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himbodjarin · 3 years

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LUNAR; CH14

18+ EXPLICIT Content: Gore, general violence, Din/Third person POV. MANDO'A TRANSLATIONS AT THE BOTTOM Word count: 16,019 Pairing: Din Djarin/F!Reader - no y/n

The Mandalorian is a driven warrior — traversing the galaxy in search of the ancient Jedi — but everyone has their weaknesses, and he’s no different. The Bounty Hunter possessed three in fact. One he’s discovered—The Child. The remaining two, though, he wasn’t aware of their existence. At least, not until he meets a valorous Sharpshooter underneath a moonless night sky; then he’s plummeting down a dark mission of self-discovery, questioning his morals and his Creed while the moon taunts him, the phases of the satellite corresponding to his personal revelations. However, the Girl has a dark past that may come to inflict hardships on the Mandalorian and the Child; it's up to the Bounty Hunter to decide her fate. Read on AO3 / Series Masterlist / Playlist

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THIS IS THE WAY

The Sun stands off to Din’s side, silent in a comforting way, a placidness he’s unable to recover within himself, and he savours the company with a gloved hand roosting on a curve. She twists to face him, bestowing a grand smile of rays that encapsulate inside and furnaces his figure until he’s blanketed in a toasty buzz, a swelling in his internal organs that he’ll just never become accustomed to. Din reacts to the sensations the only way he knows how and drags her into his side, a hand slithering to her hip to steady her there; little engagements that he’d never considered partaking in before the Girl.

Hands carved of dormant radiation fuss with the makeshift strap slung across her shoulder; one of the more unfortunate after-effects of her victory. Din had to utilise his craftsmanship to gift her with a lash capable of taking the weight of the disruptor rifle—the harness he relied on was built into his bandolier with a small metal clasp. He cares for the Girl but she is no charity case; the rifle against her back is plenty more than he would’ve ever thought of parting with.

The meddling persists, tinking the steel of the barrel against his vambrace.

“What’s the matter?”

Her head shakes and sinks to indolently survey the turf beneath their feet.

He glances at her hand. “I thought you wanted it?”

She buckles into submission from his queries, not that it took much effort on his part, and drags a hand down the front of her face. “I did - I do but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not mine… With your religion and all this feels awry. I shouldn’t have this.”

“I want you to have it.”

It’s the truth. He wants to be endowed with the ability to watch her manipulate something that’s been with him for so long. He wants to bookmark how it frames her body—he doesn’t know how but it does and he’s eternally grateful for that—but most of all, he wants a part of him to be forever touching her.

Nonetheless, it still doesn’t satisfy her scepticism and she scratches into the leather strap until it weathers and flakes.

“It’s just—”

“What?”

A relieving puff of stale carbon dioxide dispels from her slim parted lips. “I don’t want you to think I’m using you for your rifles, for your protection.”

Helmet inclines enough for the tip of his T to connect with her eyes; a small shake of his head as if to enquire what she’s talking about. She’s more than capable of protecting herself. She’s demonstrated it time and time again and Din is the last person who’d assume such things from her.

“I mean it’s the only reason I hitched a ride from you in the first place. I felt like I deserved compensation for my rifle and I needed a way off that damned planet.” She stiffly eases her eyes to the ground and scrunches a stone beneath the toes of her boot. “I never could’ve anticipated all of what’s happened...happening to—to happen…”

Jumbled and stuttering as if she’d downed six flasks of spotchka is a new look on her. It spawns a bounce in his lungs but he stifles the deep chuckle in the interest of not distressing her more than she obviously already is.

Serrated seams etch into the ridges of her eyebrows laced with insecurity, as though peering through a distorted mirror; one concerned expression switching with the other.

She elaborates, with such a hushed volume he almost activates his sonic detectors to register the mumbling, “It just feels as though if this is in my possession there’s no need for me to stick around. You’ve cleared your debt. I’m of no use to a reinforced Mandalorian like yourself. I appreciate the offer, I do, but…”

“What about…” he suggests, two fingers tilting her chin upwards, “you just keep it warm for me.”

It’ll technically remain hers—radioactive fingers having tagged the trigger with her insignia, the rifle imprinting its framework into the soft flesh of her back whereas it never could nestle into his beskar—even if Din is the only one who believes so. His proposal appears to hit the nail on the head of her insecurities and she allows that pesky hand to cease its unjustified carnage on the strap once and for all.

He’s entrusted with a significant smile that he cradles in his palms gently, nurturing it to ensure its growth and progression—a curve of her lips he’s not worthy of possessing but she donates it nonetheless.

“I can do that.”

It’s a witless justification to continue this worldless pact they’ve got going on and they couldn’t give a damn whether it was a phony excuse or not. She’s deciding to stay as opposed to leaving the parsec with pieces of himself attached to her back and around her neck; she wants to stay. Peradventure, it’ll only be for a little while—Din wasn’t accommodating enough for people’s liking and they’d always leave eventually—but maybe she’ll outride his past acquaintances and remain.

Din silently sighs and glances down the path they’re idled along. Caben and Stoke should’ve returned by now, though he suspects they did and that they might have been accidentally exposed to his fixation on the Girl. They weren’t exactly being quiet in the Crest after all.

Still, it provokes an irresistible grin; she’s his and only he could arouse those sounds from deep in her stomach.

“Sweet girl.” His finger pets the peak of her cheekbone. “I think we’re going to have to walk back.”

She groans. “So much for an easy-going day.”

With their intended excursion back to the settlement coming up empty-handed, the two set out from the Crest and follow the path they’d been adhered to for the past hour.

It’s nearing dusk; vibrant blues and greens numbing to darkened blends of orange and purples. The Eclipse formally so highly spoken of from their taxi service approaches as the moon makes its tiresome journey above.

“D’you think we’ll get to see it?” The Girl’s questioning disrupts the flow of crunching gravel underneath their synchronized feet.

The sky is victimised by a leering tinted slit of transparisteel, analysing the steadiness of thick clouds rolling across the surface of the dual spheres. It scales inwards to observe the shadows of craters beneath the puffs. Sorgan’s secondary moon, much smaller in size or perhaps simply further away, is smothered in the overcast and lags behind its twin, silent and colourless.

“Clouds are moving fast. It should be okay.”

She nods. “Never had the pleasure of seeing one before. Heard they’re real pretty, though. What about you?”

“No. I don’t frequent a planet long enough.”

There’s a fork in the road, diverging off into three different paths but he’s got it all memorised in the back of his mind and continues onwards without a falter in his steps, the Girl to his side with a bounce in her step as she mulls over his candour approach.

“That’s too bad. Not one for settling down, huh?”

It’s a rhetorical question but Din doesn’t want to leave her hanging regardless, “No.”

“Yet here you are—” She prods a finger at his unarmoured side prompting a light swat to her hand. “—settling.”

“...I’m not settling.”

“No?”

His shoulders broaden and he hooks a thumb in the front of his belt. “No.”

She chuckles at him but mercifully leaves it at that, well aware what he says isn’t true but she’s none the wiser to what he’s settling down for—and it’s not Sorgan.

Leather clings to her hip for dear life, refusing to surrender its residency even when they drift from one another to avoid a dip in the path; fingers merely burrow into the cloth and drag the warmth straight back once they’ve passed. Din exploits the absence of inquisitive glances and looming queries to dedicate cloying touches and he’s not afraid to demonstrate it. Where, even a week ago, he couldn’t express these emotions without the adrenaline coursing through his veins, the arousal pulsing in his core, but circumstances have changed—evolved into something fresh.

Something untouched that he wants to corrupt with his obscene hands.

It’s short-lived. Snooping eyes return.

Lanterns emitting orange hues reflect off the waters of the emerging krill ponds, softly rounded fluorescents mirroring against his polished beskar as he sweeps through the troughs. The majority of the inhabitants surround the central campfire, its flames a worthy competitor to the lanterns mellow gingers. They lick and lick and lick at the sky, the scorching embers puffing into the fading purples upwards; laughter and the tinking of spotchka-filled flasks circling the bonfire.

Leather collapses resembling the Crest plummeting through the atmosphere. Heavy, fast, and everything in slow motion while he processes he’s losing traction, a small hitch in his chest upon striking his own thigh. She’s right beside him, an inch away from brushing elbows, yet she’s still too far.

It’s not in his nature to act so possessively in front of people—out in the open for whoever to gauge thoughts, to probe his emotions—and he won’t start parading around now, in spite of the fact she’s accumulated fresh bruises that haven’t been fortunate enough to receive time to heal; or even grant the red inking to mollify into something a little less salient.

They’re the one factor he can pardon from his public displays of affection regulation. It’s simple and clean. An honest indication of what’s between them without needing to flaunt it, simply a demonstration to not infringe on their relations.

Din is accustomed to the turned heads, the watchful gazes as they make way to the midpoint, but the Girl still finds it intolerant; the exposure too confining and she slinks back a few steps. He continues onwards not wanting to draw further attention to her and they pass the spectators, eyes stooping and communication commencing after they’ve had a gander of their guests—their clothes and the Girl’s dishevelled hair evidence enough.

They’re really not as discreet as they pass themselves off to be.

Omera interrupts his motion with a sidestep onto their path. She offers a courteous smile. “Did you have an eventful day?”

“Yes.”

“Can we expect your participation tonight? It should only be a few more hours before the eclipse commences.”

Din nods, somewhat reluctant to agree. Social settings weren’t in his favour but there’s a persistent woman on the heels of his boots who longs to see the phenomenon, and whatever she wishes he will grant with a simple please Din.

Omera gleams at his accepted invitation and gestures past the campfire to a stationed bench compiled of dishes and brimming glasses of various liquids. “Help yourself to our delicacies. It’s all traditional for the celebration.”

He softly sighs, not enough for anybody to hear him over the uproar but it’s sufficient in getting his unimpressed thoughts regarding the taunting dishes—at least, the Girl notices. His helmet pans to the heft on his pauldron, caf-coloured eyes trailing along the limb and jumping to its partner gesturing in the direction of the hut.

“I’ll get you something to eat, all right?”

She doesn’t entitle him the opportunity to oppose her proposition before bounding through the crowd to collect a platter of high-grade Sorgan nourishments. He scouts for a moment, considering her with a slender tilt of his helmet; riveting, how enthusiastic and adaptable she is to the liability of his Creed.

The Way had forcibly distanced him from so many potentials, pulverised them before his very visor, and here she was, dirtying her faultless hands with the soot of his decisions simply to cater to him.

It wasn’t all that long ago he’d be seated up in the Crest’s cockpit, a helmet on his lap, a bowl of nutrients in his hands, a deadpan expression etched into his face as the stars skim past the viewport. Silence, he so often told himself he favours, accompanying him like a prodding rod at the back of his ears; loud and exhausting despite its very name.

It has been quite a while since he’s succumbed to the silence with the Child and all. While he wished the kid would actually comply with his requests, Din has a preference for the cooing and squealing of a baby than the hum and buzz of his haven.

Perhaps it won’t last long—the Child will be returned to wherever he originated and the Girl will journey on after some time—but at least he can savour the atmosphere until then; anything ranging from the snarky remarks to the comfortable quiet in contrast to the loud, resonating one he’s been inflicted by all these years.

“I’ll leave you to eat,” Omera announces, “I’m sure your boy would like to see you when you’re done.”

Another nod on behalf of him, another burden on his pauldron from her; a fleeting touch of her hand but it’s cold and sharp and Din yearns for the Girl’s radiation to cleanse him of the hypothermia.

He sighs and makes his way to their hut.

Their quarters are overfamiliar. The littered blankets untouched, the way Din liked it, lasting evidence of what occurred. The flimsy dress she despised neglected and long forgotten, though it resurges the crisp memories regarding Din’s Honour; how he nonchalantly stripped himself of what he’s constructed himself around simply to feel a smidge of liberation with the Girl—to highlight their connections in the cracks of their implicit relationship.

To show he’s more than just a rusting Creed.

Din exhales through his filters and sinks to the cot’s mattress. It’s not nearly as comfortable with all the beskar on but it’s not as though he’ll be inside long.

“Oh yeah, you just relax there why don’t you?” The Girl grumbles from the doorway, balancing an assortment of bowls and plates in either hand and the crooks of her elbows—she would’ve made for a poor waitress in another life.

He makes no attempt to aid her. “That’s too much.”

“It’s not all for you. Other people eat, too, you know.”

Oh, he knows all too well. The sugary goodness of a thick syrup running down her fingers and onto his tongue never strays far from his mind.

She tries for a bend of her knees to ease the dishes onto a surface but they more or less topple out of her grip, scattering pieces of fried foods across the burnished wood. “Shit...ah, it’s just yours.”

“Funny.”

“I like to think so,” she cracks.

Din strains from his position to observe the variety of consumables she’d pinched from the community; bone broth, assorted krill, an unidentified pastry of some sort—Din crosses it off his list, far too dry looking for his taste—among snacking foods.

They’re not worthy of the title ‘appetising’ but Din’s acquainted with tasteless stock; he only ever eats it for the nutrients anyways.

She hoards a bowl of bone broth to her chest. “I’ll be outside. If you want seconds just call me, yeah?”

Leather wraps around her wrist before he properly registers her words. “No—you can stay. It’s not like I haven’t taken this off around you before.”

“I thought you might’ve wanted to eat in peace.”

Din exhales a laugh out of his nose. “A girl of your build should be smarter than that, no?”

It rises a simper out of her, a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head. Din retrieves the extended plate of krill prepared in a vast abundance of methods—fried, broiled, roasted, sauteed—he unenthusiastically considers a crustacean between two gloved digits.

Vibrant cobalt had grown to a dim grey underneath the golden breading, a fine sheet of oil coating leather skin and a drop of grease slipping down the curve of his thumb. Reluctance and dissatisfaction are apparent in his mannerisms and vocoder, emitting an exhaust laden sigh that crackles into the quiet lodge.

The mattress dips with her weight, the press of her back against his beskar. “Not one for krill?”

“I think I’ve had my fair dose,” Din broods.

“Still pent up about getting a little bit of water in your circuits?”

Another cheesy droid joke that pushes his eyes into the back of his skull but he lets it slide. Din’s famished. It’d been a while since he ate; well, not exactly but the Girl wasn’t much of a meal more than a treat. If he could draw out sustenance from her he’d never have to endure another stale dessert or salty meats from who knows where.

Their backs are pressed firmly together, practically leaning on each other for support, and Din doesn’t need to verify whether she’s looking away for him to unlatch his helmet. Its casual hiss signals for her to keep her eyes trained forwards and he lays the steel to rest beside him.

It’s the first time her eyes are open while the helmet is detached. Well, maybe not the first—he had lifted it the slightest back on Tatooine, in the cockpit while she busied herself with his Crest’s maintenance. The circumstances don’t much differ from now; both scenarios involve food of some sort and resolute trust.

Cobalt of the sweet dessert transferred to a chewy crustacean that’s comparable to grinding tar in his mouth, tough and fudgy but in all the worst ways. Din isn’t a selective person; he can consume the coarse flavourless product without a second’s worth of hesitance but he’s had the best of the best—jatnese be te jatnese, he’d said so himself—a gluttonous intake of the Girl’s taste and nothing will ever equate to that.

The mound of unchewable meat slips down his pipes, buttery and peppery but overall bland. Nutritional enough. He crams another cluster of the crescents into his gullet to appease his appetite.

The Girl sips on the pale cream broth behind him, head tilted against his as the liquid leaks from the carved bowl and between her lips. Din can’t imagine the taste is much better than the krill with the colours being so dull—as though they were eating the incarnation of unstimulating hues of greys and blacks.

“Do you want to try some?” she asks, extending the half-empty bowl to their side.

Din retrieves the grub with a low hum in his throat, uncertain, but ultimately decides it can’t hurt to give it a try. It’s obviously edible if it’s a Sorgan delicacy—how wrong he was. It’s saltier than the oceans with chunks in it; he doesn’t even want to think what they could be. He refrains from spitting the soup back into the bowl or onto the cot and feebly swallows the lukewarm puddle, a nubby leather wrist wiping the residue from his lips with disgust.

She bellows at his reaction, the back of her shoulders bouncing against his pauldrons as she struggles to contain herself.

The base of the bowl knocks against the closest surface available, a flimsy stool that accompanies the table, and he scowls with his arms crossed against the hump of his chest. “You’re wicked.”

“Seemed like you wanted a taste with the way you were looking at me.” Din’s head slightly tilts as he watches from the corner of the visor. “I can feel your eyes. Not sure how you ever catch bounties when all you do is stare.”

Bounties are intimidated by my staring, they’re smart, he wants to retort but saying bounties and smart in the same sentence is comical.

Appetite long gone, by consequence of broth that would serve a better purpose as blurrg feed, Din clips the rim of his beskar between two fingers and considers it among his lap. There’s no intent to lift it up and over his face. No intent to distance himself from the Girl just yet. It gawks at him; captivating in its own methods but still so ransacked of life. The black void of his false eyes darker than that of Space’s vacuum.

Din’s eyes ricochet from the slit to the back of the Girl’s head like a blaster bolt within a room of reflective duralloy and nowhere to go; pondering the morals of his very character as he aligns the crown of her head with the vacancy in his clutch.

She noticeably stiffens as his helmet envelopes her, the rim slack around her neck with nothing to latch onto. Fingers dismiss the fried krill she’s been feasting on and orbits the surface; Din amicably smacks them away and lays his hands on her shoulders to loosen the knots.

“Greasy,” he simply explains his reaction.

One would think such a valuable material as beskar could be cleaned with a small wipe of a damp cloth. One would be wrong. It’s a nuisance to maintain its condition and he’d been lagging behind with its upkeep as of recent—he couldn’t afford greasy fingerprints.

Soft vocals are replaced with a crunchy crackle, an unnatural graininess as if she digested a bucket’s worth of Arvala-7 terrain; sand and grit forming lumps in her ducts and spluttering into the internals of beskar, “What are you doing?”

His fingers rub into the base of her neck, the deepness of his unaffected tone eliciting a hum within the helm. “The rifle won’t be used to its full potential without the helmet.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not giving you the helmet. I just want to show you what it can do.”

“Is this...allowed?” She goes to scratch the back of her head but knocks against the steel and limply drops her hand. “It doesn’t feel like this is allowed. I’m sure there’s a rule in that big ol’ Manual for Mandalorians you’ve got hiding around.”

He scoffs. “Do you want to see it or not?”

It dips to a dainty nod.

“Gods, this is heavy. Don’t you get a sore neck?”

Din neglects her questioning and extends his vambrace before her, his other arm reaching around to point at the buttons—effectively sandwiching her between his gauntlets—and his finger focuses on one in particular. It’s a small circular button, a clone to all the others, but more weathered from the abrasive leather. “Click this,” he instructs.

She complies, her digit dainty beside the stocky hide, helmet perking up once the thermal activates and submerging her vision in cool hues of blues. Her curiosity matches that of the Child’s as she twists and turns her head side to side, surely discovering the warm tones of candlelight and heat signals radiating from their hands before her.

“Wait a damn minute—” The Girl aims to toss a suspectful glare in his direction but quickly dismisses the desire, his exposure never far from the forefront of her mind, “you cheating-”

“I told you, Cyar’ika,” Din coos against the side of the helmet. “Not a gentleman.”

“I...I demand a rematch.”

Din chuckles into her, the leaps of his laughter ricocheting against her back but he pays her decree no attention. There’s no way she’d reign successfully in a no holds barred condition, not when his visor contributes half of the rifle's potential of force. Then again, if things were to pan out the same way it did earlier perhaps he’ll take her up on it—just for fun.

“Good for calculating how many threats there are--”

“Yeah, that, or being a little-”

“Next,” he navigates her hand to a second preset.

The thermal deactivates with one push and the sonic detectors engage with another.

It must be disorienting for her to focus on all the surrounding sounds of the settlement, the steel swallowing her senses, Din remembers the first time he donned a helmet—one much smaller and lighter than his current but all the same in terms of abilities and desensitising him from the outside world. Pair that with the power to be able to hear a whisper from over a hundred metres away, it can turn situations sticky and muddled if not appropriately centred.

“What do you hear?”

She’s mute and motionless, suspended in the limbo of space and time.

Din presses a kiss to the nape of her neck in an attempt to declutter her mind but it does very little; sharp claws of concern grasping at the back of his head and scampering upwards until the pressure against his temples is unbearable and it finally conquers him.

He shouldn’t have imposed this on her. He of all people should’ve known better. It takes years of getting accustomed to it.

“Hey. Hey, okay, no more.”

It’s eased up halfway before she interrupts and pulls it back down. “I’m fine. Just trying to focus. There are too many conversations, it’s distracting.” She chuckles. “Good thing I didn’t have it this morning. You snore, you know. Would’ve rendered me deaf.”

Din grumbles beneath his breath—something even the detectors can’t distinguish with the crackles in his vocal cords—and sharply flicks the back of the steel with his forefinger, grinning when she compresses a hand against the side where her ear resides.

“Ow,” she whines. “Okay, okay, turn it off. I’m sick of hearing you breathe down my neck.”

It disables with a final push of his vambrace.

The Girl explores the surface of the beskar with either hand and Din subconsciously annotates how dilatory she is with it—her fingers dipping from the cheek ridges to the face and around the ear caps before resting against the sealed cooling vents at the back—solely dedicating the time to recognise the only face she can put a name to but from his perspective.

Combine that with being endowed with the pleasure of seeing her in his shirt and helmet provokes Din’s heart to stammer against the bones, his jaw to tighten and he seizes the beskar by the edge and twists it to face him. He enables virtually no time for her to comprehend what he’s planning and it’s undetermined whether she managed to shut her eyes before his face is frontwards, but he trusts they are.

It’s outlandish to gaze into the cold dark visor when there’s another lifeform beneath it. Sure, he’s encountered incalculable Mandalorians in his lifetime but never has anybody worn his helmet—it’s a fragment of his Creed, of Him, and he’d rather fall victim to a sarlacc and endure the agony of being digested for millennia than to witness another being wield his persona.

Omitting the Girl from the equation, naturally.

She could carve out his heart with his vibro-knife and he wouldn’t complain one bit. It’s incomprehensible what she does to him. Just a touch of her finger on his face and he’s primed to brandish a blaster and confront her greatest enemy even if he’s incapable of victory.

Nonetheless, it astonishes him how she can gaze into the nullity of a slit and not request—demand—for more. She’s more than deserving of it and yet she doesn’t wish for it.

Perhaps she sees a mirrored image of what’s before him. Not a slab of shiny steel nor a devout Creed but merely the living tissue, the pumping blood, beneath it.

Din trails a digit along the steel jawline and lifts as he reaches the transparisteel visor connecting to the curve at the bottom. It lifts only a little, just enough for her lips and the point of her nose to peek beneath. The soft hills separate instinctively and he wastes no time slotting his own in their place, cupping the back of her neck with his free hand to drag her in close.

Those damned words. They utterly refuse to vacate his mind—duplicating by the dozen and submerging his thoughts and sensations with foreign statements. It links together into a lengthy chain made of high-grade alloy, fortified greater than freshly smelted beskar, and packages his consciousness into overburdened disarray.

Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum.

Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum. Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum.

Din needs her to know; needs her to hear those words tumble out of his vocal cords.

He needs to enunciate them—to listen to himself admit the feelings hidden within him aren't pseudo.

But he can’t; his lips cease their endeavours against hers yet he still can’t discover the courage to say three little fucking words. Thank the stars he disabled the sonic detectors because he wouldn’t be able to take the speculative questioning upon hearing the thumping in his chest, deep and muffled pulses of his heart struggling to compete with his nerves.

“Din,” she whispers. “You’re overthinking again, aren’t you?”

“No…”

“Come on, you need to get some fresh air. Let’s go see the kid.”

No, not yet, he thinks. Please, just a little while longer.

She hoists the beskar from her head slowly, inches of her impeccable face unmasking at a time. He cups her jaw and tilts her head to peck at her chin, her cheeks, and forehead as the helmet is relieved from each section.

Din records the movement of flesh underneath his lips as she smiles against his intimacy and it urges something intense and unexplored in his centre, his core, and the helmet bounces off the cot and crashes to the floor below with a small push of his three fingers; his lips refusing to curb their hunger for cushiony skin and his weight slowly applies against her until she inclines onto her back with him above.

“Din.”

“Mmm,” he hums, leathers stroking the strands of hair out of her face before reconnecting his lips to her cheekbones.

“We—we can’t. The kid is waiting for you.” Her actions overpower her words; a hand slides down his cape feebly, her fingers catching on the folds to thrust him closer.

“You’re addictive.”

“Not so bad yourself.”

Din emits a gravelly groan and slides a knee between her legs, the edge of his cuisse brushing against the peak of her groin. “Can I have a taste, Cyar—sweetheart, please?”

They don’t have the privilege of time on their side, Din’s more than aware of this fact and yet he can’t stop the glove from slithering down her neck and the curve of her chest to idle at the hem of her pants.

“You’re insatiable,” she says, fingers firmly rooted within the scratchy cloak.

She’s hitting the nail on the head with that proclamation; he’s utterly unsated and deprived of her sweetness. Din requires it like sustenance—like medicine.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

“Never.”

The aftertaste of her slick is on his tongue and he needs more. He wants to binge on her for eternity and, maybe, then he’ll finally be content; a belly full of her translucent flavours, the gums of his throat and mouth coated in the thickness to the brink of suffocation.

Din’s fingers toy with her buckle loosely, queuing for approval.

“Can’t,” she whines pitifully. “We’ve already made our presence known. They’ll be expecting us out there. Besides, you should spend time with the kid. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No?”

She grins. “Well—maybe back to the Crest. Has that offer got an expiry date?”

“Offer?”

“Already forgotten, huh? If I remember correctly, you said you’ll fuck me in your bunk whenever I want.” She mimics his words, “Name the time.”

Shit—it wasn’t just pillow-talk.

“Why didn’t you mention it while we were there?”

“Oh no, Din.” He’s dragged inwards, his lips brushing the tip of her ear as she diabolically whispers into his, “I got something special planned for that.”

A chill runs beneath his beskar, brandishing his flesh with a bumpiness the dunes of Tatooine would envy. There are endless possibilities for what she’s got in mind but Din’s been excluded from her brainstorming. It doesn’t cease his imagination to run wild with disgusting thoughts of deviancy; ones involving her bent over on that shitty cot of his, the familiar manacles capturing her wrists, shameful noises slipping past those beautiful lips as he takes her night long and into the rise of the sun.

It had to be bigger than that. Don’t get him wrong, he wants to give her all of that, badly, but she could’ve done it earlier. They would’ve had the equipment on hand, no preparation necessary. No, she’s suggesting something else. Something bigger.

But she won’t indicate anything further, won’t give him a little taste of what’s to come, and cruelly urges him back onto his feet to recollect his helmet with a heavy hand.

She observes him upon hearing the click of his locking system inside the helm, either hand on his hip with an inclined head that just reads don’t leave me hanging.

“Suspense makes it all that much better,” she sweetly says.

He’s beginning to realise that sweetness is all exterior, a disguise for all the hot and heaviness she possesses within. A decoy that he’s fallen victim to. He’s like that of a fish foolishly nipping at a too good to be true enticement, the Girl laying in wait for him to latch on and reel him into his doom.

But she’s inexperienced. Unsuspecting of his abilities. Oblivious to his attachment to her lure.

She’s sweet but she’s also sour.

Salty in the heat of the moment.

Bitter in times of hurt.

Saliva constructed of pure savoury goodness.

She’s got all the nourishments he requires and there’s an endless supply; flavours he can taste straight from the source.

So, one can assume the agony, the clenched fists in his gloves, as they saunter through the chatty crowd, her hips swaying ahead of him a little too provocatively. She knows what she does to him, he’s demonstrated his need in various positions, and she’ll go above and beyond to find one way or another to fuck with him—to poke and prod to test his self-control before he drags her behind a hut and fucks her against the walls, whether it was outside or not he couldn’t care.

To fuse her fingers with the puppet strings attached to his pauldrons.

“This should be quiet enough,” she announces and throws herself onto the handcrafted bench, tossing a leg over the other and patting the empty space beside her. “I know you like quiet.”

Din plops down with the Child on his lap, a slothful hand massaging the green wrinkles at the summit of his head. There’s a handful of farmers in their own respective groups scattered around them, producing enough noise that allows thoughts to wander without concerning themselves with maintaining a conversation.

Sorgan’s moons are at their pinnacles, puffy grey plumes illuminated into off-whites from their luminescence. One sphere perches in the vast black, performing as a repellent to the swarms of haze, while the other is blinded by the thickness of the clouds; a circular radiance perceived through the fluffiness the only indication the planet possessed more than one.

A vague shadow surmounts the moon’s edge, the dawdling process of the eclipse having commenced but it’ll be quite some time before anything worthwhile transpires—Din sullenly groans at the missed opportunity to give her his tongue back on the cot. It’s not as though they were missing out on anything. It would’ve only taken him a couple of minutes to work her up to the brink, a couple more to—

“I never asked,” she says. “What’s the deal with you and the kid?”

“What do you mean?”

She shifts in search of a comfortable position among the splinters. “He’s a bounty and you’re a bounty hunter; please don’t make me explain further.”

Din sighs and swipes a finger across the leafy brim of his ear, provoking a gentle burble into the Crest’s gear knob. “I handed him over but they were doing experiments on him and I couldn’t leave him there. Things didn’t go to plan--”

“Because you don’t plan.”

“--and there was a shootout with the Guild.”

“So,” She ponders, “you’ve got a bounty of your own now.”

He scoffs. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“Too late.”

Din entertains her amusement with a quiet huff of air through his filters, soft enough for her to register it’s not an annoyance. The subject of the Guild raises some questions he’s not wanting to voice—they’ll only ruin the mood and he doesn’t want to admit defeat—but he’s to play the hand he’s been dealt.

“We need to discuss where we’re heading next,” he says.

“So soon? It’s only been two days.”

“Should consider ourselves lucky we’ve managed to survive this long here. There could be hunters stationed from the last time I was here.”

“Right—and the Crest would’ve got their attention,” she agrees. “Okay. Where are you thinking?”

Somewhere reclusive. An isolated backwater planet much like Sorgan but one where nobody knows their names or reputation. Although discovering a planet with the aforementioned qualities is easier said than done, especially with the threats of audacious bounty hunters on their thrusters. Idling in space until they stumble across a safe-enough planet—or if pirates picked them off—was always an option.

Din sighs.

The Girl was right; he doesn’t plan. He’d just been traversing from parsec to parsec all his life, picking up commissions for fuel and a bite to eat, partaking in activities that simply aided his survival. Now with the Child, he’s expected to have a procedure—to shield him from the dangers Din automatically puts him in upon rescuing him from the client. But he doesn’t have the scheme to save their lives, literally.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

“Nothing wrong with not knowing. With my skills behind a rifle and your—uh… Point is, we’ll figure it out. Lighten up a little, you’ll wrinkle that pretty face of yours.”

With a roll of his eyes behind the visor, he settles for her words of reassurance and heeds her suggestion to relax his forehead.

“Mandalorian—Mando,” Omera’s abrupt panic-stricken tone is plenty for both of them to straighten their posture and bury the quips. Din twists his helmet to where she stands behind him, noting the fumbling hands before her lap, the twitch in her eyebrow ridges.

Din deposits the Child into the Girl’s arms and stands. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Caben and Stoke...they—they weren’t with you?”

“No, they never returned for us.”

The Girl interjects, “We assumed they headed back before us.”

“No, no. Nobody has seen them.”

Shit—he should’ve realised something was wrong when they failed to show up. Raiders? There was no sign of them on that trail—but Din wasn’t exactly in the right mindset, being too haunted by the Girl’s temptations.

“I’m sorry to ask this of you...at an unfortunate time, no less, but-”

“I’ll go trace their route and see if I pick anything up,” Din says.

“Thank you, thank you.” Omera clasps his hands in gratitude, her thumbs brushing along the stitching.

“It’s not a problem. If I don’t come across them on the trail, I’ll question the neighbouring settlement. They should have some information.”

“I’m coming with you,” the Girl pipes up.

“No. Stay with the kid here.”

She shoots him a curved eyebrow and places a hand on her hip, her other cradling the Child into her side. “I hardly think watching the moon is of importance right now. I won’t let you go out there alone and it’ll be quicker if there’s two of us looking.”

“I don’t want-”

“Don’t want, what, to drag me into this? I think we’re far past all that, no?”

Din sighs. “Fine.”

No use arguing with someone so cocksure like her. Besides, when push comes to shove she’ll be resourceful with the rifle.

The Child isn’t happy at the circumstances, to say the least. He finally finds serenity wrapped in cold beskar edges and has been stripped away so soon—he glares at his guardian in the warmth of poncho-clad arms while Din and the Girl retreat into the woods once more. He’ll make it up to the kid when he gets back; Din’s certain he’ll face the wrath of a foot-long baby if he doesn’t.

“I think you should take the rifle. Just in case.”

“No. You need something to protect yourself.” Din brushes her suggestion off and activates the thermals on his vambrace.

“I’ve got my blaster.”

“That’s not enough. Here, hold it up. Press that. Be careful with the bayonet.”

She glances at him with questioning eyes and rests the rifle against her hip. “What’d you do?”

“It’ll administer electricity to anybody who touches it. There're only so many cartridges—” Din presents a cluster of steel cylinders in his glove and she shoves them in a pocket in her pants, “Pair your blaster with the bayonet and use the ammunition sparingly.”

“You think we’ll need them?”

“Just be prepared.”

They fall into a sharply cold silence, Din utilising his sonic detectors as they trudge through the bush to discern any commotion that may be of use. The Girl retains a pace a few steps behind his own, purposefully slotting her boots into his prints to avoid a stray twig snap here or a tumble there. It’s wordlessly recognised if there are raiders in these parts it’s best not to disclose their presence, especially not when there’s two of them. It supplies them with a lead on their opponent, at least until they identify how many there are.

The thermals are nothing but counterproductive. If they had passed through recently the track would surely be lit in fire-orange but it’s all blues and greys; Din thumbs the button to restore his vision, relieving the burden of having to focus on where he steps and clicks another for his sonic detectors. His vambrace was really getting put to the test today.

“Where——or….hurt you.”

Din freezes, the Girl sharp in his guide, and adjusts his helmet to pinpoint the muffling in his sensors. It’s quiet. Shallow. It could be flooded with a singular flask of water.

“Does….Child,” It’s speech tears.

East, about ninety metres out. The forest is thickened around these parts—too dense to trace any campfires or shadows—but there’s somebody there and they’re referencing a child; there’s not a doubt in his mind it’s The Child.

They’re not raiders. They’re not people who’ll go down without a fight.

“Guild members,” Din slips.

“Any clue how many?”

He hones in on the vocals, isolating each individual muffle or change of tone that could indicate there’s more than just the one. Even if he’s wrong, it’s best to be over-prepared. “Two. No, wait...three. I think.” She quietly mulls the possibility over, the strap of the rifle flinging over her shoulder as she makes way inwards. Din seizes her wrist and suspends her movements. “What are you doing?”

“I’ll get the high ground and see if I can spot Caben and Stoke. There’s no point starting something if they’re not there.”

“High ground?” Din questions.

She grins and breaks his grasp. “How’d you think I got those targets up in the trees?”

The Girl cracks her knuckles, the clicks and pops of joints puncturing his eardrums through the detectors like a bubble underneath a needlepoint. Either of her hands sprawls on the sides of a trunk, fingers dig into the bark for traction, and she hoists her feet up—she’s like the Crest in its ascent, agile and coordinated as she frog-kicks herself up into the branches.

Din’s eyebrows raise in dismay; he didn’t know what he was expecting but it wasn’t that.

The potential one possesses outside a suit of steel is still an astonishing concept to Din even after all these years of branding himself to the insides of his helmet. There’s an endless list of skills he’ll never be able to master—untapped aptitudes that have greyed into a colourless nothing.

Steel platings obstruct his movements, the helmet an obstacle to his sensations; his birthrights.

Brittle tree arms creak and whine above him, the leaves rustling as she navigates the long-arm’s lens to her sight. He’ll be left in amazement if she can distinguish the bodies from the swaying of blunted foliage. The land is too compact with trunks reaching the clouds, even with the magnified scope it’ll be near impossible to identify how many there are or whether the missing duo is being held captive.

His thermals would come in handy right about now for her; with her height advantage and his helmet, she’d assuredly recognise their precise positioning. Hell, she’d be an unstoppable force—a marksman even the greatest of bounty hunters would shake in their armour witnessing.

The Girl’s low tone sails through the treetops, gliding with the bitter night edge, and into his sonic detectors, “I see them—they’ve got them in the middle of the camp. Minimum six hostiles. All equipped with blasters. I can take two of them out from here.”

Well, he’s definitely left in amazement.

That’ll leave him with the remaining four, so long as there’s not more concealed within the shadows.

A lack of communication between them serves as nothing but an impediment, but time isn’t on their side and Din can’t waste any more of it to collect the comm units from the Crest. Weapons locker, second drawer, to the left.

If only he had thought of it earlier.

Din’s helmet inclines skywards, his visor scaling in and outlining her frame.

They’ve got each other's credibility and that, strictly, is sufficient for Din to jump into action; cutting through the undergrowth and stealthing between pillars of wood, each succeeding stride premeditated.

His scanners crackle against his ears, a gruff voice laced with croaks and coughs slipping through the beskar, “Where is he? Look at me! You’ll tell me where he is, boy, otherwise I’ll gut you right here. Perhaps watching you die will encourage your friend to speak, yeah?”

Caben and Stoke quake ahead of the lambent light illuminating their features; previously happy expressions replaced with terror, identical to when the AT-ST had broken through a dozen sturdy trees to gaze upon its victims with hollow eyes.

A burly Weequay paces before them, twin thumbs hooked on the hoops of his trousers in an attempt to appear stockier.

Fuckin’ Weequays.

Din’s blaster will come up short in a confrontation with that layered flesh of his and, with the lack of communication between them, he can’t depend on the Girl on being able to snipe him—he may not be one of the two she can manage. Another Guild member sits off to the side of the farmers, intimidatingly polishing a small vibro-knife in his fist. The remaining four she spoke of patrol their encampment; all either human or made with skin he can puncture.

It won’t be easy and the Weequay has the advantage; Din will need to take him out first and foremost.

He’ll put his faith in the Girl’s abilities that she can ward off the other’s long enough.

Din shovels a cluster of rocks into his hand and hurls them overhead and into the copse recesses, the rustling effectively tearing the hunters’ focus from their posts—Din springs to action and leaps from behind the greenery boscage, blaster pistol in his dominant hand and vibro-knife in the other.

The Weequay’s back faces Din and he exploits the factor, pouncing like a predatory loth-cat onto him and slicing a gash into the leathery hide of his neck. It does minimal damage, a small notch for a dribble of blood to meet with the neck of his shirt. He’s thrown off of the hunter and stumbles backwards into a tree, grunting and raising his blaster outwards; the trigger snaps against the alloy hold, a burning beam of cherry drilling into a fleshy build. It drops to the dirt, blaster bouncing astray.

“Mandalorian!” Caben exclaims into his detectors.

Din doesn’t reply nor impart his eyes to analyse their condition - they’re alive and that’s all that mattered while in the midst of battle.

The Weequay restores his attention to his surroundings, scowling at the Mandalorian before him and dipping calloused fingers into the wound of his neck. He snarls at the amassed blood on his tips. “You’ll pay for that, Mando, just as soon as you tell me where the bounty is.”

Child--bounty.

Any doubt that he had about them being after the kid is shattered, obliterated entirely.

Din’s vibro-knife pulses in his fist, his finger planted against the trigger in his other. The four scrawnier minions gather around his position against the tree, brandishing arrogant smirks as they languidly handle their blasters.

“I said-” The Weequay spits between his boots. “-tell me where the bounty is. You may have taken one of us but there are plenty more. There’s only one of you—your friends here aren’t much fighters.”

One. He scoffs.

A henchman, typically made of flesh and bones and blood, pops beside the Weequay; organic matter dissolving to flaky dust onto the forest floor. It leaves nothing behind that proves it was once a humanoid, barring the hunter’s blaster which plummets to the soil and knocks against the boot of his partner.

“What the pfassk!” One of them cries.

His detectors pick up the familiar whistle of a rifle pellet.

The Weequay raids his surroundings, concluding Din’s ally to be the in the only place that’d see them from this distance: “In the trees! Go!”

The hunters follow their orders but abruptly stop; a second member obliterating the moment his boot sole leaves the ground. Particles scatter with the breeze through the leafy canopies. They lie in wait, suspecting of another incoming granule but Din knows it won’t come—they’re well out of her sight.

But he can’t let them head in her direction; Din flicks the point of his blade between two fingers and slings the knife through the air and into the Weequay’s gullet once more—deeper and thrumming out splotches of plasma, an unnerving outcome of the intensity the knife is throbbing.

He staggers backwards in shock but Din focuses on the others, administering two perfectly aligned bolts into either of their unsuspecting chests; they nosedive into snapped twigs and gravel where sticky liquid accumulates underneath their bodies.

One to go.

Din didn’t act in accordance with his plan—the Weequay winding up as the last he’s to tend to—but this works, too.

The blade is ripped from his gullet, a spurt of hot blood following its dislodging, and the Weequay balefully boasts the dagger in his clutch. “Come now, Mandalorian. It’s going to take more than that,” he snarls.

He scoffs to himself in response and edges closer to one of the hunters drift melee weapons, footsteps precariously slow to ensure he doesn’t allude to his intentions—the bushes swish, a deep crack of a stick, and they freeze as one.

Visor and darkened pools of black sharpen against the lightless forest, apparently having forgotten about each other’s threat to concentrate on their snooping bystander.

The Girl steps out from the dusk, amban rifle hoisted forehead level with the Weequay. She stands stout on her feet, the wooden stock butting into her shoulder, eyes perfectly trained on her target before her. She doesn’t shoot, she won’t without his expressed permission.

The hunter recognises defeat and tosses the Mandalorian’s vibro-knife before his boots.

Din decompresses somewhat, allowing a sigh to flee from his filters and swoops up the knife and creeps past the defeated frame to shred through the rope bindings around Caben and Stoke’s wrists. “Thank—thank you,” Caben hisses and rubs the rash they’ve left in their wake.

Stoke imparts a gratified nod and smoothes out his clothing. “We’re sorry. They ambushed us on our way back---wanted to use us as leverage to draw you out. We’re just glad they didn’t track us back to the settlement.”

“Are you okay?” Din asks and quickly glances over their appearance. Some creased clothing and maturing bruises but for the most part untouched - no blood, no wounds.

They nod their heads in unison.

“He’s--” Caben glares at his captor warily. “He’s after the kid—your kid.”

Din suspected as much. “We’ll deal with him. Where’s the speeder?”

“Destroyed!”

He sighs and contemplates his options as if he had any. No speeder, no ride. “Follow the trail back to the village. We’ll be right behind you.”

They share a concerned look between each other but heed Din’s instructions, slipping past the growling figure and bounding through the bushland towards their escape route without glancing back.

“Quit wasting moonlight, boy. Get your hands dirty,” the Weequay sneers.

Judging by the bravado performance he puts on, he reckons he won’t suffer at the hands of an irritated Mandalorian tonight—he couldn’t be more incorrect even if he were to claim Din was of another species underneath his armour. A nettlesome Gungan. A hard-headed Klatoonian. An emotionless droid. He’s heard it all and they’re all closer to being more correct than he assumes of his safety.

There could be a message to send; violate every bone in his body to signify not to challenge the wrath of a well-equipped storm.

He’ll be in pain, Din’s sure of it, only, it’s undecided to what extent.

The Weequay grins, a sharp menacing clenched-teeth smile that puts Din back in his place, a guffaw that transmits a surge of electricity down the bumps of his spine; sounds of self-assuredness he shouldn’t possess in his perspective, unless...

No—he’s laughing at their idiocy. He’s pending for the upper hand.

Din spins on the heels of his boots, blaster pistol scanning the thicket. There’s more. There’s fucking more of the bastards and they’re smart about it; they laid in wait and let Din kill their teammates, let Din think he had the advantage, and only to fucking swoop in once they’ve noted all of his abilities—his sonic detectors. They’re too quiet for him to sense.

He thumbs his vambrace to activate his thermal but he doesn’t get the opportunity before he’s kicked in the back, staggering a few steps before crashing to the ground in a heap of steel. Grunting and groaning, he surveys behind him for the abruptness. The Girl is preoccupied in a feud of her own with three ambushers, applying his previously described strategy of paralysing with the bayonet before finishing them with her pistol.

She’s tossed around a bit; slammed into the trunks of trees and thrown onto the ground but she recovers and snaps the trigger of her sidearm with such ease. She’s capable, she’ll be fine.

Din needs to focus on this fucker—he needs to kill the scumbag.

Who knows how many of these guys there are. They literally came out of the fucking woodworks; the Girl wasn’t the only one who thought of taking the high ground and with it being so dark out Din hadn’t even thought to assess the treetops.

But they still didn’t know the extent of his capabilities. The hidden gems implanted in his vambraces. They weren’t just for show, after all.

The lurkers are dismissed for the time being—they’re distant, patient until he makes a miscalculation, and he can work with that—his attention focuses on the leathery neck oozing taunting blood. Din’s fingers curl around the vibrating hilt of his blade and lunges while the Weequay is empty-handed, delivering another slash across an arm this time.

It’s too protective, too tough for him to pierce and really leave some damage.

If Din can get one good stab in his throat, he could fucking skin him alive.

But he’s being surrounded. Hunters making their debut from behind bushes and circling him as if he were a fire in the midst of a snowstorm. It just doesn’t end; this was supposed to be a calming few days away from combat and here they were. Din anticipated this happening—tranquillity scarcely presenting itself to him—but he didn’t expect it so soon. The last he was on this planet, he’d been endowed with a few weeks at the least.

A shrill scream erupts, resonating through the forest and waking the creatures dormant in their hides, but it’s so much louder within his helmet on the account of his detectors. His ears pulse with frigid blood. His windpipe snaps closed, lungs thumping against his ribs.

He doesn’t want to look, he doesn’t. But he needs to - needs to reassure himself that it wasn't the shriek of a girl who’d just obtained something severe, something that makes her screams force time to fall dead.

It’s blurry and hazy, his cloddish eyes simply refusing to cooperate, like observing the scene unfold through a brimming glass of steaming caf. Din manages to discern a pillar, mobile with a rifle in its arms, but it’s not the Girl. Din’s learnt her figure greater than the Creed he wears. He’s felt all of its curves and bumps underneath his callouses. He’s dedicated the inches of his tongue to its sweat.

Din could sculpt her physique out of a slab of concrete with nothing but his fingernails.

That pillar isn’t the Girl—so why does it have her rifle?

Eyes stoop lower, the haze clearing and the Girl becoming so clear-cut it aches his retinas. She’s on the ground—the dirty fucking ground—being suppressed with a boot on her midsection; her hands claw at what little shin she can reach but her efforts are depleted, slowed and weak.

The knife thrums intensively and numbs the tips of his fingers, complementing the tingling billowing through his veins, his organs, wrapping around his bones and urging his legs towards her but a hunter steps before him to block his view.

His heart stutters inside his ribs. Stopping and starting. Leaping and dropping.

Pull your head in and kill these assholes, Din demands himself the willpower to snap his scrutiny around the four hunters caging him in a circle. He’s not in the mood to entertain their wishes for a brawl and triggers the flamethrower in his gauntlet, swirling on his feet to enkindle them with orange heat that’ll leave a mark if not end them.

Clothes of two of them ignite, hastily engulfing their frames and biting its brand into their flesh.

Din relishes in their screams, their desperate tries to distinguish the unforgiving flames, and, in his foolish stupor, he’s forced onto the ground—two thickset weights on either of his arms, the front of his helmet slamming against the dirt and knocking against his nose with a vengeance.

He struggles underneath their grip but hardly moves an inch.

The Girl whimpers, faint but oh-so lively with his detectors. Din’s helmet scrapes across the ground as he cranes his neck to peer at her—the hand that’d been working at a shin now flat against the ground, her writhing the only indication she’s still conscious.

Din wants to look away, wants to shut off his sonic detectors and close his eyes.

It hurts to look at her; that pain he’d receive the day after a tussle with a high-end bounty but intensified by a dozen and stripping away at his internal organs as opposed to muscle tissue.

She’s being brutalised. A boot on her abdominals milking her of pained mewling.

“You’re impudent, Mandalorian,” the Weequay gurgles. “Should teach you some manners. Oi, bring her ‘ere.”

Din’s muscles tense. No armour can conceal the visible discomfort those words bring to him but he tries for his voice anyways, “What is it you want? To take me back to the Guild? I’ll go--leave her alone, she’s not a part of this.”

“She killed my men.” Leather-face huffs a breath. “Bring her ‘ere.”

The lackey complies, rugged gloves tearing into her skin and thrusting her in their general direction. Din scans her body for injuries, the spotlight of his eyes staring at the dark vermillion patch seeping through the black of his shirt at her belly. He struggles for a breath. Struggles to swallow the rising liquids that burn the back of his throat. Struggles to not implode with cusses that’ll only edge their retaliation over the brink.

Fucking vermillion.

A colour that looked fantastic on his foes but so fucking unsettling on His Girl.

Her competitor wears the same colour as her, a circular bolt wound in his shoulder and it doesn’t take a genius to piece them together. She must’ve been fooled. She must’ve been attacked with the knife in his hand while tending to the other hunters that now lay dead among the bark.

She can’t stand upright without the arm fisting her shirt and she drops to her knees and successively her stomach before him. They’re both a quivering mess, though for wholly different circumstances, and Din can’t fucking take the look she gives him. So painful. So devoid of that sweetness.

“Sorry, Me’suum’ika,” she whispers.

She feels as though she failed him—that somehow her getting injured resulted in him immobile, anchored to the forest floors and staring at his companion face-to-face while she bleeds out unattended to. Not the fact he can’t control the emotions that overwhelm him. Not the fact that it’s his own incompetence.

“No—pretty girl, look at me. Look at me.” Din trashes his weight against their hold but the position is awkward and his legs are unable to administer any power into his core. He’s as hopeless as captured krill, simply flailing about in hopes it’ll get him somewhere.

The Weequay wipes blood from his neck and nudges a foot into her side, squirming it underneath her stomach and flipping her onto her back to expose that hellish colour tainting her midsection. It melts through the shirt and adheres the fabric against the invisible wound beneath; Din’s eyes refuse to cut away.

It’s painful. Identical to those atrocious holodramas that’d screen late at night in the sketchy areas of town—it’s a shootout of a mess and he just can’t look away.

“She’s dying,” the Weequay announces. “There ain’t no medicine out in these parts. She’ll be gone before you can even lift her off the ground.”

Din’s stunned into silence. What’s he to do? His Girl is an arms-length away from him, bleeding out and moaning in pain, and he can’t do so much as stroke the hair out of her face and reassure her that she’ll be okay.

The Weequay snatches her rifle from his men, twisting the framework in his arms and hovering the prongs directly over her forehead—barely an inch of space between beautiful soft skin and a fatally paralysing influx of electricity.

“Don’t,” Din warns, tone more emotional than he wants to display. “Touch her and I will never stop looking for you.”

“I can end it all for her right now. Turn her to dust. Take mercy on her. Look at her, she’s in agony.”

The Girl’s mouth opens and closes rhythmically, an arm strewn across her front to stop the gush of blood—it’s fucking bad. It worsens when she looks at him, the angle causing tension to find a path along her neck and down to her belly but she shuns the idea of glancing away. Din’s throat tightens.

“All you need to do is point me in the direction of the bounty.”

The fucking choobies on this guy.

“Get her assistance and we’ll talk,” he bluffs.

They’re not impressed by his demands, a singular knee from either of the hunters digging into his forearm. The vambraces support a majority of the weight but it’s still hefty, still——

Vambraces. He’s exhausted what little fuel remains for his flamethrowers but there are still a few tricks in wait up there—techniques that they’ll never anticipate.

Din strains his arm beneath the hunter, flicking his fist as best as he can manage for specks of bright blue to ignite within the cavities of his wrist. A handful of the explosive tips dispense into the still air above him. The birds sing their tune as they coordinate their attacks, dedicating themselves to targeting each individual quarry. One dives into the side of a hunter to Din’s left followed by another to his right, the muscles pinning him down becoming limp, the third impact into the chest of the Girl’s half-defeated foe.

They lay lifeless among the forest; scorch marks where they’d been touched with his beskar sparrows.

Two birds remain circling overhead.

Two?

One dips through the air targeting the Weequay like a missile with his name written on it but Din conducts a staredown with the last, his eyes swiftly tracing the projectile. It makes its move—identifying the bleeding woman coiled on the floor as a threat to his safety, but Din matches its tempo and hurtles himself atop of her body.

His weight stimulates a displeased groan from her throat.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he says.

Din cages her head in with his arms and tucks her face into his cowl before caving in on himself, a poor attempt to cover every inch of soft flesh with reverberating beskar and it works.

He feels the menacing tink through his spine as it bounces off the steel and into a tree.

He peels himself from her, cherry liquid having been smeared across his beskar platings, and examines her condition—the shirt drags up and tracks the blood to her ribs, a wide three-inch chamber in her stomach that convulses with each unsteady exhale.

She grunts incoherently and latches her fingers onto the perimeter of his vambraces, beseeching eyes demolishing the resolve within him. “We’ll get you fixed up, all right?” Din examines the incision with trained eyes, plush grey-purple tissue beneath all the vermillion causing his heart to drop.

It’s not that she was trying to stop the bleeding; she’s trying to prevent her fucking intestines from spilling out.

They’re still tucked away inside, where they belong, but if she moves too much they’ll slip out with ease.

His glove compresses around the fabric, wringing out the garment of her insides. His helmet sharply tosses in the direction of a small explosion by his final whistling bird. Weequay remains upright. Din’s insides boil.

This fucker. This son of a bitch.

This is his fault.

His Girl lays beneath the stars, her essence draining from her disoriented body, all because a handful of good for nothing guild members needed to get their hands dirty for a lousy couple thousand credits.

Din’s knees crack as he raises to his feet, his shoulders contracting and fingers crunching around a blade’s hilt. She sputters for a breath, her lungs failing to cooperate with her demands; the distressing audio flourishes the growing rage within him and he scowls under his visor.

He wishes it wasn’t there—wishes he could pluck the damned steel from around his face to burn the Weequay’s leather hide with stewing caf; a tribute of his ire. To permit the one who attributed so much agony on his beloved to gaze into his eyes as he snips his vocal cords through the wound in his gullet; darkened eyes that haven’t touched daylight in decades to swallow him whole in their shadows.

Like a hibernating beast longing for its first meal upon awakening.

Din cocks his vambrace controls and fires out his grappling cord, cleanly winding it around the maimed throat of his opponent, jerking forwards and concurrently rushing into his physique so they tumble to the turf and fend off each other’s clamouring.

That message he had been planning on distributing for the galaxy’s eyes is burnt to ash, much like that of the Weequay’s comrades. Din simply wants to murder the bastard—murder. An act far worse than killing. Killing somebody had always implied his survival, a requirement to take matters into his own hands so that he returns to the Crest with a beating heart.

This wasn’t survival.

This is harsh tidal waves crashing against the foundations of a lighthouse.

This is the crack of lightning in the sky in an unstoppable catastrophe.

This is a whole new side to Din that he’s never witnessed before. Anger that drowns him from the inside out. A bitterness that prods his taste buds. Overheating caf scorching holes through the visor.

Din registers the whipcord and how his fingers hook around the thread.

Din registers the dire clawing at his helmet, the Weequay’s desperation urging him on.

But what Din can’t register is anything in between; his consciousness, usually so clouded with his own grievances, is utterly blank as if he were a wiped droid. All circuitry and no sentiments.

“Ash’amur,” Din spits and applies every pound in his build.

The whipcord is constructed of refined shivs that slice through the thick neck and into Din’s gloves, drawing blood from his palms and fingertips.

It’s the gurgling that does it for him. That vile bubbling of blood and saliva in his pipes as it rises upwards and leaks from clenched teeth down his frilled jowls. It’s too horrendous to sustain—Din cringes and seizes his vibro-knife, only to be punched in the side of his neck the moment he removes a hand from that rubbery fucking throat.

Din groans and slams the cord-entangled hand into his jaw, roughhousing his cranium into the dirt and presenting the vulnerable wound like the perfect target to practice his precision. The blade dips through the seams and excavates deeper through the muscles, intensifying his suffering and crackled spluttering. Coriaceous hands fumble at slippery beskar, mouth belching and spraying ruby drops across the surface of his Creed.

He digs his knee into the fleshy stomach beneath him, extracts his knife and plunges it directly through the crevice once more.

The appendages slink down his torso and thighs, accumulating in a motionless mound atop of twigs and stones—dull eyes rolling into the back of his skull.

That filthy noise pollution continues—fluids frothing and popping in the oceanic limbo of fucking somewhere. Din’s mouth reshapes into a sneer and he impales the blade through the muscle again and again, but the ruckus persists; striking his eardrums with more zeal than his efforts to numb it.

It’s too loud, too distracting, his senses simmering down to solely auditory perception as it spikes in volume. It needs to be stopped, he needs to vanquish it.

Din white-knuckles the rubber hilt and repeatedly thrusts the blade in and out of the wound with rigid movements, his chest heaving with floundering breaths as he falls into a mania of knife-plungings.

The Weequay is long-lifeless but its body rocks with each frantic stab, the blood squelching within the open wound, and Din doesn’t realise the chilling mass beneath him isn’t the cause of the carnage on his sonic detectors until it’s splintered and calling his name between cracks and coughs.

He visibly recoils.

That agonised suffocating on blood wasn’t him at all.

The Girl coughs again, liquid gargling in the deep of her throat.

Vibro-knife rips through the skin as he withdraws the blade and reverts back to the Girl’s aid, flipping her onto her side and smoothing out the hair. “Spit it up, Sweetheart,” he instructs. Vermillion amasses into a puddle beneath her mouth and floods the forest floors. “That’s it, keep going.”

She mewls, incapable of urging up the last swish of metallic liquid—Din intervenes and slips his hand free of his glove to wedge two fingers into her mouth, sweeping out the remainder of accrued blood and clearing her airways.

“Breathe in, there we go, and out.”

She exhales and nods to her wound. “Didn’t—didn’t see the knife in time. Thought I-I killed him.”

“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay, all right?”

There’s disbelief written on her face, her eyebrows and teeth tense as she chews on soft gums, but she gives him the faintest of smiles and a nod that’s more to reassure him than it is her.

She’s lost too much blood and the volume is only ballooning with time. Din acts fast and slashes a load of his cloak with his knife, again, the woollen trimmings serving as a tourniquet around her midsection; it’s a shitty solution and functions more to irritate the wound than anything—the fibres of the garment eating away at the uncovered pulsing muscle—but it’s all he’s got. They’ve got nothing going for them here and the Crest had to be a decent twenty minute trek outwards on a good day which this is fucking not, maybe thirty with her condition.

It has to last until then. It needs to.

If he can make it to the Crest in time and without dumping her guts out she has a chance—a chance, not a high one, but a fucking chance—of survival but he needs to go now.

“I’m gonna pick you up, okay?”

She’s light. All that weight sitting on his shoulders mere hours ago is replaced with a floatiness that makes her feel non-existent, like a figment of his imagination. She compresses against the beskar while he zips through the forest like the pellets she’d administered to the hunters; agile, coordinated, but his concentration bounces from his path to her face every few leaps.

“Hey! Hey. Open your eyes. Show me your pretty eyes, sweet girl...there they are. Keep them open for me.”

She strains, “Sorry.”

The syrupy goodness of her tone he starved for—binged on—has boiled over to a sticky mess that only drags him in closer at the touch of his heart. It coats the organ like tar and hardens until it struggles to continue beating, slinking downwards and catching along the walls of his lungs to harass his breathing.

Din chews on his lower lip, his teeth burrowing into the pillows with each step of his boots and shredding them with his enamel until he tastes his blood at the back of his tongue.

She hums and allows her head to roll into the soft bicep beside it, situating her lips against the flight suit to commit a forceless kiss onto the only part of him that she can reach.

“Guess - guess I won’t be taking you up on that offer.” She smiles and exhales a breath—a laugh but she’s too weak to give anything more.

“Don’t… Stop acting like you’re--”

“Dying?” She scoffs. “Well, I-I am, aren’t I?”

No, you can’t Din thinks, you can’t fucking leave me here.

The urge to vomit creeps upon him; disguises itself among the churning of his stomach and the soreness in his throat. Perhaps he would empty his stomach right here and now, discount the concealing of his identity before the Girl just to have the opportunity to bend over and heave until there’s nothing but saliva expelling, but he doesn’t have the luxury of slowing down. In fact, he needs to pick up his pace.

He does just that—albeit not by much but every difference counts.

Din risks another glimpse at her; skin all pale and face scrunched to not let the pain escape from her throat or eyes. She struggles to restrain herself from allowing her eyelids to snap close, to let that twinge in her retinas finally rest—because Din asked to see those pretty eyes and what Din asks, Din receives.

She takes notice of his lack of reassuring words, the shortage of comforting glances, the cold absence of her Mandalorian as he distances himself from his emotions.

“Me’suum’ika.”

He regrets teaching her that word. It sounds so pleasing coming from her vocals, all soft and bouncy like a mattress he wishes to rest on, but currently, it’s pained. It’s croaky and poorly pronounced. It sounds dreadful—tainting the beautiful memory of exchanging nicknames.

She tries for his attention again, “Me’suum’ika…”

No. No, no. Don’t say it. Do not fucking say it.

“Din.”

Their motion suspends as fast as a string snaps. Boots kick pebbles ahead of their path. They’re in a wide clearing, the firs having been repelled at least a twenty-metre radius around them. Quiet. Open. Peaceful.

Forearms quiver with her maturing weight, mysteriously so fucking heavy like he was supporting a thruster of his Crest. The helmet is inert on his shoulders, staring off into the distance where the path narrows between rows of evergreen. Fingers on her waist and the underside of her thigh tunnels into the flesh, his one ungloved hand perceiving her dwindling warmth.

Despair overcomes him like an explosion. No ticking to warn him, no preparation. Just one big fucking detonation that blasts against his calves, staggering his stance and plugging his lungs and helmet with clotted smoke particles that stings his eyes and throat. His tongue liquefies and slips down his pipe where he gags on his own muscle.

“Put me down.”

“No,” he chokes. “I can do it, we can make it. I just—”

His vocals fissure. They crack and pop and it’s not on the account of his vocoder.

The hook underneath the rim of his helmet drags it downwards and every bone in his body tenses at the sight. The sight of His Girl so emptied of expression that she can barely hold eye contact with his black slit. The colour deficiency in her face leaves a sharp taste of salt on his lips, streaks on his cheeks.

Din she says softly, no—not softly but so devoid of strength that it comes out oh-so weak and quiet, put me down Din.

His knees buckle. His arms quake. He sinks to the gravel brutally.

The stones poke and prod against his caps, sharp edges cutting through his garment but he’s completely numb except for his hands and face—enduring the physical touch of a falling star versus the tides that roll beneath the steel.

He doesn’t want to drop her.

He doesn’t want to let her touch the planet's crust because he knows she won’t get back up.

“Me’suum’ika.” She wipes at his armoured chest with her sleeve. “You’re all bloody.”

Din shakes, scrambling not to cave into the overwhelming itch in his forearms—to not permit her perfect figure to be tainted with more grime than it already has been subjected to—except she’s made of duracrete, weighing him down like an anchor on a flimsy rowboat and he can’t come out victorious.

It’s a sluggish descent, all slowed to record each millimetre until she’s flat on the ground. A vermillion reservoir spawns beneath her and trails to seep into his flight suit, his ungloved hand gently laying rest on her concealed wound—the cloak lumpy and outlining something soft, squishy.

He retracts his hand as if it were in the mouth of a rancor.

There’s an unspoken statement that floats above them, circles them and weighs their shoulders down.

She’s dying.

Din knows it. He can see it. He can see her life vacuuming out of a three-inch slit in her abdominals and there’s nothing he can do to delay the inevitable. There’s nothing he can do to save her life. He’s never felt more incompetent but there’s a flicker of hope that she’ll make it. That she’ll just reabsorb the sticky liquid and suture her tissue back together—denial. He’s in utter fucking denial.

“Come here,” she breathes, fingertips stroking the scruff of his jaw underneath his cowl.

His teeth clench. “No, Cyar’ika. Sweetheart, please. I can make it. Just hold on for a little longer.”

“I can’t.”

Eyelids pinch together behind the tint but it doesn’t stop the nipping at his retinas. Gloved hand remains at the rear of her skull, cushioning it from stray rubble but he clenches around air when she hoists herself onto her elbows—approaching him since he’s too shaken to go to her—and knocks against the front of his helmet.

Din forces his eyelids to peel back and it’s a huge mistake.

All he can see is the bottom of her chin, the curve of her jaw, but he’s clever enough to string the clues together; the diminishing heat of her breath warming him on the inside.

The gentle press of her lips against the summit of beskar.

She doesn’t allow him to think, to speak, she does it all for him. But they’re not words he wishes to hear. They’re not I’ll be okay or let’s go home.

“Look.” She nods upwards. “Me’suum’ika.”

She’s not referring to him, but the real moon; its silver-white glow snuffed out and overtaken with oranges as warm as the sunrises that’d rebound off his beskar as he strides back to the Crest, a bounty in hand and dark crescents forming underneath his eyes. Reds as deep as the blood besmirching her gorgeous soft skin.

“Pretty, ain’t it?”

Pretty?

It’s obscene. It’s nauseating. It’s not fucking pretty.

It’s mocking them—mirroring the scene laid underneath it reminding Din of his foolish missteps; she’s all red and bloody because of you; she looks like me because you allowed her to tag along.

Din wants to pilot his Crest all the way up there and put an end to the disrespectful satellite.

How dare it look so full, so complete, while he’s disintegrating before it.

The Girl said he was one and the same with the moon—she fucking said that—so how can it be so unaffected by the loss of life beneath it?

The loss of their Girl.

Din isn’t the moon. He’s the abyssal milky ways that attract eyes at first impression only to exploit that and drag unsuspecting victims into the black holes in the galactic centre of his chest—he’s destruction and chaos and unrelenting, his gravitational pull too great for escape and it only ever ends one way.

“Don’t...don’t look like that.”

“Like what?” he snaps.

It’s unintentional. An overload of emotions that’s been festering for too long and shows its ugly face in the form of a pitch curated with venom and tears.

“You can’t even see me.”

He’s going about it all wrong except he’s right—she can’t see him nor can she feel his warmth but that never intimidated her. She’d found ways to adapt; ways to read his mannerisms and speech rather than facial expressions.

Din has the opportunity to seize that from her; to show rather than tell.

Explosion smoke splutters from his lungs and his fingertips ache as they fumble for the switch beneath the rim, the Girl’s blood soiling his clothed throat and the insides of his Creed. It unclasps, detectors maximizing its violent hiss. He has it maybe below his lips before she pulls and pins it down.

“You’re not ready.”

Din’s heart fractures; the beskar steel of his organ—that’s made to withstand a lightsaber—cracking and creaking at her words.

“No! No, no. You told me you weren’t going anywhere—you said that. You said you would look if I wanted you to see and, Mesh’la, I want you to fucking see.” Din’s fingers tremble against the back of her hands. “Sweetheart, please look at me. Let me do this...I don’t have anything else to offer.”

“Din…no.”

“Let me,” he demands but all the authority is suppressed with a heartache that chews him up and spits him back out.

There’s an attempt to conceal the groans and hisses—an attempt—as she breathes in deep, gathering as much fresh oxygen in her lungs as possible.

Din tries for his helmet again, employing her hands beneath the rim to lift, but she overexerts herself to stop him; tight fingers latched on the insides, knuckles brushing against a sharp jawline and collecting the wetness that streams directly into her grasp.

“This is the Way,” she says it as a reminder and a reassurance that she’s content with never seeing his face because This is the Way, but it only frustrates him; boils the tears on his face until they convert into vapour that attacks his visor, leaving only the crust of salt residue on his cheeks.

You’re dying in my fucking arms he thinks the least I can do is desecrate my Creed.

It wouldn’t even be a desecration, not really. That would imply a disrespectful act was to occur and this was anything but. It’d be an honour, a homage of an unspoken pledge uttered in the dead of the Crest that outweighs the one he took among tinted visors and enkindled torches.

Din’s taut. Rigid muscle constructed of resolute alloy.

It’s not comfortable to rest among sharp edges that prod into her sore skin but rather than peel away—rather than let her breathe without the weight of steel to her side—Din cradles her against his chest, transferring the most minuscule amount of body heat that slips through his seams into her.

His hand is glazed with sticky deep vermillion that oozes from his fingertips, the gravity magnetising droplets onto the beautiful cheek it hovers above. Din wants to touch her, wants to feel the sun warm his flesh and blood, but he’s scared that if he touches her he’ll ruin her iconic softness with coarse fingers.

Blood smears onto her face and fills her sinuses with metallic scents to match those flavours in her mouth, her cheek gluing itself to his hand for him. She offers him a weak smile and entitles herself to a moment to browse his solid face, following the edges of his cheeks and swiping a thumb across the chin’s rim.

“Kiss me,” Din requests. “Just—just once.”

“Just once?”

He nods. “Just once. Do—can you manage one?”

The Girl chuffs out a laugh but cringes at the disturbance in her core. “I might have one in the bank for you.”

She elevates the beskar to the dip in his nose, scenic eyes securely held shut to preserve the Creed he’s already decided he would renounce for her if she would just let him. She deserves to see him, to gaze into his simmering caf. His thoughts range from disloyal alternatives that scour against the sincerity of his mind, wiping him clean of the trust he’s built around himself, all the way to options where he doesn’t go against her words—thoughts where the beskar lifts no higher than his mouth.

He condemns both of the options; either tricking her into seeing him for his own greediness or listening to her pleas despite how much it fucking hurts.

It’s not fair.

Din’s lips hurtle themselves into her; hungry and distraught, a false hope that if he engorges on her taste alone it’ll dispel those macabre thoughts from his consciousness. All he can fucking taste is salt and metal that’s been left in the rain. Her zest, her sweetness, the flavours that taste of her, is gone.

It doesn’t stop him.

He compiles it in the back of his throat simply to have something of her inside him. He’s indulged in her tasteless saliva, the saltiness of her sweat, the syrup of her slick, and now the rancid warmth of her blood.

He can’t hear. He can’t see. He can only feel and touch.

She’s hardly lukewarm, the sun’s rays disappearing over her horizon.

“Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum.” Din brushes the hair out of her face. “Not a minute passes where you’re not in the forefront of my mind, Sweetheart. I’ve never encountered somebody so...extraordinary as you. I just need you to know before—before…”

“Din…” Her voice pops, tears of her own brewing.

“I love you,” he confesses, wet beads plummeting from his jawline to her neck. “You taught me how to love; you are my love and that will never change. I love you, ner Cyare—my beloved.”

Din recoils like he’s poked in the chest. The snuffling and mewling that erupts from her vocal cords upon his confession burn him—singe his lungs until they’re tender with each inhale. Nothing could have prepared him for this reaction; the unmasked sobs and vulnerability she’s never shown, not to this extent.

Fingers that dig into his flight suit feel like minuscule vibro-knifes in his biceps. Statements that gush out of her mouth and landslide his heart into submission—I love you, Din. I love you. I love you.

A star and a satellite falling in love; it’s an implausible outcome bound for disaster.

The sun manipulates its flames that allows colourful flowers to bloom or for lively forests to ignite. The moon pushes and pulls the tides fit for a gentle roll across a beach or to capsize rigs with a single flick.

The Sun and the Moon.

Fire and Water.

They’re polar opposites and, despite everything in the universe working against them, they’ve merged as one. Two equally fractured vases exchanging their missing pieces for compensation; a bright orange that’s warm to the touch in Din’s heart and within her lies a sparkly silver shard, a piece of his beskar residing within her to ward off onslaught.

He’s trawled inwards, naked cheek against naked cheek; scruff pricking against the bone of her jaw. Their tears fuse as one and wedge between their pressed flesh. She sobs against him, the hand on his helmet dipping underneath the silver to tangle her fingers within his knotty locks.

I’m fucking scared Din she breaks, I don’t want to go.

Din’s lip trembles. He can’t paralyse the pain that brings forth the donning of a brave face when confronted—that crinkle in her brow isn’t fooling anybody—but, perhaps, he can distract her. Draw her attention away from the gnawing of her intestines against scratchy wool.

“I know, Darling, I know.” Voice so soft and comforting it encourages her fraught muscles to slack and abandon her awareness. “Focus on me, okay?”

Her lips part when he nudges against them, accepting the tongue that requests entrance. It’s one final deliverance on both sides; a diversion for the Girl and a concluding act of love for Din—something to burn into his lips for decades to come, something to remind him he’s deserving of love.

He takes it slow for her sake, concerned that his usual greed would be too overstimulating. They’re lackadaisical; movements so weakened they’re hardly moving, simply holding each other as they quietly sob into the others mouth.

His scalp is heavy with her fingers and he synchronises his own to the nape of her neck, dirtying her pretty hair with sticky plasma. Pretty hair he’ll never be able to touch again—he’ll never be able to feel the strands between his knuckles as he tilts her head back and deepens their devout kisses. Kisses he’ll never be blessed with again.

Fuck.

He can’t stomach it, can’t bear the thought that he’s going to be abandoned all over again.

First, his parents and now his beloved girl—everybody he cared for is slipping through the gaps of his fingers.

It’s not even a gradual process; there’s not enough time for him to tell her how much he loves her, how he’ll never love another lifeform a fraction as much as he does her.

It’s as rapid as a waterfall, a suffocating surge that’s stern against his protests; his silent pleas of please don’t take her away from me.

Din feels the pulsing in her tongue fade; acknowledges how her fingers lax against his scalp, registers how he’s been deserted despite their tongues intertwined. Beskar slips down the slope of his dewy face as he recedes within himself.

The Girl is static, still, silent.

She’s not got a fingernail’s worth of oxygen in her lungs, not a twitch in her eyebrows.

Din’s beloved Girl is gone.

The sun’s solace warmth has been wiped from the face of the galaxy, leaving residual liquid flames that paste in thick layers to his armour. Only an odious sphere of blended carmines remains perched in the celestials—a blood-red lunar eclipse that penetrates through the solid of his heartplate and devours his internal organs.

Din remains idle for what feels like a century, his consciousness paralysed with a stab of her amban rifle’s bayonet. Deprived of sensation—drained of emotion and thoughts—the tears have stopped and left behind an ache beneath his eyes.

When he does eventually move it’s wearisome. The momentum of a dawdling crawl; a by-product of the corpse in his arms and bedrock in his boots.

It takes him longer than it should to reach the Crest.

It takes him longer than it should to lay her body to rest atop the hold’s crates.

Din tries to tell himself she looks peaceful, that she’s somewhere better, that's what people said to others in times of grief, but what could be better than roosting between his arms in the comfort of a secure body of beskar?

The Razor Crest’s lethargic humdrum probes his sockets, the absence of a thumping heartbeat so fucking apparent that it’s harrowing and Din can’t tolerate it for another second. His Creed rips from his head and hurtles through the air to slam into the duralloy walls of his supposed sanctuary, denting a dome where the summit of beskar impacts but it’ll never be enough to damage that fucking helmet.

His trademark steely stoic persona is substituted for tan mien; his inability to conceal his expressions from years of never needing to palpable at the faintest indication of an eyebrow twinge.

Din presses his lips against her forehead, a frigid and stiffness that transfers to his mouth. He luxuriates on her, delivering docile pecks across her face that burns his lips. Din surrenders the last of his breath to her but he’ll never receive any equivalent ever again.

Memories are all that remains—reminiscences that tug on his lungs. They obscure his mind's eye with dull images of the individual circumstances he’d separated the man from the religion.

He wasn’t to ever remove his helmet. His heart sinks. Din had never contemplated the impact of the decree—the implicit statement that it included whether one’s eyes were shut or not.

His heart’s arteries melt into the muscle and flood it until it capsizes within itself.

Din had been subconsciously unearthing methods and plot holes to eliminate beskar from the equation to indulge in the Girl’s temptations—to permit him the opportunity of a lifetime and experience affairs that scarcely presented themselves to him—but it had backfired.

The helmet was removed, whether her eyes were shut or not it didn’t matter.

His Creed was tarnished the moment he even thought about being with the Girl and it only continued downhill from then on—a terminal illness that burrows its relentless claws into his core and carefully conquers each inch of his body without ever drawing attention to itself.

“Cyare.” His vocals crack and pop. “Open your eyes.”

Look at me. I’ve dishonoured my vows for you. Open your eyes and look into mine—savour the caf you were so curious about. You have to look at me. You need to. Please don’t let my sacrilege go undervalued.

They’d been wasting precious moments this entire fucking time. Din’s Honour was non-existent and he could’ve bestowed her with the knowledge of how his eyes brightened whenever she glanced his way, how indentations of shallow dimples formed in his cheeks when he’d smile at her snarky remarks.

His fist slams against the crate beside her. “Stubborn girl.”

Why couldn’t she be like the no-good schemers that yearned to see beneath the steel?

Why did she have to be so protective of his oath?

She died never knowing what the man who loved her looked like.

A sparkle beneath her shirt catches his eyes, solid alloy beckoning his hands. Beskar is still warm to the touch from her sternum. Din rubs the face of the pendant's skull raw, dried blood flaking off onto the steel, his thumb heating with the friction. It’s not much, hardly anything actually, but it’s something that she claimed ownership of—something physical that he can touch and hold that was once pressed against the beat of her heart. With nothing else in her possession of her own, it’s all Din’s got.

It’s knotted around his neck, the thread weighing like a bantha and the pendant torching a permanent mark into his chest. He welcomes it, remains stoic and unflinching as it intensifies and scars over—he wasn’t afraid of being burnt, after all.

Din wipes away the scarlet meadow of clumped hair adhered to her cheek and sets the hem of her shirt as low as it'll reach, concealing the hump of soaked wool. He believed himself to be incapable of shedding more salty liquid from his ducts but tonight is full of surprises. Their foreheads pin against each other, wetness streaming down the curve of his cheekbones and into her hair.

He’s uncertain where he stands with his Creed—it’s not of importance right now—but he was raised on their culture, their words so beautiful that it only felt right to say a final remembrance.

My Sun, Ni su’cuyi, gar kyr’adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum.

----

jatnese be te jatnese - the best of the best ni kar'tayl gar darasuum - i love you me'suum'ika - moon choobies - testicles ash'amur - die ner cyare - my beloved ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum - i'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.

A/N: i'm so sorry. there might be an epilogue if you guys are interested in that.

taglist: @ohhersheybars, @greatcircle79, @northernpunk, @tanzthompson, @djarrex, @omgreally, @spideysimpossiblegirl

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mugiwara-rosewolf · 4 years

Text

Alphabet Headcanons

One Piece Edition

Shanks

SFW

A=Affection (How affectionate are they with an s/o?)

Yes, Shanks is affectionate. He will take any opportunity to be near you without smothering you. He’ll have you sitting in his lap at every opportunity, if you’ll let him.

If you’re not okay with that, just having shoulders brushing is okay with him. When there’s a moment to rest, in public or private, as long as you two are touching in some way, Shanks will be happy as a clam.

Of course there are other ways one can be affectionate. So--perhaps equally as important as the action of physical touch--Shanks appreciates the value of words.

As such, the Red-Haired captain always knows just what to say in order to encourage you, affirm your decisions, to express his appreciation for you and empathise with what you’re feeling.

Shanks is also extremely intuitive. As well spoken as he is, and as much as he likes to talk, he also knows how and when to listen--actually listen. With him, you’ll always know that your being, your voice, is always appreciated.

B=Breath (What could their s/o do to take their breath away?)

Show your strength. Whether it be physically, mentally, morally, emotionally--almost any way you can imagine--Shanks will be deeply affected by the display and take notice.

For example: he admires Makino’s kindness for taking care of Luffy and her grace when confronted by dangerous bandits. He admires Luffy for his loyalty to friends and determination to pursue his dream of becoming ‘King of the Pirates’.

Whether it’s going toe to toe with a swordsman, standing up for a bullying victim, enduring painful hardships, or just going off on somebody about the importance of loyalty--just stick to your guns and Shanks will love & admire you for it.

C=Cuddling (Do they cuddle? If they do, how and when do they cuddle?)

Oh my goodness this man--this man is a closeted cuddle monster. If you thought he was affectionate before, that was just him playing it cool. When it’s just the two of you? Ho-boy.

Of course he’ll listen if you’re not comfortable at any particular moment, but again, if you let him, Shanks will plop you down in his lap. No matter your height or weight, this man will hold you and make you feel wanted--because he does.

Whether sitting up or lying down, Shanks will wrap his arm(s) around your waist and hold your waist and hold you close. He loves to feel your heartbeat so close to his--cause that’s what he loves most about you--in every possible way.

D=Dream (What do they dream of doing with their s/o?)

His dream is pretty much the same as when he was a kid, back when he and Buggy were cabin boys on Roger’s ship. He wants to have his own ship with a reliable crew and to take his time travelling the world.

The only thing that’s changed is that he wants to do all those things with you. It seems like such a small change, and yet to Shanks that little adjustment changes everything.

The way Shanks sees it--if life is an adventure, then life with you would be the greatest adventure he could ever accept.

If for some reason you weren’t able to travel with Shanks and his crew, the Red-Haired captain would still do everything in his power to include you in his life.

Postcards from Loguetown, Sake from Sabaody--living vicariously through a pirate (and a Yonko at that!) would turn your mailbox into the world’s greatest curiosity shop.

E=Effort (How much effort do they put into a relationship?)

As laid back and fancy-free as Shanks is--he does not choose a life partner lightly. Because that’s exactly how he sees them--a Life partner.

Sure, there was probably a phase of his life where he treated romance and intimacy more flippantly. He grew up with stereotypically rowdy and promiscuous pirates as his role models and mentors. It would take some time for him to realize that such shallow connections didn’t really suit him.

But once he fully realizes himself; his goals, his morals, his priorities, etc, he would treat relationships and intimacy more seriously.

That being said, when he finds somebody, you bet your bottom dollar this man is gonna Commit. Try to make you smile, try to make you laugh, be there when you’re sad, listen when you’re mad, he’ll aim to do all the above and more if he can.

If/when your relationship is confirmed, he’ll expect a similar level of commitment from you. This man is loyal to a fault. He does not choose his friends and family lightly. Once he grows attached to someone, he will do his best for them in whatever way they need.

But when he chooses a Partner, again, he’s gonna want a similar effort to be made for him as well. (In this house, we stan equivalent exchange in relationships).

F=Fear (What do they do if their s/o is scared? How do they handle it?)

This all depends on the threat level.

If someone is intimidating, boasting, or otherwise making his s/o anxious/uncomfortable, Shanks will intervene by just waltzing in and distracting the stranger in his charismatic, dorky pacifist way.

But if there’s a chance of his s/o actually coming to harm (or god forbid having their life threatened)--ho-boy.

Bitch better put some brown pants on ‘cause they’s about to shit themselves. Hands down, Red-Hair Shanks is down to murder to protect his loved ones.

We’ve all seen the footage. Shanks can be downright terrifying when he needs to be. And protecting his s/o from harm is an absolute necessity.

He tries to avoid violent confrontation if he can help it, but threaten someone he cares about and you gonna get yo ass whipped with his (1) good hand.

G=Gifts (What type of gifts do they give their s/o? Do they want a gift in return?)

Contrary to what many expect of pirates, Shanks isn’t a very materialistic person. (In utter contrast to Buggy and others).

He’s not really the type to buy every little trinket that reminds him of you. And he doesn’t expect that kinda behaviour from you either. If you are that kind of person? Great!

Shanks will appreciate pretty much any way you're willing to express your affections. He’ll happily accept anything you give him as long as he understands the thought/meaning behind it. Gift giving is appreciated, but not expected or required.

However, if/when he does decide to give you a gift, rest assured that it’s gonna pack one helluvan emotional punch (*cough Straw Hat *cough*).

For some reason I’m picturing the hand-carved engagement necklaces from Avatar the Last Airbender. I feel like he’d give you those types of gifts--small, but beautiful and immeasurably meaningful.

(How Shanks would go about carving a necklace after the loss of his arm, Idk. But this is Shanks we’re talking about. BAMF would find a way.)

H=Hugs (Do they hug their s/o? How often?)

Yes, yes he does. He doesn’t offer hugs as often as one would expect (esp. After losing his arm). But he will willingly accept any and as many hugs as you are willing to give him.

When he does hug you, it is usually him reaching around you from behind. Besides the heartbeat thing mentioned earlier, I have no idea why he does this. Maybe cause he feels like a shield around you--that he can protect you, you can support him and vice versa. Affectionate, devoted, but not smothering.

Then, of course, there’s the obligatory reunion &/or ‘thank god you’re alive’ hugs that are bound to happen when 1 or more partners lives a dangerous life on the sea.

I=Intimacy (How romantic are they? Do they have problems with intimacy?)

Oh Shanks is a raging romantic at heart. Love makes him absolutely twitterpated. He’s affectionate and can be an absolute cuddle monster when the mood strikes him.

But the majority of the time (esp. In an established relationship) the manic energy of love is often tempered by his naturally easy-going personality. Shanks is the same in his romantic gestures as he is with almost everything--he is super duper uber chill about it.

It’s the little things that carry the most meaning for him.

Tucking a wildflower behind your hair (anybody can rock a flower in their hair, fucking fight me)

Putting his arm around your waist or over the back of your chair (he’ll only do the cheesy ‘stretch and yawn’ technique to make you laugh)

Any sort of teasing or banter is fair game too, especially if you’re on the more playful or bashful side.

No matter how rowdy he and his crewmates can be, Shanks isn’t all that loud with his romanticism. The freakouts are usually before or after he’s done something grander/more elaborate than usual (Like that engagement necklace mentioned before).

Otherwise, as long as your boundaries have been established, he’ll do as many or as little of those cute intimate gestures as you’ll allow. Whatever bounds you give him, he’ll lounge comfortably within them so long as it suits you both.

J=Jealous (Do they get jealous? How do they act when jealous?)

He’s not really the jealous type. He does, however, tend to sulk when he wants your attention. Like a sad, kicked puppy he’ll pout until you refocus on him. The moment he knows he has your attention again you’ll easily be able to imagine a tail wagging behind his back just from the sparkle in his eyes.

See U=Unique for more

K=Kiss (Are they a good kisser? Do they like to kiss? How often do they try to kiss you?)

Remember that ‘previous experience’ we mentioned before? The part of his development where he thought intimacy consisted of one night stands at the tavern? He’ll probably have long outgrown that frame of mind by the time you enter a relationship with him. But what he gained from that time of his life, was experience.

Experience which serves him very well in a relationship. He’s a quick study, and thus a phenomenal kisser. He’ll figure out all the ways to make you melt with just his lips, teeth and tongue. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

He may get a bit over-excited on occasion, so not every kiss will be perfect. Clacking teeth and bonking noses are bound to happen once in a while. (He may be a Yonko but he’s still a giant dork).

Otherwise, besides your occasional snogging session and other such steamy moments, Shanks is a surprisingly domestic kisser. Cute kisses on the cheek, forehead and temple are common.

He’ll also surprise you on occasion, kissing your ear, nose or chin just to see how you’ll react. If it makes you smile or laugh, he’ll keep going. If you blush, he’ll laugh and take note. Again, a quick study, this man is.

L=Love (When do they say they love you? How often do they say it? Do they prefer to say or show it?)

The words slip out in the middle of something utterly mundane. That much is for sure. Either he’s known for a while (realizing mid-battle/mid-argument or something) and just can’t hold it in anymore--

OR--he just saw you there; washing dishes, swabbing decks, sipping sake, what have you--and the realization just happens out loud. “Oh shit, I’m in love with you…” *cue momentary panic* “HOly SHIT, I LOVE YOU!”I

When he finds his feelings are reciprocated, Shanks will feel like the King of the Pirates, One Piece be damned. From then on he’ll be boasting to everyone on his crew that he’s in love.

Anybody who wasn’t around during his epiphany will congratulate and tease him. Anybody who was there will chuckle and roll their eyes. Money will change hands and Beckman will be 100,000 berries richer.

Besides his nakama, those ‘three little words’ are meant for your ears only. In public, he’ll typically stick to those little gestures mentioned previously. Proud to be your partner, but keeping it low-key, ya know?

Contrary to what some may think, Captain Shanks is in fact capable of discretion. Not quite the same as subtlety, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

Anyways, back on his ship it’s a whole ‘nother story. The manic energy of being in love mixed with his own innate dorkiness has led to some pretty ridiculous moments--all of which make his crew laugh and you smile like sunshine.

M=Marriage (Do they want to get married? If so, what kind of ceremony?)

Honestly, Shanks doesn’t mind either way.

He’s happy to have you as his life partner, he’d be happy to be your husband.

But if you don’t drop down on one knee, or explicitly address the topic of marriage, the subject will likely never come up.

If you ask, of course he’ll say yes. If you address the topic, but don’t act on it, Shanks may not act on it at first. But w/ a bit of advice from Beckman he’ll take the hint and ask.

Either way, as long as the two of you are together for life, Shanks will be more than satisfied.

N=Night out (What type of dates do they like to go on? How often do they like to go on them?)

Any time you two have together is precious to him. On the ship, through various markets, in various taverns--as long as the two of you are side by side, doing something together, he’ll consider it a date.

So, by that logic, y’all go on dates all the time.

O=Out of the Ordinary (What’s something they don’t normally do with/for their s/o?)

Those big, extravagant, over-the-top romantic gestures. Candle-lit dinners, bed covered in rose petals, extra shit like that.

Shanks is a Simple Man, like the Lynyrd Skynyrd song. So those kinds of exuberant gestures aren’t typically his style.

Sort of a continuation of the previous section--if he does try for one of those more extravagant date ideas than you know he’s up to some shit. Special occasions only. Whatever it is, you’re damn sure gonna enjoy yourselves, lol

P=Playful (Are they playful in a relationship? If so, how do they play around/mess with their s/o?)

Uhm, have you met Shanks? Man pokes fun at everyone he calls ‘friend’. Picking on Luffy for wanting to be a pirate. Drunkenly draping himself over Mihawk just to get on his nerves, the list goes on.

Believe me when I say this man loves to tease, prank and challenge his s/o at every opportunity. It’s just his personality.

Jump-scares, banter, pad puns, pretty much everything you can think of, this guy’s gonna try it. He’s gonna poke fun at you, but in a way that pushes you to improve; to grow your wit and prove your mettle.

That and he’s a generally light-hearted person. He loves having a good laugh with his crew and his s/o about just about anything.

If he’s feeling particularly mischievous, he might go for tickles, but that’s just him trying to get you close and maybe turn up the heat a little bit. Dork.

Q=Questions (Do they ask their s/o their opinion on things? Do they share theirs?)

Contrary to what some may assume about Shanks, he doesn’t always have all the answers. He is very wise, and occasionally insightful, but not perpetually so.

In moments where he is taken by surprise, afraid, or in a moment of panic, he will turn to you. You and Beckman are probably the two people he relies on the most. When he is unsure, he will ask your opinion.

Sometimes he’ll ask just cause he’s curious. He set out to travel and learn about the world, so of course he would be interested in different perspectives.

And if you ask his opinion, he’ll freely give it. He’ll give you his perspective so that you both have a chance to learn about each other.

He’s not a fake or duplicitous person, so you can be sure that his opinions are honest and true. He’ll make sure that you can count on him as much as he does on you.

R=Random (How spontaneous is their relationship? Do they do things on the spot or plan ahead?)

Shanks is a pirate. To him, ‘spontaneous’ is part of the job description. He’s not the speedy kinda spontaneous, though. The guy is known for his ‘go-with-the-flow’ attitude--like a human lazy river.

Strange as that metaphor sounds, that’s just how he is. Not in any kinda rush, just a pirate enjoying his life on the high seas. He’s happy just exploring new places with his s/o and his crew.

He’s happy chilling in the tavern for however long he wants. Following a whim at his own leisurely pace, that’s how Shanks lives his life--with a nice, laid-back kinda spontaneity.

S=Sleep (How do they sleep with their s/o?)

Pre-injury, Shanks liked being the big spoon. Usually he’d just sleep in lounge pants (not unlike his typical daywear, just without the shirt and cape).

After his injury, his sleep attire doesn’t really change, but he can’t really lie on his side for too long. So instead he usually lies on his back, letting you tuck yourself into whichever side you choose.

Since his arm was bitten off at the elbow, he can still press you closer with his upper arm if you choose to lay on his left side. It feels like the perfect nook to tuck yourself into.

You can drape your arm across this waist, lay your head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. That’s when you know you’re in the safest place in the world.

T=Trust (How much do they trust their s/o?)

Shanks wouldn’t be in a relationship with you if he didn’t trust you. In order for him to trust you, he’ll need to have a good sense of your morals.

He’ll respect it if your moral outlooks differ in some respects. For example, He and Buggy have very different ideas of what should be treasured in life & yet he still considers the clown to be a close friend.

However, as his romantic partner, it would make sense if the two of you had most of your principles in common. If there’s too great a difference/divide in your foundational beliefs, then the longevity of your relationship would be markedly limited.

Once Shanks has a solid understanding of your moral centre, he’ll give you more of his trust. He’s not really the kinda guy to actively hide anything. But as you two get to know each other, he’ll be more willing to volunteer information about himself and his life.

He’ll be even more unabashedly himself; more goofy, more charming, more openly intelligent and devoted. (The list could go on, but I’m gonna cap it here, lol).

After that, it’s just a matter of commitment and time--that’s how an intimate emotional relationship is built.

Because Shanks views romantic relationships to be a long term commitment (the whole ‘rest of our lives/death do us part’ idea is rather important to him), he is not in a terrible rush to trust someone. But he does want to eventually get to the point where he knows his partner inside and out.

U=Unique (What makes them unique as an s/o?)

He is (almost) unflappable. I swear to god, almost nothing phases this man. He hardly ever gets angry (unless innocents or loved ones are threatened) and doesn’t really get jealous either. (Have you seen this man? He has nothing to be jealous of!)

You mad about something? He’ll let you go off about it for however long you need. Even if it’s him you’re mad at, he’ll take it. He’ll listen to your rant and discuss it with you to help you cool off. He meets all of your moods evenly. No protests, no complaints, no interruptions, just active listening and meaningful dialogue.

The only exception to this is when (before/during/after) or or both of you is at risk for injury or death. That’s when his over-reactive tendencies rear up and fights are had. Though these fights are almost always from a place of either moral determination for the self or worry for the other person.

Also, this man is willing to try anything you show even a modicum of interest in. A new kind of sushi at the market? He’s down. Hiking up a mountainous island? Sure, why not. You a fan of art and crafts? Your room will be swallowed by paper cranes in three days (trial and error, he says).

V=Vulnerable (How long until they can be vulnerable around their s/o? What are they like in this state?)

It takes a while. Shanks trusts you implicitly, but he’s lived a long life as a pirate--and being a pirate ain’t an easy life to live. While Shanks is not opposed to sharing his emotions, necessarily, it takes a lot for him to thoroughly break down.

Not many people know this about Shanks, but he is just as much of a crier as Luffy is. He’s just gotten better at hiding it over the years (or so he tells himself).

But when it happens, it’s just as heartbreakingly messy as you can imagine. Waterfalls pouring from wide eyes. His hair askew with his expression crumpling. Teeth gritted and lips trembling, he looks like something broken. His whole body shudders with the emotions raking through him. At first, you won’t know how to put him back together.

Shanks is a much more emotional person than most would give him credit for. He feels things very deeply and when he crumbles what he needs is an anchor.

He’s not a broken vase that needs to be glued back together. He’s a dreamer with a heavy burden. Someone who can only carry the weight for so long on his own. What he needs is a solid pillar of a person to hold him close and tell him that he’s going to be okay--that there’s a lesson to be learned/knowledge to be gained from what he’s feeling and why he’s feeling.

After the storm passes, he won’t likely mention the incident to anyone. (His crew will know it happened anyway, they know him too long to be oblivious). But he will acknowledge it to himself. He will thank you for guiding and supporting him, but only quietly, so just the two of you can hear.

Remind him that he’s not alone in the world. Remind him that it’s okay to lean on others for more than just the daily duties of a pirate captain. It’s okay to be vulnerable.

W=Wild Card (Get a random domestic headcanon of the character of your choice)

Shanks loves to sing. He’s not exactly the best at it, but he enjoys the act so much he doesn’t really care how good or bad he is.

When it’s his turn to swab the decks, he’ll be dancing with the mop like he’s jamming with a microphone stand. When the crew get drunk together, he’ll egg them into singing sea shanties with him.

When they lose a crew member or a friend on their journeys, Shanks will start up the low chorus of mourning in memoriam. When you wake from a nightmare or just can’t sleep, he’ll sing you a lullaby. It’s this quiet little quirk that makes you love him all the more.

X=X-Ray (What would they do if their s/o got injured?)

Similar to ‘F for Fear’--if Shanks’ s/o is ever attacked or injured in battle...that bastard is gonna get their shit wrecked by one of the most powerful men in the world.

But once the dust is settled, the man completely switches gears. While his s/o is being treated and recovering from their injuries, Shanks turns into the ultimate worry-warted, mother-henning helicopter-partner.

He already has a habit of over-reacting at the oddest moments. But now that said reactions are actually somewhat justified? Poor man turns into a fretting ninny at the littlest things.

Mishandling Shanks’ worry and devoted protectiveness in these moments can result in fights about your well being and your being able to participate in any upcoming conflicts.

Once you get the hang of it, though, Shanks’ behaviour becomes simultaneously the most endearing and most exasperating thing in the world.

Please, be patient with him. He’s trying his best.

Y=Yuck (Do they have any pet peeves about their s/o? Are there any habits that might bother their s/o?)

Honestly? It’s near-impossible to get on this man’s nerves. You’d have to be a pretty big buzz-kill to get even a modicum of annoyance out of him.

He’s a bit grumpier when hungover, but even then, as long as you are considerate of lights and noises, he’s just gonna sulk and nurse his headache in grumpy peace.

One of the few things that may irritate you is his lax attitude about cleanliness and hygiene. When you’re one of the most powerful people in the world, exploring the world and constantly celebrating something with sake--thoughts of housekeeping kinda fall to the wayside.

If you get tired of smelling booze on his breath and clothes, or can’t take the ‘bachelor pad’ mess that is the captain’s quarters, you’re gonna need to sit him down and seriously talk to him about it. Otherwise he won’t even realize that there’s a problem.

Z=Zeal (Are they passionate as an s/o? Do they want or like passion?)

Hmmm...I would say that Shanks is a passionate partner, just not in the loud kinda way that’s usually associated with the word.

It’s more like a...quiet determination. A deep well of earnestness that he makes sure to show you whenever you need it.

He never wants you to feel like he doesn’t love you or doesn’t feel as deeply about your relationship. He’d put everything on the line for you.

And he’ll treasure and enjoy any passion you show him, in whatever way you choose to express it.

A/N: And that, my friends is my first attempt at ‘Alphabet Headcanons’. Three days which could have been spent in boredom instead contributed to this adorable masterpiece, lol.

Thank you to @demigodxtonio, @r-a-f-t-e-l, @kalissen, @r0r0noa, @kin-sama and @adicoon for the wonderful GIFs and thank you to @burnedbyshoto for inspiring this work with their SFW and NSFW headcanons about our favorite blasty-boi Bakugou Katsuki.

Y’all let me know what you think & let me know if you wanna see any NSFW headcanon--for Shanks. Or, let me know if ya’ll wanna see SFW/NSFW content for other One Piece & BNHA characters.

All the best

--Rose

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