More Than a Feeling
din x reader; din dreams of you
word count: 2.6k
a/n: big thank you to @flora-screeches for some much-needed encouragement and to @saradika for reminding me that this song exists!
also tagging: @zinzinina (anyone else, let me know if you’d like to be tagged!)
(on a personal note, i am really proud of myself for getting this done during a writing funk so i hope you enjoy!)
Din dreams about you. A lot.
It had started subtly. He’d had to stay in one place for longer than he usually liked, tracking a bounty that was proving difficult. You’d helped fix his ship, not even questioning when he’d given the standard, “No droids” stipulation. For the next few days after, the Mandalorian had seen you everywhere around town; in the market, in the bar he had taken to staking out. You were the only person there that didn’t seem intimidated by him. You started to smile when you noticed him, to wave like you were old friends. It was almost a shame when he’d caught his bounty and had to move on. After that, he’d dreamt of someone waving at him, of a feeling of being known that he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
A month later, he was in your system again. An unlucky landing had caused some damage to the Razor Crest and he tried not to think too hard about it when he steered the ship towards your settlement. A good mechanic is hard to find, right? You probably didn’t even remember him. But there you were when he walked down the ship's ramp, instantly smiling at him and saying, “You’re back.”
It was nearing the end of the day and you looked tired underneath your warm welcome. There was a smudge of grease on your forehead, no doubt from your still-messy hands and Din had the inexplicable urge to wipe it away. Thankfully he was distracted by a tottering pit droid starting for his ship. You intervened before he could even say anything, tapping the droid on its head plate. “Not this one, little dude. Finish up in the back.”
So, you’d remembered that too. That warm feeling of being known was blooming in his chest again. He was glad you couldn't see his face and the smile it held.
You became the Razor Crest’s designated mechanic after that visit. At the same time, you became a semi-frequent visitor in Din’s dreams as he snatched a few hours of sleep between hunts. You appeared the way he was used to seeing you when awake: greasy rag in hand and usually squinting determinedly at whatever you were tinkering with. Sometimes you smiled at him, warm and friendly. Sometimes you talked, exchanging more words than he ever did with you while conscious. And sometimes, you were just there, a comforting presence in this weird dreamscape.
The year dragged on and Din had begun to feel guilty at the frequency in which his subconscious willed you to appear. It wasn’t every night, not even every week, but you always showed up again eventually–even if he hadn’t been back to see you for months. He hoped you wouldn’t mind being this for him, this phantom companion that made nights in the blackest of space a little warmer.
He blushed profusely the next time he saw you, once again grateful for the beskar hiding him from your sight. He felt like a fool–a lonely man having delusions about someone he barely knew. But your lips tilted up when you saw him, eyes brightening with recognition, and it suddenly hit him that he could know you. Your interactions didn’t have to be relegated to when he was unconscious. Din watched you move towards his ship, mind turning over what should have been an obvious next step. It had been a while since he’d tried to get to know someone. He swallowed thickly and opened his mouth. “How long have you been doing this?” His voice was rough with disuse and he waved his hands awkwardly at the garage. It wasn’t his smoothest opening.
You turned around and looked at him curiously for a moment, no doubt wondering where this sudden interest had come from. He could see that you were weighing something in your mind before your face cleared and you answered, a decision apparently made. “Long enough.” You started to walk towards the Crest again and Din tried to ignore his disappointment at your short response–he really was just delusional. He started to make his exit as you inspected the hull, but your voice stopped him.
“I started working on swoop bikes when I was a teenager; a few of my friends raced. You can’t make a living on the amature swoop circuits so I graduated to ships. There are usually enough coming through to keep the lights on.” Your head turned towards him, almost like you were checking that he was still there. Encouraged, Din leaned back against a work table and crossed one ankle over the other. The gesture meant he was staying and he could have sworn he saw your lips quirk up at the sight. He wondered if maybe you were just as lonely as him.
It was the first time he’d stuck around while you worked on the ship and the two of you exchanged questions until the suns went down. You didn’t seem to mind his presence or his awkward, stilted questions while you made readjustments. You even let him get away with his sparse, noncommittal answers. In turn, he gave you as much time as you wanted to come up with your own. He learned that it was worth the wait to let you ponder, hands still moving skillfully inside one of the Crest’s panels. Your answers were thoughtful, genuine. Din learned your favorite foods, what holovids you’d watched as a child, and how endearingly attached you were to certain tools you’d had your whole life. That night he’d fallen asleep with a smile on his face. For the first time in a long time, he had more to look forward to than just dreams.
After a few months, Din started running out of reasons to stop by your garage. His ship was running better than it ever had thanks to your skillful repairs. He always stuck around while you worked after that first time, claiming what he started to think of as his spot leaning against your rusted workbench. Your conversation flowed more easily at every visit. Each of you were slowly letting your guards down, but never pushing for more than the other was willing to give. On his fourth visit in two months, you barely had anything left on the ship to tinker with. He could tell your hands were moving slower than usual, like you were trying to stretch out the time you had together. Neither of you acknowledged the fact that you weren’t even working on the Crest anymore, just mindlessly buffing a scorch mark off the hull as you talked. You were turned almost all of the way towards him and listening intently as he explained the engineering behind his jetpack. Your head was tilted slightly to the side as you listened and that look was starting to come over your face again.
This look was one that was becoming familiar to Din, and he knew it meant that he’d hit on something you cared about. Your eyes would light up and he could practically see the thoughts whirling in your head. Even if you looked a little distant, he knew you were paying complete attention to his words. This look meant that you were visualizing how something worked in your mind, picturing how each piece fit together. He’d noticed it first when telling you about the Crest and some of the repairs he’d made to it himself over the years. You’d bitten your lip, a little crease appearing between your eyebrows as you drew a mental map. Din wasn’t used to having so much attention focused on him–and from you? It was addicting. Each one of his weapons had been brought out in your garage over the months as he showed them off, explaining how each worked–what their pitfalls were and what made them handle well. Sometimes you stopped what you were working on to come over and inspect what he was describing. It was obvious from your hesitancy and awkward grip that you weren’t used to weapons, but your curiosity always won out. It felt strangely intimate when he handed over a weapon for your inspection, vulnerable in a way he knew you didn’t understand–or maybe you did. Once, you’d fired a smaller blaster of his to feel the recoil. The blast had torn through a sheet of rusted metal and he’d let out an involuntary laugh at the way your eyebrows shot up your forehead. You’d handed it back gingerly and never asked to shoot one again, but your enthusiasm for learning how they worked never waned.
As he described the propulsion of his jetpack, you finally dropped the rag in your hand and made your way towards him, immediately moving to inspect the contraption on his back. Din felt awkward suddenly, unable to see you as you prodded at the directional thrusters and asked him technical questions he could barely answer. Suddenly, he felt your hand at his elbow and it took all of his self control not to jolt away from the unexpected contact. You froze, his rigid body language giving him away, and quickly withdrew your hand.
“Sorry,” you mumbled, the most unsure he’d ever seen you as you took a step away–wringing your hands.
“No,” Din heard himself talking before he’d gotten a chance to think about it, “it’s okay.” His arm extended and you hesitantly returned, tracing the connector from his jet pack to the hand controls. You were a tactile person–he knew that from watching you work. But knowing that and feeling it were two incredibly different things, and his mind was whirling as fingers brushed from his tricep to his wrist. The air felt different around the two of you, turning heavy and expectant as you delicately took his wrist and flipped it over. His heart was pounding, reacting to the brush of your thumb at the edge of his glove, searing even through the leather. Hand unmoving, your eyes flicked to his visor. You were searching for something and he desperately wanted to help you find it, but he was frozen in place–fixed by your gaze. A loud clang at the back of the garage made you both jump and separate, breaking whatever charge had been building in your close proximity. The pit droid stumbled out from under a pile of circuitry, shaking its head animatedly as it started to pick through the mess it had made. You chuckled and smiled at Din unsurely before returning to the ship. He let out a breath he hadn’t meant to be holding.
Later, his dream was different when he finally drifted off. He fell headlong into it, unsure how it had started. It was all panting and slick skin spread beneath his hands. His eyes in the dream caught only snapshots–hair curling on the nape of a neck, a hand gripping the back of his thigh, urging him closer. It was an overwhelming crash of heat and touch so vivid that he thought it had to be real. Din was utterly lost in the body pressed against him. His lips were devouring, sucking lasting marks into any accessible skin as his pleasure rose higher and higher. He was enveloped and the sensations rushed through his shaking body, only able to focus on the wet slide of joining bodies. Groaning, he was pulled impossibly closer. Hands were on his back, in his hair, grasping desperately as he tipped over the edge. It wasn’t until then that his vision cleared and he blinked, looking down to see your face. You were smiling–soft, sated, and more relaxed than he’d ever seen you. He woke up with a start to a mess on his belly, ignoring the inexplicable pang of loss.
Din couldn’t go back to see you for a few months. Bounties kept coming his way and he took all of them. He needed the credits, but there was also a part of him that wasn’t ready to face you just yet. Between your touch and the near-palpable memory of his dream, it was easier to lose himself in a string of hunts that left no time for thinking. It worked for a little while. He was too exhausted when he finally passed out to remember his dreams, and the credits in his account were growing more than they had in years. He was in the cantina again, picking up another puck that would take him across the galaxy when everything he’d been avoiding came abruptly to a head. It was a simple moment, inconsequential to the crowd of drunk patrons around him. His eyes had just happened to fall on two figures at the bar. They were leaning close, a human and a twi’lek, one woman whispering in the other's ear and making her giggle. Their hands were intertwined on top of the bar in a show of affection that was unusual for the rough atmosphere of the hunter's cantina. He watched them for a moment as they were lost in each other. The twi’lek woman was stroking a pale green thumb reverently over her lover’s fingers and suddenly Din couldn’t stop thinking. The couple continued in their own world as he practically ran for his ship, driven by a need that he still didn’t fully understand. But he wasn’t fighting it any more.
When he arrived at your garage, you were nowhere to be found. The pit droid noticed him and bounced up and down a few times before returning to its sorting. It knew better than to go near the Razor Crest. Din’s resolution was quickly fading and turning to anxiety when your head popped out of a small office he had never noticed before. Your hair was messy and grease-streaked but your smile was brilliant.
“You came back. I thought maybe you’d found another mechanic.” Your voice was joking, but he could tell there was a bit of truth in it. He realized he hadn’t planned what he would say, too focused on just getting here in front of you. Now you were watching him, waiting expectantly for some response as the seconds dragged on.
So he said the only thing he could think to say: “Can I buy you dinner?”
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A year later and Din still dreams about you sometimes. Only, now he can open his eyes and pull you closer to nuzzle against your neck. You smell like engine oil and the sharp citrus of your shampoo. He breathes it in deeply and presses a kiss to your shoulder, feeling as you start to stir from your sleep. It’s barely morning, but time is always different on a ship speeding through the inky blackness of space. He can feel you shifting now, turning to face him and bumping your noses together softly. “Go back to sleep, c’yare,” he whispers, pressing his lips to your forehead.
“But you’re up,” was your sleepy retort, but he can see your eyes starting to flutter closed again in the dim light. Smiling, he wraps an arm around your back and holds you against his chest–feeling as your breathing slows back down in sleep. He knew why you wanted to stay up–tomorrow the Razor Crest will arrive back on your planet. Usually he wouldn’t let you fall asleep so quickly again. He would want to soak up every last moment before you both returned to your lives and waited impatiently for the next opportunity to be together. You didn’t know it yet, but this time was different. This time Din was going to ask to stay, to make a life where neither of you had to ever reach out into an empty bed again. And he was pretty sure he already knew your answer.
