Through The Wall - Part Twelve
Pairing: Din x Reader.
Summary: Back on the Crest, you and Din talk things out.
Warnings: 18+only. Smut is back 🥰
A/N: Enjoy our pair getting back on track.
Part Eleven IIII Part Thirteen
Din Masterlist
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Vesha meets you in the front room with a clean towel already in her hands and her sharp old eyes going first to your face and then down your body and back, the quick triage scan of a woman who’s seen a great many people brought in off Nevarran streets and who’s gotten very good at telling at a glance whether they’re bleeding.
"Not hers," Din says, before Vesha can ask. "The blood. It's not…it's not hers. It's not ours. She's not hit. I checked. I checked her. I checked everywhere. She's not…she's not hit."
"Set her down here."
"She…the baby…"
"Set her down here."
He sets you down on the long wooden bench against the wall – the one for waiting husbands – and Vesha is already on one knee in front of you, her hands going to your wrists, your throat, your forehead, the long unhurried thoroughness of her sweep almost more steadying than anything else that’s happened in the last hour.
"Your pulse is fast and your skin’s clammy. Pupils…yes, fine. You’re in shock, just mild, but nevertheless. It’s quite normal. Did you fall, my dear?"
"No."
"Were you struck anywhere?"
"No."
"Did anything hit your belly? Anything at all. A door, an elbow, a bolt that grazed...?"
"No, nothing."
She nods briskly. “Now the belly."
She moves you, carefully, onto the cot in the back room. Din puts himself in the corner with his back to the wall and his hands at his sides, deliberately useless, the way a man makes himself when he knows that if he lets himself help, he won’t be able to stop helping. But the visor doesn’t leave you for a second.
Vesha spreads the gel on your stomach again and passes the wand over you
You hear the small, wet, rapid drum before Vesha has even gotten the wand properly placed, the same frantic pulse from this morning. You close your eyes, and Din makes a small sound through the modulator that is, almost, the same sound he made on his knees on the bloody floorboards of the tavern.
"There she is," Vesha murmurs. "Right where we left her. Same rate, same rhythm. No change. Nothing has happened in there, my dear. Whatever happened to you out there did not happen to her. She is entirely unbothered. Do you hear me? Entirely."
"Yes."
"Good." She wipes the gel away and helps you sit up. She looks at you, and then she looks, sharply, at the visor in the corner. "Mandalorian."
Din starts slightly. "Yes."
"This is the second time today she’s been in this room. I would like it to be the last for a while, do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"Take her home, whatever home you decide that is. Make her tea, make her eat something with iron in it and put her to bed. Do not let her replay what happened until tomorrow at the earliest.”
"I understand.”
"Good. Out now, both of you. Go."
You smile your thanks as Din gathers you once more into his arms and proceeds to carry you all the way to the ship. You tell him, twice, that you can walk but he doesn't answer.
He carries you through the lanes – past the small dark knot of Karga's settlement-guard still working the tavern frontage, past Karga himself, who only takes one look at the visor and the way it’s angled and steps back without a word to let you pass – up the slope of the pad, up the ramp and into the cool dim of the cargo bay. Only then, with the ramp hissing shut behind him and the inner door sealing and the recyclers humming, does he set you down.
He rests you on the lower step of the cockpit ladder, carefully, his hands lingering at your hips even after your feet are on the deck. He doesn’t let go for a long moment, standing in front of you with the visor on your face, his hands on your hips and the smallest tremor still running through them. The small careful tilt of his helmet says he is, only now, beginning to register that you’re alive and inside his ship and that no further immediate thing is going to take you away from him.
He bends and presses the cool beskar of the brow to your forehead.
"I need to tell you something."
"Okay."
He moves back and stands a few feet away, leaning his weight against the small fold-down table with both hands on the metal of it, the visor angled down at them, and stays silent for a long moment.
You wait because you can feel the shape of what’s coming and you don’t, just yet, want to help him say it.
"I can't do this," he says, finally. "Cyar'ika, I can't…I can't do this. I can't…I can't have you out there and me on the pad. I can't have you out there and me an hour behind. I…I came up that lane today and I…I heard the second shot, and I started running and the whole way I was…I was thinking…I’m not going to get there. I’m not going to get there. I’m not going to get there. The whole way. For…for two minutes. For two whole minutes I ran up that lane thinking I was going to find you and our baby on the cobbles."
"Din…"
"I almost didn't get there."
"You did get there."
"Barely."
"You got there, Din…"
"By seconds, cyar'ika. By…by the third one bending the bar up with a magnetic lift. By him not knowing his back was to the door. By you being a better shot than I have any right to expect. By all of those things, cyar'ika, and one of them goes the other way and you’re dead. You and her, both, on the floor of a tavern. Because you walked around a corner. Because you walked around a corner, cyar'ika."
You don't speak because the thing behind his voice isn’t anger or blame and you don’t have the strength to mistake it for either.
"I can't," he says quieter. "I can't keep you safe and keep flying. Not the way I've been flying. Not the way we've been flying. I’ve been telling myself since Tatooine that I could, that I could find a way. That the ship is enough and the bunk is enough and the blaster in your waistband is enough. That you’re…that you’re tough enough and quick enough and that I’m close enough and that we can…that we can go on like we have been, just…just with the baby. With the baby in a sling in the cargo bay. I’ve been telling myself that, cyar'ika, and now…now I can’t tell myself that. Now I…now I can’t."
He stops and breathes once, slow, through the modulator.
"Karga offered me a cabin a long time ago before…before you. He offered me a map and a deed and a…” he breaks off. “I said no at the time, but he said it would always be mine if I wanted it. When you were sleeping, before Tatooine, I commed him about the…the baby and he said that it could be ours. He said he’d happily give it to us.”
You laugh, but it comes out wrong – sharp, raw, a little broken.
"All of you," you say. "All of you have been…all of you have been planning this, Din. Peli, Karga, Vesha, you. All of you have been moving me into a cabin in your heads without telling me. I am the last person in this…in this conspiracy of midwives and magistrates and Mandalorians who has been told what is happening to her life."
"Cyar'ika…"
"Don't cyar'ika me,” you snort, folding your arms across your chest. “Not right now. Tell me the rest, because I know there must be more. All this time you’ve been spending thinking and tapping…there must be more."
He’s quiet a long moment.
"You take the cabin," he says, finally. "You take the cabin and I take the ship. I take the jobs, the careful ones. The ones I know I can come back from. I come to the cabin between jobs. I…I’m there as much as I can be and you and the baby are safe. Karga has guards that will keep watch from a distance. You’re there, and I’m on the ship, and I’ll come back as often as I can, and you’re safe, cyar'ika, you and her, you’re safe."
You don't speak – can’t, because the cold thing under your sternum from this morning has come back and has, in the last thirty seconds, grown teeth.
"How long between jobs?" You ask quietly.
"Cyar'ika…"
"How long, Din?"
"A…a week, sometimes two. Sometimes more. Karga said he could keep me to short runs, mostly. Inner systems. He said he could…he could route me through Nevarro often. He said…"
"Sometimes more."
"Sometimes more, yes."
"How much more?"
"I don't know. It depends on the work.”
"A month?"
"Maybe."
"Two months?"
"Cyar'ika…"
"Two months, Din?"
"Sometimes, maybe. I…I would try not to. I would… "
"You would try not to."
"I would try…"
"No."
It comes out of you flat.
"Cyar'ika..."
"No, Din. No. I’m…I’m not doing that. I’m not going to be a woman in a cabin waiting for her Mandalorian to come back from a run. I’m not going to be a woman who puts her baby to bed at night not knowing if you’re alive. I’m not going to be a woman whose only news of her husband comes through Karga's comms relay. I am not - no."
He raises his hands. "Please…"
"You think I would survive that, Din? Two months at a time? In a cabin with a baby on my own? Not knowing? You think I would…you think I would do that? I would lose my mind, Din! I would lose my mind in a week. In a month I’d be…I’d be a woman who can’t let her baby out of her sight because the baby is the only thing in the cabin and the cabin is the only thing in the world and her husband is…is somewhere in hyperspace getting shot at without her and she doesn’t even know it yet!”
You try to take a breath and find yourself wanting.
“No, Din. No. That’s not…that’s not the deal. That wasn’t the deal when you found me on the Crest and that isn’t the deal now and you don’t…you don’t get to make it the deal because you got scared in a lane today."
"Cyar'ika…"
"I got scared too, Din."
It cracks out of you.
"I got scared too. I was on the floor of a tavern with a blaster in my hands and a dead woman next to me and a man lifting the bar off the door from the outside and I was scared too. I was terrified. I thought…I thought our baby was going to die on those floorboards. I thought I was going to die on those floorboards. I thought I was never going to…never going to be able to tell you I love you and I…I got scared too, Din. And I’m still scared, but I’m not going to be scared into a cabin. Not without you in it. Not…not at the price of you. Do you hear me, I am not."
He’s very still, the visor on you. His hands lower into careful fists and the shoulders under the beskar are doing the small terrible thing they were doing on the floor of the tavern.
"Cyar'ika…I'm trying..."
“My life on Shakari…” you go on, your voice cracking, your eyes hot. “I know I don’t talk about it but if you knew…if you knew what that was like for me, then you would know that I can’t.”
You swallow hard.
“You asked me to marry you and we said the vows and we are married now and you don’t get to just…we are partners in every sense of the word and I don’t want…I don’t want to be somewhere that you’re not – for weeks and months on end. If that’s what you’re offering me, then let’s take the vows back and go our separate ways. Because I would rather be alone forever than only have you for some of the time and spend the rest of it not knowing.”
He flinches slightly. “We can’t…we can’t take them back, cyar’ika. We’ve said the vows…we’re one now. I belong to you and you belong to me.”
“Then you don’t get to leave me,” you say quietly but fiercely. “You don’t get to leave me – leave us – behind. Not for weeks and months at a time.”
For a moment, neither of you speak and the only sound is the familiar hum of the ship around you.
"I’m not saying no to the cabin. I’m saying no to the shape of it you brought me. I’m saying no to you on the ship and me in the cabin. I’m not separating from you, Din. Not for a job. That’s not…that’s not what we are. That’s not what we’ve built. I want to live with you, wherever that is. Ship. Cabin. Both. Neither. With. Do you understand me? With."
"I understand,” he says softly.
"So, you don’t get to take the jobs without me. You don’t get to take a single one. Not a careful one, not an easy one, not an in-system one. Not one, Din, unless we have sat down – properly – and decided it together. And if I say no…if I say I can’t have you out there for that one, Din, that one is too long, that one I can’t do, then you don’t take it. You turn it down and you tell Karga to give it to somebody else. You stay. You hear me? You stay."
"Okay."
"Say it back to me."
"I…I stay. I don't take a job without you saying yes.”
You let out a shaky breath and look around you, at the ship that you’ve made into a home. You look at the starkness of it and think about everything Vesha said. The Crest is your home because Din is there. Din is your home and you realise, that as much as you love this gunship, it’s not about metal or bricks or mortar.
"We should take the cabin,” you say finally. “We should take it and move our things into it. We build a crib and we hang our weapons by the door. We have a kitchen and a window and a fire. We have all of that, and we have you, Din.”
"Yes."
"And when you go on a job – when we go on a job – when we’ve decided together that it’s one we can take – you take me with you the way you have always taken me since we met. The cabin is the base, the place we go from. The ship is where we go to. Together. Until the baby comes. Until she comes and we…we make a new arrangement, with her in it, together.”
He nods. “Alright cya’rika.”
You let out a long, slow breath and rub your hands over your face. “Where is this cabin anyway?”
“A short speeder ride away.”
You look at him curiously. “You’ve been there?”
“I went to look – once – before you,” he replies calmly.
"Alright, tomorrow we go and look at it together, the two of us, and then we can decide if it’s right. If it’s ours. And if it isn't – if we walk into it and the kitchen is wrong and the window is wrong and the rooms feel wrong – then we tell Karga thank you and we look at another one, and another one, until we find the right one.”
"Yes.”
He moves around the table, crosses towards you and kneels on the deck plates in front of you the way he knelt in the tavern in front of you, only this time there’s no blood on the floor and no body at your hip and no third man at the door. This time there’s only the soft hum of the ship, you on the bench and him on his knees. His hands come up and close, carefully, over your thighs and the visor tips up to your face.
"I’m going to be bad at this," he says, softly. "I’m going to forget and chew on things alone again. I’m going to come to you with a…with a decided thing in my hand and you’re going to have to push it back at me and make me undo it. I want you to know that, so that when I do it, you know I’m not doing it on purpose. And…and I'm asking you to be patient with me, cyar'ika. Will you be patient with me?"
You set your hands over his and suddenly realise that you’re both still shaking.
"Yes, of course I will, Din. Because you’ll have to be patient with me too when I get angry the way I got angry this morning. When I…when I yell in lanes and run out of midwives' offices. When I… when I’m bad at this too. Because I will be."
"I’ll be patient with you.”
"Okay."
He bows his head, the visor comes against your knee and he stays like that, hands wrapped around the backs of your calves, helmet pressed to the top of your thigh, for a long quiet moment. You let go of one of his hands, lay your palm on the top of the helmet, where the smooth beskar curves down over the back of his skull, and stroke once, slow, down to the cowl at the base.
Heat suddenly pools in your belly, hot and demanding.
"I need you, Din," you breathe softly.
The helmet raises again towards you, and, for a moment, you think he either doesn’t understand or that he’s going to refuse you again. You feel it in the stillness that suddenly goes through his body.
"What do you need? What can I give you?"
"You," you reply simply. "You can give me you - here and now."
He gets up slowly, hands sliding off the backs of your calves and bracing on the bench on either side of you, the long beskar-clad height of him uncoiling in front of you in the dim light. You stand with him and fist your hand in his cape.
“I’m still on the floor of that tavern, and if you put me down on that bunk right now and tell me to rest, I’m going to lie there for hours thinking about a man lifting the bar off the door from outside and....I don’t want to rest and I don’t want to sleep. I want you, Din, right now. Hard.”
The visor tips, slow, the modulator hissing, soft, against the air between you. One hand comes up and finds the side of your face, careful with the small unconscious gentleness he can’t help, and you reach up, close your bare hand around the gloved wrist and pull it, hard, down.
"Not careful, Din."
"Cyar'ika…"
"Not careful. I don’t want careful right now. This is our wedding night and I want you to put me against that bulkhead and fuck me until that’s the only thing I can think about – being your wife.”
The visor stays on you. The modulator hisses out, ragged, the small bare sound through the grille that is, almost, the closest thing to him swearing in his own native tongue you ever get in daylight.
"Are you…? "
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"I have never been surer of anything in my life, Din. Fuck me now, please.”
He moves fast, the way he moves when something has finally, somewhere behind the beskar, given – his hands closing at your hips, turning and walking you backwards until your back hits the cool of the galley bulkhead with the small bright sound of skin against metal.
The visor is right there at your forehead, the modulator, ragged, against the bridge of your nose. His hands brace on either side of your head, the cool of the cuirass pressing against the bare of your stomach where your shirt has ridden up.
"Like this?"
"Yes, Din."
"How hard?"
"Hard, Din,” you breathe. “Hard."
"Okay,” he says softly and he pulls both gloves from his hands, one after the other, dropping them to the deck plates between you. They lie there between his boots while he stays braced over you.
His bare hands come up, his palms finding your throat, the left one sliding slowly up under your jaw, his thumb finding the small hammer of your pulse there. He tips your head back against the bulkhead with it, and his other hand comes down off the metal, finds the loose neckline of your shirt and pulls, yanking the fabric off your shoulder, and it slips down to your elbows in one motion.
"Cyar'ika…"
"Don't ask, Din."
"I’m not asking."
"Then do it."
The ragged sound that comes through the modulator is almost a laugh, almost a snarl. His hand at your throat tightens, carefully but hard, causing desire to climb quickly inside you. His other hand goes down, fast, into the loose waistband of your trousers and his fingers find you already wet, the sound now coming through the modulator against the bare of your collarbone almost a groan.
"Fuck cyar'ika…"
"Don't talk, Din," you gasp, the crudity sending an extra shot of heat to where his fingers still probe.
"You’re… "
"Please, don’t talk!”
His fingers move hard, not the slow, careful, patient thing he’s done a hundred times in the dark, but rather the hard, fast unhurried thing he does only when you’ve asked, only when you’ve begged, and you feel your orgasm climbing fast against the heel of his palm, his other hand at your throat keeping your head back against the bulkhead, the visor pressed to the side of your jaw, the modulator ragged at your ear.
"Din…"
"There."
"Din, I…Din…"
"There, cyar'ika. There, come for me."
You come on his bare hand with your back arched off the bulkhead and your hands fisted in his cape, and a bright, bitten sound torn out of you against the cool of the beskar at the cheek-line. The hand at your throat doesn’t let go and his fingers don’t slow, and the shaking down of it is not, this time, slow. It’s short and hard and bright and he doesn’t give you time to come down before he takes his hand out of your trousers and pulls them down off your hips, where they fall to the deck plates around your ankles.
"Step out."
You do as requested and he kicks them aside with one boot in a careful, efficient motion before his hands go under your thighs and lift you carefully off the deck plates, pinning you to the bulkhead. Your legs come up around the dense warm beskar of his hips, and he finds himself through the opening in the flight suit, lines up and slides into you in one long, hard press.
You cry out, loudly, the sound tearing out of you against the visor. You know the recyclers in the galley will muffle it, but it doesn’t matter, and you don’t care and you make the same noise, again and again and again
"Move, Din. Hard. The way I… oh fuck, Din…"
He moves the way you demand, sliding back and then thrusting forward into your hot wetness, the visor pressed hard to the side of your jaw, the ragged unmodulated-shaped sound through the grille at your ear with every breath.
The bulkhead hits the bare of your shoulders with every press meaning that you’ll have bruises tomorrow but, right now, you want them – you welcome them as proof that you're alive, that you're okay and that you've been fucked well by your husband.
"Harder, Din."
"Cyar'ika…"
"Harder. Ask me who I belong to."
"I don’t…"
"Ask me, Din!"
“Who do you belong to?”
“You,” you pant, “only you, always you…harder.”
He gives it to you harder, hips driving against yours, the sound of flesh meeting flesh mixing with the hum of the recyclers around you as you come for the second time within three minutes, the galley lights flickering under the relentless thudding of the bulkhead.
“Din…oh fuck…!”
“Mine,” he grunts.
Your hands grip his cape tighter, legs locking around his hips, your forehead pressing hard to the brow of the helmet. He doesn’t stop or slow, the sound through the modulator at your ear almost a sob now, and his hands tighten under your thighs.
"Cyar'ika, I’m…I need to…"
"Come, Din, come in me. In me, now. I’m already carrying your baby – please!"
He unleashes himself with the visor pressed hard to your jaw. his hands tight under your thighs and the cool of the cuirass pressing against your stomach as he holds you against the bulkhead through the long shuddering down of it. His hips stutter then he drives into you again, the warmth of him flooding you and you cry out again, the sound stretching into a keening you can't control and which finally dies in the air between you.
For a long time neither of you moves.
The recyclers hum and the galley lights flicker once, then steady as he continues to hold you in his arms.
“Are you alright?” he pants after a long moment.
"I’m perfect, Din."
"You…are you…?"
"I’m perfect, Din. Shut up."
"Your back… "
"My back is fine. Yes, there might be some bruising tomorrow, but I don’t care. I don’t care, Din. Just…set me down carefully.”
He sets you down with the slow, careful, unspoken reverence he uses for the few things he’s afraid to break, his hands at your hips taking the weight you can’t, immediately, take, because your knees don’t quite work. He knows it, and he stays braced against the bulkhead with you for a long moment with his visor at your forehead and his ragged breath at your ear, until you can stand.
“That was good,” you breathe, and the helmet moves back so that he can look at you. “So good.”
“Will you…I mean, every time…?”
You smile wickedly at him as you reach out and lay one hand on the side of the helmet. “Perhaps. I've read that hormones can be funny things. Will that be a problem?”
You sense his gaze dip momentarily downwards to your stomach and then back up again, one hand moving to slide, warm, across your bare skin.
“I don’t want to hurt you – either of you.”
You feel a tightness in your throat. “You could never hurt us, Din. I know that to be true more than I know anything else. And our baby is strong – I can feel that about her already.”
He nods imperceptibly, then presses the visor once more against your forehead. “We will raise warriors.”
“Yes,” you nod, sliding your arms around him and pulling him close. “We certainly will.”
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