Work Text:
When you step out of the refresher, reality comes back to you quickly as you struggle to towel yourself off in the cramped space. You’ve pulled on a pair of pants and a too-big shirt: muscles and sore skin aching for the comfort of some loungewear after such a long hunt. You exit to grab your comb from behind the door and watch as Din moves toward you to head into the fresher himself. Without thinking you stop him, hand placed gently on the dirtied beskar pauldron on his shoulder. He looks back at you, helmet tilted slightly, questioning.
You blink a few times before your brain catches up with your body. “Would you let me clean your armor for you while you’re in there?” You immediately realize how forward that sounds and you backtrack quickly. “If that's a Creed no-go, it’s okay, but I figured I would at least offer. Then you don’t have to sulk down here by yourself for an additional half-hour on top of everything else.”
His helmet stared back at you, unmoving. You imagine him blinking beneath it and immediately you scold yourself for allowing your mind to trail off that way.
His voice is low through the modulator when he finally responds.
“No, it’s… that would be okay.” You nod.
“Okay. I’ll head up to the cockpit for now and you can just leave everything outside the door. I’ll come down in a few.” His helmet nods downwards at you and you turn, heading up the ladder as you make your way to the co-pilot’s chair.
You lose yourself to your thoughts for a while, before you hear a change in the water falling in the refresher, indicating that your Mandalorian had finally stepped in. You slowly made your way back down the ladder and face the pile of dull armor carefully arranged in front of the door. The visor of his helmet looked back at you from where it sat, making your chest feel uneasy - like you were looking at Din’s beheaded remains.
As the discomfort settled over you and eventually dissipated, you realized that you couldn’t even picture what your Mandalorian might look like beneath the helmet. Of course, he was human, but you had no sense for him. Was he young? Old? You caught glimpses of his tanned skin when you helped him swap out a particularly dirty cape, but they were fleeting enough moments that your eyes didn’t have the chance to linger. His persona was grumpy enough - you had to peg him as late 30s or 40s so - but again, you really had no way to definitively tell. What color was his hair? His eyes? Did he shave? So many questions were swirling around in your brain frantically, and it quickly started to feelk, like a betrayal to him in the way you reeled over what he looked like.
“Kriff, alright…” you spoke aloud to yourself, trying desperately to silence your thoughts and figure out how to mentally behave once more. You pick up his helmet and head over to the cargo hold where you kept various towels and cleaning supplies. Taking out the bottle of metal polish that you had seen Din walking around with previously along with a stack of old rags, you sat down and got to work.
It didn’t go particularly quickly, but you liked the monotony of scrubbing down each part, drying it off, spreading on some of the polish, and then buffing it out. Quickly, the helmet you held in your hands was back to its beautiful inky silver luster and you felt a smile creep onto your cheeks.
This was your Mandalorian. This shiny, beautiful, dazzling, sparkling hunk of metal staring back at you from your lap. You stood, holding the helmet timidly in your hands, turning it over a few times to admire its craftsmanship. You’ve never paid attention to it this close, and you make note of the lack of any kind of scratch or dent in the perfectly chromed beskar. It was amazing, really, considering all he had been through since you started traveling with him, let alone since he put on the helmet.
You walk back over to the pile and place the helmet down carefully, picking up two more pieces of armor and repeating the process. You clean them, polish them, and then turn them over and over in your hands, casually appreciating the power of each piece, reveling in the knowledge that these hunks of shiny metal had saved the life of your Mandalorian time and time again.
After switching out clean for dirty a few more times, you step back and take a look at the full pile of newly polished beskar in front of you. It really is a beautiful material, you note to yourself, keeping a close eye on the way it reflects the dim interiors of the Razor Crest back at you. You hear the water stream shut off from behind the refresher door and instinctively call out to him.
“Din?” You’re not sure what you’re waiting for, realizing that you just tried to make verbal contact with him, sans helmet. That had to be against the Creed, right? “I, uh… finished everything. It’s just outside the door, with a clean flight suit. I’m gonna head up to the cockpit now.” You turn, scuttling towards the ladder as quickly as possible, embarrassed at yourself for not thinking before speaking.
You should’ve just left it and gone - he would’ve known that you’d shuffle your way out of the space as soon as possible after you were finished.
Idiot, you think to yourself.
As you’re planting your right foot on the first rung of the ladder and tensing your muscles to hoist you up to the next, you hear a distinctly un-modulated baritone voice respond from behind the door and it steals the very breath from your lungs.
“Thank you."