Archive of Our Own

You hadn’t finished getting your boots on all the way and had already told the kid to wait right here, next to you and you could go outside and play together. Obviously someone was too excited by the prospect of freshly fallen snow to care too much about rules.

“He’s fine.” Mando reassures, standing next to you in the hull. There’s a certain lightness to his voice from underneath the helmet, maybe he was amused at the kid’s… childish antcis.

You roll your eyes and stand up next to him once your boots are laced up. The freezing air from outside has already drafted into the ship and you feel it down to your bones. Living on a desert planet your whole life prior to meeting Mando meant you didn’t own one single article of clothing that would be appropriate for this sort of weather.

Along this whole strange trip with Mando, you had come into possession of a few warmer pieces like some utility pants and a few shirts but still, you didn’t own thick socks, a proper coat, a scarf or anything that would help you right now. The Child seemed fine in his little onesie but you, on the other hand, were already fucking freezing.

Luckily Mando noticed that you were freezing, the way you used your hands to warm up your arms. Running them up and down the length of his long black sleeve shirt which you were wearing.

You wore it quite often, Mando hopes it's a favourite of yours or something. Even after having bought you your own clothes on Batuu over a month ago now, you still seemed to favour his old, worn black shirt. It made his stomach feel funny when he thought about that.

But he often felt funny when he thought about you for too long.

“Wait here.” Mando instructs, letting his hand rest on your shoulder briefly before walking away, deeper into the hull, to indicate that he was in fact talking to you. You could never tell, especially not with that helmet of his.

Mando returns promptly holding a long, thick material in both of his hands. One of his cowls.

“Oh, thank you.” You stammer, taking the long and surprisingly heavy fabric from him. You struggle to hold it up, trying to figure out which was the best way to wrap it around your neck or shoulders, or throw it over like a shawl-

“Let me.” He offers with slight hesitation in his voice, taking a tentative step closer to you. Your breath shakes, unable to find it within yourself to even look in his direction.

You almost squeak when he takes the cowl into his own hands, trying to find the head hole himself. You would laugh at the difficulty he’s having as well but you can barely bring yourself to remember how to breathe due to how close he’s standing to you.

Eventually he does find the head opening and loosens the hole wider for you, gently lifting it over your head. Your grasp onto the fabric, helping him guide it over and around your head. The smooth flesh of your hand glides along worn leather, his touch burning, singing marks into your skin that you don’t think you’ll ever be able to get rid of.

The material is down to your shoulders now but your head is still lost in the thick fabric, trying to find the hood so you can stick your head out and breathe some fresh air. You inhale the fabric accidentally and, oh.

It smells like him.

Of course it smells like him, it’s his fucking cowl but fuck.

It smells like Mando. And suddenly he’s everywhere, invading your senses, fogging up your brain like he just drugged you with spice and you’re a lightweight so you fall fast and you fall hard. 

Fuck why did he smell so good? He’s a bounty hunter, he shouldn’t smell so good but he does. It smells like skin, sweat and grime and blaster oil and gunpowder, the lethal combination makes you lightheaded.

You’ve never gotten this much of him all at once before. Wrapped up in something of his while his hands are on you. Fuck, you almsot forgot he was helping you put this thing on so you could go outside and play with the Child while he repaired the thrusters or whatever he had muttered about back in the cockpit when you landed.

You feel his hands touch and pull at you through the material while yours do the same, your fingers and palms bumping, grazing and touching each other every so often. Your hair gets pulled over your eyes as the cowl is swivelled and turned, all trying to get you right side up like you're drowning in water.

Mando huffs, frustrated that he can’t seem to figure out his own damn cowl. He puts this thing on everyday, how could it be this hard to put it on another person. Because it doesn’t fit you, it’s too big for you, too long, too heavy- fuck.

Realizing you had been turning in useless circles while he pulled the fabric the other way, Mando grabs both of your shoulders in his hands, steadying you. You nearly yelp at the sudden grounding touch, not knowing which way you were facing anymore from being lost in the cowl for so long. You stop your useless efforts, letting Mando take over.

You feel another tug, more gentle this time and the cowl turns and turns, pushing more hair into your eyes and suddenly, fresh air. Cool crisp air hits your face as your head awkwardly pokes out of the hoodie hole Mando has finally managed to find.

You can’t help the burst of giggles that falls from your lips. How did you both manage to make such a simple task so difficult? He could have left you to it, he could have handed it to you and then headed over to the thrusters like he knew he needed to do, like he said he would.

Your eyes squint, your cheeks scrunch up and your hair falls chaotically yet somehow fucking perfectly, framing your face as it falls out of the wide, loose hood of his cowl, caresses it in a way he wishes he could. Your plush lips stretch into a face-splitting, shit-eating grin like this is so fucking amusing to you and if Mando was anyone else in this moment, he thinks he would be laughing along with you. Fuck, he thinks he would even be kissing you right now if it weren’t for the helmet and… and. The Way. Yeah, The Way.

So you just stand there, for too many moments, too many seconds pass by where both of you just stare and smile at each other, admiring each other’s faces- well, Mando admiring your face and you trying to find his eyes behind the pitch black of his visor. Your eyes flit back and forth, searching, you land on them a couple of times and Mando has to actually stop himself from gasping from the intrusion. Your eyes pierce him, they sting and they burn and bite but they're so lovely, kind, and soft with the way you bat your lashes up at him. Like you know he’s looking and blushing like a fucking child underneath all this beskar.

“Ooooo!” The Child coos from outside in the snow, snapping both you and Mando out of whatever trance you had seemed to put each other under.

The Child rolls some snow in his hands, maybe liking the way it feels as it melts against his warm, green skin. Whatever he was trying to say, it was a painful reminder that you couldn’t just stand here and stare at Mando all day, not if you wanted to get off of this planet before you all freeze to death.

Flustered and a little embarrassed for getting caught staring at Mando, you nod at him as a way of saying ‘thanks for the giant scarf’ and turn to head outside. 

But you end up stepping on said giant scarf and your foot twists in the fabric, sending your body jolting awkwardly but a hand tight on your hip keeps you upright with too much ease. Another hand grasps onto your bicep, wrapping tightly around your limb, keeping you steady.

You see the way your breath comes out in ragged breaths thanks to the freezing air, chest heaving and cheeks blushing not just from the snow. He was touching you again. Maker, you were almost starting to believe he liked it as much as you did.

You think… you think he chuckles. So low and understated but you think you catch it from underneath his helmet which tilts to the side a bit, as if trying to get a better look at you. Or taunt you, make fun of you. You don’t have a clue, you were so bad at reading his body language, even after a month of living with him. 

Completely flustered, you say nothing, just stare up at the big, intimidating T-shape on his visor and hope he isn’t laughing at you but maybe with you.

“T-Thanks.” You stutter, feeling his thumb graze over your bicep, running the covered digit over your arm, feeling you in the slightest way possible. 

Mando nods at you, “Go play with the kid.”

Eventually being able to pull yourself away from him and secure the hood of the cowl over your head properly, you let your boots carry you through the soft and sparkly snow, towards the Child whose cheeks are flushed an adorable shade of pink.

He runs to you, an oddly shaped snowball in hand. He reaches up for you to take it from him and you thank him for such a lovely gift. He seems pleased with himself as he makes more little balls, they become rounder and rounder the more he makes and you watch endearingly before you start to make some too, adding them to his little collection.

He gets very protective of the snowballs, whining if you move them too much or if he thinks you’re going to steal one. You really have to try your hardest not to laugh because you’re not laughing at him, he’s just so weird and cute and apparently 50 years old but still clearly a baby and wow. You think you love him like you would a son and your heart thumps heavy in your chest as you spend the afternoon playing with him.

Mando watches you from where he's stationed on top of the Crest, fixing the integrity of the left thruster so that it doesn’t disintegrate when he tries to lift you all off this planet come morning time.

Maybe he even repositions himself to get a better angle of you and the kid, he tells himself he’s just keeping a watchful eye, but that excuse gets harder and harder to believe when his heart starts fucking hammering in his chest everytime he gets a glimpse of your face. The way you smile at the kid, the way your hair falls and frames your face, poking out of his cowl, begging to be pushed back behind your ear, for his hand to cup your cheek.

He likes the way you cling to it whenever there's a particularly cold gust of wind that flows through the open field, how you cover your face with it while still watching the Child, making sure he’s okay and holding him when he gets a bit cold or hurts his hand on a piece of hidden ice. Mando thinks he sees you bring the cowl up around your face one too many times, maybe you were smelling it, smelling him-

Mando burned himself a few times with his tools, by accident, from staring at you just a bit too long, losing his grip on whatever it was he was wielding together and accidentally burning his hand instead.

There was something about seeing you in his clothes that… that made him feel weird. It was this sort of fuzzy feeling in the pit of his stomach, like that feeling you get when you think you’re going to throw up but really, you’re just nervous or anxious or something. The way his heart beats heavy, different with each new pump of blood through his system, the blood travelling to less the optimal regions at the wrong moments, making him dizzy and fucking hard in his pants.

Maker, what was wrong with him? Why did seeing you in his cowl or black shirt make him feel so fucking possessive over you?

Right now, he tries to focus on how much fun you genuinely seem to be having with the kid, how easily you laugh along with him and take part in his games. Mando wonders if you had a good childhood back on your home planet, if you did normal kid things or if you missed out on most of them like he did.

Eventually it gets too dark and too cold for you to stay outside any longer, thankfully the kid doesn’t seem too upset about heading back inside to warm up. Maybe it's due to the promise of warm food and a warm belly.

You set yourselves back up in the cockpit where Mando had installed some sort of heat radiator, it had been going all day, heating the cockpit nicely but you kept the cowl on for… reasons. 

You manage to find some dried meat and bone broth in some of Mando’s cabinets, where he usually keeps his rations and snacks. You heat them up over the radiator as best as you can, you think you remember Mando getting some spices at a market on some long forgotten planet but you can’t find them anywhere. You make do with the amount of salt you managed to find instead; anything helps really. 

You hand the child his tiny little container of food once it’s warm enough but not too hot for his little palette before you climb down the ladder, placing Mando’s own plate and bowl of broth and meat before climbing back up and reaching for the hatch to call to him as he continues to work on the roof.

The hatch is heavy to pry open, you muster all the strength you can to turn the locking wheel and push it open and poke your head out the top, bombarded by whistling wind and the cool, biting kiss of the snowy air once again.

“Mando!” You yell over the strong gusts, shivering as you call his name. The helmet turns to look at you and you notice the ice forming along the hard and sharp edges of his beskar. Maker, he must be freezing under there. 

A light that he’s set up to work in the dark illuminates half of him, the other side cast into a dark shadow you can barely see, the unrelenting harsh fall of snow was no help.

Without hearing what you have to say first, he packs up his equipment and walks towards you, towards the open hatch.

“I-I put your food in your cot. Let me know if it’s not warm enough.” You try and smile at him but your face already feels frozen from the cold, cheeks and lips locked in place. He seems to nod so you just head back down the ladder and he waits for you to reenter the cockpit before heading in and closing the hatch for the night.

As you sit back down in the cockpit with the kid who’s already finished his food and begun to eat yours, you hear Mando clamber around in the main hull, probably taking off and drying his armour, taking the helmet off to eat. You hope the soup helps to warm him up.

You scold the kid lightly for eating your food but let him sit in your lap while you eat, giving him spoonfuls every now and then. You can’t say no to those big black eyes, probably an evolutionary design you think, laughing to yourself.

“You’re a little menace, you know that?” You tell him, fake scowling at him but kissing his forehead a million times over so he knows you’re only teasing. He coos and babbles in response, grabbing at your hair so you take that as a sign that he knows you mean no harm.

You wrap him up in Mando’s cowl that you still wear, letting him get cozy in your lap. With a full belly, body wrapped snugly in his little onesie and now the cowl, his big eyes become droopy, ready for bed. You wonder if Mando will come back up to sleep in the cockpit or if he’ll take the child into his cot, leaving you in here for the night.

As if on cue, the sliding doors screech at the force of being opened manually, Mando closes them behind him and turns to- to take in the sight before him.

The Child wrapped up in your-his cowl, which you still wear, still cling to like you did earlier today, like the kid does now as he seems to doze off in your lap. Your eyes are as big as ever, as sweet as ever as you look up at him by the door. Mando thinks he sees you smile at him from your spot on the floor but he quickly tries to ignore the erupting mass of butterflies in his stomach and just sit down next to you. Maybe a bit too close, he feels his shoulder graze yours ever so slightly and he has to stop himself from flinching away from you. Just a reflex, force of habit.

It only startles you a little how closely he decides to sit next to you, your thighs almost, almost grazing. You tell yourself it’s just to get the best angle on the radiator and maybe to share some body heat in whatever… no perverse way you two can manage.

“How was the soup?” You ask, your voice coming out much quieter than you intended. Maybe you were beginning to fall asleep yourself. The Child making himself so cozy on you and breathing softly was lulling you to sleep peacefully, like a purring Lothcat.

“What?” Mando had been so focused on not freaking out about sitting so close to you that he hadn’t heard a word you said.

“The soup? Was it okay? I couldn’t find any spices so I just made do with sal-”

“No. I-It was fine- it was good. Thank you.” He nods at you. You smile softly at Mando and then look back down at the kid, running your fingers over his little wrinkly forehead and then letting them travel through the thin white hairs.

He stirs at the sound of Mando’s voice, no doubt recognizing that his dad was finally back inside, available and ready to give him attention now. You smile fondly at him, watching as he manages to crawl out of your lap and towards Mando, climbing up his much harder, beskar covered thighs and snuggles himself into the space available. He manages to expertly find a gap in the beskar, a spot where the hard metal parts and he can sleep and nuzzle against Mando’s softer stomach.

Your heart.

Your heart fucking explodes as you watch Mando let him get cozy on him. You feel insane amounts of… of two different feelings. Two feelings you’re insanely embarrassed and ashamed of.

Jealousy and…. And lo-

You stand up after a moment of watching them and plan to head for the door, to head into your own cot which Mando had set up for you months ago now, just across a little hallway from the cockpit.

But Mando stops you. His hand wraps itself quickly around your wrist, halting your movements.

“Where are you going?”

“My cot?” You assumed he would want to be left alone with the Child to sleep. You knew he probably still didn't trust you that much, which you were fine with. You respected his boundaries, you knew he followed a Creed or something along those lines, either way, you didn't ask too many questions. You didn’t want to pry, so you often just assumed he would want to be left alone in most cases. Oftentimes, you were right.

“You’ll freeze.” He states plainly. Oh. “The heating system is down, damaged when we landed. W-We should all just sleep in here tonight, the radiator should keep us warm enough.”

Oh. You ignore how his voice wavers, you blame it on the cold he probably still feels in his bones. You feel it too, even now, despite the radiator. At least, you think it’s the cold.

“O-Okay.”

So you settle back down next to him, sitting closer to him than you had been previously. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe it wasn’t. You’re too tired to really think about it too much, to pinpoint if that was subconscious or not.

You snuggle into the cowl that’s still around your shoulders, pulling the hood back up over your head to get all the warmth you can. With the cowl, the radiator, and Mando’s wide body next to you, you think you’ll be okay tonight.

Mando thinks you look so fucking cute wrapped up the way you are. How you try to hide behind his cowl that he’s worn so many times, behind the material that’s done nothing but serve him in whatever terrain he’s been in. He’s never properly looked at it until you’ve worn it, until it adorned your body, resting with a hefty weight on your shoulders, wrapping around your hair. So fucking cute.

“Is the thruster okay?” You ask, deciding to break the silence, maybe just to hear his voice a little longer, wanting that deep, gravelly barione to lull you to sleep like a sweet and low song.

“It started to freeze over when the sun went d-down but…..” Mando’s voice stutters when you slouch against him, letting your head slump against his shoulder. He watches you slowly drift to sleep, eyelashes kissing your cheeks in a way… in a way he could only dream of.

“Oh… that’s good.” You say, yawning and nuzzling your head onto the hard beskar, trying to get comfortable and acting as if you’re completely unaware of what you were doing to him, like you didn’t notice how he didn’t even finish his sentence. 

“We should be able to leave in the morning.” He rasps, trying to clear his throat but it comes out so thick.

“Hmmmm.” You hum, nearly completely asleep by now, drifting off with help from the radiator and his rhythmically rising and falling chest. 

The weight of your head on his shoulder is extremely comforting, even that feels like an understatement.

This feels… too normal. Too good. It scares him how much he thinks he could get used to this, how much he wants to get used to this.

He looks down to the sleeping child in his lap, cuddled against his stomach, and then to you, peaceful at his side. How did this become his life? How did he get wrapped up in all of this?

Was it a mistake? 

Travelling with a 50 year old child and… if he was being honest, the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on, and he’s seen more than most people have at his age. 

He could so easily fuck this up, so easily endanger you, or the Child, too innocent things he’s managed to lasso into this whole fucking ordeal.

Mando pulls his cowl over the Child so that he can receive more warmth, feeling his own heart pulse when the kid snuggles into him further, letting himself get comfortable. He then tries to smoothly let his arm wrap around your back, giving you something to lean on instead of the unforgiving wall of the Crest’s cockpit. 

He doesn’t want to startle you, doesn’t want to push boundaries. He just wants to keep you warm.