Work Text:
The temporary residential room at the space station was small and sterile, clearly made for the quick turnaround of its inhabitants, but she had found herself living there for longer than she would have liked. She had been assigned to the space station after a rather unexpected promotion - so unexpected, in fact, it seemed like her new employers forgot they had a new employee to provide room and board for. Despite the title and raise, her permanent accommodations still “weren’t done”, even after working at the the space station for what had felt like months.
Another day, another night spent on a bed that clearly hadn’t been designed by or for humans, and away from the planet and place she had called home for so long. A place where she wasn’t sure she was really missed, and the one person she might dare to hope would miss her didn’t even know she had gone off world.
She hoped he hadn’t forgotten about her entirely, but she knew he well could have - they had been a single intersecting point in the trajectory of her life, but she would never forget him.
Her Mandalorian.
Cold beskar steel, the scent of blaster smoke, and his voice that called her name - severe while running through the streets to see her to safety, or gentler then a whisper when sharing a bed.
She couldn’t bear to keep thinking about him any longer, and shook her head as if to clear away the memories.
It was over. Done. She hadn’t seen him in some time, and didn’t have a chance to tell him where she was going. And he probably wouldn’t even care to know.
She turned her data pad off and tossed it carelessly onto her bed, roughly undoing the top closure of her station uniform collar when a knock came at the door, making her jump. It was probably one of the space station’s officers who she saw often while doing her work - maybe too often, but he hadn’t really seemed to understand when someone wasn’t interested. She sighed as she walked over to the door, pressing the panel to open it, eyes pinched shut in a combination of general weariness and a lack of interest in whatever Tennan might have to say or wherever he might invite her to go to at this hour.
“Listen, it’s been a long day… Can we talk tomorrow?” she asked, knowing Tennan would stand around and keep talking, well after she would try and find an out of the conversation. Damn them for not moving her into her actual room yet, and damn the public space station housing and amenities.
“Tomorrow, then,” the even, modulated voice of her Mandalorian answered, and her eyes opened to see him standing before her, ready to turn to leave.
“No, wait! Don’t! Don’t go,” She blurted, shaking her head frantically and stepping backwards into the room as if to invite him to come inside, watching him with a pleading gaze.
Her Mandalorian didn’t go. Instead, he wordlessly closed the gap between them with an even stride, and tapped the door’s control panel as he stepped in, the door shutting softly behind them both.
“What are you doing here?” She asked quietly, feeling small in his presence. The very last man she would have expected outside the door, in front of her once again.
“I came to find you,” he said, brushing a stray lock of her hair back into its place, her hand finding its place over his. “I wanted to see you again.”
She looked into the tinted transparisteel of his visor, her other hand tracing the cheek of his helmet, the orange and white paint of his armor chipped, scraped and weathered, shiny beskar peeking out from underneath. His tan flight suit was singed and patched, and his red neckerchief had been tattered to a mere strip of fabric knotted to one shoulder strap of his flak vest.
“You’ve been through a great deal, haven’t you?” She asked quietly, her Mandalorian leaning into her touch.
“Nothing that would keep me away from you,” he said, his hands finding their way down her sides and to the small of her back. She shivered, his appearance and touch immediately stoking something hot and long ignored within her —
You clicked your data pad off as quickly as you could, placed it face down on your desk, and glanced around the magistrate’s reception area to make sure no one had been in close enough proximity to have read anything.
The place was as empty as it had been when you decided to pick up where you had left off in your novel, and you were thankful for that. You shouldn’t have been reading while at work, but it had just been so quiet the past few days. There was a notable lack of new messages to send or any to respond to, and with no public audiences or scheduled meetings being held either, you couldn’t help but bring your data pad with you.
Clearly, your novel had some less than work safe content in it, but with the way the story had been going at first, you hadn’t been sure the heroine and the Mandalorian would ever meet again. Clearly they were going to meet again going from the moment they separated based on the amount of pages left, but if the magistrate’s office was going to be so quiet, you might as well not force yourself to wait until you were home to find out how your romance novel with the Mandalorian love interest was going to end.
You cast your gaze from the overturned data pad out the window, and couldn’t help but wonder what would make the author decide a Mandalorian would make a good love interest, other than the whole “wayfaring stranger with a dangerous occupation and mysterious creed” thing.
Which, strung together in a sentence like that, made a lot of sense, you thought.
There was also the fact that Mandalorians didn’t really exist anymore, or so you heard, and were more the things of stories anyhow. Though, they were the things of stories that were usually less erotic in nature.
You started to wonder if the author had ever met a Mandalorian herself, or if she should stick to writing about bad boy smugglers with hearts of gold and talented but self doubting ace pilots in need of love. Though, out of the three leading men in the novels this particular author had written, maybe you were in love with the Mandalorian the most.
Your Mandalorian, even.
Maybe he’d pull you out of your dreary administrative job and into a life of adventure in the far reaches of the galaxy, like the heroine in the novel. You’d never really left the planet before, and going to one of the moons hardly counted, so you’d never really done much adventuring at all. You had definitely wanted to go off-world and see all sorts of things, but it just hadn’t happened, and with the remnants of the Empire still around, it really wasn’t happening anytime soon. Besides your lack of travel, getting a “safe” job was all your parents tasked you with - no enlisting with the New Republic, no bartending, no shipyards, and certainly no “entertaining”, as your father had put it, so into civil service you went.
And civil service led you down the dark path of romance novels during work hours. You smirked into the palm of your hand, coming back to your senses, and decided to check the desk’s computer for any new transmissions or e-mails.
It was probably better to live vicariously though the heroines in your novels. You would hope you could put up a fight in any danger, but realistically, you’d been to a blaster firing range once, and wasn’t like your parents knew any martial arts to teach you. You’d probably die. You couldn’t help but give an amused scoff to yourself at the thought of dying pathetically in front of your Mandalorian as you scrolled through the lack of new messages. This kind of life suited you better anyway, you figured, as blasé as it was.
As you scrolled down to the beginning of the pervious week’s messages, and then flicked your finger up to rapidly scroll back to the top, your desk burst into a cacophony of buzzing, beeping and short, repeating melodies, all convenient ways of getting your attention when an incoming message was being received. An incoming message that was being received by anything and everything on your desk that could receive a message, in fact.
You scrambled to answer the com link, while clicking off the vibrating pocket secretary and glancing at the header of the newest e-mail in your inbox - LOCK UP, GO HOME - you picked up the line.
“Hel—“ You began, but the voice on the other line immediately cut you off.
“What are you still doing at the desk?!” The magistrate’s personal assistant, Lorn, barked, “Just lock up and go home, and even if he shows up, you can’t let him in, got it?!”
“Him?” You asked dumbly, absently standing up from your chair as if to look for someone, still holding the receiver by your ear.
“Just do it!” Lorn commanded, and the line went dead.
You stood silent for barely a second, eyes glued to the cryptic and extremely unsettling message on your screen. By the time you returned the receiver to its dock and looked up at the door, it was already open, and he was already inside.
A Mandalorian.
The real deal, complete with gleaming beskar armor and more munitions than you’d ever seen on a single person at once, was walking your way. Your first panicked thought was to sweep your data pad into the trash, but something about the way he walked in told you he’s wasn’t there for your erotica. You stepped backwards into your seat, unintentionally at the ready to play secretary.
“Is the magistrate in his office?” A low, modulated voice asked.
Was that what the vocoder was supposed to sound like? Was that what your Mandalorian sounded like? Your mind blitzed through the catalogue of expectations and the Mandalorian tilted his head the slightest amount, as if asking, “did you hear me”?
You looked to your computer screen, back at the visor where the Mandalorian’s eyes should have probably been, and then back at the header of the last e-mail from Lorn. Mandalorians were mercenaries and bounty hunters as far as you knew, and if a mercenary-slash-bounty hunter was here looking for your employer, it probably meant you were about to be imminently unemployed.
And it was probably wiser to be unemployed than dead.
“He- He is in his office today, yes,” you said, trying to look him in the face like any other inquiring visitor, but the lack of eyes to make contact with made it harder than expected. How did the heroine in the novel do it?
The Mandalorian looked past you, to the hallway leading from the reception area.
“Last door at the end of the hall,” you managed to add, gesturing like you would to any other guest of the magistrate with an appointment.
“You should go home,” the Mandalorian said, giving you a small nod as he passed your desk, making you sit up even straighter in your chair.
You watched as he strode by, and the instant he had turned the corner to go down the hallway, you stood up and briskly walked around the reception desk and out the front door.
You couldn’t help but wonder if the Mandalorian had already opened the door to the magistrate’s office by the time you let the front door of the office building swing closed behind you, as you made a beeline away from what was surely to become your former place of employment. You didn’t even try to crane your neck and listen for the inevitable shouting and blaster fire that was likely to come. You shoulder checked someone and mumbled an apology as you made your way from the business district, trying not to think too hard about what had just transpired.
You didn’t really remember how you got home, but you did.
You went through the motions of your after work routine upon arriving home at your little apartment and managed to settle somewhat by the evening, though any thoughts that crossed your mind were interrupted by the memory of the Mandalorian at your desk.
Your Mandalorian at the desk.
He was real. It was all real. Beskar armor, ballistics, and a helmet that was never, ever, coming off.
Except for cunnilingus, according to your novel.
You chuckled to yourself at your own stupid joke, leaning back on the pile of pillows on your bed, before jolting upright in realization.
Your data pad! You were so busy fleeing the scene of what was most definitely a bounty being hunted that you forgot your data pad on your desk. You could only pray that the desk was ignored in the likely kerfuffle, or the whole place burned to the ground and no one, especially the Mandalorian, would ever know the kind of stories you were reading in your spare time.
It was a shame. Snug in your bed after long day at work, you really did want to know how that romance novel with the Mandalorian ended.
But maybe, your firsthand encounter would give you the inspiration needed to fill in the blanks on your own as you drifted to sleep - visions of the gleam of office lights on beskar armor illuminating the back of your eyelids.