Chapter Text
There’s a newcomer at the VA. A very attractive one, in an old beat up leather jacket and jeans with holes in them but not in the tasteful way, more like in the way that they’re so old and worn that they just got holes in them, and he has wavy brown hair that hangs past his ears and the scruffy kind of of facial hair that’s so common here and Luke is so remarkably gay that it’s almost painful. Almost, until the new guy looks up from his phone, and Luke can see his eyes , big and brown and Luke’s already so far gone that he can already hear his sister making fun of him.
“Hello?” He seems confused, which Luke has to admit is fair because he’s kind of staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights. “Can…Can I help you?”
“Um.” Why? Why is Luke like this? “Uh, hi. I’m Luke. I haven’t seen you around here, before, so. Um. Nice to meet you?” Well, that could have gone a whole lot better. The bright side is that it literally couldn’t have gone much worse.
He looks Luke up and down, still pretty visibly confused. That’s also fair, because that was the absolute worst introduction he thinks he’s ever experienced.
“I’m Din,” he says finally, and Luke needs him to never stop talking, ever. His voice is lovely, warm and rough. “I just moved to the area.” He waves a hand in a broad all this gesture. “Figured I’d check in. You know?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I. Yeah.” Maybe Luke can get away with not telling Leia or Ahsoka about any of this, but he’s pretty sure that both of them will somehow find out anyway, and they will never, ever let him forget about this. They never let him forget about a single one of his absolutely useless gay moments. “How. How are you liking the area?”
Din eyes Luke up and down again, except it feels distinctly different .
“It’s alright,” he says, after a long moment where Luke feels scrutinized . “Nice sights.”
Oh. Oh .
Luke wakes up the next morning to Din getting dressed carefully, like he’s trying not to wake him. It isn’t even morning, really, the bit of sky that Luke can see through the crack in his curtains still mostly a dark grey. He wants to say something, ask him why he’s leaving this early, but. It’s just a hookup. There’s no obligation, that’s how hookups work . Luke knows this. He knows how these things work.
“See you around?” he does ask, because they probably will , at the VA and probably at the grocery store and the like.
Din pauses in the doorway. “Probably,” he allows, but doesn’t say anything else. No I had fun or enjoy the rest of your day or anything at all. He leaves, and Luke lays there for a few more minutes, suddenly reminded of why he doesn’t usually hook up with people.
It had been fantastic, of course, and Luke absolutely does not regret anything about last night, but he’d kind of been hoping for a round two this morning. Luke climbs out of bed himself, stumbling a little bit once he gets to his feet and wincing at the sensation. It has been a while since he’s had sex with anyone, and Din had…Din had not been gentle. Fuck, Luke feels used , but in all the best ways.
He catches sight of himself in the mirror, hair disheveled and throat and chest covered in bite marks and hickeys, and Luke’s supposed to be meeting up with Ahsoka for brunch in a few hours, it’s summer , how the fuck is he supposed to cover this up?
He sighs and goes to the bathroom. He needs a shower and to not let himself get hung up on the very, very attractive ex-Marine that he will almost definitely be seeing at the VA, the one with the tattoos and the well-toned muscles and the bruising grip and relentless pace and—
Luke slams his head against the wall and groans in frustration. He’s an idiot and a gay disaster, and he’s just. Going to have to find a new VA center. Yup. That’s it, that’s the solution here.
“Oh, my God ?” Ahsoka stares up at him when he walks up to the table she’s already seated at, and doesn’t stop staring at him even as he sits down and picks up his menu, even though they both already know exactly what they're going to order. “ Oh my God?”
“Are you done?” Luke isn’t really in the mood to deal with this, right now, actually.
“Am I—No?” Ahsoka reaches out a hand and slaps it down over the menu Luke isn’t actually trying to read, but he could have been. “Was he cute?”
Luke swats her hand out of the way. “Don’t think that’s quite the word for it.”
“Oh my God ,” Ahsoka says again. “I’d ask you if he treated you right, but the answer looks pretty obvious from where I’m sitting.”
Luke scoffs. He wouldn’t quite consider trying to leave without saying goodbye being treated right , but it’s definitely up near the top of the list for best sex he’s ever had . “Do we really have to talk about this right now?”
She’s pouting, when he finally looks up at her. “You’re surprisingly grouchy for someone who just got fucked.”
Luke groans, putting his face down on the table. “I was only up to see him go because I’m a light sleeper.”
“Ouch.” Ahsoka reaches out and gently scratches his scalp. “Was it worth it?”
Luke groans again, longer. “When are the mimosas coming?”
“Do we need to have a movie night tonight?”
“Please?”
Leia and Han join them for movie night. This is not what Luke wants, and certainly not what he needs . But they bring with them a bottle of blue raspberry vodka, which Luke probably doesn’t need but definitely wants . He reaches out and grabs the bottle before he even greets them, then turns and goes into the kitchen to grab himself a glass. And probably some ice.
“Oh, well. That’s a good sign,” Han says, and Luke can only assume that he and Leia are stepping into the apartment, since his back is to the two of them.
“Are we getting you drunk enough to talk about it, or are you gonna tell us what’s up and then we can all get drunk together?” Leia asks, coming up beside him.
Considering the fact that the glass that Luke’s filling up is one part vodka and one part Sprite, he doesn’t think he needs to answer.
“Okay.” Leia slaps the counter once. “Do you still have that wine I brought over last month?”
“It is in the exact same place it was in when you left,” Luke tells her, picking up his barely-a-cocktail and going back into the living room. “What are we watching?”
“Your emergency movie night, kid,” Han points out, already having claimed his spot on the couch. “What are you in the mood for?”
Luke’s in the mood to be a fully functioning human being, is what Luke’s in the mood for. Barring that, he’ll take something incredibly, painfully stupid with a whole lot of hot guys in it. And alcohol. A whole lot of alcohol. He voices this, and lets his family figure out what the fuck they’re supposed to do with that.
Leia sighs, sitting down next to Han on the couch. “So…Magic Mike?”
Ahsoka groans, which Luke totally understands, because Magic Mike is a Bad Movie™, but it’s exactly the kind of bad movie that he needs right now.
“Yeah,” he agrees, settling himself into the corner of the sectional and letting it swallow him. “Kind of.”
“Not drunk enough for that, yet,” Han says, standing back up. “Still got that bottle of tequila in your freezer?”
“Nope.” Luke isn’t a tequila drinker; Han had brought it over a few months ago because he’d had a bad day, and any booze that gets brought over gets left here because it’s the best place for it to stay. Unfortunately, Luke’s freezer is kind of falling apart, and the shelf that the tequila had been on had collapsed in the middle of the night a couple weeks ago. Most of the contents had survived the cascade down to the floor the next morning. The tequila had not. “Poor freezer craftsmanship. Your tequila was the only casualty.”
“Hey, while you’re up, Jack and Coke?” Ahsoka asks, craning her head back to look at him. “Mostly Jack? This movie sucks .”
“I’m not a fucking bartender,” Han grumbles, but he pulls down two glasses anyway. “Do you want grenadine in it?”
“Please?”
“And then he just fucking left ? And like, look, I know , it was a fling , but I just. Either commit to staying to fucking night or be up front about it, right? He tried to fucking sneak out like a fucking coward.” Luke is, apparently, angry drunk tonight.
“Hey, listen, you deserve better than a fucking jarhead, anyway, alright,” Ahsoka tells him, probably the least drunk of all of them. “One day, you’ll find a real nice guy with absolutely zero military affiliation who will be suitably impressed by all your cool stories, alright? And it’ll be beautiful , and I’ll be the best man at your wedding.”
“Hey!” Han interjects, but he has to know that Luke likes Ahsoka more than him and also trusts her with his bachelor party far more than he’ll ever trust Han.
“I do deserve better than a fucking jarhead ,” Luke agrees vehemently. “Where is the next closest VA center?”
“That’s not the solution and you know it.” Leia reaches out and shoves him, none too gently, and he falls over into Ahsoka’s lap. “If you see him again, you make him fucking regret trying to sneak out on you. You’re a catch and way out of his league, and you make sure he fucking knows it.”
“He had a leather jacket, Leia,” Luke commiserates. “And tattoos .”
“Never had a chance, did you?” Ahsoka’s hand finds its way into Luke’s hair, fingers massaging his scalp in soothing circular motions.
“I was my usual awkward disaster self and it wasn’t totally off putting,” Luke mumbles. “I know flings never go anywhere, but. I dunno. Thought this one could have.”
“Too bad he turned out to be a total jackass,” Han says. Luke couldn’t have put it better if he were sober.
School. Din has to get Grogu to school. It is the middle of August, why is Grogu already two weeks behind? What kind of sadistic asshole decided to start the school year in the middle of summer instead of at its end? He gets his son up and dressed and fed, and Grogu clutches his brand new backpack to his chest with an excited grin. Din doesn’t remember first grade that well, but he’s pretty sure he was never this excited to go to school, and definitely not when it was a new school.
And then, after getting Grogu to school… fuck . Din has to go back to the VA. His first meeting with his new (and hopefully temporary) therapist is this morning, and then he needs to check out that list of recommendations for child therapists that Grogu’s therapist had given him before they’d left.
It’s been a week since the last time he’d gone to the VA, and therefore, it has been a week since Luke . A week of feeling absolutely terrible for the way that he’d just left , attempting to sneak right out like some kind of asshole . Usually, if he ends up staying the night, he at least stays long enough to go another round in the morning—and he had wanted to go another round with Luke, fuck had he wanted to—but the babysitter he’d gotten had texted him that Grogu had woken up in the middle of the night and wouldn’t stop screaming when he saw that Din hadn’t been home, and. There wasn’t exactly time for Din to explain. What the fuck would he have even said? Sorry, my son is having a panic attack because he’s afraid the reason I’m not home right now is that I’m dead, I have to go so I can call the babysitter and talk to him so he knows I’m okay. See you around!
And even still half asleep, Luke had been pretty clearly upset at having caught Din trying to sneak out, which had made Din feel even worse . But there hadn’t been anything for it, so he’d walked right out of the apartment like a total dick and then realized that he had, very stupidly, left his fucking bike at the VA .
Once he’d managed to get home and convince Grogu that he was, in fact, alive and well, he’d resolved to himself that the next time he saw Luke he would explain the situation and apologize . It’s just that, right now, now that the possibility of that confrontation being today , he would rather do anything else.
He gets Grogu to school, and takes himself to the VA for his first therapy appointment. Luke’s car isn’t in the parking lot, which is both a great sign and a terrible one. The longer he goes without apologizing, the more upset Luke will probably end up being when they finally do see each other again. But, again, now that seeing Luke today is a very real possibility, he isn’t actually sure that he’s ready. How do you tell someone that you slept with that you have a child ? The more that he thinks about and tries to plan what he’ll tell him, the more he realizes that there is no good way to have this conversation.
It ends up being a moot point, anyway. Luke isn’t here today, and the therapist the VA scrounged up agrees that he’s probably not the most qualified for Din’s remarkably specific set of problems. He’ll still have to check in with him, because that’s the way that the VA works , but he’s getting a referral to a civilian that does a lot of work with military families for his more regular appointments.
It’ll probably be a while before Din sees Luke again, which will give him plenty of time to figure out how to explain himself. Which is good, because it’ll also give Luke plenty of time to figure out whether or not he wants to deck Din the next time he’s in close enough proximity to do so.
“I think he’d benefit from some extracurricular activities,” Grogu’s therapist, a bubbly woman who’d introduced herself as Dr Jessica tells Din one Monday afternoon. “Somewhere to interact with kids his age outside of school.”
“Like sports?” Din doesn’t know what recreational sports are in season right now. Or, more importantly, which ones are currently holding signups. He also doesn’t know a single goddamn thing about sports, what Grogu would need or where he’d go to get any of it.
“Yeah,” Jessica says with a nod. “Or scouts, which might be a bit easier this time of year. Both rec football leagues closed registration about a week ago, and basketball doesn’t open for another month. Cub scouts are kind of always open, or at least the local packs are. And it’d be a better option for him anyway, I think. Sports invite a lot of really competitive kids and really intense parents, and while I can’t say scouts are completely without those kinds of people, they tend to be easier to ignore.”
Jessica makes some excellent points, Din has to admit, but he really, really , hates the fucking Boy Scouts.
“Jessica tells me that she recommended Cub Scouts?”
Dr Freidman is surprisingly not pushy, for a shrink, and he has a way of making Din confront everything he tries not to confront without Din realizing what he’s doing. He and Jessica talk to each other about their respective Djarins (with Din’s consent, of course) so that they can make sure that they’re on the same page. It’s also a good idea because most of what Din talks to Freidman about is Grogu anyway.
“She did.”
“And you have some concerns?”
Oh, Din has some concerns . “Scouts are full of themselves and think they’re better than everyone else just because their parents had enough money to buy them everything they needed to earn more badges, or whatever the fuck they’re called.”
“Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts are like that. Your son is six, and his denmates will be six.”
“ This year.” Din’s well aware of how Cub Scouts move up with age and have the same packmates every year; he’s also well aware of how well they take to newcomers. Or, rather, how well they don’t . “One of my foster parents made me do it for a few months. Would have been better off without it.”
“Perhaps,” Freidman doesn’t quite agree with him, “but I must say that I agree with Jessica that you should register Grogu for something extracurricular. Not only would it give him more interaction with people his own age, it would introduce you to other parents that could potentially…prove to be a great benefit to you. Football’s out for the year, but there is indoor soccer and basketball coming up, although both of those tend to be a bit pricier.”
“And scouts isn’t?” Din’s not stupid , he can tell when he’s being led to a conclusion. “I’d have to buy him his uniform, his book, his—”
“There’s a local pack that’s very accommodating for the more financially challenged families,” Freidman interrupts. “And I’ve heard that the Cubmaster is very good at deterring the more…intense parents from being so intense.”
Din isn’t even going to bother asking him what the fuck that means.
He ends up giving Grogu the choice between scouts or sports, and Grogu, unfortunately, chooses scouts. So he gets the information from Jessica and gets him registered in a pack that holds meetings about twenty minutes away from the house. The Cubmaster assures him that Grogu won’t be too far behind joining so late, and also offers any of her son’s supplies that Din might not be able to afford right away. He’s a couple years ahead of Grogu, so he has no need for his old Tiger book or any of the other Tiger-specific stuff he’d amassed back then. Din thanks her for the offer and tells her that he’ll get back to her on it, even though he has no intention of accepting handouts. He’ll make it work.
He takes Grogu to the store that the Cubmaster had told him he could go to for scout supplies after his appointment with Jessica on Monday, and he discovers that it’s not as bad as he’d feared. He’d been told that the only thing Grogu needs right now in terms of uniform is the blue shirt, and even then he doesn’t need to wear it every week once he gets a couple of the pack t-shirts, and the only thing he needs by way of supplies is the handbook. He can afford that. No problem.
No, the problem comes when Grogu finds a giant stuffed bear in one of the bins on their way to checkout, and Din’s only able to tell him no when he sees the fifty dollar price tag on it. He makes him put it back, only to be met with those wide eyes and sniffles, and Din’s better than that, he is .
He gets Grogu a much smaller stuffed bear instead.
When Wednesday rolls around, he outfits Grogu in his little blue scout shirt and takes a few pictures of him holding the handbook before loading him into the car and driving down to where the meetings are held. It seems to be a church, because scouts are always held in churches, in Din’s experience, but a very modern looking one. There are some kids running around on an unimpressive playground right by the parking lot, fenced off to keep anyone from running in front of the cars. The parking lot isn’t even really a parking lot, so much as a field of grass that other people have already parked their cars in.
“Mr Djarin, I presume?”
Din turns from where he’s helping Grogu out of the car and finds himself face to face with a woman who’s about a head shorter than him wearing a pair of jeans and a bright green t-shirt with the Cub Scout logo on the chest and the pack number underneath it.
“Din,” he says, holding out a hand. “This is Grogu.” Grogu waves up at the woman, looking suddenly shy.
“Leia Solo,” she introduces herself, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“I’ll show you where the Tigers meet,” Leia says, and she turns and starts walking into the building. Din locks the car behind him and follows. “My brother is the den leader, since none of the parents wanted to do it and he owes me a few favors.” The hall that they enter into is almost ominous, with white cinderblock walls and faintly flickering fluorescent lights, but the kids that Din can see running up and down don’t seem too bothered by it. Leia leads him down to the third door on the left, just past a turn into another hall on the right, and says as she enters, “Look alive, Skywalker.”
Din walks in after her and freezes, his eyes meeting the den leader’s familiar blue ones as recognition passes through them. Of fucking course Luke from the VA ended up being Grogu’s fucking den leader, because the universe loves nothing more than fucking with Din’s life and making it as difficult and painful as possible.
Luke, to his credit, seems just as shocked and uncomfortable with this development as Din is. And then his eyes flick down to Grogu, tiny for his age and clinging tight onto Din’s hand, and he can’t quite place the emotion that settles on his face as he connects those dots. At least it solves the part of the problem where Din has to figure out how to open his explanation with so I have this kid .
Leia sighs. “I see you two already know each other,” she says, and oh no . How close is Luke to his sister? How much does she know about…all of this? Is she going to hate him for it? “I have to go talk to my husband before the meeting starts officially, so I’ll see you around.”
“No, wait, Leia—” Luke reaches a hand out to try and stop Leia from leaving, which Din just thinks seems to be unfair. They’re not being left alone , there are half a dozen small children in here, and a couple of scout moms. Din isn’t going to try anything here . “Oh, I’m never going to hear the end of this.”
“Your sister seems nice.” Din’s at a loss for what exactly he’s supposed to say, since the only conversation topic that he’s got is not appropriate for their current company.
“She’s a very good actress,” Luke tells him, still staring forlornly at the doorway, like he thinks he can just summon her back here. “She’s definitely going to gossip .” He sighs. “Um. Truce?”
Din hadn’t been aware that they were in a position where truce needed to be called. “This is Grogu,” he says, instead of accepting the offer he doesn’t know what to do with. He picks Grogu up, even though his back tries to tell him not to, and adds, “Grogu, this is Mr Luke. He’s going to be your den leader, okay?”
Grogu waves shyly up at Luke. Luke relaxes a bit, smiling at the kid and saying, “Hi, Grogu. Are you excited to make some new friends?”
Grogu looks over at Din, who smiles up at him. He looks back at Luke and nods. Din sets him back down, and he runs off to find a seat at one of the tables, long rectangular ones arranged to form a square in the center of the room.
“He doesn’t talk much when he first meets new people,” Din explains. “He’s. He’s shy. It’ll probably be a couple weeks before he starts opening up.”
Luke nods. “That’s fine. Um. You’re welcome to stay, if you want. Or if he wants. If you. If you think it’ll help him, I mean. You know?”
He’s so nervous , Din thinks, and it’s so funny because it doesn’t even necessarily have anything to do with the fact that Din fucked him and then tried to sneak away in the middle of the night because Luke was stammering and stuttering the exact same way before that had happened. It was why Din took the chance in the first place. He probably shouldn’t stay, because he’s already so smitten with the man in front of him that spending any more time with him—watching him interact with his son —would only serve to make him even more so.
“I’ll ask him if he wants me to stay,” Din decides, because it’s up to Grogu, ultimately. It’s always up to Grogu.
Luke nods. “Alright. Sounds. Sounds fair.”
Grogu does want Din to stay, so Din stays. And Luke seems to be avoiding him, as much as he can given the circumstances, and Din wants so desperately to apologize for everything but this is such a bad time, all things considered. The only plus side to this whole disaster of an evening is that Grogu seems to be enjoying himself, which is only a positive thing until Din realizes that it means that they’re going to be doing this every week . Din’s going to have to be in the same room as Luke for an hour and a half every single week, watching Luke be fucking great with kids the whole time, and he’s going to have to somehow manage to be okay with the fact that Luke almost certainly hates him.
The meeting ends, and Din has absolutely no idea what actually happened in its duration, but he knows that this is the best chance he has to explain himself the way that Luke deserves.
“Hey.” Grogu’s playing that dots game in an old coloring book with one of the other boys, and Luke’s cleaning up some of his papers and sticking them into an old bookbag. “Can we talk?”
Luke pauses, closes his eyes, and sighs. It is not a great sign. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we probably should.”
They go out into the hall, just outside the door, so that Luke can still keep an eye on the kids. It’s as private as they can get, even though it isn't private at all. “I just wanted to apologize,” Din begins. “I hadn’t…been planning on doing that to you.” He hopes that he can get away with being vague because of the possibility of kids hearing them. “I got a text from the babysitter, it was an emergency. I needed to get home. I was just trying not to wake you, I wasn’t. I wasn’t trying to escape .” I’d like to have a do-over, if you’ll give me one . “But I’m very sorry that it seemed like I was, and more sorry that I’m only just now getting the chance to explain myself. You deserve better than that.”
Luke stares up at him, and Din really, really wants that do-over. “I understand,” Luke says finally. “Thank you for telling me. I really appreciate it.” He smiles up at Din, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “See you next week?”
Din nods. “See you next week.”