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hansoulo · 4 years

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cold when you hold me (warm when I cry)

pairing: din djarin/reader (gender neutral, no y/n, could be platonic)

warnings: cursing? mild angst, crying, hurt/comfort oh ye boiiii

word count: like a cute 1.5k

a/n: may i offer you some catharsis in these trying times?

Today... today just… sucked. Like, really really sucked. What was that law? Anything that could go wrong, will go wrong?

Maker, it wasn’t even anything that bad, y’know? It was just.. Frustrating. The kid was frustrating. Mando was frustrating. Everything was just…

Fuck.

You’d been in a fit the entire day, hating how shrill your voice sounded when you became short with the both of them. You didn’t mean to. You didn’t want to. It’s just that everything managed to become incredibly too much for seemingly no reason at all, enough so that just the sound of the Crest’s controls was enough to bring you near tears.

One of the subjects of your ire spoke up.

“Are you- alright?” his words were stilted, halting and unsure but edged with soft concern. You let out a laugh, the sound watery.

“Yeah, yeah I’m-” you swiped your knuckles across your eyelids, tracing the sunburst dust that follows the pressing on your vision before the shine of his armour came back into view. “I’m good,” you finished with a small sniff and a bobbing nod, trying to convince yourself more than him.

A few seconds passed in silence. You wiped at your eyes again. Tasted one roll of dripping salt. And turned away.

The Mandalorian’s hands curled around the ship controls. He was still, ever-stoic save for one slight turn of his head. “Do you want to… talk about it?” he asked when you only breathed, the sound rattling a wheezed hollowness in your chest and against the cockpit walls.

You smiled - or tried to - and shook your head gently, feeling the pool of crackling tears before you willed them back down. “No, it’s okay,” you answered after a moment, quiet. “Thanks, though.”

The hem of your shirtsleeve caught in your nails when you fiddled with it, drawing out a loose thread and watching as it piled around the skin of your wrist. It was white. The thread, that is. Which was sort of strange because the fabric was black, so it really didn’t lend itself to blending into the rest of the- oh, shit you were crying again.

“I’m gonna go, uhm-” you swallowed, ducking your head with a cough as you stood up from the copilot seat. “Check on the kid. Maybe nap.” You offered up a vague wave up towards your head in half-hearted explanation. “Headache.”

The Mandalorian nodded. “The Mandalorian” felt… impersonal, though. Mando, you called him sometimes. Nerf-herding hunk of fucking metal, other times. None suited him very well, you thought before you turned to go, the goosebumps rising on your arms from the chill of the air vent above your head. You knew better than to ask for his name, though. Maybe one day, you could call him something else.

The ship’s filtered air washed over you in waves, trickling down your neck and through your sleeves like recycled water, soothing some of the raw sting still settling in the base of your stomach. One breath. Two breaths. In. Out.

No tears. No fuss.

No one to witness when you do.

You shook yourself out of your shallow stupor when you heard a voice, deep and rasped in modulated timbre. “Sorry,” you said, your hand curled around the edges of the entrance. “What was that?”

“I said ‘try to sleep,” he repeated.

Oh.

That was… not what you thought he’d say.

In all fairness you didn’t really expect him to say anything, but that was… considerate. Sweet, even. Maybe.

“Thanks,” you whispered, fighting down the thick notch in your throat. “I- I will.”

-------

You coudn’t fucking cry in peace.

You only heard a slight shift, one barely audible step, before the glint of beskar took up your entire field of view, looming dark and sudden above your seated figure.

“What happened?”

“Fucking- oh, for Maker’s sake,” you cursed under your breathe, burying your face in your hands with a hiccup. “Don’t- don’t sneak up on me like that, okay? Almost gave me a heart attack.”

“You look close to it anyways,” he responded.

You glared at him through the spaces between your fingers, mumbling dryly. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Groaning, you let your hands fall beside your legs until they dragged limp over the threadbare covers. “Why are you here?”

The Mandalorian took another step forward. “It’s my ship, isn’t it?”

“You know what I mean,” you rolled your eyes, drawing your knees up to your chest. The stiff rod of the bedframe dug into your heels when you shifted, scooting sideways with a pat of your hand to the space next to you. His shoulders stiffened and you managed a soft smile. “It’s your bed,” you parroted. “Isn’t it?”

He conceded, tilting his helmet as if to say I guess, and your knees jostled against metal when he sat down, apologizing. You tucked your legs underneath you. Told him it was fine.

It’s hard to tell what time of day it is. In space, everything looks the same. Cold and sterile, a vacuum of glittering crystalline set against empty, empty air. You’d been traveling in hyperspace for hours. Still had hours left to go. A long ways for a good bounty, you supposed. Wasn’t really your area of expertise.

“You can tell me,” he offered quietly, careful not to press close. Professional, huh. What was this, then? Emotional insurance? Preemptive therapy so he wouldn’t have to go find someone else to drag across the galaxy? “If you want to.”

“Tell you what?”

Maker, you were a horrible liar. As if he couldn’t see your puffy eyes and your nose rubbed raw with his stupid, fancy high-tech heat vision sensor-thingies.

The Mandalorian didn’t say anything. If you could see it, you think he’d be raising his eyebrows. “There’s nothing to tell, honestly,” you said after a moment, leaning to rest your chin on your knees and looping your arms around your calves. You stared ahead at the far wall, following the dingy metal plating. “I just… had a bad day.”

“A bad day,” the man beside you said, his arms braced on his legs as he sat.

“Yeah,” you sighed, tucking your chin and letting your eyes shut. “A bad day.”

“I know the kid-” he began, “ I know I can be… difficult. And I’m sorry-”

You shook your head, turning to look at the sharp metal of his visor. It was always so strange, hearing him disembodied. Only to face its source and find a mask.

His voice sounded human.

He wasn’t wearing gloves.

“It’s not your fault,” you assured him. His armour reflected hazy glints of gaseous blue light and you followed them with red-rimmed eyes, your gaze curious; his, unyielding. A stare-down. Stare...off? There really wasn’t any way you could know he was even paying attention. He could be sleeping right now, for all you knew.

He wasn’t, though. He was looking at you.

“It’s not your fault,” you said again, more to yourself. “It just gets too much sometimes. Y’know,” you gestured vaguely at your surroundings. “Everything. Anything. Stuff.”

The Mandalorian let out something that could possibly, maybe, in some ways, be interpreted as a laugh. “Stuff, right?”

You squinted, watching him through the sideways vision of your tilted head, and faked offense. “Are you mocking my pain?”

He let out another raspy chuckle, the sound reverberating in your ears and melting in the tips of your fingers. “No,” he said.

“Good,” you replied.

His posture loosened, more slack beside you. A little closer. “You know, you don’t have to.”

“Have to what?” you asked, your question genuine this time.

The edge of your thigh knocked against his cuisse when he spoke again. “Pretend like you’re okay.”

Well, shit.

“I don’t like it,” you admitted as you twisted your sleeves in your palms, wringing the trailing hems until they grew damp. “I don’t like-” you exhaled shakily. “-crying, in front of people.”

Hands that didn’t belong to you, tan and wide and ever-so-careful, reached up to pry the fabric from between your fingers. Then, they pushed the sleeves up, to the slope of your elbows. Then, they traced the skin of your forearms and down your wrists. And then, they stayed there. Pressing two soft thumb circles into your tremoring palms; waiting.

Your vision burned blurry as your chest tightened. “Your hands are warm,” you whispered.

The Mandalorian raised one to the curve of your cheek, over the leaking rivulet trails you hadn’t realized were falling. “Yours are cold,” he replied.

You swallowed, feeling the light callouses. Turned in. “Can you stay?” you asked. His visor revealed little, but if you let yourself slip into a half-state you could almost imagine the color of his eyes. Something dark, to match his voice. Something warm, to match his hands. “Just for a bit?”

He nodded and so you let your eyes fall closed again, your thoughts slow in that tired, aching way that prying something open makes you feel.

When you moved to rest your head on his pauldron, you felt an arm wrap around your shoulders.

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