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Din had never thought he’d have a family.
He’d had far-fetched dreams, lonely nights stained with a hint of guilt as he wished for a touch. He’d had nights filled with doubt and disbelief that anything would come of his dreams.
Yet he’d never thought he’d have a family.
His dreams were visions of haziness, barely out of the reach of his clarity. Simply an imagination that sometimes slipped past his walls, bringing an addicting, vague sense of happiness and pure peace.
Yet in defiance of dreams solely destined to be dreams, he is here, leaning against the side of his ship, you reclined with your head on his chest. The world’s made of green and blue and something indescribably fresh—a planet he’d found to stop on for a day.
Mountains lie in the distance, hazy and regal, like paintings he’d seen in his past, two-dimensional, somewhat unreal. Fresh mountain air runs cool in his nostrils, the first cool air he’d felt in years.
His helmet had always come off in enclosed rooms, in the lifelessness of hyperspace, in strictly self-guarded environments, constrained with paranoia. Now it comes off in the presence of life, an idea that dredges up a certain reverence within him.
Grogu waddles around within eyesight, chasing butterflies and frogs. Din decides it’d be cuter if he were unaware of the fact that Grogu will soon choose to make a meal of those frogs.
You shift against Din’s armor, fingers grasping at the soft grass beneath, verdant and brilliant, small flowers of purple and yellow among it ready to break free in spring—lushness to compliment some newfound feeling in his life.
You chatter on and on about your family, of fond childhood memories he’d never experienced anything close to, yet he patiently listens, zoning in and out of interest and absence, even though he adores the sound of your voice. His mind is elsewhere.
“I’ve been without a family since I was a child,” is the statement that leaves him abruptly in one of your pauses, borne from his bouts of absence. It takes you off guard in a brief moment of guilt.
He can feel a falter in your disposition, a drop in your relaxed mood. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel—“
“No,” he quickly responds, tensing up briefly. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just…”
His voices trails off as he glances around the place, finding resolution in his wandering mind. A feeling of safety in a person, a feeling of comfort in a presence—it’s all suggestive of a distant feeling buried in murky waters of the past, shining through with a frightening, yet exhilarating, brilliance.
It’s a feeling that seeks out missing familiarity, one that had whispered in his mind since he was a child, haunting and addictive—find me.
He has a moment of intuition in which he thinks it’s been found. In you, in the child, in whatever he wants to believe is set for the future.
“Din?” Your weight leaves him. You’re sitting up now, eyes trained on him. Although it’d been months since you’d seen his face for the first time, a small part of him still cowers in the feeling of pure exposure.
His words, so sparingly used throughout his life, refuse to change their mannerisms.
I’ve been without a family since I was a child. He blinks a few times, lips beginning to part before closing once more. And now?
He knows what he feels now. What remains is the lurking fear that you won’t feel the same.
“The kid…he’s my son….” Din lets out a breath, praying that you’ll understand, that you’ll save him from this sensation of vulnerability like you always do. “And you….”
Your features seem to soften as an understanding shows itself. He intertwines his fingers with yours as you give him a single nod of reassurance.
“Family,” you murmur, and all he wants to do is kiss you with this new admittance in the back of his mind. He knows it’ll be even better, that you’ll somehow taste even sweeter.
“Family,” you whisper once more, as if savoring the sound. “And something more.”