Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Does he think he’s being subtle? 

That Mandalorian has been prowling the fringes of the market square, conducting no business, not speaking to a soul, not even attempting to belong, and you can’t help but turn away just to roll your eyes. His guild badge might as well be soldered to his chest plate. A bounty hunter. Another one. 

What does this make, three? One you gave the slip in your usual way; the other, you punished…in the capital sense. Okay, technically a well-timed hovertrain got her, but still, it counts. And now there’s this guy. Maybe he thinks he doesn’t have to be subtle. Maybe he thinks you’ll waltz up to him and reveal yourself. 

Diverse species swarm around stands and carts, and in the center of the square, a group of rather uninspired performers play folk tunes you don’t know. Shopping list forgotten, you meander through vendors and pretend to peruse their wares. You keep the hunter in your periphery. That helmet of his swivels back and forth like a security droid while he scans the throng. He may have narrowed his search down to these streets, but he hasn’t yet locked onto you. 

As a rule, you stay on planets with high populations and dense cities—more people, more buildings, more variables, the easier it is to cloak your existence, and right now it’s working as intended. The hustle and bustle around you is your protection. You also change up your appearance whenever you hop planets; for you, being recognized isn’t usually a welcome thing. Like everyone else in the crowd, you sport protective gear and a choice weapon—a thick vest covering your torso and a trusty knife sheathed at your hip. After all, this isn’t one of those fancy Core Worlds planets where you can prance around their cities unarmed, and where civilized people frown upon unsanctioned market brawls. 

This guy could be after anyone, but you have a funny feeling, and ignoring your funny feelings never goes well. It’s unclear who has it out for you—there are a few possibilities—but whoever wants your hide must want the job done, finally, since this time they sent a whole fuckin’ Mando. 

Tall tales of Mandalorians’ skillsets accompany their rare appearances. You’ve yet to see one in action; the few times you’ve laid eyes on them have been in your natural habitat of various seedy taverns. Mandoes always keep to themselves, talking in hushed tones over drinks, and they never stay long. They all get up at once and march out with their helmets on their hips, presumably on their way to go destroy something. 

This lone Mando looks…scrappy. He’s outfitted with mismatched armor that, even from this distance, you can tell has been repaired several times over. The stock of a blaster rifle looms over his shoulder, and a tattered cloak hangs off his back. Unlike the battle-worn condition of the rest of him, his helmet of solid Mando steel is unmarred. 

Does the real thing hold up to expectation? You’re not too keen to find out one way or the other, but surely the stories are overblown. It wouldn’t be life if it weren’t a little underwhelming, now, would it? 

The Mando slips a device from his belt, glances at it in his palm, and then tucks it back in place. You sigh. You had wished there were a chance you were only being paranoid and could continue your day of debauchery in peace, but no—that’s a confirmed tracking fob right there. Now you have to do something about this. 

Time to dip, but not before throwing a wrench in this bastard’s plans on your way out. Should be simple. Better act now. The last thing you want is for him to check that damn fob again and zero in on his target. 

Squeezing your way through the crowd, you close in on him, and as you approach—that’s something you haven’t felt in a while; is that apprehension? This could go very wrong very quickly. If he sees through you and decides you’re coming with him…well, you’re most likely coming with him. 

Skittish and clumsy. Tried and true. You adopt the hunched posture and graceless gait of someone trying to occupy little space but doing it badly. Both to sell the character and to somewhat conceal your identity, you untuck your hair from behind your ears and let it fall over your face. It still smells of dye. 

Pretending to be engrossed in the droning musicians, you stroll without looking where you’re going, and just as you’re about to pass on his flank, you veer and slam your shoulder right into his arm, hard. It hurts. Tch, you always were an overactor. You clutch your shoulder and glare at whatever just got in your way—and go slack-jawed upon clocking his stature, his arsenal, and his Mandalorian…ness.

“Oh, shit,” you gasp in a tiny voice. “Oh, fuck.” 

Awkwardly as possible, you pat him on the unarmored part of his arm where you collided. Hm, a squeeze to his bicep—for good measure. He looks down at you squeezing his arm like he might draw his blaster and shoot your hand clean off. At least, that’s the meaning you attribute to his unreadable stare. 

The interaction lasts only a moment. One moment of misdirection is all you need. You retract your touch like you just realized that’s another bad move and mumble, “Sorry 'bout that.”

He doesn’t say a thing, not that you give him time to. As abruptly as you entered his life, you become a thing of his past. You weave through the crowd and slip the tracking fob you just swiped into your pants pocket. You have only seconds to disappear. Unless he’s got bantha brains under that bucket, it won’t take him much longer than that to realize you’re to blame for the tracker missing from his belt. 

You head straight for the nearest outlet into another street. The foot traffic thins out, and as you hasten your retreat, your lips curl into a smile. The thrill of a successful lift never gets old. Nostalgic, going back to basics. If only you could’ve nabbed his purse, too, while you were at it. 

Now that you’re out of sight, you afford a sweeping look behind you. No Mandalorians or other sinister figures seem to be on your tail. You take a few turns down random alleyways—best practices and all that—and duck beside a foul-smelling dumpster to fish the fob from your pocket. A junk piece of technology. How does this thing—? Ah. The crude device lights up red and lets out a continuous stream of tinny pings. Yeah, yeah, shut up.  

Well, fuck. Once again, your gut was tragically on the mark. The fob’s for you. A Mando’s on your scent. Right now he’s probably scouring the vicinity, and ooh, did you let him get a nice, long look at you. You touched him. You shudder. But, you’re holding his only reliable tool for finding you in a city in whose bowels you’re about to vanish.

You slip the fob back into your pocket. Makes for a nice trophy; could be the start of a collection. You’d rather run, but you force yourself to walk to the nearest hovertrain station. No matter your destination—all you need is to put distance between yourself and this hunter. Heart racing, you blend in with the others waiting, keep your wits about you, and mutter curses until your getaway vehicle arrives. When the train rockets into motion and whisks you away from the scene of the crime, you take and release your first full breath. 

Out the train window, beyond your grim reflection, countless building faces blur by. You slouch in your seat and fidget with the tracking fob in your pocket. What’s your worry? It’s just like the others. He’s not going to find you. In a place like this, it would take him an incalculable amount of time. No one would waste that on small fish like you. 

It’s been a few days since you ran into the Mandalorian. 

You sit with your back to the wall of a tavern you don’t normally frequent, keeping one eye on your cards and one on the door. Your Devaronian opponent is proving to be a sore loser—your favorite, the kind that feeds you credits out of a bruised ego. When she starts to get ugly about it, you call it quits. You’re not a cheater. Games are one of the few fair things in life, and besides, cheating would cheat you out of the fun of simply being better. 

With your purse several hundred credits heavier, you step out into the night and make your way home—”home” being the nearest inn with sufficiently pathetic security measures. A healthy dose of spice should take the edge off your restlessness. This between-jobs thing is getting old. 

You turn a corner and start down a deserted and barely-lit alley. Another one of your funny feelings hits you: Behind you, is someone—? You come to a halt. A glance over your shoulder tells you no one’s there, which isn’t exactly consoling. You’ve just got the creeps. That’s all. The best thing to do is to keep moving. Pushing away your unease, you continue down the alley. 

Nope—you know there’s someone behind you. Well, you don’t know, but you don’t even want to look, as if the act of looking will summon him into existence. You force yourself to turn and look. Something slinks into shadow…you’re pretty sure. Maybe? Was that a flick of a cloak? 

“Saw that,” you call out and hold your breath. If no one’s there, there’s no one to cringe at you.

From that shadow, the unmistakable silhouette of a Mandalorian emerges and stands stock-still, one straight shot down, no more than a dozen sprinting steps away. Turns out it’s not any less terrifying now that you can see him. All your doubts of his ability are redacted and replaced by a single question: How? 

You’re not incompetent with your knife, but you’ve also seen up close and personal what this guy’s carrying. Going up against this Mando would mean going down in history as a dead nobody. You make a calculated decision—which gets overridden by primal instinct, but they both result in the same course of action: you run. You book it down the alleyway like you just made your own jump to lightspeed, arms and legs pumping as hard as you can and boots springing off the cobblestone. 

Behind you, a low-pitched whistle signals something zipping through the air, and your legs stop working. You slam to the ground. The impact punches the breath out of your lungs. Thinking of nothing else but getting away, you try to jump straight back to your feet, but a cord’s wrapped tightly around your legs. He threw some sort of grappling line at you, and the other end’s attached to that vambrace on his arm. Knife, your knife—!

—Knife’s not doing shit. Your futile attempt to sever the cord is interrupted when Mando heaves on it and yanks your lower half out from under you, forcing you on your back and knocking the wind out of you a second time. Quickly, he pulls hand-over-hand and drags you, with terrifyingly little effort, right toward him. 

In a last-ditch effort to thwart your attacker, you aim your blade at the same spot on his body you flirted with earlier, his unarmored upper arm. You can do this. You’ve practiced, sort of. You can pin a thrown Sabacc card, sometimes. 

Your knife leaves your fingers and slices the air along the exact trajectory you intend. Mando dodges with a deft twist of his shoulders and keeps reeling you in. Somewhere out of view, your knife clatters to the ground. You claw at the passing cobblestone, instinctively grasping for anything that might delay your fate, but much sooner than you’d like you come to a stop, and he towers over you. Gulping in air, you wriggle and work at the cord constricting your legs. If you can get free—

He crouches, and two gloved hands put a stop to your struggle. Something bulky and cold slides around your wrists, and with two electronic clicks, one after the other—your bounty hunter puts you in binders. 

He did it. He got you. And without drawing a single weapon—unless you count the grappling line. That puts a nice dent in your pride.

Mando keeps hold of you with one hand. From his other palm, a blue, pixelated light flickers awake and casts his visor in an eerie glow. He holds a bounty puck that projects an outdated (and, to your dismay, unflattering) portrait of you with a drastically different hair color. Damn, you haven’t seen your legal name in ages. From your perspective, your reward amount is displayed backwards: 7300 credits. 

“For me? Eh, not bad,” you quip nervously. You don’t have anything close to that. Bribery isn’t an option. 

Mando ignores you, seemingly comparing the you in your picture to the you restrained on the ground right in front of him. Your unfortunate image blips out of existence along with the blue light, and Mando tucks the puck away. He begins unwinding the cable from your lower half and feeding it back into his high-tech vambrace. The moment the last of the cable retracts, Mando hoists you up to standing and drags you over to the alley wall. At first you don’t know what the hell’s happening, but when he grabs your binders and places your hands high up on the wall in a wordless order to keep them there—Oh, of course. You’re about to be searched for more weapons. 

A compromising position. Large hands. A firm touch. Under other circumstances, you’d be thrilled. 

It takes Mando no time to find the tracking fob. When he activates it, the thing practically screams your presence, and with a glance over your shoulder to spy his reaction, you meet what you think must be an annoyed glare. You smile. Mando huffs, silences the device, and slips it back onto his belt.

Mando pulls out your lock breaker and inspects it. He doesn’t seem to know what it is—but he doesn’t like it, apparently, because he drops it to the ground and crushes it under his boot. You hang your head and bite back a swear. Next, he finds your purse. You say a mental goodbye to your credits, but he returns it to your pocket. It weighs the same as before.

Apparently satisfied with your lack of concealed weapons, Mando pries your hands off the wall, pulls out a small length of the whipcord from his vambrace, and secures it to your binders. Not wasting a second, he turns and stalks off down the alley. You’re momentarily taken aback by the oversized blaster rifle strapped to his back, and then the line snaps taut and seizes your arms forward. You stumble along after him. It’s not like you have a choice. You’re on a leash. 

Lying on the cobblestone, your knife glints in the darkness. Mando kicks it out of his way and out of your reach, leaving it there for some lucky bastard to find. The empty sheath at your hip mocks you. You liked that knife. 

Tethered together, Mando leads you through the dark, city streets at an urgent pace. Judging by his route, you suspect you’re being walked to the spaceport. Occasional passersby take in the fearsome Mandalorian before they notice your sorry self trailing behind—and avert their gazes when they realize your situation. Through this morbid parade you give your captor no argument, no struggle. 

What kind of bounty hunter does things like this? He didn’t loot your credits. He doesn’t prod you along by the barrel of a blaster and subject you to gloating or threats. It’s like he’s forgotten about you. He never looks over his shoulder and never says a thing. Maybe he thinks even acknowledging scum like you is a waste of his energy.

“Hey. Mando,” you call ahead. 

Instead of staying in Mando’s shadow, you take a few jogging steps to catch up and walk side-by-side, in lock-step. The line connecting you to his vambrace droops and drags along the pavement. 

“Or—you go by a name?” 

Mando pays you no mind. He shows nothing but a stern profile: his sharp, angled jaw, beveled curve for a cheek, and tinted glass on his eyeline from which he could be giving you side-eye, and you’d never know. 

“Just so you know, no hard feelings,” you say. 

Is he human under there? He looks human. Five—? Yep, five fingers. Better stop staring. Your inspecting his figure could be misinterpreted as admiring it. 

“No, honestly,” you insist. “Can’t hate you for doing your job. A job’s a job. Credits are credits. Imperial. New Republic. Whatever they are these days.”

Mando meets your magnanimity with the same, cold disinterest. 

That’s it. You stop dead in your tracks and watch the cord between you stretching tight as Mando keeps on going. You ground your feet and resist your leash’s pull. He doesn’t miss a step. Still not bothering to look back, Mando jerks his arm, tugging you hard and dragging you for a few paces. With you back in motion, he continues on as if nothing happened.

You trudge along. That was once. It’s still a long way to the spaceport. How many times will it take to get him to say something? 

On the next instance of your petty rebellion, he tugs even harder. But still, he refuses to look at you. Does the bastard even have buttons you can push? Mando doesn’t react, not the next time, nor the time after that. 

Eventually, he tugs so harshly that you fear your elbows might have popped free of their sockets. You lose balance and stumble to the ground. He wheels around, and his boots crunch to where you kneel. His voice through the helmet reminds you of dear ol’ Imperial bucketheads, all scratchy and compressed-sounding. 

“Stop it.”

“So you do speak.”

“It’s up to you. I can bring you in warm…” 

He rests a hand on the grip of his blaster. “...Or I can bring you in cold.”  

But damn, if there isn’t something about the rougish way he just threatened you in his criminally husky voice that sends that weird-but-pleasant rush down from your stomach to…to…You need to say something back. 

“What a line. Anyway, if you killed me, you’d have to carry me—and I’d weigh more, dead.”

The helmet tilts like he’s sizing you up, and he says, “Your head wouldn’t.” 

Suddenly feeling sprightly, you get to your feet. 

“How about that spaceport, huh?”

You keep up obediently all the way to your destination. Mando leads you to a hangar open under the night sky. There’s his starship. Looks like him: a battered hunk of metal. You follow him up its entry ramp onto a deck that seems to function both as living quarters and a cargo hold; the panel to a closet fresher is wide open, and crates are stacked about and secured with netting. With a craft this size, you expect a crew of at least one other, but no such partner appears. Behind you, the hatch seals, and the air turns stale. 

Mando unslings the rifle from his back. Something to your side catches your attention, and the sight sends you down a spiral of gruesome implications. A slab hangs in a tall frame. You’re face-to-face with a grotesque, metallic form encased in the slab: a Rodian, his spindly fingers clutching the sides of his head and his big bug-eyes glossed over in dark silver. There’s not just one slab; three are suspended in a line along a sliding apparatus. Their victims’ last moments are frozen in time and exhibit individual expressions of horror, pleading, and rage. This is a—he has a—

This hunter has a carbon-freezing unit on his starship. These things come with a not-insignificant chance of death. Oh, look, an empty frame waiting to be filled. Warm or cold, huh? Not much of a choice, now. This is it for you. This is your last day alive. What a shit day to end on. Even so, you’d prefer dying to not dying; if being flash-frozen doesn’t kill you, you’ll be trapped in a void with some unknown level of consciousness, lost in nothingness, voiceless, helpless—

Your captor snaps you out of your thoughts with a sharp tug on the cable. He points straight up, directing you up the ladder at his side. 

Oh. He’s not sealing you in his little freezer, not right now, at least. Too relieved to question anything, you scurry up. As long as he doesn’t acknowledge the hanging bodies, you’ll pretend they aren’t there, too. 

The ladder leads to a passageway, which leads to the flight deck. Mando points to a co-pilot chair, and you ease into it, mind reeling. Where is he taking you? Who’s waiting for you when you get there? And what the hell’s so special about you that he brought you onto his flight deck instead of freezing you? 

Mando lets you off your leash, drops into the pilot seat, and flips switches around him in quick succession. The starship responds to each activation with whirrs and rumbles that come from somewhere beneath your boots, and when Mando eases the throttle forward, all that energy doubles and thrums through your chest. 

Mando takes the controls and lifts off. The ship rises out of the hangar at an angle that makes you cling to your seat until he levels off, and then he soars over the nighttime cityscape and gains speed until you’re shooting like a blaster beam into the black sky. You lean into the curved glass by your side and watch the lights that make up the city below shrink to a dot on the planet’s dark surface.

As you leave the atmosphere, new stars appear one-by-one, and within seconds the velvety expanse of deep space surrounds you. These glimpses of the cosmos are the only part of space travel you like. The moment doesn’t last long. Once Mando steadies his trajectory, he inputs a sequence in the nav system. Starlight stretches into beams, and without any lurch, you’re pulled into the vortex of hyperspace. Mando flips a few switches, abandons the controls, and rests back in his seat. No sigh, no nothing. It’s like he just—powered off. 

There’s a sudden, palpable, uncomfortable intimacy. You’re probably projecting, but it’s there all the same. Your pilot sits close enough that you could reach out your bound hands and touch him—though, that’d be a terrible impulse to indulge. Are you both really going to sit here, this close, and never say a word the whole way? That certainly seems to be Mando’s preference. 

This is going to be an awkward flight.

Chapter Text

Here in the cockpit, it’s dark and cramped. A deep drone and an intermittent creaking fills you with vague unease. Dozens of glowing indicators, some blinking, some static, are scattered around the confined space. This trip could last a while, depending on where your bounty hunter’s taking you, and you crane your head to spy the nav for a clue on where that might be, but you glean nothing and resign yourself to not knowing. 

The ethereal light of hyperspace reflects off Mando’s helmet. Is he ever going to take that thing off? You certainly hope not. Knowing what’s behind that inscrutable exterior would ruin his entire appeal. 

Of all things to feel about him, you really shouldn’t feel intrigued, but you can’t help it—it’s like this guy was made to arouse the parts of your psyche you’re least proud of. Most men wear authority like an ill-fitting costume, but this one exudes a pure something that makes you want to test how tempered that steel really is. And as you’ve already found, that’s likely to get you into trouble. 

Time passes at an unknown pace. Lightspeed travel never fails to be painfully dull, and all you have for entertainment is your own thoughts, which grow filthier the longer you sit unoccupied. From what you’ve heard about hunters, they’re certainly no bastions of chastity—or sobriety…or legality, really. Mandalorian hunters, though? You’re not sure. In any case, the guy’s gotta blow off steam somehow, right? Makes you wonder if all that competence and assertiveness carries over into his off-hours activities. What’s it like to be the recipient of all that? You have some ideas, which grow more vivid the more you hypothesize. He probably goes straight for what he wants; he’d use you as a means for his end; pin you down, fill you up, and you’d take it all like a good—

You blink out of your indecent trance. Rein it in. Getting worked up, right here and now with no outlet, would be self-inflicted torture. Funny how Mando’s sitting only an arm’s length away but has no clue the utter lechery polluting your mind. If he’s thinking of you at all, he must think you’re plotting something, the way you keep glancing over. 

Oh, you’re plotting, all right. 

Why not turn fantasy into reality? You’re right here. He’s right there. What have you got to lose? The worst he can do is say no. 

…Actually, the worst he can do is get fed up and throw you in the freezer. 

You’ll just have to be careful. You break the sacred silence with a sigh, and when you speak, your voice sounds like someone else’s. 

“I’m bored.” 

Mando doesn’t respond in the slightest. You didn’t expect him to. 

“Are you bored?” you probe. “You must get bored as hell in this thing.” 

Still, nothing.

“I get it. You don’t want to talk. We don’t have to.” Your tone sweetens. “We could do something else.”

If that at all piques his interest, you can’t tell. With him giving you nothing to work with, there’s no tactful way to bring it up. You slide to the edge of your seat in hope that he’ll acknowledge you, which, he doesn’t. 

“Here’s the thing: you’re you, and I’m me, and you and me are trapped here together for the next…however long, and time’s going to pass no matter what. We could do something together to make it go by more, uh, enjoyably? If you like that sort of thing, that is. With someone like me. Of course we’d have to get a little creative here…but that just adds to it, don’t you—”

Mando says, startling you, “I don’t bargain with quarry.” 

Ah. Yes. That’s you. Quarry. Of course he assumes you’re scheming for your freedom. Still, the fact that he spoke is enough to spur you on. 

“I’m not bargaining anything. I know full well what’s happening when this ship lands. I’m just bored, and when I’m bored, I get horny.” Ah, geez—you’ve could’ve kept that last part to yourself. You shake your head dismissively and say, “Anyway, I do have one condition.”

Mando doesn’t ask the condition. You tell him anyway. 

“Keep the helmet on. It’s kinda doing it for me, not knowing.”

With thinly-veiled contempt, he says, “My helmet is part of my religion. It never comes off.” 

It takes a few moments to process the implications of this new information. He means in front of other people, right? How would he eat, among other things? 

“But—I’ve definitely seen Mandoes—” 

For the first time, he turns and looks at you, and for some reason you regret starting this sentence. “...With them…off,” you finish. 

“You’ve seen thieves. Or apostates,” he corrects. “A Mandalorian who removes their helmet is a Mandalorian no more.” 

His words sound borrowed. He’s repeating someone else. His explanation leaves you no less confused. But then, religion has always had that effect on you. 

“I’m just saying—” You give an innocent shrug. “Works for me.” 

Mando regards you for several heart-hammering seconds. You have zero clue what he’s trying to communicate. 

“If you don’t want to, just say you don’t want to,” you say. 

“I don’t,” he says, “bargain with quarry.”

You squint at him. He didn’t say…Ugh, you’re reading into it. You turn away and decide to keep your mouth shut. You’ll never open it again. You’ll sit here in quiet embarrassment ‘till you die of old age, or you reach your destination, whichever happens first. You stare into swirling hyperspace and wonder if you could use it to hypnotize yourself into forgetting the last couple minutes. 

The pit in your stomach anchors you to your seat, and your thoughts drift to what lies ahead, namely the consequences of your life choices. Suddenly you see this starship, this cockpit, less as a prison cell and more as your last refuge before certain doom. It’s strangely cozy in here, all dark and still while chaos washes around the ship. The ambience might be enough to lull you to sleep. Resting back in your seat, you face away from Mando, zone out on the viewport next to you, and pretend you’re on an all-expenses-paid trip to Canto Bight instead of whatever hellhole you’re being transported to. 

Just as your eyes grow heavy, something silver flashes in the reflection on the glass. The translucent image of Mando’s helmet visor comes into focus. It’s trained on you. With another flash in the glass, he turns away. 

Moments later, he looks over again. No. Absolutely not. You are not going to look back. 

When you look back, you shrug as if to say, What?, and Mando says, “Taking the tracker was clever. You’re the first to try that.”

“Oh. Thanks.” It comes out flatter than you meant it to. Mando turns away again. Apparently, that’s all he had to say. 

“How’d you find me without it?” you ask. 

“That’s not for you to know.”

“Fine. May I know where we’re going?” you ask.

You don’t expect an answer at all, but Mando relents and says, “Nevarro.”

“Ugh. Nevarro. I was hoping you’d say Canto Bight. Or Spira. I could do with a beach right about now.”

“No such luck.” 

Huh. He’s talking. Saying things. Maybe you can sneak in at least one more question before he closes up again. “Why haven’t you put me in carbonite?” you ask. “You did it to the others.”

“You’re worth more credits alive.” Mando draws and releases a breath like he means to say something else but decides against it. The next moment, he says it anyway. “And I don’t need to. You know how to behave.”

You almost choke on nothing. So matter-of-fact. He really shouldn’t say shit like that, not to you. Without even thinking, you counter, “Do I? Misbehaving is kind of my speciality. You’ve gotten a pretty good demonstration of that.”

The tilt of Mando’s helmet suggests a hint of mischief. “You can—when you’re given a good reason to,” he says. 

He has to know what he’s doing. All right. Yeah. If he’s decided he wants to play, you’ll play along, nice and easy. “I guess that’s true,” you say. “Many can’t handle me the way I need to be handled, but, well…you’ve proven you can.”

You let your eyes rove all over him, just like you’ve already done, but this time with his knowledge. Mando seems to short-circuit. Snaps his gaze away. Clears a catch in his throat only to give a clipped, “Yeah.” What’s this? He’s flustered? That’s not—hang on, you like flustered on him. 

“You didn’t get attached, did you? I mean, hard not to, tied together like that,” you say.

“I’m making it worth the trouble,” he says. 

“Right, took you a bit longer than planned. Guess giving you trouble worked in my favor, then—I could be down there frozen solid…” You grace him with one of your most impudent smiles. “…But you decided to keep me warm up here with you.”

Mando spins in his chair and gets up. Your smile drops, and you resist the instinct to flinch. Is this good? Bad? You don’t know, but you’re petrified of how he can become a threat in a split-second. Mando moves to leave the cockpit but stops in front of the closed door and asks flatly, “Do you need food? Water? The privy?”

“…No, thank—”

The panel slides open, Mando disappears through it, and his rapid footsteps retreat down the passage to who knows where. He leaves you alone at the helm of his ship and with the way out wide open. Risky, on his part—but what could you accomplish in his absence that wouldn’t result in swift retribution? He’s right. You do know how to behave, given certain conditions. 

Guess he’s done being around you. You pushed it too far. And you were finally getting along.

Once again, you’re left only with your thoughts. Damn these binders. Your arms and shoulders are starting to ache from being confined to this awkward posture. You’ve never had a pair of these on for this long—and these are the real deal. 

Mando’s footsteps return much sooner than expected. He marches back through the door, retakes his seat, and fixes his focus on hyperspace. Surprisingly, he speaks right away. 

“What you’ve offered is complicated for me.” 

Thank fuck he can’t see how your eyebrows just shot straight up. You’re about to ask what he means when Mando gives two, solemn taps on the side of his helmet. You scramble to respond. “I—I already said I don’t—I like not knowing. Doesn’t bother me.”

“I’ve heard that before. Didn’t end well.”

“What didn’t end well?”

“I’ve learned it’s a risk I can’t take.”

“What’s a risk?”

Mando makes an open-handed gesture that doesn’t explain a single thing. Geez-Huttese, you’re going to strangle him with his own cloak. 

“Mando—”

“She—” 

You both cut off at the same time. Oh, shit. Did you hear that right? There’s a she? 

“She?” you ask. “She…took it off?”

“Tried to.”

“Oh. Um…you mean… during?”

Mando turns his head and gives one, slow nod. 

“Oh.”

So. Some lady tried to yank off the helmet and get a look at him. Lied to him, tricked him into thinking she’d respect his religious code. Then…

Now, you’ve got what some may consider a faulty moral compass, but business is one thing; pleasure is another. You wouldn’t do that. There’s no satisfaction in that. That’s pure sadism, and not the fun kind. What do you do with that revelation? It just hangs in the air, grim and vulnerable. Mando deserves a more meaningful response than Oh, but you feel weird about it, for some reason. Surely you’ve got the guts to utter two simple words. 

“I’m sorry,” you say quietly and add, “Hope you kicked her into a Sarlaac pit.” 

This earns you an amused huff from the Mandalorian, and you hide your smile by redirecting your gaze to your bound hands in your lap. 

In your earlier fantasy, you had a clear mental picture of your captor. That picture’s gotten fuzzy. It sounds like he might not be as experienced as you imagined, but that only appeals to another side of you, one that wouldn’t mind showing him what he’s been missing out on. There’s a very simple solution to this complication. Maybe he already realizes it. Given the circumstances, maybe he needs you to suggest it. 

“Next time,” you say, trying to sound cool and impersonal, “you could ask to restrain your partner. Then you wouldn’t have to worry. You could…be in control.”

Voice tight, Mando replies, “I’ll…keep that in mind. I take it that— that —doesn’t bother you?” 

Your soft no betrays just how much it doesn’t bother you. Excruciatingly slowly, Mando swivels a quarter-turn. You lean back and meet his unaffected stare with as much nonchalance as you can muster. 

“The job is to turn you into the guild,” Mando says, “and I always get the job done.”

“I don’t doubt it. And I mean what I say: No hard feelings.”

Neither of you moves. The cockpit seems to have shrunk even smaller; you’re hyper-aware of how close you sit, and yet there’s a league of personal space to broach. Your sordid fantasies return in flashes. One move from Mando, and it’s all over—but he doesn’t move. Is he waiting on you to act? Should you? 

Your heart is so heavy with dread it might form a sinkhole in your chest, but you slowly slide from your chair and lower yourself to the floor beside him, right next to his knee. You wait for him to demand you get back in your place or at least question what you’re doing, but he does neither. He watches. 

Kneeling below him, you find Mando even more imposing. His broad, armored shoulders and chest rise and relax, his gloved hands rest on his thighs, and his legs fall slightly open. You lift your bound hands and lay them cautiously on Mando’s leg guard. The worn metal is cool under your palms. There’s no flinch, no change in his breath. You stay like this, afraid to move or speak lest you dispel whatever magic is holding this impossibility together. You search his helmet visor, as if it’s going to tell you what’s on his mind. It’s time to let him know what’s on yours. 

“You seem to me a man who doesn’t play as hard as he works.”

With a delicate brush of your fingers, you trace a ridge on Mando’s thigh plate. One hasty move could make him think you’re going for his weapons. You don’t want that. 

“I guess you’re not like other men. Lesser men would cave to the offer for a good, mindless fuck—but you? You don’t need that. You can go without.”

He tilts his head. You tilt yours, too. Oh, did that strike a nerve? Or is he toying with you? Any moment he could decide he’s had enough of your foolishness and let you sit the rest of the journey on the floor, humiliated and frustrated. 

You venture from his armor to his unprotected inner thigh and dig into him, just a little. Under the rough material of his pants hides warmth, softness, and muscle. Your gazes stay connected while Mando lets you wander where you don’t belong, lets you feel him in ways you shouldn’t. You can’t help yourself. You claw insistently up the inside of his leg, higher and higher, until—there’s a squeak of leather; his fists clench. Mando’s gaze falls to his lap to watch what you’re doing. You feel over all his warm, rigid length and give a soft laugh of delight. His chest heaves, and with a ragged exhale saturated with lust, the back of his helmet drops to his headrest—just for a moment, before he seems to remember he has to keep an eye on you. 

You keep stroking him with all the care you can give and watch adoringly as his stomach tenses and relaxes with his every responsive, hitched breath. All that tightly-wound stoicism finally unraveling makes you…well, it makes you ready for anything. 

He gives no resistance as you wedge yourself between his legs and bend down to run your tongue up the tented crotch of his pants. But there’s no appreciative groan like you hope; instead he reaches over you to the controls. With two flipped switches and one button press, the ship lurches like it just crashed into an asteroid. You yelp and almost smack your head on the underside of the console, but Mando yanks you back. A glance out the viewport shows that you’ve just exited hyperspace into empty deep space. 

Well. You weren’t ready for that. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Changing course.” 

But he doesn’t touch the flight controls or plot anything new into the nav. It’s uncanny, knowing that you’re still traveling fast but with no accompanying sensation or relative movement through the immense nothingness. Stars stay put. Deep space is still.

“I’m letting you go. I’m not turning you in,” he says. 

Your heart makes its own violent lurch. “Oh. Okay. Um. Why?”

Mando adjusts the crotch of his pants. “I’m not doing this and then taking a reward for you.” 

“Well…all right with me.” You put your hands back on him and say in a sultry tone, “We’ll fuck. Part ways. Pretend this never happened—”

“I want you off my ship.” 

You let go of him. 

“If I turned you in after—being with you, if I took the reward…I’m not doing that. If I—” 

“Okay, so don’t—”

He clamps his gloved hand over your mouth, which does nothing to clear your lustful fog. “If I…sleep with you,” he says in an undertone, “and then let you go, I’ll never know for sure why you offered. If you did it because you thought you had to.” 

You say, muffled, “I’ve been telling you—” He drops his hand. “—That’s not how it is.”

“Maybe. You’re a good liar.” 

“I’m a terrible liar,” you lie. “Mando, this is way less complicated than you’re making it out to be. I’m off the hook, right? Now we’re just two people on a starship. No hunter, no quarry. And I still…” You hate that heat crawls up your neck and face. “I’m still bored.”

“You said—say if I don’t want to,” he says. 

“Yeah, I did.”

“I don’t want to.”

All you want is to keep touching him and make him lose his composure all over again, but for once in your life you exercise some self-control and keep your hands in your lap. You nod in acceptance. That’s that. The other arguments you had lined up don’t matter. 

“I’ll drop you on…somewhere.” Mando flips through menus on the nav, searching his maps. 

You eye him with suspicion. “What happened to ‘I always get the job done?’” 

“…Change of plans.”

You should feel relieved.  You do feel relieved. Really fucking relieved. But you won’t believe this ordeal is actually over until your feet are on some planet’s surface, and you walk away with your hands free. 

“Tatooine?” Mando suggests. “You’d find your kind of work there.”

“Please, something with no more than one sun.”

“You could find more honest work.”

“Like what, bounty hunting?”

An alarm goes off. Lights on the console turn red. That means something bad, right? Two ships appear on both side viewports. It’s—

“Ah, fuck.”

“Dank farrik.”

X-Wings. The fucking New Republic—a two-ship patrol. Ever since Endor, they’ve been crawling all over the Outer Rim making sure the other guys don’t come back. You peek over the console. You can’t make out the faces of the pilots from this distance. 

A woman’s no-nonsense voice comes in over the transmitter. “Razor Crest Em-One-Eleven, this is Umbra Nine. Come in.”

Mando sends you what you think is a warning not to speak. As far as you’re concerned, you’re not here. You stay huddled on the floor, out of view. He reluctantly answers the call. 

“This is Razor Crest.”

“Razor Crest, what’s your destination?”

“I’m headed to…Tatooine.” 

You glare up at him. 

“Are you aware your transponder is offline?” Umbra Nine asks. 

Mando responds, stilted, “Yes, I’m aware. I’m pre-Empire surplus. I’m not required to run a beacon.” Sounds like he’s given this justification a few times. 

“Negative. Your information is outdated. Under New Republic legislation, all spacecraft are required to run a beacon. Consider this a warning. Get it online.”

“Oh,” he says with feigned surprise. “Understood. I’ll do that.” 

“Stay safe. Umbra Nine out.”

The two starfighters peel off and disappear from view. You finally get up off the floor and plop into the co-pilot seat. 

“Pre-Empire, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Better get that beacon running like the lady said to.”

“Sure.”

“So what were you saying about honest work?”

You can’t believe this is happening. You can’t believe that without even trying, you seduced a bounty hunter into letting you go, and you didn’t even get to fuck—have to— have to fuck him. Eh, you can’t deny that you’re disappointed. Damn him and his stupid, functional moral compass. 

You and Mando agree on a planet in this sector that isn’t a sandy oven and has an infrastructure large enough for you to get by. You approach a frosty-looking planet called Gloem. At the base of a snow-capped mountain range sits its largest town, and what you see on your brief fly-over makes you wary. It’s a meager civilization. There’s no spaceport, just an open yard near a tiny refuling station where other starships and landspeeders are stowed. Looks like you’re about to be the unwelcome stranger in town. 

You and Mando stand at the open hatch in the cargo hold. You’re already freezing your tits off. Mando presses a control on his vambrace, and your binders come unlocked and dangle off your wrists. He takes them. The cold air stings where they rubbed your skin raw, and you work out the ache in your arms through a couple stretches, relishing the ability to move.

Mando clocks the empty sheath at your hip. “Your knife,” he says grimly.

“Yeah. You dodged it and left it in the street.” 

Looking down at the side of his calf, Mando sighs a great, big, weary sigh. He reaches down, draws his own knife from his boot, and offers you its handle. “You’re going to need a weapon.”

You don’t like this. You don’t like being given things. Taking is one thing, being given…always gives a sense of foreboding right along with it. You always end up paying for it later. Instead of taking the knife, you cross your arms. 

“Nah. Don’t do that. I’m more deadly with my wits, anyway. I mean, you’ve seen—”

Mando bypasses you and slides the knife into the sheath. Seems it’s about the same size as your old knife. 

“Your knife fits my sheath.”

“It vibrates.” 

“It does not.”

“It’s a Mandalorian vibroknife.” 

You inspect the knife and find a discreet switch on its handle. The blade blurs, and your grip buzzes. Ridiculous. When you carefully raise it to your ear, you hear high-pitched ringing. You take a few practice slashes and thrusts in the air from which Mando doesn’t back away. Nice weight, good balance. Hell, this knife is way better than your other knife. 

You consider it in your palm and say, “Well, I do like a little danger.” 

The fabric at his neck bobs as he swallows. Yeah, let him think about that. Mando unclips the tracking fob from his belt and holds it by its antenna for you to take. “You stole it, fair and square. That’s what I’m telling the guild.”

“The truth, then,” you say, taking the fob from him.

“The truth they need to know.”

This is it. There’s not much more left to say. Time to part ways and pretend this never happened, just like you wanted. 

“Not to seem ungrateful,” you say, “but I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Don’t you want your credits? You know, for your trouble?” 

“You trying to change my mind?”

“No, no, no. I just—”

“Then get out of here.”

But you don’t get out of there. You get up close to Mando and peer into the darkness on his visor. “Sure you don’t want to sleep in a free bed tonight? On me. The room, I mean.” 

Mando leans into you. He’s so damn overwhelming—it makes you want to back into the nearest wall and let him overwhelm you some more. 

“Get off my ship. Now.” 

With one, last, coy smile, you turn and head down the ramp, aware of Mando watching you leave. At the end, you give a light-hearted hop from the ramp to the hard, frozen ground, and something tickles the back of your brain. He could’ve done anything with the tracking fob. But he gave it back to you. Why didn’t he just destroy it? He could probably crush it in one hand. 

You pull the tracker out of your pocket and turn to look back up the ramp. Framed in the entrance to his ship, Mando stands up there, squared to you, severe as ever. You toss the fob up the ramp. He snatches it out of the air. Judging by the way he weighs it in his palm and relaxes on one leg, you did what he hoped you would. 

“Come find me again, sometime,” you say.

The entrance hatch closes behind you. With Mando’s knife at your hip and your tracking fob on his belt, you part ways.

Chapter Text

There’s no good reason to go out of his way back to the planet he left her on. Din Djarin has other priorities. Just like she said: You don’t need that. You can go without.  

Besides, she’s probably already long gone. 

Instead, Din keeps doing the job and keeps bringing in much-needed resources for the Tribe. He also keeps up the habit of checking the tracker on every world his hunts bring him to. It becomes rote, an added step to his routine weapons check before setting out. It never pings.

Until one day, it does. 

Din’s heart thuds against the duraplast on his chest. Is he seeing right? Here in his hand, the fob glows red, fading in and out, and it pings slow and mellow. Din shakes his head and scoffs. What the hell is she doing on Tatooine? 

You throw the Sabacc card in front of you and take aim with your knife. Elbow up, forward step, straight swing, and release—

The point of the vibroknife stabs into the face of the card, pinning it to the board and earning a few whoops from your onlookers, who sit at the bar and half socialize, half watch. Some even clink credit tokens into your empty glass on the counter. You go pry your weapon out of the board. It leaves a gouge. Even without the vibro part of the vibroknife, it tends to destroy what it touches. 

You stroll back and once again take your stance. As you focus, the surrounding chatter fades away. A breath in and out. Ready. Throw another card. Elbow up, forward step, swing—

From behind, someone grabs your throwing arm and squeezes. Oh, hell, no. You blindly punch your other elbow back and meet something way more solid than just a torso. Ouch, what the—

The sudden quiet wasn’t just the intensity of your focus; everyone nearby had fallen silent because of who’s behind you. The other half of the cantina and the band still carry on, oblivious, but all at once, with the frantic scraping of metal stools, your onlookers scatter. Thanks, guys. Thank goodness you’re confronting not the mug of an attacker but the helmet of a specific Mandalorian. 

“This was supposed to be for protection,” he says. 

Mando lets go of your arm. You’re not weak in the knees. You’re not suddenly having trouble breathing. How do you breathe, again? You were doing it fine a few seconds ago. 

“I know,” you retort. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m training.” You gesture to the board and its many wounds. 

“At a cantina. With an audience.”

You point your knife at him. “Not anymore, thanks to you.” You retake your stance, and Mando gives you space. You can feel him watching. You have to make this one. With unexpected power behind your swing, the knife practically teleports from your hand to your target, splitting the card in two—and the blade all but disappears into the board. You’re cool about it. You go retrieve your weapon. The moment your back is turned to Mando, you can no longer contain the idiotic grin that overtakes your face. 

Uh. Well. Knife’s not coming out of the—fuck—It takes a two-handed, mighty yank to pull it out. That’s enough for tonight. You sheathe the weapon and cross to the bar counter. Mando follows. You collect damp credit tokens from your glass and dry them on your vest, one-by-one. 

“Your hair is different,” Mando points out. 

“Yep.”

He doesn’t say it looks good. You’re not sure if it’s because he doesn’t think so or if he doesn’t know it’s expected. He hasn’t changed, as far as you can tell. It has only been a few months. There were times you wondered if he was a spice-induced hallucination, and the only reason you knew he wasn’t was the vibroknife at your side. 

Patrons ease back into their abandoned seats, seemingly confused that a Mando-instigated fight didn’t happen. Tokens safely in your purse, you hop onto the barstool. Mando doesn’t take the one next to you, instead choosing to lean on the counter. Does he plan on not staying long? 

“I’d get you a drink, but…” You gesture to his helmet.

“Thanks anyway.”

You order another one for yourself. Your hands need something to do. When you imagined this moment, you were always cool and collected, but right now you’re your own living vibroknife—vibrating head-to-toe with nervous energy that you hope isn’t apparent. He’s here. He’s actually here. Standing right next to you, of all places in the galaxy. 

“You’re probably wondering why I’m on this bantha’s asshole of a planet,” you say. 

“The other one too cold?”

That makes you laugh. “Work. Not elaborating. Why are you here?” 

“Need some repairs done that I can’t put off any longer.”

You assume he means for the Razor Crest. The bartending droid places your spotchka within reach. Turning to face Mando, you rest an arm over the back of your stool and take a sip of your drink before asking pointedly, “What brings you to this cantina?” 

Mando takes a moment to reply. “I was…bored.”

You take another, much larger sip of your spotchka. 

“What about you?” he asks. “You bored?”

“Bored to death,” you say. “You’re so…boring.” Your pants rustle as you shift in your seat and sensually cross one leg over the other, the toe of your boot almost touching him. “What about my suggestion? You get a chance to try it?” 

“What suggestion?”

“You know.”

“Not yet.”

So deliberately, in a way that’s impossible to mistake for anything but exactly what it is, Mando skims gloved fingers up the side of your leg. Every nerve ending in your body lights up. You’re scandalized. He knows people can see, right? If he does, he doesn’t care; he rests his palm on your calf. To this, you throw back your glass, chug your entire drink, slam it down, slide off the stool—a little light-headed—and toss an undetermined number of your newly-earned credits onto the counter. Mando’s already got your wrist, but he doesn’t have to drag you out of there—you’re right behind him. Heads turn as you ditch the cantina. 

Three moons of different brightnesses and hues hang in the sky. It’s chilly. Always surprising how cold nights get on Tatooine. You don’t know where you’re going. Is he headed somewhere? You’re just walking, and fast, almost a jog. You’ve gone only a dozen paces down the quiet, dirt alley when Mando looks at you. You don’t know what exactly is playing across your face, but whatever it is makes him halt and pivot toward you. 

In an instantaneous, wordless, mutual agreement, Mando backs you into the side of the cantina. His hands are on you, hungry and searching; he gropes your waist and hips like he’s going to undress you right then and there. His thigh splits your legs, and as the ridge on his thigh guard presses at the perfect spot, you stifle a whimper, which makes him press into you even harder, and you can’t help but roll your hips against him. 

You almost reach up to hold onto his cloaked shoulders, and you thank whatever deity other people believe in for giving you the foresight to realize that’s a bad idea. Instead you keep your hands low and feel over the soft, unarmored parts of his abdomen. Grinding on his thigh, you say, breathless, “There’s an inn. Not far. Let’s go.”

Neither of you seems to want to break apart. You have to, if you want this to go anywhere. You can’t fuck in the street. Even this is indecent. Anyone could round the corner and see you. Mando dares to slide up your waist and feel over your breast. Oh, fuck, he’s having just as much trouble controlling his breath as you are. Even though it’s impossible, you swear you can feel it on your face. 

“Room. Let’s go,” you insist, arching into his touch. 

“No, back to Razor Crest.”

You give an unsure laugh. “Locked in your ship?” 

Mando pries his hands off you and answers seriously, “The hull’s reinforced with duralloy plating. Figured it’d be more…soundproof.”

That holds quite a promise. It’s enough to override your misgivings. “Good point. All right,” you say, bracing him away from you, “let’s go fuck on the Razor Crest.”

Your back is naked to a cold, metal wall. Your arms are suspended overhead by a grappling line that’s secured to familiar binders around your wrists. Your bare legs are hooked around Mando’s hips. You hold onto him for dear life. With a bruising grip on your ass, Mando presses you into the wall, smushing your breasts up against his chest plate, and the top of his helmet rests on your temple—you have no choice but to be swallowed up in the darkness that hides his eyes while he rams in and out of you. It’s rough, relentless, just how you like it. You can feel him taking his frustration out on you. You don’t mind being the vessel for it. You don’t mind him taking what he needs, because it’s exactly what you need, too: someone to make you stay put and make you feel something. 

As soon as you had set foot on the Razor Crest, everything became about getting you into this position and getting him inside you. It seemed like Mando had thought this through. Some cargo netting came down off the wall to reveal hooks, and he used the entire whipcord from his vambrace to restrain you in a way that would keep your hands above your head and out of play. It worked beautifully. He could do whatever he wanted to you. You couldn’t do anything to him.

The way he touched you, at first, wasn’t at all like his greedy, back-alley groping; this time, he approached your naked body with reverence. The only thing he removed off his own body was his weapons, something you questioned as the leather of his gloves trailed down the underside of your arm. 

“You gonna at least lose the gloves?” 

“Thought you said I’d be in control.”

“Yeah. Just figured you’d—”

“I’ll touch you how I want to touch you.” 

And that’s when you knew that whatever was about to happen, it wouldn’t be lackluster.

It didn’t take him long to discover just how defenseless you were to him and how yielding your body could be when it’s teased the right way, and you responded in the only way your restraints allowed—you arched from the wall and writhed against him, your slick cunt rubbing all over his hard cock still in his pants. Mando’s revenge for your insolence was to overpower you and give it right back, and you lost yourself in the feel of him, in your helplessness to his wandering hands, in the rocking of your bodies, in the anticipation of the real thing. 

Now, fully joined together, subject to the man no longer denying himself of you—getting fucked senseless by a Mandalorian in full armor—every thought turns to mush and comes out as one wrecked moan after another that fills the hull and reflects back to you just how carnal you sound. Soundproof, it’s soundproof. Not like you really care right now. Mando’s strained groans and gratified hisses are loud in your ears. The tension in your arms already hurts, but the pain is nothing compared to how much you need him to keep doing this to you. 

Mando slows down and regains stamina, dragging hot and wet in and out of you. You keep an iron grip around him with your legs but take a moment to relax against the wall and let your head fall back with your eyes closed. When you open them again, you’re looking up at your own locked-away hands. The sight makes you want to laugh in disbelief. You can’t believe you proposed this. Scratch that, you can believe it. You’re just astounded it’s actually, finally happening. 

“This fucking leash you put on me. That’s when this all started,” you say. 

“Didn’t know what the hell you were trying, making me drag you along,” Mando says. “You just like being difficult? Is that it?”

“Little bit.”

“Look where being difficult’s gotten you.” 

“I don’t know. Seems to be working out for me.”

You laugh at your own glibness, but your laugh turns into a gasp as Mando drives deep, invading you at what feels like the core of your very being, and he picks up speed and pounds out the desire to do anything but moan and take all of him over, and over, and over again. He’s merciless to the end. He doesn’t tell you when he comes—not in words, at least. Keeping you pinned to the wall, and with his cock still hard in your cunt, Mando rests on you, his helmet heavy on your chest. 

“Fuck,” he says, panting. Also breathless, you gulp and nod. Fuck, this is crazy. You wiggle your fingers and summon circulation back into your hands. This was exactly what you were looking for, but you’re also nowhere near done. You haven’t gotten off yet.

Once you’ve both caught your breath, Mando withdraws from your cunt, and you carefully climb off of him with a wince at the burn radiating through your limbs. He hides himself; he quickly tucks his still-erect cock back into his pants, the front of which are a mess with the same stickiness that clings to your inner thighs. Then he steps back to assess his handiwork—you’re sweaty, spent, and smiling. As Mando scans you up and down, the only part of him that moves is the helmet. You don’t know what process is going on under that thing, and you’re not about to interrupt it. 

Finally, he says, “I want to try something.”

“Do it.”

“I didn’t tell you what it is.”

“Mando, I’m not in the mood to be asked. I just want to be told.”

Mando sighs. He reaches down to your clothing discarded on the floor. From the pile, he draws out the vibroknife. Your whole body flinches. 

“For fuck’s sake, Mando, that was a joke! I do not want—”

“Easy, easy. I’m making a blindfold.” Mando finds the end of his cloak and shears off a long strip of its tattered edge; the blade runs through the fabric like it’s nothing. “That’s why I was trying to tell you,” he scolds.

“All right, a blindfold. Wouldn’t be my first time. Are you taking the helmet off?” All the possibilities for what he wants to try on you, and why it requires this step, form goosebumps on your skin. “Is that okay with your…your code, or whatever?” 

He folds the strip of cloth over a few times, holds it up to you, and says, “Close your eyes.” 

You obey, and Mando gently turns your face by your chin and knots the makeshift blindfold at the back of your head. The fabric smells singed.

“What can you see?” he asks.

“Nothing. I see nothing.”

“That’s the truth?”

“I swear.”

There’s a mechanical click and a long hiss, and something heavy is rested on the floor. Mando lets out a sigh. You can’t tell if it’s out of relief or trepidation.

“You’ve done this before?” you ask. “Blindfold, helmet off?” 

“No.” 

The resonance of his unfiltered voice is unexpected. Equally unexpected is what his answer incites in you—a possessive feeling, a prideful notion, something you don’t exactly like but can’t shrug off. This mysterious warrior with his mysterious rules, and he’s likely breaking one of them for you, and only you. At what point in his life did he adopt these beliefs? Are you the first he’ll taste? A part of you is embarrassed to ask, but you want to know. 

“Have you ever kissed anyone?” 

Mando hesitates and says, like he’s only just now recalling it, “I have. Before I swore the Creed. As a very young boy. There was a…girl in our village.” 

The possessive feeling melts away at his voice, heavy with a memory you can only imagine. 

“Ooh, on the lips?” you ask. “Were you a brash young boy?” 

“On the cheek. Then…she kicked me and ran away.” 

“I’ll try not to kick you.”

“At least you can’t run away.”

Mando’s boots fall in slow, grave steps toward you, and his shallow breathing echoes yours, growing louder the closer he comes, until you can practically feel him inches away. His presence is suffocating, and he’s not even touching you. You rely on the wall and your restraints to hold you up—and you find the resistance and the hard surface at your back oddly comforting; it puts you in a physical space, acting as an oasis in the void. Out of the darkness, Mando’s legs brush yours, and his gloved hands take your sides. Warm breath precedes the prickle of stubble on your cheek as he presses a short kiss there. It elicits a slight hitch in your breath. 

So, that’s him. It’s strange. That simple brush with his humanity changes his presence entirely. No face conjures itself in your imagination—instead he is made up of only warmth, scent, and sensation. Instead of trying for your mouth next, this man you’ve come to know as Mando goes for near your earlobe and lingers longer on your skin. From there, his kisses become more frequent but no less demure. You’ve never felt so delicate and sensitive. Hard to believe this is the same man who’s thrown you to the ground more than once and just finished fucking you into this wall at your back. 

When Mando reaches your hairline, he draws a deep inhale followed by a sigh thick with satisfaction. Just like you can smell soap and musk on him, he must smell you, too. This seems to give him a more mature craving; he eagerly skims his lips over your covered ear and along your jaw, lavishes you down your neck, and his stubbled chin grazes the dip of your throat—immediately soothed by his wet tongue that he’s just gained the confidence to use. The effect on you is instant: an arousal so visceral that your knees give, your thighs clench, your weight pulls down on your restraints, and a moan escapes on your next breath. Against your skin a groan reverberates deep in his throat, too, one that makes you almost frightened of what you’ve both just unleashed in one another. 

Just as a fresh wave of need washes over you, Mando withdraws completely. You’re about to protest when there’s the sound of a buckle being undone, followed by various mechanisms and zippers, and then things start clattering to the floor. It doesn’t take him nearly as long as you thought it would—before you know it, he’s back, now just as smooth, hot, and sweaty as you are. 

With nothing between you now, Mando scoops you up in his arms and begins an unhurried exploration of your body, starting where he left off on your throat. It’s like he’s on a quest to learn how every inch of you feels on his lips and tastes on his tongue. All you can do is hang there, completely helpless to his curiosity, and let your whimpers tell him where you’d like him to linger. While his mouth seeks your most tender spots, he takes handfuls of your softer parts, gets to know your curves and dips with his own bare fingers. You’re swept up in experiencing yourself in the way he wants and at the pace he wants. This isn’t what you signed up for. This much careful attention can’t possibly be for you, you silly thing. And yet, here he is, giving it to you anyway. Your eyes grow warm. Your throat constricts. You’re thankful for the blindfold. It’s too much; of all things, this makes you consider asking to pause. 

Your flash of emotion gets knocked out of you by raw lust when he figures out how to lick and suck on your breasts in a way that makes your cunt envious—and it only gets worse the further down your body he goes. Fuck, you want it. The tingles he spread all over your skin compound and redirect to your loins in anticipation. 

His knees pop. From below you, Mando commands, “Open your legs.”

Please—fuck…y-yes…

Both with and without words, you give direction that he puts into practice. Wonderfully obscene, wet noises come from between your legs. He just doesn’t do anything half-hearted, does he? For a few terrible seconds, Mando stops what he’s doing and asks, “Am I doing it right?” 

“Does it sound like you’re doing it right?”

“Yeah,” he says. He gets back to work, drawing more affirming noises out of you. Before you know it, the true climb to climax begins. All the desire he’s ever inspired in you culminates while he coaxes your clit into slavery to his tongue. You lift a leg over his shoulder and grind on his face, tensing and pulling on your restraints so hard your arms start shaking. “Fuck, Mando, need to come,” you whisper. 

“Mm, you need to?” he asks, muffled by pussy. 

“Yes, need it. So close.” 

“You need to come.” There’s a teasing lilt in his voice that’s entirely new. You don’t like where this is going. He unburies his face from your cunt, and you want to yell at him for it.

“Keep—”

Mando slips your leg off his shoulder, stands up, and replaces his mouth with gentle fingers at your clit. Now his cheek is against yours, his breath right in your ear and your scent on his face. You try to grind onto his fingers, but the more you search for the pressure you desperately crave, the less he gives. You ache for it. Just a little more, and you’ll get there. You’ll gush onto his hand. Just a little more. He doesn’t give you the little more you need. His fingers abandon your clit. You let out a frustrated whine. 

He growls in your ear, “You don’t need it. You can go without.”

And Mando leaves you entirely, letting you dangle there and rut against nothing. You seethe. He is being evil, and you love it. “Oh, fuck you!” you shout into the darkness, rattling your restraints. “You’re lucky I can’t get at you! I’d—I’d…” You falter. Your lust-addled brain can’t come up with any good threats. 

Mando’s bare feet pad across the floor, away from you. 

“Where are you going?”

He challenges, “You’d what?” 

With that, your binders come unlocked with a click, and you almost collapse with the sudden freedom. The restraints clang against the wall behind you. Tingles spread up your arms as blood rushes back into them, and the shock of it all abates your built-up arousal. You freeze in place. You’re afraid to move. No, no, you don’t like this. You could ruin everything with a simple motion. You have the power to obliterate his trust. You don’t want to. It would be so easy. 

“Mando?” you call, sounding more panicked than you’d like. 

Keeping one hand anchored to the wall behind you, you reach out blindly and meet nothing. The sensation of him pierces the unknown; a warm hand takes yours. You leave the wall and come to what you think is the middle of the cargo hold, and Mando takes your other hand. You’re standing there, holding hands, like you’re about to exchange vows or something. His grip is tight. 

“Why this?” you ask. 

“Because…I—I want…” 

You know what he wants. 

“Hold onto me—my arms,” you say. 

Mando’s grip relaxes and slides from your hands to your swelling wrists; the binders are replaced by his soft fingers. With him holding onto you like that, you reach out and touch him, brushing his body hair and underlying, smooth skin. You place your palms on his ribs, feel his breath coming and going, and then you cautiously glide over his chest and up to his shoulders. As you caress over him, Mando’s whole frame rises and falls in one, long, shuddering sigh that hurts you somewhere deep in your soul. That simple touch does that to him? 

“How long has it been since anyone’s…” You don’t know how to finish the thought.

“Like that?” Mando says, his voice thick. “I don’t…that’s…I don’t think—”

Slowly, slowly, you travel from his shoulders to his neck, giving him time to object. He doesn’t, but he swallows hard, and his muscles remain tense under your fingers. You draw along his jawline and lean to grace it with a delicate kiss like the ones he gave you. He returns one to your cheek, then the corner of your mouth; your noses brush, and you feel his breath on your parted lips. 

Poised together like that, him still holding onto you, you return your hands low, drag your knuckles down his stomach, and say,

“This is what you want—to be touched?” 

His mouth is on yours. Mando abandons your wrists and takes your head in his hands. You push, he yields, and lip-locked, you both stumble to the opposite wall where you pin him and show him what it’s like when you’re in control. Mando goes limp and slides down, and you go with him, straddle him, and keep him nice and tucked between your knees as he sits up against the wall, inviting you to do with him as you wish.

Mando may have been careful with you, but you’re not good at taking things that slowly, especially not now. You can’t get enough of his mouth, this forbidden part of him that tastes of you. You can’t help yourself—you take his lower lip in your teeth, and it earns a devastated groan that plays over and over in your mind as you devour more of him. Your fingers are in his hair, and you’re licking and sucking and nipping, and—

“Hey. Go easy,” he says.

“Sorry. Excited.”

“Me too. Just feels weird.”

That’s right. He’s not used to any of this. When he explored you earlier, he was touching you the way he wants to be touched. You lighten up, soften your affections, and feel your way around his body, finding many raised lines and bumps, especially on his arms. Nipples get a nice response. He’s ticklish on his ribs, a fact you file away for nefarious purposes. His hip bones. Oh, he likes that. You linger there. 

As you gently lavish him, it hits you again: He’s here. You’re here. When you had parted, it was a challenge to keep your expectations in check. With time and space to fantasize, your limerence only grew stronger. All you had was the unlikely possibility of him appearing at any moment, just like in that damn creepy alleyway, and you sometimes wandered in a fog of unhealthy hope that he’d be around the next corner. Strange, wanting to be found. And he did. He found you again. 

“Thought about you,” you confess between licks. 

“Thought about y-you,” he returns, weakly. 

“Oh, you thought?” you tease. “You just sat around and…pondered? Reminisced? That’s all?”

“Not exactly.”

“Tell me.” 

“Thought about—things going a little—d-differently than they did.”

“Like what?”

“Like if I let you keep going.”

“That’s right. You stopped me just when I got to the good part.” You sweep your tongue over his hip to his pelvis, where coarse hair begins, and he lets out that same sound he did when you stroked him for the first time. “Want to finish things where they started? You in your pilot seat, me on my knees?”

Mando doesn’t answer. He doesn’t seem eager to interrupt what you’re about to do. Abandoning the idea, you focus on making up for lost time—but slowly. Not all at once. One thing at a time. First you fondle and tease with just your breath and brushing lips, then you kiss and lick all up and down his shaft, and then you take him into your mouth and suck him off with an enthusiasm you don’t give just anybody. He isn’t getting anything half-hearted from you, either. Every unashamed gasp and groan he gives when you introduce something new rebuilds your arousal until you’re distracted by how your clit throbs for something to rub, and you try and fail to ignore how your cunt longs to be filled again—and…and, you can’t take it any longer. 

You give him one, last, tight, full, luscious suck before you pop off from his cock and ask, “Was this good?”

There’s silence. 

“Speak up, Mando. Can’t see you.”

“Yeah. Good,” he says gruffly. “So f-fucking good.”

“Good. If you don’t mind—” You hoist yourself over his lap and grab hold of his shoulders, “—I need you for something else.”

You sink onto his cock, and Mando takes hold of your hips and helps you find the perfect angle that hits just what you need. Dizzy with power, you lean over him and catch his mouth with yours while your cunt flutters around his twitching cock.

“Can feel you—around—” he manages to get out between sloppy kisses. 

In response, you squeeze even harder and begin to grind at a pace only for you, only enough to keep the pressure mounting. With an intensity that takes you aback, Mando says, “Fuck, yes—c’mon, use me.” 

Your labored breath comes out in stutters. You can’t say anything back. You’re spending all your concentration on doing exactly that: using him for your own gratification, taking what he denied you, punishing him for it. Energy courses through your legs, up your spine and stomach, down your arms, and flows out of your hands—the ones pinning his shoulders to the wall and supporting you as you take his cock exactly how you want to. 

You feel it approaching. Just a matter of time. You loll your head back and give in with a smile, resolving to simply let it all overtake you when it pleases. 

“You’re going to come?” Mando asks. There’s a loud thud that must be the back of his head hitting the wall. “Fuck, you are, aren’t you? Going to come on me.”

The delight in his voice is what does it. Joined together, so gorgeously full, your orgasm hits you. You throb on his cock, and everything becomes a haze while you ride it out, barely aware of your involuntary cries of pleasure and Mando’s quiet, encouraging curses. 

The last of your orgasm ebbs away, and you slump over him in complete satisfaction. Mando rubs circles into your hips and rocks underneath you. “Just a little more,” he whispers, “and I think I’ll…”

Say no more—you give him the little more he needs. You give him more than that. You viciously ride him until he’s smothering his face with your breasts and pulsing inside you once again. You blindly clamber off of him and sprawl out on the slightly sandy floor, utterly spent. Mando doesn’t move from his spot. 

It feels like the floor is swaying underneath you. Eventually the sensation passes, and you drift into a relaxation that rivals one of your spice trips. You might’ve fallen asleep for a second; you’re not quite sure, but out of nowhere, Mando lets out a soft laugh—another new sound—that pulls you out of your post-good-sex stupor.

“I just remembered,” he says.

“What?”

“I almost didn’t take your puck.”

“You serious?”

“Thought it wouldn’t be worth the fuel.” 

“How dare you. I’m absolutely worth it.” 

“Can’t argue with that.” 

Mando laughs again, and for the first time, you wish you could see his face.