sometimes I really think it would be cool to rewind
phan, 966 words, unrated
I used to watch the pigeons and be so afraid that they would die. But they will, and maybe some of the ones I used to see outside already have. I will too – I know that, always have. And I love to live, to drink coffee, to kiss you, to look at a dog and think about having one. I love to live, but I can live with life ending.
And then I think about it having to happen to you and I can’t do it.
warnings: none! lots of fluff! (sleep what’s sleep)
word count: 1.7k
A month or so after you had joined the Mandalorian on the Razor Crest, the baby had taken a very strong liking to your dangling earring. Just the left one - the one he would chew idly on whenever you carried him in your arms. The Mandalorian had long since stopped trying to get him to stop, and instead watched with a curiously tilted helmet as the baby slowly fell asleep, the earring firmly held between his teeth.
It only took a few days for the baby to slowly slip the earring out of your piercing, and his big plaintive eyes made it extraordinarily difficult to ask for it back (to which the Mandalorian chastised you later - ‘You need to hold your ground! Who knows how many earrings you’ll lose like this.’)
The baby’s little ball was long forgotten, and had slipped down the console to rest against the glass of the cockpit windshield. You leaned over the controls to pick it up, intent on screwing it back onto the gear shift, but the Mandalorian’s gloved hand wrapped around your wrist, holding you back.
(and you try your best to control your breathing, to lower your heart rate, but there was no way he missed the way your pulse rose at the touch.)
‘It’s okay,’ he murmured as he shifted his gaze back at the stars. You held your arm against your chest, rubbing a little absentmindedly at your wrist. Behind you, the baby snuffled a little in his sleep.
‘You don’t want it back on the gear shift?’ you asked, and didn’t receive a response in return.
Taking that as an affirmative, you let the small ball roll against the console, and left the cockpit for the night.
---
You were surprised that it lasted as long as it did.
An unfortunate combination of a Twi’lek with impressive combat skills and Mando’s flamethrower had resulted in his fleece cape being burned beyond repair. With the ship safely in hyperspace and stoically on autopilot, Mando sat on a crate on the hull to sort through the damage of the day.
It was rare to see him without much of his armour. Hunched over, the fabric of his simple shirt stretched over shoulder blades, and his sleeves were dutifully folded up to his elbows. A sigh escaped the reaches of his helmet, quietened by the static, and he turned the scraps of the cape over in his hands.
‘Nothing you can do?’ you asked as you climbed down the ladder, and he just sighed again in response. He inclined his helmet in invitation, and you took the cape from his hands. There truly wasn’t much left - the remaining salvageable fabric was scarcely bigger than the length of your forearm, and the edges had somehow been melted down. You frowned at the fabric, and Mando let out a dry laugh at your pout.
‘A lot of my weapons were damaged,’ he said. He tipped his helmet side to side, stretching the cords of his neck with a soft groan. ‘We might have to stop for supplies sooner than I thought. Could you put in the coordinates for Dantooine?’
You rested your hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. Mando hummed, and you suppressed the urge to press your fingers harder against the muscles, just to hear him groan again.
‘Of course,’ you whispered.
Later, when Mando joined you in the cockpit, you kept your eyes firmly on your datapad. You definitely didn’t see him running his fingers over the fabric of his cape, nearly folded into a small square, tied with scrap of ribbon, pressed between the edge of the console and the windshield.
---
‘Have you ever been here before?’ Din asked, his boots making soft crunching noises against the sand.
‘Never,’ you said. ‘Well, definitely never here, on this planet. But I’ve also never seen water like this before.’
The beach was lined with activity - little marquees of pop-up markets, and vendors selling the most eclectic of goods. Here, a young girl sat at a wicker table under a blue tarp, painstakingly applying paint to the face of a toddler squealing with glee. In another stall, several hangers displayed scarves in a dizzying array of colours, and a portly woman, wearing several scarves herself, was arguing passionately with a customer.
You shifted the baby against your hip, and he cooed at the sites of the sea. ‘See there, adi’ika?’ you said, pointing towards the glittering reflection of the horizon. ‘Water!’
The baby looked at your hand, and waved his own in an imitation of your pointing. He giggled, tapped your cheek with his waving hand, and babbled against your shoulder.
You laughed a little. ‘That isn’t how you say water,’ you teased gently, pinching his cheek, ‘but we’ll get there eventually.’
It was peaceful. A momentary reprieve from the nomadic lifestyle of planet hopping, and you allowed yourself to idly daydream of a small beachside cottage and quietly furnished it in your mind - a front garden with rows upon rows of vegetables. A sunroom with a loth-cat lounging lazily on a wicker couch. A bed, half-covered in plump pillows and patchwork blankets.
A framed crayon drawing in the front doorway. Maybe a pair of boots outside the front door.
Din lowered himself to sit cross-legged next to you on the sand, leaning back on his hands behind him. He tutted at the baby, who was puttering around happily in the shallows, squealing in delight at every small wave.
‘It’ll be difficult to get him back on the ship,’ Din said quietly. He nudged your shoulder with his, urging you to lean back, and you do just that, resting your bodyweight a little against his.
‘He’ll tire himself out,’ you replied gently.
It was an odd appearance, and you knew that. You, dressed in one of Din’s old tunics, leaning against a fully-armoured Mandalorian on a lively beach, watching a little green baby wrinkle his nose at accidentally swallowing salt water, and you were loathe to think of what the beachgoers thought of the combination.
‘I found some sea glass,’ said Din, and he held out his hand for you. Three small pebbles sat on his palm, light blue and translucent, faded by the wind and the sea. The light of the suns flickered off the surface of the glass, and they knocked against each other with soft clinks.
He found some sea glass. You couldn’t really explain why your eyes became watery.
Din kept his visor trained on the baby, who was now sitting in the water. ‘We can put them behind the console,’ he continued, not noticing your sniffles. ‘I think we still have space there.’
---
Ground protocol had been activated, and good thing too, because the dust storm on Er’Kit was all but tipping the Crest over. The hollow low whistling of the wind was not the most comforting and, given that the power had somehow been knocked out, you only had the dim emergency runner lights to keep you company.
The side ramp of the Crest opened slowly - manually, you gathered, given the creaky clunks of the hydraulics. You sat in the pilot's seat and stared ahead into the sheets of dust battering the windshield, counting the heavy footfalls in the hull. Eight to get from the doorway to the ladder, and four up the ladder.
He sounded tired.
The smooth beskar helmet pressed against the top of your head, and you heard the soft rustles of gloves being removed before Din wrapped his arms around your chest. You leaned down and pressed a kiss against his forearm.
‘Sand is stupid,’ Din mumbled, and you hummed in agreement. ‘Anyone who lives on Er’Kit is stupid. Whatever made the wires on the Crest so friable is stupid.’
You let Din grumble a little more, rubbing his forearm absentmindedly.
‘As soon as we get enough credits, we’re buying a house.’
That brought attention sharply back into focus. You spun yourself in the chair out of Din’s grip, frowning at the visor. ‘A house?’ you said incredulously.
Din took off his helmet with a soft grunt, frowning when a steady stream of sand fell out of it when he tipped it over. He had already removed the rest of his beskar, leaving behind a man in dusty blacks. He was so beautiful, you thought, admiring the lines adorning the corners of his eyes, and the way his hair had flattened against his scalp. You stood to face him, reaching up to brush your fingers through his hair, returning volume to it. Din shut his eyes at the action, and leaned forward to press his forehead to yours.
‘A house,’ he said. ‘One with the garden that you want. And all the loth-cats you want. You don’t have to spend another day on a ship if you don’t want to, and especially not on a desert planet like this.’
He leaned back to look at you, and pressed a sandy kiss to the corner of your lip. ‘If anything, we’re running out of space for our trinkets.’
The walls of the cockpit were covered in paper artworks of shaky crayon handprints - some five-fingered, some three. Small beaded bracelets hung from almost every control on the console, and a little clay pot of dried flowers sat right in the middle of the console.
To the right of the pilots seat, your earring hung off the unscrewed gear shift - the metal hook bent into a loop so it wouldn’t slip off. The baby held the other firmly in his little hand while he slept in his pod.
‘We do need more space, don’t we,’ you said finally, and Din kissed you slowly in response. You could feel his smile against your lips, and you tugged gently at his curls.
