Fighting Sleep (Mando x Reader)
gif by @sith-archives
Part 2 (part 1 here) to a story I wrote literally ages ago. The slump I've fallen into is literally insane. But writing this, and reading it over felt so good. I miss this. And hopefully posting this makes me want to revisit writing again.
Warnings: Literally just fluff.
Word count: 1.2k
Days always seem to start the same. Wake up. Caf. Actually wake up. Get dressed. Check on the kid. (Check on Mando). Make sure the navicomputer is set on course. Keep searching the galaxy for Maker knows who.
Training with Mando would continue anytime you could find a spare couple of minutes. And when the kid had gotten enough entertainment from you getting your ass kicked, you’d all decide to call it a night.
The days begin to blend. One after another, following the same repetition. You were starting to forget what an amazing opportunity the Maker had placed in your lap.
Back home, you led a different life, much more dreary and stagnant. At least here you were seeing worlds you had never dreamed of. Exploring places with a make-shift kind of family, and learning so much along the way.
But one night, things took a turn.
After “beating” Mando in combat a handful of times - significantly less than the amount of times he got the best of you - you figure it was probably time to get some rest. But before you could suggest the idea, Mando offered an alternative. Although admittedly it did take you several seconds to fully compute the phrase that escaped his modulator.
“Have a drink with me.”
The words scrambled in your brain as you fought the urge to respond with some stupid retort. In fact the first words you could string together were “But… helmet?”.
Thank the Maker that they stayed inside your head
You already felt drunk from the power of over-thinking, but you learned your lesson long ago when it came to Mando: Even if he didn’t know exactly how to handle social interactions, his intentions were always in the right place, and you never wanted to miss an opportunity to encourage him to open up to you.
With a quiet nod and a gentle smile you slowly approached the table as Mando reached into a hidden crevice in his armory.
Whatever came next was a blur.
Somehow you found yourself sitting back to back with Mando in the hull of his ship. With his outer layer shed, you could feel the defined muscles that lined his body. It should have shocked you more that Mando was willing to be so exposed around you. It should have been inconceivable that he would sit with you, helmet off, letting you hear the full extent of his baritone voice, removed from the modulation of the helmet.
And for a minute, it did. It was shocking and inconceivable. But once you got there, once you felt this body against yours, once you heard his true voice for the first time, it didn’t feel like anything at all. It felt like breathing. Like air passing into your body without thought. Natural and easy and comfortable.
The entwined mixture of your laughs filled the hull of the ship gorgeously, bouncing off the walls and meeting back in your ear. The more you drank, the more laughs were shared. As you grew intoxicated, you were lost in the sounds and feelings that overwhelmed whatever remained of your senses. It felt like home. For the first time since leaving your birth planet, you felt like everything in the universe made sense.
You dropped your head back against his shoulder with a sigh, looking up at the ceiling and swimming in thoughts. It was a motion that shouldn’t have been allowed. You were too close to him, too close to seeing his face and ruining everything that he believed in, ruining everything you built. But as you relaxed into him, nothing changed. He didn’t flinch, or pull away. He sat still, maybe holding his breath, you couldn’t tell, but he let you be there, teetering on the edge of betrayal. In a second, one tilt of the head, you could destroy it all. You could demolish his Creed, rip apart his life, and turn your friendship into dust. But you didn’t. And he knew you wouldn’t. Even if he held his breath, just in case.
The words kept flowing between you. Stories and memories you had almost forgotten. Pieces of each other you were sure no one else in the entire galaxy knew about, they came right to the surface, revealing and exposing, and making your two hardened souls that much more vulnerable. You couldn’t help it, and neither could he. But somehow, thoughts you barely allowed yourself to endure were suddenly poured right out into the open, spilling from your mouth with no resistance, and meeting none from Mando either.
You hummed along to each other's words, confirming to each other that you were both still listening, even if you couldn't see one another. But soon, your hums were drawn out. They were slow and slurred, and feeling heavier, just as your eyelids and - shortly after - the rest of your body seemed to feel too. As your body felt limp with lack of sleep, the Mandalorian smiled. The rare sighting was lost to the galaxy. No one would know he ever did it, but the effects of it were instantaneous, causing something deep within him to stir, something he wasn’t expecting, or something he was, but wasn’t ready to feel.
As your head began to fall off his shoulder, Mando twisted his body to catch yours before it hit the ground. Softly he guided your head into his lap, and after setting it down, he reached gently over towards his helmet. Before he could reach it, he heard you stir. As you shifted, he sat deadly still. With your eyes still closed, you mumbled, “what’s going on?”
After letting out a small laugh - with barely enough force to be considered so - he responded, “You’re going to sleep.”
“No I’m not,” you grumble, sounding frustrated with the fact that your own body would betray you at such a moment as this.
“Oh, I see. Then you’re fighting sleep?” he teased, smiling down at you this time, almost hoping you could look back up to him to see it.
“Noooo,” you moan into his thigh, the vibrations of which tease something in him, a small payback for his cheek to you.
“I think so,” he says calmly, moving to hook his arms around your weak form, lifting you off the ground with almost too much ease for what anyone might expect.
The change hardly goes noticed by you, although somehow your arms instinctually wrapped around his neck as your face cradled into his neck.
Mando paused for a moment. The contact on his skin was an inferno. He couldn’t recall the last time someone was this close to him. Your face was inches away from his own. Your hands were dangerously close to being entangled in his hair. Your nails grazed the skin on his neck causing a devilishly sweet sensation. But before the thoughts and feelings overtook him, before he allowed himself to think about waking you, and letting you see him, throwing away everything he believed in for more of what you barely knew you were doing to him, he stepped forward. He kept moving, until you were placed safely in the comfort of his - or your - bed. The one bed you shared, that he barely used. The bed he wanted to climb into, and feel more of your body against his, in his hands, on his skin. He placed you there, and as you curled up into the blankets he saw - for a second - a life he had never allowed himself to think about. The chance to have happiness he had long denied himself. The type of life that he knew he never could have.
As you fought off sleep, he fought off those thoughts
Well, I've written something. Crazy, I know. Let me pray that I get the drive to continue. Because honestly I really like this. And I've been reading more recently so I've been getting the urge to write more, but idk there's just something holding me back. So if you read this tell me you love it please because I crave validation. Thanks!
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