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Sending you to the market is something Mando has trusted you to do dozens of times. Sometimes you get a little distracted and end up spending a couple extra credits on something frivolous (he very much did not need a much softer and newer blanket for his sleeping quarters, even if his heart does squeeze inexplicably every time he thinks about the gesture and how his back feels much better as of late), but you’re never gone for longer than a couple hours. No problem; he’s got the kid mostly under control, and he genuinely does appreciate that he gets some one-on-one time with the child and that you get some alone time as well. There isn’t much time for that between caring for the child, caring for the ship, caring for Mando, caring for yourself….
He should really give you a raise. If only he had the credits.
But you’ve been gone for a while now, and he’s starting to worry. You had told Mando on the trip here that you were running low on some supplies, and when he conceded to your offer of getting the items yourself so he could spend some sorely missed time with the kid, the way your eyes lit up at the little excursion had Mando smiling under his own helmet.
Whatever you two have is… new. You both know there’s more than a professional relationship and camaraderie, but the closest Mando has ever gotten to making a move on you was the one time he put his hand on your back in a crowded marketplace to keep you safe and close to him. Not that he needed to, as you’re a capable fighter when push comes to shove and could have easily followed him through the market, but he also didn’t pull away when you latched onto his arm as the crowd thinned out to explore the rest of the vendors on the street. You had stayed like that the whole night, as both of you kept finding excuses to stay in the market just a little longer.
But this planet is more dangerous. Not by much, or else he wouldn’t have let you go alone, but enough that your absence for this long causes concern. He doesn’t like where this is going, and the thought of any thing happening to you while he sits on the floor of the Crest playing with the child is unnervingly at the forefront of his mind.
But maybe you’re out this long because you want to be out. That makes sense, right? You saw a show that was being played and got caught up in it, or maybe the market is much bigger than the last time Mando was here, or maybe somebody caught your eye and you’ve been talking and laughing and maybe even gone out for drinks-
He doesn’t like that. Mando stops the train of thought as best as he can, but it’s already there. Something big and ugly rears its head at the thought of you smiling and laughing and flirting with some shithead on this dumpster planet. It wouldn’t be surprising, as you are quite beautiful and, though it has yet to cause a problem that Mando is aware of, it’s never caused any trouble you couldn’t handle. He doesn’t realize he’s cracked one of the building blocks (a gift you had bought the child a short while back) in his hand until he hears the sad sounds building up to the kid’s waterworks.
“Shit,” he mutters quietly, trying to push the splintered but not completely broken piece back together enough that it looks fine. Grogu takes one look at it and takes in a big breath to start wailing when the ramp leading to the outside begins to lower. The child makes a brrr? sound in question, and Mando quickly scoops him up to greet you at the base of the platform, expecting arms full of supplies and an apology mixed with an excuse ready on your lips for him.
What he doesn’t expect is the way your bag has had to be tied up to prevent where it looks like it has been cut from spilling all its contents, the disheveled hair on your head and the dirty, tattered clothes that were fresh this morning to match.
Oh, and the blood all over your top.
“Don’t worry,” you attempt to reassure him, “it’s not my blood.”
“Not my-” he cuts himself off. “What happened?”
“Well, some of it is mine,” you try again, hurrying after his glare sharpens at you, “but not all. It’s mostly the other guy’s.”
“The other-” he tries again, unsure where to begin with the woman in front of him. The child hiccups gently, and this seems to bring you out of your reverie. You smile kindly at him, walking up the ramp to offer a quick kiss to his forehead. Mando chooses to look past at your close proximity in favour of figuring out what the hell you got yourself into.
“I was just in the market when some guy grabbed me and pulled me into an alley.” You give one last smile to the kid before brushing past them to enter the hull, setting your bag onto one of the crates. Mando follows you, setting the kid into his pod and watching you lean against the wall. “He told me to give him my stuff - which I did - and then he tried to grab my ass so I just…” you trail off, raising your eyebrows and hoping Mando got the hint. He offers nothing but a silent gesture in hopes of your continuation, so you tell him, “stabbed him in the throat. A couple times.”
“A couple times,” Mando echoes. You huff.
“He was a big guy, so it took a few tries before he went down,” roll your eyes, crossing your arms over your chest. It reveals an open wound running up along the side of your forearm. “And stop copying me.”
Mando says nothing, only moving to grab the medkit from its spot in the wall and pulling down the shitty med cot folded into the wall.
“Sit,” is all he says. You mutter something under your breath but comply.
“So you mean to tell me,” you drawl, “that this cot has been here all this time, and you've been letting me sleep on the floor?”
“The floor is actually quite comfortable if you give it a chance,” he retorts, opening up the medkit and sorting through the supplies. Bacta and bandages are all he needs, but what if there’s an infection that bacta doesn’t cover? Do you need painkillers? He doesn’t have any other than the bacta itself, and makes a mental note to grab some in case of an actual emergency.
“Not a chance,” you snort. Mando tilts his head up at you, and watching you blush at the bridge of your nose and shift in your seat sends a fluttering feeling into his gut. “You’ve got a bed, even if it is small and has only one ratty blanket to lay on.”
“You’re more than welcome to sleep in it,” he offers, only realizing what he’s said the moment after he’s said it. You pause at this, settling after a moment onto the edge of the cot and rolling up the sleeve of your shirt to reveal the cut and a litany of other bruises alongside it. Mando thinks quickly. “Did you fight him?”
“I already told you,” you say after a second, “it took a bit for him to go down. And it wasn’t exactly a clean job, hence all the…” you gesture broadly to yourself, and only now does Mando realize that you were trying to get changed into non-bloody clothes before he had forced you to accept treatment. He looks to the side and sees one of his old shirts. It’s probably clean enough.
“Here.” He tosses it to you. “Change.”
“Wh-” you stutter, blushing, and it’s upsetting, really how much Mando wishes he could take a picture of you like this for himself. “I’m- you’re right there, and so is the kid. I’m not-”
“It’s a shirt,” he interrupts, turning around to give you some privacy. “You could’ve had it on by now.” There’s only silence, and then the soft rustle of clothing being changed. Mando smiles softly under the helmet. When he turns around, he does not anticipate the sight of you in his clothing to be so intoxicating - and yet, he can’t take his eyes off of you. You reaching from your seat on the cot for the content of the medkit stirs him back to reality.
“I can-”
“Let me.”
You’re holding the roll of gauze in one hand and the tube of bacta in the other, and there is blood and dirt speckled on your face that looks up at him from your seat on the cot in front of him, and Mando is only vaguely aware that he is standing unnecessarily close in the V of your legs as he drinks in the sight of you, like this, in his shirt and trying to take care of your own injury so that Mando can spend time with the kid.
Whatever it is between you two, it’s strong right now. It’s thick in the air, but it isn’t unpleasant. He wants to settle in it, settle in you - not in a sexual way, he corrects himself quickly, but in your comfort and kindness and wit and humour. He wants it all. He wants it from you.
But you’re bleeding onto the cot right now, so he’s going to have to wait. Without looking away from you he takes the bandages from your hand, and half a second later you’re handing him the bacta. You don't turn away even as he moves to look at his work.
The process really doesn’t have to take more than a minute, but Mando realizes as he begins to unravel the gauze that he’s never done this with you before. If you’ve ever been hurt, he’s been worse; you’ve done this more for him than he ever has for you, and he isn’t sure if he feels enamoured guilt or repentant bliss at the thought. He slows his work consciously.
Mando is careful to wipe down your arm gently, pressing lightly with a cloth long stashed in the medkit he rarely uses to clean your skin. He is especially cautious when he brushes over the open wound, but he feels you tense under your skin anyway. He thinks to mutter out an apology, but that means breaking whatever is soft and tender and so delicate between you two that he doesn’t know how to navigate so instead just chooses to exist in, and so he says nothing. You’re still looking at him.
Once your arm is clean(er than it was before), he sets the cloth on the cot beside you and pauses for only half a moment before removing his gloves; they’re dirty, truthfully, and he hardly ever cleans them except for the blood and whatever other grime can be quickly wiped off onto his clothes. This grabs your attention, and the instantaneous reaction of your eyes shifting to his hands after you’ve processed the movement is almost enough to make the Mandolorian feel self conscious. But he’s a professional, and professionals don’t get distracted by girls who wear their clothes and let them bandage their wounds and stare at their hands when they take off their gloves for the first time in front of them. So he sets the gloves on the other side of you and spreads a thin layer of bacta on his fingers before he holds out your arm steady at the wrist.
His hands are gentle on you, reverent in every way he feels he must be to hold you at this close. He spreads the paste along the cut, dabbing a bit at the other couple of nicks and bruises that litter your arm. There’s a moment, in between him holding your wrist and resting his hand gently on your arm, where neither of you move. He’s covered all your hurts in bacta and you’re unmoving in response, and the two of you settle in that position for just a second before Mando continues with his movements. He lets go - hesitantly - to unwrap the gauze, then begins to wrap, starting at your wrist and securing it at the base of your elbow. That’s all there is to it, though he did take a bit longer to, uh, ensure that it was done correctly, sure, but Mando can’t seem to get himself to let go of you. Thankfully, you don’t say anything; at some point, your eyes moved back up to the unreadable black T of his visor, and Mando feels something flutter in his stomach when he looks back at you. He’s moved closer. He doesn’t know how or when, and he possibly knows why, but he’s too caught up in this moment of touching you and being this close and having something so intimate yet divisive between you two that just refuses to be acknowledged.
If he were a brave man, Mando might have made a move. Not that he knows exactly how to do that, but he imagines it can’t be that difficult. He’s never, uh, really done that, even with Xi’an, and the job doesn’t exactly call for it. Not that you haven’t offered to try it out yourself for “the sake of the mission,” as you had explained it quickly to Mando, but he didn’t even want to hear it. He doesn’t want to think about it now, either. Maybe he would say something, if he had the courage. Or hold you. Or do one of the handful of things Mando has observed couples doing on various planets (and, truthfully, the various holodramas he’s seen snippets of over the years). Ultimately, though, it’s you who makes the first move.
“Thank you,” you say softly, putting your hand over his and looking up at him in a soft smile and earnest gaze that makes him forget how to speak. Maybe you’re not expecting anything, but he can’t help but feel like there’s a door of opportunity closing that he’ll regret not taking, so he rests his other hand on your thigh and says nothing.
You look at him in some way that he wants to hold on to, a warm and fluttering sensation in his stomach that refuses to quiet even after he removes his hands and gives you a curt nod, turning to return the content of the medkit to the pack and placing it back on the wall. He feels your eyes follow him for a second before dropping away, uncertain, and he ignores whatever uncomfortable lead feeling sits in his stomach as he moves to climb into the cockpit silently. He’ll wait until morning to leave, like the two of you had discussed, but he just needs to… check something, probably. It’s an old ship. There’s bound to be something in need of repair.
———
That thing, fundamentally, is him.
He didn’t do anything wrong, he keeps reminding himself; you had climbed into the cockpit to bring Mando his dinner, as you normally did, and exchanged no more pleasantries than usual. Mando knows he’s not a talker, but he has never been so worried that you thought he was ignoring you and it’s driving him crazy. So he touches your thigh in a moment of weakness (or strength, a small part of him admits) after patching you up from a fight with some dick that Mando definitely would have liked to deliver the same fate to, had he been there.
But he hadn’t. Though a small part of him feels guilty that he wasn’t there to help, he understands that you can handle yourself and his presence wasn’t needed. Which stings unexpectedly, truthfully, but not as much as the thought that you might be upset with him.
Correction: he does not care, because you and him are nothing but professional and anything that happens to you is an inconvenience at most. Mandolorians don’t care for such trivial things.
The armor is Mandolorian, he thinks softly to himself. I’m just a man.
Men are not stone any more than Mando - any more than Din Djarin - is made of the beskar he uses to hide, to shield, to protect so much of himself. Yet despite its durability against the insides of space creatures and blaster shots and vibroblade cuts, you’ve managed to worm your way past it. Perhaps, he wonders, it’s because you’re soft; Mando has only ever known violence and pain, the hurt and anguish that comes without defence, and has learned to build from it. He hasn’t built a defence against the shape of your eyelids, the curve of your hand on his bicep when you two wander through crowded markets together and how the sound of your laughter could be the only thing he listens to for all the time it takes to cross the galaxy and back and still not grow tired of it. There was no course on unrequited love in his time as a foundling, no creed to protect anything other than his face. Mando was taught how to survive, how to fight and kill and maim and endure any of those attempts on him; Din was taught how to disappear.
How does a man go from that life, of cold, harsh persons raising him and giving the closest semblance to normalcy and love that he might ever know, to the one where you cook meals for him in a makeshift kitchen on the Razor Crest and bring up to him to eat without having to ask? How is Mando - how is Din - supposed to ignore the old, aching desire of any living creature in the galaxy to know, love, connect? You are funny and kind and smart and witty, and every time Mando thinks about it too long he feels the corners of his mouth upturn and the knot of unease and anger and uncertainty that had been driving him for so long loosen up just a little. It’s dangerous, and if he were a smart Mandolorian he would have gotten rid of you a long time ago.
But Din Djarin is not a smart Mandolorian. He is just a man who wants to eat the meal so tenderly and thoughtfully prepared for him by this incredible girl and then tell her thank you and I love you.
That first bit he can do. The rest….
———
The kid had a sudden burst of energy right before it was time for bed (for him and you both), so the hour you had spent playing with him outside was equal parts tiring and exhausting. You don’t even care what the difference there means, because your thoughts are entirely elsewhere. His hand - Mando’s hand, ungloved and big and warm - had come down to your leg in a motion of comfort and affirmation, before it seemed that Mando had gotten scared and backed off. You figured he wanted some space after what must have been the least violent touch he’s had in… maybe decades. You don’t know. It was more than he’s ever shown, and if you didn’t know him so well you’d have brushed the whole situation off completely.
But you do know him. You’ve been travelling together for quite some time now, and while he’s been reserved with touch you’ve seen how he’s opened up in other ways. He doesn’t talk much about his past other than what you ask about (and you’re always careful, cautious of the fragile bond and trust you’ve meagerly built up), but he’ll gladly entertain any conversation you start up - even if it feels a bit one-sided at times; he’ll prompt you with a question or a look if you seem to finish your train of thought, spurring you on before you realize that you’ve been talking with him for nearly an hour. He takes note to pick up the nutrition bars that you said you liked once, and he always makes sure that you’ve taken your fill before serving himself whatever food you’ve made.
Touch is okay sometimes, you concede, cheeks warming at the memory of your fingertips pressing gently into his arm at a crowded market when you keep almost losing him (you know he wouldn’t lose you, but you can get nervous if you don’t know where he is and so, you’re sure, he entertains it). The soft touch of your hand on his bicep as the two of you strolled through the vast market at a much slower pace than usual, separating hesitantly on your way out of the city but warmly content inside instead, was not uncertain. You knew before, further confirmed then, that the Mandalorian cares for you. What exactly he feels is something you don’t want to speculate on, out of both respect and insecurity, but it grows between you two so thickly that you can hardly breathe without taking it in.
You sigh, turning over on your spot on the floor. Thinking about all this from your pitiful sleeping quarters that truthfully consist of a few threadbare blankets and a makeshift pillow of old shirts rolled together in a pillowcase (it’s really more comfortable than it sounds, honest) is less than ideal. You get the feeling that someone is looking at you, suddenly, and you’re prepared to meet the gaze of a small green baby in a burlap sack (who mischievously keeps getting out of his pod at odd hours of the night) but instead jolt at the sight of a Mandalorian staring down at you awkwardly.
“Uh,” you swallow, uncertain, “can I help you?”
“Is it… comfortable?”
What?
“Huh?” You rub your eye, yawning and looking around at the dark ship. You can’t really see him, just the outline of a man with a cape and then a strange, unidentifiable blob from the waist up that you just assumed belonged to Mando, but his voice sounds warm and nice so you endure the rapid stuttering of your heart and try to regain your composure.
“The floor,” he clarifies. “It’s not comfortable, is it?”
“It’s fine,” you say quickly, thinking back to his earlier words. You’d like to sleep in his bed, but his body needs a good rest more than you do and there is no way that you will let him sleep on the floor or in the cockpit unless he passes out in that space. Mando stills and nods curtly, pausing hesitantly before he speaks again.
“Well,” he starts, “if you’d rather something else, you’re more than welcome to sleep in the cot. It’s not much, but it has to be better than… this.” He says it uncertainly, like he’s trying not to offend you but also cannot stand the sight of you on the floor. You worry your bottom lip in thought.
“Where will you sleep?” you ask finally. He cocks his head like he hasn’t thought of that.
“In the cockpit,” he answers. “Or maybe I’ll try the floor, since you like it so much.”
“You can’t do that,” you frown.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll feel bad.”
Oh.
A small pause before you summon all the courage between you two and open yourself in offering to him.
“We could just share it.”
He looks at you uncertainly, silently contemplating the implication of your words. You swallow and continue talking.
“It’s big enough for us both,” you speak quickly, “and you shouldn’t sleep somewhere uncomfortable. I don’t mind. It’s… kind of cold, anyway, on the floor.” You shift in your seated position on the floor, anxious in the silence that remains. He doesn’t speak, only stares at you for a minute before extending a hand down to you.
“Alright,” he concedes, and your face lights up in a way that he can see even in this pitch dark. “The helmet stays on.”
“Of course,” you rush. “Just… maybe not the rest. Of your armor,” you add quickly, seeing the cock of his head at your words. You flush, and you wish you had something to hide your face like he has his. The hand stays outstretched, and it takes yours softly when you accept it. He leads you in the dark, letting you settle in to get comfortable while he removes his pauldrons and chest piece. Your eyes follow the outline of his movements, and he feels so raw and exposed and vulnerable but he likes being watched. He likes it when it’s you.
Finally, everything but the helmet is removed. His first knee rests on the cot to enter in before he stops. You freeze, suddenly nervous that he doesn’t want this, that you were wrong about this and everything else and now he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t want to be near you-
“Close your eyes,” his voice interrupts. There’s a confused pause before you voice your understanding and comply, followed by a soft hiss and a thump before his body joins yours. Your eyes are still closed, and only once he pulls the door shut and you feel a warm puff of breath on your neck do you realize what this is.
“Mando-” you start, but he’s quick to move over you and rest an arm beside your head. You aren’t boxed in, not completely, but he’s there and there isn’t much space to move away otherwise.
“Din,” he interrupts, and the confession leaves his tongue like it’s a thousand pound weight being dropped from his shoulders. Your breath hitches under him and it’s a wonder he doesn’t go feral right there.
“Din.” You test the name on your tongue and decide it’s your favourite taste. You smile even though he can’t see and turn your face to align with his. There’s a pause where neither of you move, soft and anxious breathing the only sound between you two.
“What were you going to say?” Mando - Din asks finally, and it takes half a second before you remember what he’s talking about.
“I forget,” you answer truthfully. And it really isn’t that hard of a decision to close the gap between you two.