourself beside him in the co-pilot’s seat against his brooding silence. You bashfully tucked away a rogue strand of hair and cleared your throat, desperately unsure and contemplative at what he must have thought when he walked through the door to see you singing to a sleeping child.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” You finally spoke, refusing to meet his eyes in lingering mortification. “The kid insisted and wouldn’t nap until – ”
“No,” The Mandalorian answered so abruptly that you almost snapped your neck from turning to him in surprise.
He noticed how taken aback you were and cleared his throat, the sound echoing behind his mask. His helmet tilted a bit away from you, perhaps even reservedly, so your eyes wouldn’t meet with his. The bounty hunter fiddled with a few controls in the pilot’s seat beside you.
“I mean, you shouldn’t apologize,” The Mandalorian managed, albeit calculatedly. “Your voice is...very pretty. It was pleasant to listen to.”
And for the rest of the ride, he doesn’t speak another word.
Perhaps it’s better that way, you think, because if he did attempt to say anything again, you’re afraid you won’t be able to control the way your cheeks burned raw and red as a wound.
/
By now, you would know him blind.
You would know him by the way his boots struck the earth, and what each dip of his helmet implied, and the rate of his hushed breathing behind the mask or the subtle rise and fall of his chest.
It comes after the accumulation of fleeting touches and words of comfort reserved only for you. Before the both of you could catch it, you would find yourself instinctively resting your hand over the side of his helmet where his cheek was as you’d remind him to be safe, and he would wordlessly move closer to your touch in reassurance. When you are occupied dressing any exposed wound in between his armor - muttering about how careless he could be - his gaze would linger on your face and trace everything from the slope of your nose to the calm flutter of your eyelashes.
When you sing the Child to sleep, he privately listens, and you wonder how many nights you both have lain awake thinking about each other’s voice in the silence.
The Mandalorian is a difficult man to read, but when he’s with you, it almost comes easy.
So when you ask him if he’s ever danced and he twitches uneasily beside you, you nearly smile in silent victory.
“You’ve never danced?”
The bounty hunter was rigid beside you in the pilot seat of the cockpit. He was trained on the windows of the ship, lifting the Razor Crest out the rims of a foreign planet and preparing to send it into hyperspace. His helmet refused to turn to you in attention.
“No,” He replied pointedly. “Mandalorians don’t dance.”
“Well, surely, you guys must have fun sometime,” You chuckled, and when he makes effort to throw you a dubious look, your eyes are twinkling. You sat up from where you had been lounging in your co-pilot seat, brushing past him to rummage through your belongings on your bunk and retrieve your Walkman.
“Weapons are part of my religion. I hunt for a living. That’s my idea of fun,” The Mandalorian called sardonically from his seat.
You ran your fingers over the tape, clicking it into place before securing the Walkman to your hip and returning back to the cockpit. The Mandalorian remained fixed, and his hands still placated over the ship’s controls and concentration fixated over the stars. Against his distraction and with a few simple swipes against the control deck, you set the Razor Crest to cruise on autopilot.
“What are you – ” The Mandalorian began, whipping around on his seat to interrogate you, only to halt when you hand reached out to enclose over his own.
He was momentarily paralyzed, catching the determined line drawn across your lips and feeling the warmth of your hands intertwined over the rough leather of his gloves. There was a funny knot in your stomach that threatened to claw up your throat, and your heart was racing, but you nevertheless refused to loosen your hold on him.
You tugged on his arm, pulling him reluctantly out of his seat. Both of you fell in step, walking towards a larger space of the ship. His hand and gaze refused to leave yours, seemingly analyzing your every move in apprehension before you paused in front of him. You were daring to move closer towards him until his steel chest plate was bumping against you, and his breath seemed to hitch from behind his helmet.
“Might as well teach you,” You beamed.
His head was tilted forward to watch as you raised your chin at him, your lips drawn in a promising grin as your reflection against his helmet distracted from the eyes intently searching your own. His helmet followed the way your hand reached to your hip to unravel the headset of the Walkman, but his view was settled on the way your hair delicately framed your face beneath the light of several moons shining over the ship’s window panels.
You clicked the ‘PLAY’ button and your favorite song from the tape began to drift from the orange headset. With the Walkman still attached to your hip, you raised your arms to lower the headphones over the helmet of the Mandalorian. Though awkward and a bit tight, it seemed to fit fine over where his ears would be, and you could hear a faint murmur of the song against the vibration of his steel helmet. It was silly to see the vibrant orange headset clash with the menacing sharpness of his armor, but you’re too distracted by the intensity of his gaze on you.
it's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
it's never over, she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever
When you asked if he could hear it, the Mandalorian reacted slowly and nodded, almost as if he was entranced. You wondered if he’s ever listened to music this intimately before – if he’s ever felt the lovely rush of strings and drums ring throughout his body as opposed to the muddled cacophonies in questionable cantinas.
well maybe i'm just too young
to keep good love from going wrong
Carefully, you guided his hand to your waist. Even against the worn-out leather, with his glove delicately brushing over the sliver of exposed skin that peeked from where your shirt lifted above your hip, he was soft to the touch. Never removing your eyes from his own, you enveloped your other hand with his.
And then, you swayed. You let the slow rhythm of the song guide the balls of your feet against the floor, feeling your body moving along to its tune and encouragingly tugging the bounty hunter to follow alongside you. He, too, followed the tempo of your footsteps trudging carefully over the floor. You were close enough to share breaths, and his helmet was only inches apart from bumping against your temple.
He’s incredibly stiff at first - to the point where you want to poke fun at it - until he follows the movement of your steps and sways with you in remarkable quietness. It’s clear that the bounty hunter had never engaged in something as trivial as dancing by the hesitation of his steps. But just as the universe continues to shift, the Mandalorian, too, learned to fall within your orbit.
You yearned for the armor to shed so you can press your ear against his chest and feel how his heart beat in tune with the languid beauty of the song.
oh... lover, you should've come over
‘cause it's not too late
“So this is dancing?” His voice was low. Wistful. The Mandalorian danced with you awfully slow, swaying like he wanted to savor how you feel in his hands.
“Yeah, this is dancing,” You smiled. “Not bad, for an amateur.”
His laugh is breathy. The Mandalorian leaned down to rest his helmet against your forehead in inexplicable tenderness. Your eyes closed, relishing the feel of how patient and gentle he is with you even beneath the ragged edges of his steel. His arm moved to the small of your back, holding you closer as you both moved and twirled and touched beneath the stars flickering through the slanted windows of the ship, letting him watch the light illuminate over the crevices of your skin.
oh, love well i'm waiting for you
lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover
lover, lover, lover you should've come over
‘cause it's not too late
/
Your Walkman dies a short time after your first dance.
It should have been expected anyway - the Child played with its buttons with reckless abandon - and it was only a matter of time before the batteries would run out.
It was still sorely missed, as Earth batteries were oddly niche and hard to come by. You remember most of the songs, though, and often hum them while changing clothes or putting the Child to sleep. The Walkman remained beneath your sleeping bunk, collecting dust and sentimental memories that shared unspoken secrets between you and the Mandalorian.
A few weeks later, the Mandalorian gives you a gift.
You had been resting on a rocky boulder against the dunes of Tatooine beside the Razor Crest, waiting for the bounty hunter to return from a meeting with a client regarding his next bounty. The winds of the desert seemed to sing as they flew past the barren land and the distant red hills. The suns began to set, painting the sky in a striking orange and scarlet. You heard his footsteps approaching from behind you, kicking sand along the way.
“I have something to give you,” The Mandalorian says when he finally reaches you. His voice was particularly quiet against the breeze that threatened to blow it away.
Taking a slow inhale, he hands over a small, closed bag in your direction. His helmet is lowered, and you’re almost sure he’s purposefully avoiding eye contact with you behind the mask. His armor gleams from the suns’ rays aligning perfectly from the horizon.
“Oh?” You raise an inquisitive brow, lips curled playfully. “Well, I hope it’s a few extra credits this time as compensation for me sticking around and being your babysitter.”
The bag is small and light, and when you open your palm to dump the contents into your hand, out falls a couple of tiny batteries and a brand new tape cassette. Your breath hitches in your throat. You rotate the objects around your fingers, a smile breaking on your face at the sight of the tape’s reel and the shining silver of the small batteries.
“Mando…” You find it hard to breathe. “How did you get these?”
“I wasn’t here to meet a client,” The warrior explains truthfully. “I was here to close a deal I struck with a trader - a droid back on Sorgan.”
You nod, “I remember.”
“Well, he played hard to get,” The Mandalorian sighs. “But I managed to get a hold of some of these Terra resources from him. I set aside some credits to buy off the tape and batteries. They come straight from Earth. I know how much that Walkman means to you.”
You clutch the tape and batteries closer to your chest.
“But you hate droids,” You uttered, both in disbelief and in appreciation.
The Mandalorian does not speak for what feels like a millennia. The sky is filled with a deep purple and peach glow in the dusk, but even as the suns were starting to disappear, you feel warmth pool around your body at the thought of his sacrifice for you. He dips his head forward, eyes trained on the parting of your lips. With a gentle finger, he tucks a stray strand of hair that fell over your temple behind your ears. It lingers over your cheeks for the briefest of moments before he pulls away.
He speaks softly, “You’re worth it.”
He does not give you any time to process his kind words. The Mandalorian reaches for his belt, and behind his row of blasters, he pulls out your dead Walkman and dusts off its surface. Gratefully, you open the device to replace the tape and insert the batteries in before attaching it against your hip. You pause for a moment, not even realizing that you were trembling as you grip onto the headphones, anticipating what kind of new world it would open up for you as soon as you lowered it over your ears.
Wordlessly, the Mandalorian cups his hands over your own. It’s strange to think that with every touch, he seems to calm you yet set your heart racing all at once. With a reassuring nod of his helmet, he takes your enclosed hands and guides them over your head.
You press play.
free, on my own is the way i used to be
ah, but since i met you baby, love's got a hold on me
it's got a hold on me now
You turn to the falling twin suns, closing your eyes to bask in the light of the afterglow as it consumed you and the crooning voice in your ears sung to you against the wind. Facing the horizon, the Mandalorian rested a slow and careful hand over your waist. His heartbeat thrummed louder than usual when you tilted over to rest your head on his shoulder, humming quietly to the song as you lean closer to his touch.
i can't let go of you baby
i can't stop loving you now
‘cause i fooled around, i fooled around, i fooled around, i fooled around
i fooled around, i fooled around, and i fell in love…
And the world seemed to remain perfectly still from where you both stood.