Intrasolar
Pairing: Din Djarin x Female Reader Rating: M Word Count: 5.8k Warnings: ANGST and SPICE and FLUFF, canon-typical violence, nonexplicit sex, cursing, nongraphic descriptions of injuries, grief, nightmares, references to drowning/death in the context of nightmares, alcohol consumption Summary: This is the sequel to Extrasolar. You'll definitely want to read that part first! Author Notes: Parts of this are from Din’s perspective (third person) and parts are from yours (second person).
You did a double take the first time you saw him, whipping your head back to watch him run a hand through his slightly unkempt hair.
You’d never seen him before. He was probably passing through the small coastal town like most people who wandered into the cantina, and he was ruggedly, strikingly handsome. You turned your attention back to the stack of credits you were sorting into the register before he noticed your staring. Your first thought was that he looked familiar, but that wasn’t quite right. He felt familiar? Did that make sense? You shook your head to banish the thought and refocused on the task at hand.
He wasn’t seated in your section, so you wouldn’t be serving him anyway.
Like every other day, you settled easily into the flow of work, welcoming the comfort of tunnel vision. Things were always busy enough at the cantina to require all of your attention, which conveniently prevented you from ruminating on things you couldn’t change.
There was one thing—or more accurately, one someone—in particular you were trying not to think about. You’d been trying not to think about him for over a year now.
Losing him had left you in pieces, a thousand jagged pieces that would never fit back together in quite the same way. So here you were—still you, but different.
Immediately after, to distract yourself from the pain, you had taken some non-Guild work only to find that everything you’d enjoyed about hunting had been warped into vile, unbearable feelings. The thrill of the adrenaline rush was poisoned into anxiety, which clouded your judgment and hindered your ability to think on your feet. The satisfaction of outsmarting a quarry was corrupted into the deep-seated guilt of betrayal and the fear of potentially dooming an innocent person to capture.
Your world of black and white had been painted shades of metallic gray, swallowed whole by the silver sheen of beskar.
So, you did what you had to do—you dismantled your life and built something new, something simple and monotone and self-contained. You removed yourself from the swirling chaos of the galaxy and planted your feet firmly on the ground. You fortified your heart against any potential entanglements by settling in a quiet place, keeping to yourself, and abandoning your old profession. Now, you were an actual waitress, not a bounty hunter who occasionally played the role of waitress to ensnare an unsuspecting quarry.
Do your job. Keep your head down. Go home.
That was your mantra.
An hour later, when you hung your apron on the peg behind the bar and turned to leave, you saw that the man was still seated. His eyes met yours, and with an unexpected wave of panic, you felt pinned, trapped by the spotlight of his gaze. You were only able to turn away when someone in the kitchen dropped a dish, the loud crash breaking the paralyzing spell. You hurried toward the exit, and in your periphery, you could tell his gaze followed you. You realized why he felt familiar: his unwavering stare and something about his posture and the mechanical swivel of his neck reminded you of him.
You breathed a sigh of relief when you stepped into the comfortably warm air of the evening and directed your feet toward home. You savored the ritual of your daily walk, taking the well-worn path bordered by a dense coniferous forest on one side and the shore on the other.
This wasn’t a rare occurrence.
At least weekly, something would remind you of him—someone laying a hand on your lower back, a gravelly voice, a Mandalorian in green armor, the pressure of a chilly window pane on your forehead, a set of especially nice shoulders...the list was endless. A memory would sink its eager claws into your throat and yank you back in time. You’d blink and be sitting at a table with him once again, holding the child on your lap, looking into the black expanse of his glass visor. You could feel the cold of his beskar under your fingers, smell his scent—metallic, warm, alluring. The memories were unlike any others you had: they were visceral, tangible.
In the beginning, these moments knocked you on your ass. When you’d stumbled and a customer wearing soft leather gloves had steadied you, you'd wrenched yourself away, unable to stand the familiar texture gripping your arms so tightly. You had to awkwardly excuse yourself and rush out the back door to take gulps of fresh air to soothe your thumping heart.
Those first few months, when the gaping wound of grief was still so raw, were brutal.
Frustratingly, these instances of heartbreak faded in intensity and frequency much more slowly than you had hoped. Here, over a year later, the hurt was the same—apparently, it would take years to build immunity to this type of pain—but you had, at least, learned how to withstand the pain discreetly. Now, you were conditioned to take it in stride.
You wove your way through the scrubby dunes, leaving the path that edged the forest to strike out on the direct route to your little house. The sound of relentless ocean waves was a grounding metronome in the back of your mind.
The grief wasn’t avoidable, but you could numb it for a while—postpone it to give yourself a break. Over time, you'd identified the things that could occupy your mind enough to offer some relief: work, the ocean, fucking, whiskey, sleep.
And, thus, you had perfected a foolproof daily routine: work, the ocean, fucking, whiskey, sleep.
You stepped onto your creaking porch and unlocked the front door. As always, you immediately went to your room to change. With a towel in hand, you walked back out your door and across the wide expanse of sand to the edge of the sea. For almost an hour, you lost yourself in the refreshing salt water, swimming laps between two rock structures that breached the surface, staying out past the tumult of the breaking swells. It was cold enough and strenuous enough that all you could do was focus on one stroke and then the next, propelling your aching body forward.
The sun was starting to set when you emerged, breathless and exhausted, and you returned home, your damp feet sinking into the rapidly cooling sand. Like clockwork, your neighbor was there, sitting on your porch—ready to commence the third act of your routine. He lived a couple houses down, and you had the perfect arrangement for both of you: regular sex without any obligation. He was beautiful, kind, uncomplicated.
When he fucked you, your mind went blank: it was like falling into white noise. You let it swallow you, let it sweep you away—because, in that nothingness, your thoughts had no surface on which to ricochet, so instead of echoing incessantly as they usually did, they faded away. It was blissful static.
Today, though, a thought found purchase. Unbidden, an image formed behind your eyelids—an unfaltering picture of that man with the overpowering gaze. It crowded your mind, and your eyes flew open, your breath shallow. You did your best to focus on the feeling of the man pressed against you, the silky sheets fisted in your hands, the slow tension building in your body.
It was futile.
You felt claustrophobic in your own head.
You gently extracted yourself from his embrace, mumbling that you had a headache. He was understanding and thoughtful, bringing you a glass of water and a pain pill before slipping out the front door to let you rest.
You ignored the pill and poured yourself whiskey instead—a more generous serving than normal in hopes of flooding the image out of your mind. When that didn’t work, you commenced the final stage of your routine early. You tossed and turned in bed, frustrated that there had been a breakdown in your system. This wasn’t supposed to happen: these five things were supposed to provide uniform reprieve every day. You tried not to agonize over it. Tomorrow would prove that this was a fluke, an anomaly, nothing more.
Eventually, you fell into a fitful sleep.
You woke early the next morning to a loud knock. Head fuzzy with sleep, you stumbled out of bed, clutching the blanket around your shoulders, and cracked the door.
It was the stranger from yesterday.
He had brown hair that needed a trim, patchy stubble along his jaw, and one of the most handsome faces you’d ever seen. His eyes were an inviting brown; they spoke of warm embraces and safety and home.
And when he smiled—
When he smiled shyly, his cheek dimpled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. You wanted to hold him.
You opened the door all the way.
You looked at him, and all you could think was that he was both the person you wanted to rail you with absolutely no mercy and the person you wanted to hold you when you cried.
Your grip slackened involuntarily, and the blanket slipped off your shoulders and onto the floor, pooling around your feet.
On some level, you already knew, but you were still surprised when he spoke your name and reached a hand out toward you. You took a reflexive step backward, ankle catching on the blanket, flinching away from his touch. Even without the distortion of the modulator, you’d know that voice anywhere.
“Mando—”
***
two months earlier, Nevarro
The Jedi came for the kid, and Din immediately felt disoriented without him: untethered, adrift. Over the last year and a half, everything important to him had been stripped away, and now, empty-handed, he was forced to appreciate the magnitude of what he had lost.
To cope, this new grief was shunted into the shadowy recesses of his heart to keep his existing grief—for his parents, for his tribe, for his identity, for her—company.
He told himself that work was what he needed—routine and familiarity. He could slip back into what he’d once known, back when his life had revolved solely around a job; he would recapture the focus and tireless, single-minded resolve that he’d relied on for so long. He returned to Nevarro and took the hardest jobs Karga had to offer.
Din had never told Karga what his deception had cost him—how a simple lie had completely rearranged his universe. The first time he saw Karga after he lost her, he had been legitimately tempted to kill him (fuck, it would have been so easy), but he’d been desperate for help taking down the Imp. So, Din had locked away those feelings—his longing and anger and grief shut safely behind iron bars in his heart—to prioritize the safety of the kid. And even now that the kid was with his people, Din was afraid to tap into that rage and hurt, terrified that he’d unleash something wild, a destructive force that would overpower him.
Besides, Karga was a means to an end, nothing more. He didn’t deserve to know. And so, Din guarded the story jealously. He didn’t even tell Cara when she prodded gently.
Evidently, however, in the wake of losing the kid, Din’s heart was at capacity, and bounty hunting was not a compelling enough distraction from the clamoring of so much grief unacknowledged. On jobs, he was inefficient and reckless, making rookie mistakes he hadn’t struggled with in decades. He felt none of his old drive. What was he doing this for? What was the point? He’d always had a guiding star, a direction, a mainstay, a why. Not anymore.
Din was desperate to feel grounded; he yearned for the reassuring sanctuary of gravity, but everything large enough to hold him down was gone. So he was left to wander aimlessly and alone.
Several weeks into his failing plan, Din limped up the ramp of his new ship and hoisted an unconscious body into the carbonite chamber before collapsing onto the floor. He’d been careless. The quarry had managed to outfox him at every turn, prolonging what should have been a two-day job into a two-week struggle. In the end, Din had caught him, but not before he’d pursued him across miles of unforgiving desert and been stabbed twice.
He was in pain, exhausted... and despite the fact that he’d captured the bounty, he felt utterly defeated. The thrill of eluding danger and the rush of pride that used to accompany the successful completion of a job were absent. He hadn’t felt those things in months.
He lay there on the floor of the hull, chest heaving. Without lifting his head, he closed the ramp and initiated the ground security protocols with his vambrace. He knew he should get up. The wounds on his side and his thigh were slowly leaking blood, and he needed to tend to them right away. His body required water and food, then sleep.
Any minute, he’d get up and grab his medkit.
Any minute.
Instead, Din thought about the things he had lost.
There were the inanimate things, the loss of which shouldn’t weigh on his soul the way they did, but when almost everything in his life was transient, the few things that were enduring became significant, whether he liked it or not. He thought about his Amban Rifle—a reliable companion in his solitary existence. There was an endless list of threats that rifle had saved him from: a Ravinak, quarries, hunters, raiders, an AT-ST, troopers, a kriffing Krayt Dragon. On an almost daily basis, he found himself reflexively reaching over his shoulder for it, only to close his hand around the cold beskar spear.
And there was the Razor Crest, the closest thing he’d had to a home for decades. It had been as integral to his sense of self as his armor, something he didn’t realize until it was gone. He hated every inch of this new, unfamiliar ship. It held no memories, and memories were the only source of warmth that made a real difference to him in the unforgiving chill of space. In the Crest, he could picture the kid, and her, and even Cara and Kuill; he knew where they fit. In this ship, there were only blank silver expanses.
Then, there were the people he'd lost.
Din thought about his tribe, the haunting image of a pile of empty beskar shells flitting through his mind. In the past, his duty had sometimes felt like a burden—the responsibility to provide for so many resting on his shoulders alone—but now, he realized it had been his backbone. Without it, everything crumbled. What felt like chains holding him down had, in reality, been scaffolding, maintaining every bit of his integrity.
He knew it was time to look for what remained of his covert, but he could barely bring himself to think about it, let alone do anything. What happened if he searched and found no one? The prospect of seeking out the splintered fragments only to find that none survived was even harder to fathom than leaving it unknown. If he didn’t search, there was always the possibility that they were out there. He was being a coward in the name of preserving what little hope he had left. It was selfish.
But... that wasn’t the only reason he delayed.
Din thought about his lost identity, his broken Creed. Did he even have the right to seek out his tribe when he was no longer one of them, no longer a Mandalorian? Was he still a Mandalorian? He still wore his armor, but he wasn’t totally sure why—another question he couldn’t answer. If he was no longer a Mandalorian, how could he possibly have a rightful claim to the Mandalorian throne? The Darksaber sat at the bottom of his weapons locker, burning another hole in his already frayed conscience.
This was what he was left with after he took off his helmet that first time, a swarm of needling questions that ate at him every day.
But it was worth sacrificing the Creed for the kid.
Right?
He thought about Grogu, a tiny, three-fingered hand on his face. He wondered what he was doing, if he was happy, if he thought of Din as often as Din thought of him. At least he had a face to attach to his memories now. Was he learning a lot from the Jedi? Did he get to spend time outside playing in the sun? Was anyone rocking him gently to sleep the way he liked when he was fussy?
And, finally, he came to the last entry in the catalog of what he’d lost in the last year or so: he thought about her. To be fair, he had never really had her. He never had the chance to call her mine, but they’d had potential—the promise of something more, a bright shiny glimmer of hope. At a time when Din’s world was turned upside down, right after he’d broken the Guild code to save the child from the Empire, when he was totally out of his depth and everything around him felt like chaos... she had made him feel still. And that was a hell of a thing to lose.
Even after she revealed her true motives, he couldn’t shake that feeling—that feeling that she was the thing he was supposed to orbit.
He could picture so vividly the way her features lit up when he and the kid walked into the cantina. He could hear the musical cadence of her laugh, feel the comforting warmth of her hand over his, smell the light floral notes of her hair.
With those details playing through his mind, he drifted off. He let grief and exhaustion and defeat pull him under.
Din couldn’t breathe. He was underwater, suffocating weight pressing in around him as his heavy beskar dragged him deeper. She was drowning, arms and legs flailing as something with an iron grip on her ankle drew her down. He reached for her, arms outstretched, but he couldn’t keep pace with her descent. His lungs burned, begging for air, as the reassuring light of the surface retreated above him. He watched in horror as her eyes widened in panic, and she choked, lungs filling with water. He tried to yell, kicking toward her frantically, but she stilled, all the fight leaving her body.
He woke with a start, adrenaline coursing through his veins. In a panic, he ripped off his helmet, letting it clang loudly against the metal floor, and took several shaking breaths. Clarity burned through him like acid. With the little strength he had left, his head swimming from dehydration and blood loss, Din hauled himself to his feet and did the simple list of things that would keep him alive.
He couldn’t wear his helmet after that. Every time he put it on, he felt like he was suffocating, the years of bearing the heavy beskar no match for the stifling weight of his shame. And the armor felt wrong without the helmet, so he stopped wearing that too. He locked it away with the Darksaber.
To move forward, he had to let what little he had left fall away.
In the following weeks, he traced her name, her chain code, her age. He recalled every detail she’d shared with him—about her family and past and likes and dislikes, anything that might give him some clue as to where she’d be. He worked from a holomap on which he'd meticulously marked off the planets he'd already eliminated as possibilities. He'd had to recreate this map after he lost the Crest, but that was easy enough, as he vividly remembered each and every planet he'd scoured.
And eventually—ironically, thanks to some information from Karga—Din uncovered the promising golden thread of a lead.
He tracked her to a planet that was largely water, one known for its expansive oceans, beautiful coastlines, persistent sunshine, and temperate weather—her ideal home. He felt the softest stirring of hope in his chest, knowing that she was where she wanted to be.
The first time he saw her again, it was from afar, but he knew her by the way she carried herself, her unmistakable walk. His heart stuttered. She was as beautiful and perfect and bright as he remembered. He didn't realize until that moment that a small part of him had worried he'd built her up, romanticizing the memories until she was more than human in his mind. But there she was, just as ethereal as in his daydreams.
For those first few days, all Din did was watch her. He reminded himself that she wasn’t a quarry, but there was some information he needed, and this was the only way to get it. He wanted to know if she was happy; he wanted to know if his appearance would be welcome or disruptive.
He studied the topography of her life, searching for any hint that there was a place in it for him.
He smiled when he found out that she lived in a small cottage right on the beach. He stopped breathing, fists clenching by his sides, when he watched her walk into the waves and disappear, only to reappear seconds later. For the briefest moment, his mind flashed back to his nightmare, and he had the mad impulse to follow her and pull her out. But he knew she never needed saving.
Even still, he waited at the edge of the forest until she emerged.
Frustratingly, the more he watched her, the less certain he became. He knew what she was to him, but how was he to know what he was to her? He had been a job that had evolved into something more. She had confirmed that what had grown between them was also real for her—the written proof was folded neatly in his pocket. So surely, she had real feelings for him at some point... but how real? And how enduring? Her feelings had been tamped down, reined in because she was doing a job. How successful had she been at burning them away? How much had her feelings been eroded by time? It had been over a year... maybe that was too long.
He watched a man walk up and sit on her front step, awaiting her return. She approached him with a smile on her face, salt water dripping from her hair, and took his hand, leading him inside.
Fuck, that smile.
Was her solar system already complete? Or was there still room for a devoted moon? Would she want it to be him?
In the end, Din told himself that if she could take the leap of faith and trust him so many months ago, he owed it to her to swallow his fear and let her make this choice for herself. Last time, he had made her feel like he didn’t want her, and that was his biggest regret.
He wasn’t going to do that to her again.
***
“Mando—”
She looked scared.
He didn’t expect fear. He expected confusion, surprise, irritation, apathy, maybe even anger? But never fear. But there he was, standing in front of her, and fear flashed across her eyes.
“Din,” he rushed to get the words out, “My name is Din.”
The fear faded as quickly as it came.
“Din,” she repeated.
He’d imagined her saying his real name hundreds, if not thousands of times, and his imagination got nowhere close to the real thing. His throat felt tight.
She stepped forward, raising her hands to frame his face. Her eyes glazed over slightly; she was entranced as she took him in, caressing his cheeks and scanning his features like she was trying to commit every detail to memory.
Din leaned into her touch, closing his eyes to savor the moment. His breathing slowed, and for the first time in months, he felt still.
When he opened his eyes again and met hers, she startled slightly, like she hadn’t realized what she was doing.
“Sorry—”
She started to lower her hands, but Din caught them, bringing them back up to his face, unwilling to lose the contact.
“Don’t be,” he said, smiling uncertainly. The corner of her mouth quirked up in the beginnings of an answering smile.
They stood there for a moment, Din holding her hands against his face.
He’d planned what he was going to say, rehearsing it in his head at length, because he was worried as soon as he saw her, he’d revert to his inability to string words into sentences. Sure enough, despite his preparation, his mind was blank.
So instead, he asked, “Can I kiss you?”
In response, she slid her hands around his neck and pulled his face down to meet hers, and relief spread through him like a cleansing fire, stealing the breath from his lungs.
***
When your lips met, everything fell into place; it felt like the universe spontaneously rearranged itself and finally got it right—every planet and every star and all the empty space in between attained perfect alignment in an instant.
You had no idea that one moment could curate the arrangement of the cosmos exactly to your liking.
You pulled Din backwards across the threshold into your house, kicking the door shut behind him without losing contact with his lips. You were both desperate and clumsy and impatient, hands everywhere at once.
He was just as you remembered and completely new. You recognized those shoulders, those hands, that scent—he somehow retained the metallic twang of beskar even without the armor. The way his breath hitched and his chest expanded when you slipped your tongue past his parted lips was familiar, reminding you of his reaction the first time you touched him.
But you’d been privy to such a limited sliver of him before; now, here he was, laid bare for you to learn again, and so you charted his features with your hands, your lips, your eyes, every part of you. Eager to close what little space remained between your bodies, you pushed his jacket off his shoulders, and he obliged, tugging it off until it slid to the floor.
A dim thought rankled at the back of your mind, a reminder that you were taking the life you’d carefully constructed and throwing it straight out the fucking window, inviting uncertainty directly into your orderly world.
You were finding it difficult to care when Din’s hands were lighting a fire across your skin.
You had a million questions for him, but only two were louder than the need humming in your veins. You broke away for a moment to say, “Where’s the baby?”
“Grogu—”
You were both panting, slipping words in between kisses, too enthralled in each other to stop and have a real conversation.
“What?”
“That’s his name—”
Palms on his chest, you pressed him against the wall, trailing open-mouthed kisses down his neck. He groaned and lolled his head back when you sucked one beneath the sharp corner of his jaw so you did it again.
“Fuck—he’s with the Jedi—he’s, uh, he’s with his people now. I brought him back to them.”
At that, you actually did stop, stepping back to look into his eyes, hands linked behind his neck.
“You must miss him so much.”
His eyes met yours for the briefest moment then flicked away, grief written plainly on his face. “Yeah,” he admitted. “But he’s where he belongs.”
Din wrapped his arms around you, drawing you into his tight embrace and resting his chin on the crown of your head. Unspoken words hung in the air: and this is where you belong.
Ear pressed to his chest, you smiled and asked, “And your helmet?”
He hesitated. “I... I took it off to say goodbye to the kid. I couldn’t let him go without showing him my face...” His voice caught, and he paused to take a deep breath. “I sacrificed the Creed to do it, and I still don’t know if it was the right decision.”
“Of course, it was the right decision,” you said earnestly, nodding against him, “You told me how precious foundlings are, and you prioritized your foundling. How could that be wrong?”
You were the farthest thing from an authority on the Mandalorian Creed, but you were certain—so deeply, painfully certain—that Din was a good person and sharing love with a child could never be wrong.
“I don’t know what’s right anymore...” He ran a hand over his eyes, scrubbing it over his face as he let out a resigned huff. “I found out that some Mandalorians do take off their helmets, so I don’t know what to believe.” He sounded exhausted, lost.
You pulled away to fix him with a fierce look, framing his face with your hands to force him to meet your gaze. “You cared for Grogu and kept him safe and brought him to his people. You protected a child, loved a child. That’s what matters. An arbitrary rule is nowhere near as important as that, and breaking it doesn't change who you are. I think you already know that.”
He stared intently, and you worried for a second that you’d offended him, stepped over an invisible line by assuming you knew better than he did what was right or wrong in this case.
“I’m sorry, I—”
He crashed his lips against yours once again, and when you stumbled back in surprise, Din steadied you, holding you upright.
There was nothing else pressing you needed to know in that moment; you had everything you needed in this, the refuge of his arms. There would be time for everything else.
He slipped his hands under the hem of your shirt and before he could even ask, you ripped it over your head, tossing it aside. He responded in kind, divesting himself first of the several weapons strapped to his belt and his calf, then his shirt.
You raked your eyes down his face to his perfect chest—muscled, golden brown, littered with a constellation of scars—and mused, “You know, if I had known from the beginning that you looked like this under your armor, I’d have thrown my entire plan out the window to fuck you immediately.”
He barked out a surprised laugh. “I would have preferred that.”
Laughing, you grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall to your bedroom. He paused at your doorway to say, “I, uh, I want you to know—this isn’t what I came for.”
You quirked an eyebrow at him. “What did you come for?”
“I—just... you.”
“Then take me.”
“I mean... All of you, not just this.”
You slid your fingers under his belt and jerked him forward, smiling mischievously: “Well, we have to start somewhere.”
He laughed, leaning down to press his forehead against yours.
And when he did take you, when you closed your eyes, you didn’t slip into that familiar static. You stayed—there, with him, where you belonged. It was all whispered praises and breathless moans and a tangle of euphoric thoughts. It was overwhelming, a hum of lust and safety and longing, a hyperawareness of every sensation. You felt held—carefully, lovingly, preciously.
Hours later, you were lying with your head on his chest, the steady beating of his heart a reassuring cadence in your ear. You lifted your head slightly to look up at him: “Why now?”
He looked down and furrowed his eyebrows. “Because I happened to find you this time.”
“What do you mean?”
His fingers traced intricate patterns on your back. “I looked for you that day. I looked for you for a couple weeks after, and I would have found you if I’d had more time... but then I was quested with finding the kid’s people, so I had to stop. But whenever I was near a temperate planet with an ocean and had some time, I stopped to look for leads. And then when the Jedi came for the kid, I, uh, was lost for a bit... I tried to work to distract myself from everything but I couldn't. So... I had time again. I had to find you.”
He said it so unsentimentally. He put his devotion into words like it wasn’t a declaration of love—he recounted it like a simple fact.
You sat up and swung a leg over his hips, pressing your lips against his once again. He straightened, running his hands down your back and crushing you against his chest. The tempo of your breath kicked back up in tandem.
It was a relief that you were both on the same page: you had over a year of touch to make up for, and you were shameless in your pursuit of that goal.
You mumbled against his mouth, breathless: “That day—the day I left... I thought you hated me.”
Din leaned back, brow wrinkled in genuine confusion. “I could never hate you.”
“You said the person you were falling for didn’t exist.”
“You let us go. You proved me wrong.”
“Oh.”
“Even if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have hated you. You thought you were doing the right thing. I shouldn't have said that... I didn't meant it. I was hurt. And drugged.”
“Oh.”
You shook your head, laughed. What could you do but laugh? It didn’t matter anymore. Why mourn what little time you had lost when you had what you needed stretched out infinitely before you?
It tasted like hope, this feeling—to be able to look forward once again, to broaden your horizon back to the endless possibility it once promised. Finally, you’d be able to move freely, unencumbered by the need to maintain safeguards around your heart. You could venture out into the galaxy knowing wherever you went with him, you'd never be lost.
Smiling, you asked: “So, what now?”
He looked down and clasped your hand, lacing his fingers between yours. When his eyes met yours again, there was so much uncertainty there, so much unease, you almost had to look away.
Fuck. The bright light in your chest faltered like the wavering of an unsteady flame.
“I—There’s something I need to do. A few things, actually... things I’ve been avoiding, but I know I can do them now. I’m sorry, I'll have to go, but I needed to find you first,” he stopped, then rushed to add, “but I know you like it here. I wouldn’t ask you to leave—to come with me. No, but I’ll come back. Of course, I’ll come back to you. I’ll always come back to you, for as long as you want me.”
The light in your chest expanded, filling every inch of you with warmth. You smiled at him, placing a reassuring hand over his thumping heart, and leaned down to press your forehead to his.
You closed your eyes. “I want you to ask.”
He let out a relieved sigh, holding you closer. “Will you come with me?”
You kissed a word into his lips: yes.
***
Tagging those who expressed interest in a sequel to Extrasolar: @disgruntledspacedad @thirstworldproblemss @dincrypt @beskarhearts @goldielocks2004 @elinedjarin @speakerforthedead0 @thosewickedlovelies @theawkwardpedestrian
Everything tag list: @spideysimpossiblegirl
I hope I didn't miss anyone! I'm sorry if I did!
