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Chapter Text

He walks and walks, and he doesn’t feel his feet anymore. The dunes boil and shift around him, the suns relentless, the wind unforgiving. He’s vaguely aware of the sand, scraping harshly between his toes: there must be some blood there, where the flesh’s the most tender, but he hasn’t got enough strength to care anymore.

His memories come in waves, like the ones on the Dune Sea, unsolicited, unprompted by anything specific. His brain makes him think about his father. First, he recalls the smell of his beard, some kind of seaweed that somehow always got stuck there; a fishy, not totally unpleasant sort of scent. Then he remembers the sensation of his father’s hand on his face, calloused fingers touching his brow, his head, his curly hair. He can see his smile coming out from the thick fog of his thoughts, like his father’s crossing a sandstorm born in the very heart of Tatooine just to get to him.

He doesn’t want to remember that tenderness. He doesn’t want any memories at all.

*

Cobb comes back from his final rounds when the twin suns are low on the horizon, and the moons, behind him, have already started to rise and give the night a head start. Drying the day sweat from his face, he tilts the head up and looks at the first stars. Recently, he found himself doing that more and more: looking up at the sky, searching, making useless connection between distant points of light. Sometimes he wonders what it would feel like to be up there, skyrocketing away from the shit that has always been his life.

But he’s also too tired and too old to fool himself: he loves Tatooine, he loves Mos Pelgo. He loves living in the middle of the fucking desert, in a village made of hovels and shacks, alongside people that look at him for guidance, for protection. People that look at him with pride.

And things are good, he thinks slowly, peeling away his eyes from the sky. Things are better.

He knows he should head home, clean himself in the sonic, eat something end then go to sleep, but he wants to check on Scott, and he wants to have a drink, and maybe he wants to talk to someone after the entire fucking day spent in solitary patrol around the settlement. A few words, a joke from Jo, maybe a little game of dejarick to win some credits from Taanti. Nothing big, he doesn’t feel the need to get shitfaced and pass out on a table like two days before. Been there, done that, thank you.

Cobb Vanth wants a quiet night. And after all… since the Mandalorian came and went, there hasn’t been a not-very-quiet night yet, has it now? Things are good, now, Marshal Vanth, oh, so, so good.

So, it’s with surprise and a little something that feels like hope that, upon arriving at the cantina, he finds a little commotion playing out at the very centre of it. Not very unusual: drunken idiots are always ready to put up a fight for the stupidest reasons imaginable, and in truth, his brand-new deputy could be enough to fix the problem and bring back the peace and quiet. But, and that’s the curious, strange thing, his brand-new deputy seems to be the one involved in said commotion.

Cobb gets to the cantina’s door almost totally ignored by the rest of the people gathered there. For a moment he doesn’t do much but assess the situation with a hand ready on the hilt of the blaster, eyes focused, lips pressed in a tight, annoyed line. He just wants a drink, dammit. And still, at the same time, he can’t do much else than welcome back the adrenaline, the blood that pumps in his veins a little faster, head suddenly clearer, mind hyperaware.

There are two men closely involved, and another five are spread around. No weapons in sight, no blaster, no hidden little guns, not even a vibroknife, which is good, even if a little boring. He knows all of them but one, and it’s on this one that Cobb focuses every ounce of his attention.

In the bar the lights are dim, the tables and chairs are scattered around, as if someone has bumped into them with violence; there is broken glass on the floor, little pools of liquid staining the dirt. The men are shouting but none of them seems eager to get involved, maybe because Scott is standing a little unsteady, his nose probably broken, his face bloody and battered. The other man… well, he’s standing a little unsteady too, but probably not because he’s been beaten into a pulp: from what Cobb can see, judging from the quality of his unfocused gaze, whoever he is, he’s really fucking drunk.

And still, he has managed to keep up and give some damage to his young, capable, new little deputy.

But right when Cobb is starting to think that the stranger will have the upper hand, no matter how much the townsfolks keep shouting encouraging words to Scott, then the man, the stranger, puts a hand on a chair to steady himself and spits on the floor a lump of saliva mixed with blood. When the stranger lifts his eyes again, he looks straight at Scott with a little, almost invisible grin that gets lost in the shadows.

“That all you got, di’kut[1]?” he asks, with a mild, steady tone that still doesn’t do much to conceal the slithering contempt. His words are a bit hazy, unfocused, but his face is fixed on Scott, who’s blaster is nowhere to be seen. Not good.

When the latter makes a move like he’s ready to answer with his fists to the blatant insult (because Cobb doesn’t need to speak more than one language to know that was an insult), the Mashal of Mos Pelgo finally decides to intervene. He enters the cantina with ease: it’s his territory, his town, the only fucking place in the whole galaxy he can call home; and whoever this stranger is, Cobb will make sure he’ll know that soon enough.

“What’s goin’ on here, gentlemen? Don’t reckon anybody invited me to this party, eh?” he opens with a relaxed smile and the room immediately falls silent.

Cobb glances directly at Scott, holding his gaze for a second, evaluating the level of drunkenness and especially the level of hot, stupid rage. Deeming the first one very low and the second one very high, Cobb just asks: “Where’s your weapon, deputy?” To which the young man averts his dark eyes, a glimmer of embarrassment on the abused face. Well, well.

“Your papa never taught you not to bring a blaster to a fist fight?” intrudes the low voice of the stranger. His tone is slightly amused, like he’s dealing with children at best, but the slur of his speech is unmistakable: he’s the one truly drunk, even if he’s hiding it very well.

Taanti stands still behind the counter with his hands hidden: Cobb knows he has a rifle there, probably ready to fire too, but he hopes it won’t come to that. Slowly, deliberately, the Marshal moves his entire body to face the stranger, to properly look at him. There is even less illumination now. Nobody’s moving, nobody thought about switching on the lights for the evening. Still, there is a beam of fading light that hits the stranger’s eyes, and for a split-second Cobb knows. He knows with a certainty that rarely has come to him before in his life that the man is in pieces.

He swallows hard before answering: “You talking to me? Or to him?”

“Depends,” says the stranger, leaning heavily on the counter, shoulders uneven, a hand slack. Bloody knuckles trace liquor residue on the counter’s surface, while his right thumb finds its place in the low belt he’s wearing. He looks straight at Cobb, and then he continues: “You his papa?”

Cobb has to repress a grin. The man is well built, tall and he’s wearing nothing more than a first layer of dirty clothes: brown slacks, brown blouse stained with sand and old sweat. His boots seem on the verge of falling apart and his face is brown like the rest of him. He probably has sand even inside his ears. If he didn’t know it impossible, Cobb would say that the stranger just came in Mos Pelgo walking from the desert, no proper clothes, no sun protection, no mount, no ship, no fucking speeder. Not even a drop of water or a morsel of food.

“I’m not that old, I hope. You planning of making a mess in my town?”

The answer is immediate, right to the point. “You planning on shooting me?”

Cobb decides to play it safe: he doesn’t remove his hand from the blaster. “Not if it can be avoided.”

The stranger’s lips break apart in more than one place when he produces another little grin, a sarcastic twitch, but somehow Cobb knows that the smile is not for him: it’s meant for the stranger himself. “Maybe it can’t,” the guy says after a beat. “Maybe it would be better that way.”

Then he moves fast, very fast. Too fast. But instead of pulling out some kind of weapon and beginning his shooting on the townsfolks, their Marshal and their Deputy, the stranger grabs the first bottle of liquor he can find and takes three long sips. Cobb’s blaster and four other blasters along with Taanti’s rifle are already aiming at his unprotected chest, but the stranger’s dark, awful gaze looks right at Cobb while drinking, daring him to shoot. There’s a horrible kind of hope in his face that doesn’t go well with his strong features and for a moment nobody knows what to do.

After a moment Cobb releases the breath he hasn’t realize he’s holding. “Relax, folks,” he declares leisurely. Unsurprisingly, they all obey.

Seeing that the strange, broken man is almost folded in two on the counter, Scott resolves to move towards Cobb, his entire demeanor apologetic. Cobb can’t really deal with his bantashit right now, but he knows he has to. The boy’s hotheaded, and Cobb knew about it well before he hired him.

“What the kriff happened?” Cobb asks immediately, never losing sight of the other man. He doesn’t look like he’s gonna drain the bottle: his face is scrunched up in disgust, but he also looks like he may vomit in about a minute.

“Wanted to know his name, that’s all,” Scott is explaining a second later. “I dunno how it happened, but he wasn’t happy about it.”

“I bet he wasn’t.” Cobb doesn’t elaborate, but he can picture his deputy moving around with the same air of importance he’s been sporting all week, since the day Cobb nominated him: hand on the blaster, arrogant smirk on his face. If the stranger feels as dehydrated and half out of his mind for the heat as he looks, well… Cobb isn’t surprised that the situation’s gotten out of hand that fast.

With a sight he adds: “Can’t you see when a man doesn’t want to be bothered?”

But there’s nothing to do now: if he wants to spare Scott the embarrassment and at the same time maintain at least the appearance of the deputy’s authority, Cobb has to place this stranger in the drunk tank slash the only cell that the town possess, buried low in an old mining silo. Not a big deal per se, but someone must keep an eye on him during the night, making sure he doesn’t kick the bucket, drowning in his own vomit, and Cobb has the feeling that that someone will be the kriffing Marshal of Mos Pelgo. Goodbye nice, quiet night of sleep.

“Go clean up your face” he orders after a moment of consideration, sheathing his blaster back in the holster. “And then go see Kara and ask her for those plants the Tusken gave her.” He cocks one brow, amused, looking closely at Scott face: “The guy’s about to pass out, but he managed to disarm you and break your nose and your lip?”

“He’s fast…” Scott mutters.

“Yeah, well. You gotta get better, Scotty.”

“I know, boss.” Then Scott changes the subject abruptly. “What we gonna do with him?”

Cobb scoffs while all the other patrons resume their positions on the chairs and tables, fixing the mess, ordering new drinks. “We are gonna do nothing. I’m gonna throw him in the drunk tank for the night.”

“But Marshal, I should--”

Cobb lowers his voice, suddenly very tired of the conversation. “You should get out of here as fast as you can, boy.”

There is a moment when he thinks Scott is ready to argue, but it doesn’t last long: soon the young man is retrieving his side arm and retreating as he’s been asked to. Suddenly there’s not much else to do but convince a drunk fool to follow him without the threat of a pair of cuffs.

Unsurprisingly talking doesn’t work.

“I cannnn pay for this, yah know?” the stranger grumbles, gesturing with the bottle he still holds in his hand. “And for the mess. Got the credits.”

“Yeah, nice try, brown eyes. Unfortunately, you crossed a line, and I gotta bring you in either way. But I’m mighty sure my friend Taanti will be pleased to know he still gets a margin out of this stupid mess you made. Isn’t it right, Taanti?”

The Weequay doesn’t bother answering, but the new fella holds his head in one hand trembling slightly. “You always talk so much…” he mutters under his breath and somehow it doesn’t even sound like a question.

“Afraid so, stranger.” Then, more serious now that they are closer: “listen, I can bring you in by hook or by crook, but I’ll prefer you coming willingly.”

The man looks up at him from under heavy lids. His eyes are bright, feverish, there is a spark of recognition there, but again is not intended for Cobb. “Cold or hot…” the guy mumbles, making absolutely zero sense. No problem there: the Marshal is not looking for sense, but for collaboration.

He waits for two more seconds and then he removes the safe from the blaster, slowly, in a way that the guy can clearly spot if he wants. And it looks like he does. Strangely he doesn’t move much, nor he tries to flee. Maybe he’s too cooked up. Oh, well.

“By crook it is, my friend.”

It doesn’t feel like a fair fight, not when the man lets Cobb cuff him with vibro-handcuffs without much protest, but then again… It’s Cobb’s show of strength and all that stuff. The Marshal knows that if the story isn’t already out, it will soon be, and he doesn’t want to hear how he got punched in the face because he’s been too nice and used the carrot instead of the stick, no way.

Pushing him out of the bar, Cobb realize the man doesn’t smell good. The Marshal is used to a great variety of different body odors, especially now that the Tusken started mingling among his people, but the stranger stinks of something rotten, like he’s already a corpse, but still standing, still breathing, somehow still existing. Up close his skin is dry like a piece of paper left too long under the suns, there are wrinkles around his eyes and his beard and mustache are short and patchy. His brown hair is curled at the base of his neck and flat on his brows, matted with old sweat, dust and dirt. Suddenly Cobb is not even sure the stranger will be able to walk to the drunk tank all by himself.

“How much he drank, pal?” he rapidly asks the bartender, steading the wobbly figure next to him. The fact that his hands are now bound doesn’t help much.

“Besides that bottle there?” Taanti answers indicating the object, which is still mostly full. “Not a lot… couple of glasses, at best. It’s the dehydration, Marshal. You know what that bitch does to a man’s wits.”

“Sure do,” mutters Cobb while encouraging the now silent stranger finally out of the cantina.

The night is upon them. For a moment the guy looks up at the three moons and then he sighs, like he’s somehow defeated by their presence. “I made it, then…” he says, probably making sense only in his mind. Then he looks back at Cobb, eyes dark and glistening under the light of the moons. “Hoped to fall down in the desert, ya know?”

Cobb blinks. “Not a nice way to die.”

The man takes his time answering, probably trying to follow the path the Marshal is showing him, but when he does, he seems almost sober. “Is there a nice way to die, for people like us?”

He talks like they know each other, but Cobb is pretty sure that in those condition he probably would talk like that to anybody and anyone ready to listen. He doesn’t touch him much. He keeps two fingers under his elbow, directing him alongside the little houses. Lights are filtering through the long, horizontal windows close to the ground, but there are no people around: most of them are cooking dinner, resting, spending time with their family, if they have one. For some reason Cobb feels like this stranger doesn’t welcome physical touch. Maybe it’s the way he recoils almost absentmindedly, but the Marshal is sure that if the man was sober, he would have a hard time laying a single finger on him.

“No offence, brown eyes, but you have no idea what kind of people I am. And I imagine in your state you should have some problems knowing what kind of people you are too.”

The stranger tilts his head slowly, meditatively. “The nice kind. The reckless kind, I’d say. The chatty, annoying kind.”

Cobb doesn’t even look at him, too busy making their path in the evermoving dunes. “Assuming you’re talking about me, stop, I’m gonna blush.”

There is a new darkness in his tone when the stranger speaks again, like Cobb hasn’t even open his mouth. “Me… I’m no people.”

“No name too, I’m guessing,” Cobb continues as they finally reach their destination without problems. Thank the stars for small miracles. “How did you manage to arrive in Mos Pelgo, brown eyes?”

The stranger looks straight at Cobb’s face, but not in the eyes. The two are almost the same height but the dark looking man is folded on himself, like he’s normally used to walk tall and proud and now he doesn’t know where to put his own limbs. Or maybe it’s just the booze. “I walked,” he explains after a moment of silence.

Cobb manages to open the rusty door of the silo, a sad excuse of a shelter, but he knows inside he will find a camp bed, a barely functioning ‘fresher, some supplies and a cooking station for himself. For the guy - the prisoner, he should say - the cell is small, just enough to keep a man lying down and a couple of guys standing up, but it will have to do, like everything else in their forsaken little village.

“You walked.” Cobb repeats, pushing the man inside with a bit too much force. He observes him stumbling and recovering at the last second, holding himself against the dusty wall opposite the small entrance. The door swooshes close behind them; the lights flicker on. “From where? Did you cross the Dune Sea like a bantha? All by yourself?”

There’s a smirk on Brown Eyes’ lips, and in that smirk there’s some secret or some stupid ironic shit that Cobb’s too tired to care about. “Am I supposed to just believe you walked from wherever with just those clothes on your shoulders?”

The other one doesn’t answer for a long time and then: “You believe whatever you want, Marshal.”

And just like that, Cobb has had enough. “Get in, before I make you crawl back from where you came out!” He orders with a low growl. They don’t get many visitors in those parts of Tatooine and when they do, they normally bring trouble: Cobb doesn’t want to harbor a fugitive, or someone who’s running away from the Syndicate or from whoever is in charge at the moment in Mos Eisley. He just wants his people to stay safe, and for that, he needs a sober man who can answer a few simple questions.

He closes the cell doors with the code he remembers by heart and the stranger takes a seat to the low, hard bench in the back of the little prison. “Not very hospitable, this town…” he comments resting his dark head against the cool wall behind him.

Cobb, who’s never been someone to hold a grudge, not even to secretive, drunk bastards with bloody knuckles, smiles a little. “You got drunk and punched my deputy in the face. I’d say we’ve been more hospitable than you deserve, my friend. Why don’t you start telling me your name, moving on to the reasons you’re here, and the length of your stay.”

The stranger opens an eye, looking at him for just a moment. “You want my life story?”

“Why not?”

“No.”

“Then give me your name. I’ll give you mine, look: Cobb Vanth, Marshal of Mos Pelgo. I’d say it’s nice to meet yah, but I’m not so sure.”

“I know,” the stranger says, looking nonplussed. “Your people mentioned you at least a dozen time in the cantina”. And then he covers his face with a vambrace, just the top part. Cobb concentrates his gaze on his plump bottom lip, cracked in the middle by the heat. He must have an incredible resistance, Cobb thinks, if he really walked all day in the desert and he still hasn’t asked for water. He feels guilty… he should share his flask with him, but maybe only after he hears the name.

“Knowing my name won’t make me less a stranger to you, or your people,” the guy continues after a moment of surprisingly companionable silence.

“Well, at least I’ll know how to call you.”

At that, the man lips open up in a little smile, something that for the first time doesn’t just cover a painful, broken mind, but that looks sincerely amused. “I don’t mind ‘brown eyes’,” he mutters, a sentence that reminds Cobb how drunk he was just a few minutes ago.

He sighs. “You should drink some water.” He’s almost giving up talking some sense into him, but just for the time being. I’m not gonna arbor a fugitive, I’m not gonna endanger my home, Cobb thinks, holding out the half full flask of water he has slinging across one shoulder. The man lowers his arm and looks at Cobb like it’s the first time he sees him: there’s some sort of recognition there, pain - of course there is pain, it’s like something physical, an ache that Cobb has trouble comprehending - there is loneliness, longing, gratitude, and a good amount of self-loathing.

Fuck, the man is an open book, and every emotion feels the same as when the wind throws sand in Cobb’s face during a storm. It stings, it makes him wanna rub his eyes.

They look at each other through the bars, Cobb’s arm stretched forward, the bottle already open. He knows that if the stranger is as dehydrated as he looks, he should be able to sniff the water right out of the flask. It’s a horrible feeling, one that he knows all too well, a sensation that brings one closer to the animal side of oneself, it makes one feel crazy for a single drop.

However, the stranger stands up slowly, tentatively, like a caged massiff, as if he’s suddenly scared Cobb will beat him and then chase him away. His brown, deep eyes are huge on his sunburned face, they are bloodshot and the skin around them is red with exhaustion and fear and pain, again… so much pain.

When the man holds out his bonded hands to grab the flask, Cobb is so startled that he almost drops it, but the stranger’s fingers grab it before it can fall on the floor. So composed, so calm: another man would have already gone crazy for the thirst, but not this man.

He drinks slowly, cautiously, as if he knows that if he’s not careful he’s just gonna throw up everything on the floor. Cobb wonders if he’s a Tatooine native, but it takes one to know one, and he has the feeling that the stranger came from the stars.

“My name is Din Djarin” the stranger says in the end, giving him back the flask. There’s still some water inside. “Thank you for the drink.”

Cobb answer comes after a moment of consideration. “Welcome to Mos Pelgo, Din Djarin.” And for some unknown reason his voice sounds a bit cracked.

No matter how hard he tries, Cobb has no idea who that man is. Name or no name.

[1] Idiot, useless individual, waste of space (lit. someone who forgets to put their pants on) in Mando’a

Chapter Text

When, exhausted, he falls on his knees, the suns have just started to set. It’s probably a beautiful sight, if he remembers well, but right now he doesn’t care. As an afterthought he realizes that he never saw the sunset on Tatooine with his own two eyes and, for a second, he wonders if it would be different. But different from what? The only sunsets he saw directly are the ones of his half-forgotten childhood.

Still, he remembers the way the red used to fall into the water, bleeding all around, touching the rocks along the shoreline and making them light up in flames. The image of the twin suns in front of him has almost nothing to do with the faded memory. His mind tries to conjure up all the incredible colours that the T-shaped tempered glass could never mimic. Numbers and calculations, a binocular sight, sure, but never colours, never the right shapes, never the astonishing stillness of the world while a sun dies out, disappearing over the horizon.

Hidden, sheltered, his eyes prickle with unshed tears.

The sunset makes him wonder if anything is ever worth it.

The sand his unbearably warm between his gloved fingers.

*

Cobb wakes up suddenly and with a crick in his neck. He stands up on the lumpy bed and he immediately turns to checks on the prisoner. The light filters through the low windows and, judging by the way it casts a worm glow in the room, it must be a little after sun rise. At first glance, the prisoner seems awake as well. He’s not facing Cobb, though, and he doesn’t look like he used the small bench to sleep either: he sits on the floor, gaze apparently fixed on the opposite wall, his back against the cell’s bars and his long legs stretched in front of him.

He keeps his hands folded on his stomach and his fingers twitch a little when he finally opens his mouth and speaks. “You got some more water?” Djarin’s voice is raspy, but extremely controlled, almost subdued.

Cobb tries to stretch his back, wondering why the strangers won’t turn around and face him like the night before, then he dismisses the behaviour as a symptom of exhaustion and dehydration. “Sorry, pal… we’re all out: gotta stop at my shack to refuel. You hungry?” He knows that there must be some rations stashed away in the silo.

“Not particularly,” is the terse response. Still, it doesn’t look like the man will be turning around any time soon. Well, whatever. Cobb doesn’t care about that: now that Djarin is sober it’s time to resume the conversation they started the night before.

“Are you running from the law, Din Djarin?” he demands then, hoping to sound stern enough. “Are you bringing trouble to my town?”

The blunt questions gain him a side glance, a slow thing, so slow that Cobb can see a glimpse of those brown eyes, but again the man turns to face the wall, like he’s embarrassed or something equally stupid.

“No,” he answers drily.

“So what? You just came here to pick up fights in bars? You can do that in Mos Espa, as far as I know.”

There is a sigh, a little one. “I apologise for that. I can pay for the damages.”

“You said that already. Not that I don’t believe you, Brown Eyes, but I don’t care about your credits. I care about the safety of my people.”

Cobb can see the stranger’s jaw twitching, the spots of brown, patchy beard moving slightly with the nervous way he holds himself. He looks so different from the man he was last night…

“I know that,” Djarin says, like it’s a fact well established, like they met weeks before, and not just hours and he knows that Cobb loves that stupid little village with all his guts. 

“So? What do you want with Mos Pelgo?”

He finally moves. He puts his bonded hands on the floor, and he turns around a little bit: his face stays in the shadows where the light from the low windows doesn’t reach, but Cobb can see the yellowish white of his retina and the full lips clenched in a tight line. Somehow, he looks like he never had a nice night of sleep in his entire life and Cobb has to look away, somewhere, anywhere but the devastation of feelings that is spreading out over the man’s face.

“I don’t want anything with Mos Pelgo, or its people.”

“And what do you want, then?” Cobb asks, not realizing he’s almost whispering. “You are telling me you just happen’ to stroll around the Dune Sea until you ended up here, or what?

There’s a little pause and after a beat the stranger resume his position, facing the wall once again. Cobb releases the breath he hasn’t realised he’s been holding and awaits the response, which arrives slowly: “Something like that, yeah.”

“Alright,” the Marshal sighs, strangely defeated. He will check if there are any bounty for that particular guy, but if the man says he’s not dangerous the only thing Cobb can do is giving him a little trust. Last time he gave trust to a stranger, things went smoothly after all. Almost too smoothly. Immediately he has to banish the fluttering image of shiny Beskar and a green little smile from his mind and come back to the present. “After all,” he adds, noticing Din Djarin doesn’t seem to be saying anything else, “a man has the right to his secrets. So, what do you want, then? If you have credits, we can give you a speeder, some food, some water and you can leave.”

“I don’t want a speeder.”

Cobb crosses his legs on the bed, leaning against the wall. He feels like he’s forgetting something. “I got the impression this conversation is moving on two different tracks. I’ll ask again, but this is the last time: what do you want?”

Din Djarin brings both hands to his eyes, he massages his temples, slowly, like he’s performing a foreign task. His hangover must be skyrocket high if he can’t even lift his harms properly. “I wanna stop,” he confesses finally, almost a whisper, probably something he himself hadn’t known until he said it out loud. “I wanna stay still. For a bit… just a bit.”

Cobb can see as he did the night before - with astonishing clarity, that is - that the man is in pieces. He can see that there are pain and regret and loneliness coming out of him like little waves of sand on a windy day. It’s not hard to see, to be honest, it’s not even about the alcohol: the guy wears the proverbial heart on his sleeve even when he’s sober. The problem is… Cobb doesn’t think Mos Pelgo is the best place to restart a life, if that’s what Din Djarin is after. So, he just says it.

“This is not the best place to restart a life, pal.”

“I can earn my keep. I won’t be a burden!” is the controlled but rushed response.

Cobb scratches the back of his head. “You are not hearing me, here: you won’t be welcomed after the thing you pulled last night. The people here… they don’t like strangers and I got more important things to do than keep an eye on you. You seem level-headed enough, when sober, so I think you get it.”

There is another glance, almost pleading. “I’m pretty good with my hands.”

Cobb remembers the time he found a dying massiff in the middle of the desert: the animal had two legs broken and the jaw completely dislocated: he looked at Cobb with huge eyes, asking for help, begging him to end that agony. Cobb shot the animal in the head, that time. Now he doesn’t feel like that would help much.

“Can you handle weapons?”. It’s a pointless question: everybody on Tatooine has to know how to handle a weapon.

Nevertheless, there is a little pause there, a consideration. “I could,” Djarin says in the end.

“Well, you won’t.” Cobb answers rapidly. “You will not be allowed to carry anything more dangerous than a toothpick.”

“Does that mean I can stay?”

“Just a few days. Then we’ll see.” What the hell is he saying? When has he decided to give Brown Eyes his permission? What are you doing, Cobb?

“Why?”

Cobb doesn’t know how to answer, so he just doesn’t. “You wanna push your luck?”

The man inhales sharply. “No, Marshal.”

“Good.” Cobb stands up and stretches himself again, hearing his shoulder blade pop painfully. He needs food, he needs a drink, and the guy desperately needs to clean himself. “You good with your hands, then? Mechanic? Can you fix a vaporator?”

“I can fix stuff.”

What the hell are you doing, Cobb?

“Cryptic. You are a man of little words, Brown Eyes, but that’s fine: the folks here don’t like to talk much either. There’s also no way that anybody will let you sleep in their house, so you can camp here: the silo has all that you may need. And, as a bonus, the cell will remind you where you’ll end up if you keep brewing troubles in my town. Now. Are you planning to stand up and letting me take you out of those cuffs or you wanna keep staring at the wall all day, mmh?”

Even when standing up, Din Djarin’s face manages to remain in the shadows, but there is enough light around them for the Marshal to notice the way his eyes roam over Cobb’s face, taking him in, probably for the first time, given that he was so shitfaced last night. They are almost the same height, but Djarin seems to shrink a little while Cobb performs the unpleasant task of removing the vibro-cuffs. Still his gaze doesn’t falter, and after a moment Cobb feels obliged to return it.

Somehow, he expects something specific, some sort of recognition, some acknowledgment, but there’s nothing. The only thing he sees is curiosity, surprise and, again, overwhelming, the pain Djarin seems unable to hide. It must be torture, to live like that.

Long minutes tick by, or maybe they are seconds, but in the end Cobb coughs slightly, he pockets the cuffs and opens the door to the cell. Djarin doesn’t even try to get out.

“I’m gonna go speak with the others. You better stay here for today: recover, sleep, do whatever. There is a lavatory behind that door, some food in the cupboard, but I dunno if it’s all edible. I will send someone with water.”

Djarin takes a step into the light. His curls are matted with sweat and sand, but they look soft enough, a brown glow that matches eyes and skin is emphasized by the low light. There is a faded scar on his temple. It looks ancient, like the dream of an injury, and for a second, just a second, Cobb thinks he made a terrible mistake, that the stranger will attack him and then kill all the town-folks like some sort of horrible monster from a fairy-tale. Instead, Cobb is given a little smile, a crooked thing, barely a twitch of chapped lips.

And then, soft, almost embarrassed: “Thank you, Marshal.”

Cobb retreats slowly. He’s not exactly running away, no, he wouldn’t phrase it like that… but the weight of those eyes, the kindness that he can read even if he’s not meant to, even if he doesn’t want to, is there, almost unbearable. This stranger has no right to look at him like that. Like… like Cobb’s someone he can immediately trust.

They don’t even know each other, for fuck’s sake!

And so he retreats, not so fast that Din Djarin notices something’s wrong, but when Cobb’s finally out of the silo he leans against the now closed sliding door and breaths the morning cool air, inhaling deeply and slowly. 

“Mornin’, boss.” Unsurprisingly, Scott is not far away. He’s perched against the wall of a hut. It’s still so early that there are only the two of them around.

Cobb shakes his head to bring a bit of clearness to his wandering thoughts. “Morning, Scott,” he replies after a moment, admiring the work of art that is the face of the poor boy. Din Djarin did a really good job of that nose, the night before. Oh, well. “Feeling rested?”

Scott takes a few steps towards him, cocky as always. “To be honest, I’ve felt better.”

“I bet.”

“What are we doing about the guy?” Scott’s expression is annoyingly grave.

Unaware of his own movement, Cobb straights out his back, abandoning the slouching position he was keeping until that moment. “He needs some water. And we need to call a town meeting.”

“You wanna keep him, am I right?”

Keep him, like he’s a stray. Like he’s an animal that crawled his way from the desert to come and die at Cobb’s front door, begging for a morsel of food, a sip of water, a last pet before letting go forever.

There are a few ways Cobb could answer his deputy: he looks strong, he can help around, or maybe he told me he can shoot, we can use that. Hell, he could probably get away with a simple I just wanna figure out how he survived the Dune Sea.

Instead, he says exactly what he thinks, which he feels it’s somehow embarrassing, but, well. It’s also the damn truth.

“I think,” Cobb explains slowly, eyes fixed on the brown scarf the boy has tied around his neck, “I think if we send him away, he may just off himself.”

There’s a moment of silence and then Scott shrugs. “Why do we care?”

“Yeah,” Cobb agrees without agreeing, and then he starts walking towards the town centre. “Why do we?”

He doesn’t know how to answer his own question, let alone his deputy’s. But in the end Din Djarin stays.

Cobb is not sure why he feels so relieved when, at the meeting, he manages to convince his friends - kriff, basically his family at this point - that the man is not a threat. And still, he has to promise to keep an eye on him, and he has to endure a lot of side glances, questions and scoffs.

But anyway, everybody still remembers that the last man the Marshal chose to trust and let stay was also the man that slayed a dragon for them.

So, yeah, Din Djarin stays.

In the desert there are always more things to slay, after all.

Chapter Text

When the Tusken find him, he’s almost disappointed.

They pick him up, but they never try to remove the metal shell protecting all his soft bits. They know him, he knows them. Their respect is mutual. They kindly leave him in the shade of the biggest bantha in their party, and one of the kids, a little one, brings him three black melons. He’s left alone. He drinks.

The flavour is hard to swallow, as always, but his tongue laps at the last drops as if this is the freshest water he ever had in his life. If there was someone looking at him, he would probably feel embarrassed, but there’s no one, now. No one to take care of, no one to feed and clothe and bathe. No one to look up at him and see him. Really see him.

He drops the empty shell of the melon right on the sand, and he stares at it as it rolls away, all the soft bits of juice vanished forever in his stomach.

He wonders if he’ll vanish too, now that there’s none to see him.

He takes a breath. He picks up another melon. He drinks.

*

They let him recover for the whole morning. They bring him water, supplies, the little amount of clothes they can spare - probably ill fitting, but one can’t be too picky if one ends up wandering in those parts of Tatooine. Nobody really speaks to him. Din Djarin opens the door of the silo only to pick up the things they left for him, and he doesn’t even try to engage in conversation. He thanks them, sure, but his eyes are unfocused, his face hard and contracted.

Cobb doesn’t think about him for a few hours. Scott is keeping an eye out and that should be enough for now. Instead, the Marshal checks which bounties are available on the planet in his far too old Data-holo, but there’s no matching description of Djarin; and, as always when performing that particular task, he ends up wondering if Mando’s doing the same thing, lost somewhere in the big bad universe, choosing his next target while his little boy whines to get some food.

It’s a disheartening and a comforting thought at the same time, and Cobb is lost in it for so long that he flinches when Jo enters in his little excuse for an office and declares abruptly: “We thought that he should clean up the mess he made last night, Marshal.”

“What?” Cobb questions, sounding distracted to his own ears.

“The stranger!” Jo explains, maybe a little annoyed. “He should clean Taanti’s place, for starters!”

Cobb runs his hand across the face. He needs some proper sleep, and he needs to focus. “Sure. Good idea. You go get him and tell him what to do. He’ll probably oblige.”

The woman rolls her eyes and smiles a little, as if she knows that Cobb isn’t really participating in the conversation. “And if he won’t oblige?”

The Marshal waves his hand dismissingly, eyes fixed on the screen. “Use your gun, or something.”

There is a little pause that Cobb uses to open a folder marked with just an “M” on his Data-holo. Inside he finds the few information he managed to collect about Mandalorians. Him? Obsessed? Of course not.

He can see with the corner of his eye that Jo stance becomes less threatening, more relaxed. “Did you forget to eat again?”

“Eh… too much to do.” Cobb dismisses her concerned tone with not so much as a glance in her direction.

“I thought we got a deputy exactly for that, Cobb!” Jo crosses her harms, then she rolls her eyes again, defeated. “You should come down to the cantina, so you can check if the new guy is working properly and get something to eat too.”

“In a minute…” Cobb replies slowly, closing the folder again and starting with some real work, some stupid paperwork that Scott messed up two days prior. When the town made a Marshal out of Cobb, he thought that keeping his hand on the gun and looking menacing enough to scare off bandits would be his main job. But the real job was keeping the files in order, apparently. 

Jo leaves with a huff and the minute Cobb promised her becomes two hours. When he finally gets down to the cantina he’s famished, and the suns are so high that shadows disappear under the boots’ soles. It’s the hottest hour of the day, and the town is practically empty.

The bar is almost empty too, save from a couple of people in the far end and Jo and Scott, apparently focused on a game of dejarick but probably more focused on the stranger picking up shards of glass from the floor with his bare hands. Taanti, behind the counter, looks at the guy cleaning his establishment like he doesn’t really know what to do with him. The only one that looks kinda comfortable is Din Djarin himself, totally absorbed in his task.

Cobb loses a moment to take the scene in. He’s pretty sure nobody ever cleaned the kriffin’ place with such a care, not even his owner: it looks like Djarin is picking up shit that he never even put there in the first place. Oh well, in a way it’s almost comical.

Din Djarin realises he’s been checked out and straightens up, hands full of glass that is immediately discharged in a container half full on a table close by. When he looks back at Cobb, he almost smiles, and Cobb can’t do much else but blink a couple of times in disbelief.

The Din Djarin that is standing in the middle of their cantina doesn’t look much like the wasted shell of a man he was last night (and that morning, crumbling apart in the little cell). He clearly cleaned himself up: he combed through his hair now falling in neat curls around his brow, framing his face like a curtain of little shadows. He hasn’t shaved, for obvious reasons as Cobb didn’t leave him any blade, but his features seem less pronounced, softer, in a way. Water and food gave him some life back, and his chapped lips are not bloody anymore. He’s wearing the same half-destroyed boots, but he changed the rest of his clothing for the soft black pants someone gave up and a dark red shirt that highlights his whole complexion. The only things utterly unchanged are his eyes, same color, same unforgiving depth.

Wow, he’s handsome, Cobb’s mind supplies, utterly unhelpful.

“You came to give a break to the baby-sitters?” Din Djarin asks slowly, breaking the unnatural silence of the bar.

Cobb can feel his lips arrange themselves into a grin, and then he cocks an eyebrow, entertained despite himself. He hears Scott’s unamused snort, but he pays the boy no mind.

“I’m sorry,” the man adds fast, looking away and then looking back up at the Marshal. “That was uncalled for. I appreciate the…” He looks like he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence, so Cobb does it for him.

“The incredible opportunity of being helpful?”

Jo hides a laugh in a fake cough and goes back to her game. Apparently, Cobb sudden appearance just manged to defuse a situation. He walks slowly to the counter where Taanti has already prepared a bowl of cold stew and a spoon. It’s Cobb usual spot, his usual meal, his usual day, but today he can feel Din Djarin eyes following him. It’s not entirely unpleasant but it’s also weird. He doesn’t know how to place this guy and he keeps feeling like he’s forgetting something.

Taanti talks to him about the taxes that are soon due and for a while Cobb lets himself be dragged into the usual complaints. He does everything he can to keep the vulture from the big city far away from Mos Pelgo, but sometimes it’s just impossible and the best thing he can do is just listen to his people grievances. Talking sooths them, apparently.

After a while he can see with the corner of his eye that the stranger has almost finished his job. He’s smoothing out some of the dirt so that the floor looks even and not too bumpy and he’s cleaning the last two tables with a cloth that has seen better days. Finally, he sets down a couple of stools and he looks around him to check if everything is in order.

“I’d like to know how much I owe you for the drinks and the damage.” Djarin closes the distance between him and the counter and Taanti looks directly at the man probably for the first time in the whole day.

“You fixed it,” the Weequay replies stiffly.

Djarin doesn’t look disheartened at that, just apologetic. “Still, I’d like to pay.”

“Well, if you’re positive…”

Cobb’s pretty sure that Taanti gives out a random number, then, but he’s more interested in discovering what Brown Eyes will do. The man fishes a little handkerchief from one of his pockets, opens it and counts slowly, then he hands out a handful of credits to the barkeeper. Taanti’s eyes widen.

“A bit too much.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Partner,” Cobb interjects, “let the man spend his money the way he wants! You’ve always been too honest for your own good.” Then, moving directly to face Djarin, he adds: “Can I offer you a drink?”

The stranger looks surprised, then pleased, then sad, then thoughtful. A range of emotions that Cobb isn’t entirely sure how to interpret. Finally, he utters: “I’m not sure that’ll be wise, after last night.” He looks away, almost embarrassed… almost shy? Oh, for fuck’s sake!

“Fair enough.” Cobb moves the now empty bowl towards the Weequay and then he turns around, leaning against the counter with his elbows. Now that he’s facing Djarin, he can see the little wrinkles around his eyes: he’s probably a little older than he looks, closer to Cobb’s age than to Scott’s ages. “Can I offer you a smoke, then?”

Djarin blinks and he seems confused. Then he nods once, and they are both out of there. Cobb feels Scott’s eyes plastered to his back, but he doesn’t care.

Outside is unbearably hot, the suns merciless. Still, they find a little shade near the entrance and they both lean against the wall facing the street, eyes fixed on the sand that twirls around, low on the ground. Cobb takes out the cigarette he previously rolled and lights it up with a flick of his finger on the lighter. Djarin glances in his direction. “Where you get tobacco? Or whatever that is.”

“We have a little trade with the raiders,” Cobb takes a drag. “They make this shit themselves, if you can believe it, plants that they find in the desert, I think. It’s not bad…” he adds after a second, offering the lit cigarette to the man next to him. Djarin accepts it with a nod.

This is weird in a pleasant way. Two men that know virtually nothing about each other, sharing a smoke and some silence. It shouldn’t be so simple. For Cobb it never has been, safe for one occasion, of course.

“Do you have something else I can do around here?” Djarin asks after a minute, smoke coming out from his nose. His voice is raspy, different and Cobb has the feeling the man is not a great smoker.

“Don’t like the quiet time, do you?”

The man shrugs, looking everywhere but at Cobb. “I prefer to keep myself occupied.”

“I get it.” Cobb deadpans. “Keeping away those intrusive thoughts. Got them myself, sometimes. Well! I guess you could help with the banthas… we bought a couple of them from the Tusken recently and the stables are getting a bit crowded for Freben alone.” It’s an understatement. Freben is close to eighty standard years and taking care of the town banthas is too much for him, nowadays. His nephew helps sometimes, but he’s a young boy and he spends the morning and some evenings in the little school. “You know how to take care of animals?”

“Sure.”

“Well then, it’s settled.” Cobb takes another long drag of the cigarette before passing it along again. “I’ll bring you there when the suns relent a little bit.”

Djarin gives him a little smile, closing his eyes against the strong light. “Does that ever happen?”

Cobb, surprisingly, laughs. “No, but it’s nice to believe they do, sometimes.”

The heavy scent of herbs hangs around them like a cloud and Cobb is surprised to notice that the stench of death and fatal desperation he smelled last night on Din Djarin’s skin is all but gone.

They start walking after the smoke’s butt finds its resting place under the sole of Cobb’s boot, and for a while they move in silence. It’s a little bizarre, but Cobb imagines it’s always like that with total strangers. Until Djarin clears his throat once, two times, as if he wants to say something but he can’t find the courage.

 “Last night…” he mutters in the end. “Did I say something I should regret?”

His voice is extremely controlled, but the ways he drags the vowels tells Cobb that his companion is almost scared of the answer. He thinks about it, about their interaction the night before.

Cobb adores to take apart mechanical stuff, to study it, rebuild it again and see if everything fits, and from the disassembly of that particular conversation he actually realised a few things about the stranger that came from the desert. Din Djarin was (is?) almost ready to die. He’s lost something, possibly someone, probably everything. He can’t really hold his liquor. He has an unexpected sense of humour, but he keeps it at bay when sober. He doesn’t know the meaning of a poker face and he doesn’t like to talk much.

Not one of those things are known to Cobb because Djarin said something about them. It’s just how Cobb works: he has to dissect a man, when he’s still alive to do so. Shoot first, ask questions later.

“You said you didn’t mind if I called you Brown Eyes, but I don’t think that’s highly incriminating. Most people like when I compliment them.” He adds the second part as an afterthought, asking himself what the hell is he saying and, most importantly, why?!

Cobb glances rapidly at Djarin, and notices his face is red, but the heat is taking a toll on both of them and at that point they are sweating and breathing hard. He would love to look aloof and relaxed but the silence coming from the man beside him is making Cobb uncomfortable, so he takes a breath, and he jovially declares: “You didn’t spill your life story, if that’s what you are asking. Don’t know much more than your name and that apparently you came from the desert like a fucking mirage, or something.”

“A mirage?” there’s a hint of humour in the way Djarin repeats the word, but Cobb ignores him in favour of pointing out their stables.

“Here we are, Brown Eyes,” he states, just to annoy him a bit. “Let me introduce you to our bantha keeper.”

The stables are the biggest construction of Mos Pelgo. Standing higher above the ground, they are meant as a shelter for animals that can survive the scorching heat in most situation, so they don’t need to be very cool. They are built in the easiest way possible and with no windows, to preserve the shade the animals love and appreciate, so the only light is coming from a door big enough for an adult bantha to squeeze through, and from the artificial illumination. Upon their arrival, Cobb is immediately welcomed by Freben with a tired smile. The old man is barely breaking a sweat, but his wrinkled hands are dirty, and his expression is tired. They both know the roof need some fixing, but fortunately Freben refrains to remind him in favour of extending a hand towards Djarin. The man takes it slowly and shakes it, looking at the fingers intertwined like they don’t really belong to him and an old man.

Cobb leaves after a few minutes and he can’t help himself when he says, cheerfully: “I’ll send your baby-sitter, partner. Don’t play games!”

He hears a sharp inhale and then an aborted half laugh that follows him along the dunes for a while. He feels almost guilty when he asks Scott to go and keep an eye on the man, as if Cobb should trust Djarin implicitly, as if cleaning the canteen is enough to deem their stranger a good man.

Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. Cobb knows how to judge a character, he had to learn the hard way. As an orphan first and as a slave later on. Sometimes knowing who to trust and who to stab was the only way to survive the long nights in the big common room full of rotting life and fowl smells. This guy, Din Djarin - he thinks about the name, rolls it in his mind a couple of times, tastes it on his tongue and realises it has a good rhythm - this guy is hard to read, but easy to trust.

And Cobb knows those are the worst kind of men. Those are the men you get attached to. The men that sneak their way under your skin, nesting there, taking all the space until them moment when, if you are not breathing the same air, breathing itself becomes difficult.

He’s going a bit too deep for a guy he met less than a day before. But Cobb doesn’t do thing by half, so he’s not really surprised. That’s the kind of recklessness that made him accept a partnership with a bunch of raiders and that lead him on a hill, staring up at the sky with his heart clenched, while a man he barely knew flew headfirst into the belly of a dragon for him. For his little town lost in the middle of nowhere.

And the Maker knows that Cobb likes to be saved as much as he likes to be the one who saves.

Before starting his solitary patrol around the perimeter, he looks up at the sky and Chenini, barely noticeable in the impossibly light blue that hovers up there, stares back at him. The biggest moon of Tatooine looks like the half of an invisible smirk, almost totally erased by the strength of the twin suns and, not for the first time, Cobb feels like the sky is making fun of him.

The sands shift, reminding the Marshal to move along, to stop daydreaming and Cobb goes about his business, a little smirk of his own, not knowing if he’s laughing at himself or just at those feelings that, after months of stillness, are clearly on the brink of spilling over.

He spends the rest of the day shooting at womp rats, checking the town reserves of grains, and calculating the days until the Tusken will appear again to trade whatever stuff they raided from towns less fortunate than Mos Pelgo. It’s been almost two entire lunar cycles, and everybody knows that the raiders organize their life around Chenini, so it won’t take too long, Cobb thinks. He’ll need to practice a bit his very poor knowledge of their sign language if he wants to make a passable impression. He’d love to be as fluent as Mando.

Walking alone, staring at the flickering horizon, he tries out a few signs, but not having anyone that can correct him or fix his posture makes everything harder and, as always, he feels stupid. When he circles back to the first scattered houses of the settlement, he stops practicing all together, knowing that his people are not entirely convinced about the arrangement between them and the raiders, and that Cobb’s almost the only one making an effort to communicate. Sometimes he’s not even sure if he’s doing it for the town, for his people, his own ego, or something else entirely. And then, some other time, he knows very well for whom he’s really performing those stupid hand movements, and he just lies to himself.

The suns are lower now and there are more people around, fixing stuff, selling trinkets, coming back from their hunts in the desert. A little group of women are airing their linens in the light wind, before the sands can get to them. The younger of the group smiles at Cobb and waves a little, her dark locks are hidden under a scarf, but her eyes are bright on her blue face, and Cobb remembers when she was so little that she didn’t even reach his knee. He waves back and her mother gives him a polite nod.

Mos Pelgo is growing, slowly but surely, like a plant in the middle of a secret oasis. There is no water around, but her roots are going so deep in the sand that she can find the moisture hidden down there, from when Tatooine was a planet made of water and water only. Sometimes Cobb wonders what’s like to walk on a shore, his feet bare, the feel of water coming and going in between his fingers. It’s appealing and kriffing terrifying at the same time. It’s a silly dream of a silly boy that had to wake up before sunrise to serve his masters: that boy would do anything to stow away abord a vessel and sail the vast universe, looking for the wettest possible planet out there.

“Boss?” a voice diverts him from his wandering thoughts. “This is the most boring job you ever gave me.” Scott’s sitting on a stone stool right outside the stables, under the shadow of a pierced curtain. 

“I thought the most boring job I ever gave you was filing those reports, last week. Which you didn’t do, by the way.”

“Have you come to relieve me?” Scott muses, crossing his arms. He looks really annoyed, but well, life is hard and all that shit.

Cobb didn’t come to relieve him from his guard job. To be completely honest, Cobb didn’t even realise he was moving towards the stables once again, but Scott doesn’t really need to know that does he?

“Sure, boy. You can go. I’ll keep an eye on the terrible, terrible stranger.”

“Good!” the kid says, perking up immediately. “I need a drink.”

Cobb gets closer to him and smack his hand on Scott’s shoulder, amiably. He smirks, showing his teeth. “Don’t let anyone break your nose again, mind you. I cannot be always there to save your sorry ass.”

His deputy has the decency to blush and then he walks away dropping his head a little, muttering unintelligible words that would be lost anyway, because Cobb can’t do much else but exhale a little laugh. He knows he should have given the title to Jo, but she has refused so many times that the other only logical option was to adopt some green boy from another village and make him Cobb’s right hand. The arrangement works fine, the boy needs a home, and the people like him well enough; but still, Cobb believes the mantle will fall on Jo shoulders before or later, whether she wants it or not.

Always better when they don’t want it, though.

From the stable comes a low bellow that goes on for a while and Cobb cocks an eyebrow, confused, as normally the banthas are quiet unless threatened or pushed around.

“I know” comes Din Djarin voice, strangely soothing. “I know. Udesii… udesii[1].”

Immediately Freben interjects. “Another pull should be enough. Try again harder this time.”

“He’s hurting,” Djarin explains, not as an excuse, but as a matter of fact.

“Well of course he’s hurting. Wouldn’t it hurt if you had a rock stuck in your foot?”

Cobb crosses the entrance, and he finds himself looking at a strange scene: there’s only a bantha in the shelter, the others probably left free to roam around the village, but this bantha is tied to a sturdy fence and one of his posterior legs is propped up against a stool. Djarin is manoeuvring a pair of big pliers and there is some blood leaking on the floor and mixing with the sand. Freben in sitting in the corner, both hands gesticulating toward the younger man who’s fulfilling a task probably too hard for him to do. The old man seems tired and pleased at the same time. “A little higher, yes, like that! Now pull hard. It’s better a sharp pain that a constant limp.”

Din obeys without batting an eye and from the animal foot comes out a rock that makes Cobb grimace slightly. How could the beast walk with such a thing embedded in the flesh it’s a mystery, for him.

The bantha wails and trashes around a bit, but the rope holds, and Djarin lets the rock fall on the ground along with more blood and the pliers. He moves fast in front of the animal, checking one of his big eyes, murmuring little words in a language that is again lost to Cobb, and stroking his brown mantle. The bantha calms down easily enough and the man stops to dry out the sweat on his brow.

“Well,” Cobb exclaims, making himself known. “That looked unpleasant.”

Freben stands up as soon as he sees his Marshal, but Cobb rolls his eyes. “Sit down, man, the Maker knows you deserve a bit of rest!”

“Marshal,” Djarin says as a greeting. He’s still mostly focused on the animal and now he’s checking his leg again. “Should I put is foot down?” He turns around, addressing the bantha keeper.

“No… let him gets his breath back and then I’ll tend to the wound.”

“I can--”

But Freben holds up a hand, shaking his head. “You did enough.” And then, sparing a little glance to Cobb he adds: “I’m grateful.”

And that’s really something, isn’t it? For the first time in the whole day Cobb is truly and totally pleased with himself, with his decision to let the man stay despite everything. It was a good decision, and he likes when he makes one of those.

“If you go up the house my daughter-in-law will give you something to eat” Freben continues, standing up again and moving to inspect the wound himself. “For your trouble.”

Djarin shakes his head. “No, it won’t be necessary. I’ve got plenty of food in the place the Marshal is letting me stay in.”

All right, enough pleasantries, Cobb thinks, let’s get out of here before the night starts creeping in. He signals the man that it’s time they leave, and Din follows him without complain. Cobb’s not entirely surprised when Freben cocks his head in his direction and whispers a low: “He could come back tomorrow, if you can spare him.”

The Marshal chuckles a little. “I certainly can, old man. I’ll send him in bright and early!” And after that he joins their unexpected guest right outside.

Djarin is trying to dry the sweat at the back of his neck with his shirt sleeve and there is a long line of dampness that highlight the line of his shoulder going down along his spine. Shamelessly, Cobb checks out the expanse of his back, the way the shirt is half untucked from the trousers and the way it falls down, covering part of his backside. The man is looking at the desert, at the faraway banthas still roaming in the warm light of the evening.

“You got a pregnant one,” Djarin says, sparing a glance towards Cobb.

“What?” He sounds distracted to his own ears.

The man in front of him snickers a little. “You got a pregnant bantha. Quite close to give birth, too, apparently.”

“Ah, yeah. Sure.” Then, changing the topic slightly. “You know how to deal with animals, it seems.” It’s not exactly a question, but it’s not exactly not a question.

Din Djarin turns around and now the suns are behind him, crowning his curls with gold and red. Cobb has to narrow his eyes a bit. “Did I pass the test? Can I deal with your people, now?”

“Eh. I didn’t mean it like that.” Cobb lies, but just a little. He’s kinda happy to discover that Djarin is a bright one and not just a stupidly handsome, depressed one.

“Yeah, you did.” But there’s not bite to the words.

“Maybe I did, sure,” he concedes after a second. “But you really know how to deal with animals.”

Djarin scoffs, his lips twitch, his eyes look at Cobb and then they look away again. “I like banthas. They are quiet, kind. Gentle.”

Not unlike you, it seems, Cobb thinks, but doesn’t say.

“We are planning a sort of party,” he blurts out instead. “For the little one. The new calf, I mean. The town kids are excited about the birth almost as much as the Tusken and we figured… why not?”

Djarin expression become softer, like it’s melting with the light. “You should celebrate,” he agrees with a little smile. “Freben says the raiders will probably arrive in time for the birth or shortly after. They’re good with this kind of things.”

Cobb crosses his arms and laughs a little. “Yeah. It’s still a fragile thing, this truce we made… but they were very excited when we told them about the pregnancy. I’m sure Freben told you everything already. These people are kind of obsessed with their banthas. Symbiotic shit and what not.”

They are still standing one in front of the other one, and it doesn’t look like the other man wants to leave any time soon, not even to find some shade. Cobb isn’t complaining about that, though.

“I understand that for the Tuskens a bantha’s birth brings good luck and prosperity.”

Cobb’s face unfolds in a surprised expression he can’t really hide. Not that he tries to: no point in doing that. “You know a lot about our customs, for an outsider, Din Djarin.”

The man frowns a little. “You can call me Din. And I never said I wasn’t from Tatooine.”

Cobb leans against the stable’s walls, rolling his eyes and smiling. “You take me for an idiot? You basically smell off planet.”

Djarin, no, Din moves his stance from one foot to the other. “And what’s that smell?”

Slick, damp, coppery… almost like metal, almost like--

Cobb coughs his stupid thoughts away and instead he answers with a non-answer, but a safer one: “You don’t smell like the desert, that’s for sure.”

Din looks down at himself, a little bewildered, like he’s seeing his body for the first time that day. “It sure smells like desert from where I’m standing.”

“Nah…” Cobb plays it down a bit. “You’ll smell like the Dune Sea only when you have sand running through your veins, like me. Like the old man in there.” He points with his thumb to the entrance at his left. “I wonder what flows in your veins, though?”

“Is this the Tatooine way to ask where one’s from?”

Cobb likes that the conversation runs so easily. It’s like talking with a pleasant stranger in a crowded bar, safe from the fact that they are not in a bar, they are not totally strangers anymore, and they both should leave, hit the ‘fresher and call it a day. Instead, they keep talking.

“Maybe. But I get you are a secretive type, Din. Don’t wanna pry too much.” It’s a blatant lie and they both know it, but Cobb doesn’t care. He suddenly wants to know where this man is from, who’s his family, why he ended up here, on a sand planet of the outer rim, walking alone in the Jundland Wastes, sporting the saddest eyes Cobb has ever seen.

“It’s fine,” Din says, sounding like it’s not fine, but that if he pretends enough maybe it will be. “I come from… all over, really, but I was born in Aq Vetina.”

Cobb swallows hard. “Is that a water planet?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

How’s the water? Cobb wants to ask, but he knows that’s a stupid question. If someone asked him “how’s the sand, man?” he would look at them like he’s dealing with an idiot: there are hundreds of words to describe the sand on Tatooine. There are hundreds of different sands, different feelings, different sensations when one touches the dunes, the fine debris that permeate the air all around them all the fucking time. So, how’s the water? may be the stupidest thing Cobb can ask. And still, he wants to know.

So, he settles for something less foolish: “Tell me one thing about the water, Din.” And if it comes out as a plea, well, Din doesn’t seem to care.

He appears taken aback, though, as if he didn’t expect a Marshal from the Dune Sea to ask him something about an actual sea. Well, Cobb is surprised too.

“Well… it-- it never stops. It’s relentless. It moves constantly and it gets everywhere. It sits in the air too… makes your hair curl up sometimes.” Din eyes grow big while he remembers something that’s lost to Cobb. He doesn’t look at the Marshal anymore, his gaze is unfocused and he’s suddenly fidgeting with the hem of his sleeves. “My-- mother. She used to, she used to brush her hair before bed, but in the morning the umidity would make it all--”

He doesn’t finish the thought and Cobb has the horrible feeling that something bad just happened, as if he walked in on the man in a compromising position, or something; as if he’s suddenly watching and listening to something he shouldn’t. He looks away, abruptly aware that he’s basically gaping at Din Djarin’s face, all the lines and the little imperfections, the strong nose and the creeses on his brow, the way his moustache touches lightly his upper lip, the way he’s frowning, the way his features lit up painfully with the power of a probably half-forgotten memory.

“Ah!”, Cobb says after a beat, sure that the unprompted fluttering of his heart will be heard miles away. “It’s not so different from the desert, then. Relentless, gets everywhere, messes up your hair…”

Din comes back to himself with a little gasp. He clenches his fists tightly along his hips and takes another breath closing his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, they are grave and serious, and Cobb doesn’t know how to fix it. Doesn’t know if it’s even possible to.

“Yeah,” the stranger not so stranger agrees slowly, painfully. “It’s not so different.”

[1] Easy, or Take it easy in Mando’a

Chapter Text

He’s left alone again, but it’s fine, it’s what he wants. To be left alone.

They didn’t talk much, he and the Tusken. The tribe has offered to accompany him to the next settlement, but he kindly refuses. One afternoon, their leader says his name as a goodbye, like he always does: he brings two fingers in front of his face and makes the shape of a “T”.

He signs slowly, not because he fears that the human will not understand, but because that’s the polite way to say someone’s name. I will remember you, he’s saying, when you’ll die on the scorching sands, the same sands on which our ancestor walked and died before you and before me, I will remember your name and I will say it again, so that you’ll never be forgotten.

They give him food and supplies and they say their goodbyes just as the suns are setting and reflect their light on his armour, every day heavier and heavier on his shoulders.

The raiders know when someone enters the desert to disappear, they know what it means; and while they leave, slow and steady along the sand waves, he thinks of another name, a name he said just a few times and that he wants to remember forever.

But to do so, he will need to repeat it to someone else.

*

Cobb’s just finished to clean up his blaster, he’s laying it on the table of the tiny office when he gazes up to see Scott’s scrunched up face. The young man’s doing the same job, having a little more trouble than Cobb himself. But his is a new blaster, and Scott’s a relatively new deputy too, so Cobb’ not going to judge.

It’s the first time in a week that the two of them are together in the same space, quiet, more or less relaxed. In fact, Cobb would have liked to end Din Djarin’s surveillance as early as the third day of the man living amongst them, but Scott wouldn’t listen.

“Suit yourself,” Cobb said a crisp morning of five days prior. The weather was looming hot, and Scott looked at him all stiff and composed, convinced of the threat posed by the stranger.

Whatever, Cobb had thought at the time, he will get tired soon.

But two days later and the situation had started to be a little embarrassing.

Din had spent the whole week helping with the banthas, patching up the stable roof and fixing some vaporators around the village, harms deep either in shit or in engine grease. As far as Cobb knows, he never complained once. And still, Scott had loomed around him, looking for something suspicious. In Cobb’s humble opinion, the boy just wanted to be right about at least one thing in his life, and he couldn’t let it go.

However, he let it go the night before, when Din Djarin himself graciously offered the Deputy of Mos Pelgo an exit on a silver platter. Cobb hadn’t spoken with the stranger since the afternoon they spent outside the stable, not really knowing why, but unsure of his own footing. Normally he would have loved to push, but Djarin didn’t seem like the type that lets you push him around. So, Cobb had watched from some distance. And he kept doing so the previous evening too, when Din entered the cantina covered in dust, hands darkened by the vaporator’s oils and hair knotted with sweat and grease. He wore a black scarf around his neck that he used to dry the sweat from his brow, acknowledging Cobb with a brief nod at the same time. The Marshal, who was sitting at the counter, raised a glass in his general direction and as a result he didn’t miss the way his deputy stumbled inside the bar, as if he had been running after the man for a while.

Din Djarin glanced behind him, almost sensing the presence of the young man, and suddenly he said: “I’d like to buy you a drink, Scott.” There was a note of exasperation in his voice, but the buzzing of the place hid it well enough. Cobb smiled behind his glass, taking a sip of liquor, watching, listening.

“Sure,” Scott answered rapidly, but his eyes were confused. 

A drink became two, and two drinks became a game of dejarick that Din lost spectacularly, his little creatures on the board dying like flies. Scott was good at that game, but not that good. They played three more times and Scott drank two more glasses of spotchka and finally he started smiling. Cobb looked at the little mountain of credits near his deputy’s elbow and he asked himself if being on the good side of Scott was worth loosing that much money. But at the end of the night Din seemed content and the two of them parted amiably.

The morning after – that same morning – Scott has shown up at the office asking Cobb what tasks he had for him that day, as if he totally forgot his obsession about Din Djarin.

It took everything Cobb had not to make a joke.

And now they are sitting together, the night almost upon them, their weapon clean and ready for a real threat.

“That guy,” Scott starts, not looking up from his blaster, eyebrows clenched, hands moving fast. Then he specifies: “Din Djarin, I mean. He lost so much money to me, yesterday.”

Cobb makes an uncommitted sound, but his gaze doesn’t falter. “Did he, now?”

“It’s not like he’s bad at dejarick, not really… I mean, his strategies were good,” the boy continues, conversationally. “It’s just that—”

“You could read his next move on his face, couldn’t you?” Cobb completes, smiling slightly. He folds his arms, and he looks in Scott’s eyes when the guy gapes at him.

Then, Scott smiles too, just a little. “He has zero gambling face. And I thought that… someone like this couldn’t really be a danger.” Then he goes back to scrub invisible dust from his blaster’s parts, and, barely moving his lips, he whispers: “He apologized for my nose.”

Cobb doesn’t suppress his laughter, then. “Mighty kind of him.”

“He does a good job, don’t he?” Scott’s tone is becoming softer, like it always gets when he’s trying to get a praise out of Cobb, a nod, a pat on the back. Now he wants to know if the Marshal agrees with his judgment of character, because before everything else, Scott’s still a boy that grew up without a father and it doesn’t matter how much he tries to hide it: it shows.

And fuck it, Cobb is an old sap for this stupid kid. “You know what? I believe he does.” Good call, boy, fantastic work. “Well!” he concludes, before things can get out of hand and one of them slips. “I think imma hit the sack. And you should do the same.”

“Sure, boss. I’m just gonna finish here. I’ll close the office.”

The suns are setting, the sky is a lovely shade of deep blue and dark red and Cobb decides to walk around a bit before heading home, and if he passes close by Freben’s house, well, it’s entirely by accident.

Inside the place the lights are on, and he can hear a baby cry, muffled voices, a laugh. He doesn’t linger there; he moves on, saying his hellos to random passers-by, until he notices a few lights up on the sand hill where he knows Freben has his second vaporator. It looks like a droid and a shadowy silhouette of a man.

Well, better investigate, right?

When he arrives up there, the first evening stars are starting to appear behind him, and Chenini is clearly laughing at him. Cobb can almost hear it… it sounds like a million crystals crashing down on his shoulders.

Djarin is lying on the ground, a thin layer of old fabric separating his limbs from the sand. Cobb can only see from his neck to his boots, as the rest of Din’s head is covered by the panel he’s trying to fix. He’s muttering under his breath while the small droid provides a little illumination, chattering in numbers and bips, but the man must be aware of his surroundings because as soon as Cobb is close his voice rises in a greeting. “Marshal!”

“Partner,” Cobb answers without thinking. “Couldn’t this wait ‘til morning?”

Din blows out an exhausted sigh, but it seems to be mostly directed at the machinery and not at Cobb. “They have a baby. They need all the water they can get.”

Cobb smiles fondly, glad that no one can see him, not even the man sprawled on the ground. “Ain’t you a soft one, Din Djarin?”

The clank-clank of metal over metal stops to resume almost immediately. “They gave me one of their speeders. Told me if I can repair it, it’s mine,” he mutters, like that’s the easiest explanation for all his hard work.

“And, let me guess, you had to thank them somehow.” Cobb knows his tone is slightly ironic, but he can’t help it. There’s a mystery down there in the sand, hidden by a faulty vaporator, and he can’t resist it. “You know that’s missing a piece, right? You can play with it as much as you want, but it’s not gonna magically come back to life.”

Finally, the panel shoots all the way up and a pair of brown eyes finds Cobb in the disappearing light. He can see some stars reflected in them. Fuck.

“I know that, but look. If I can connect those two tubes and push together that piece and this one here…” he shows Cobb a little metal bit that he keeps on his stomach, probably for safekeeping, “I think it could work again, for a little while, at least.”

“All right, sunshine,” Cobb says before he can even think to stop himself. “Scoot over and let me have a look at the mess you made.”

Din raises an eyebrow. He has traces of oil along his left cheek, and he should really think about shaving the patchy disaster of his beard, but there is a little twitch of lips, like maybe a smile, and then he’s moving on the side, leaning against the far end of the cylinder he’s working on. Cobb swallows and bends down on one knee.

He’s beside Din faster than it’s probably necessary, but he doesn’t want the opportunity to pass by. The opportunity of doing what, exactly, he’s not sure. Of fixing young Valtas’ vaporator, probably, nothing more.

It takes him less than thirty seconds to assess the situation and maybe another ten to hide his disbelief.

“Fuck me,” he breaths out slowly. “I never thought of doing that.” The comment comes out a little too surprised, maybe, but Cobb’s really impressed, what can he say? Loves himself a man that can take apart shit and build something new. He gesticulates towards the mess of cables and tubes and then looks sideways at Din that’s working on attaching together the two pieces of metal he showed him before. He seems totally concentrated until the droid offers to help and welds the parts faster than any human could.

“Yeah, well,” Din says, nodding towards the droid in a silent thanks. “Had to fix my fair share of old equipment. Enough for a lifetime, probably.”

“And here you are, fixing more old equipment.” Cobb keeps still the little black tube while a pair of dirty hands with long fingers rise up to connect the pieces of the puzzle. Din doesn’t look away from the job they are doing, but he actually smiles a bit, just the corner of his mouth.

“Life is weird like that.”

“You betcha, partner.”

There is a hiss of vapour, a movement from the inner part of the machinery and like magic, the vaporator splutters back to life. Din looks pleased. “That should last for a while.”

“Eh… it will break down again. And they don’t have the credits to replace that broken part, anyway.” Cobb explains standing up immediately after they close the panel. Din follows suit, cleaning his hands in the sand. The droid chooses that moment to shut down the light and they are left in the dim glow of the twilight.

Djarin doesn’t look towards Cobb when he says: “Not a problem.”

The Marshal cocks his head, intrigued by the impossible way the guy is behaving. “You plannin’ on spending all of your money on my people?”

Din cracks his spine with a wince and a sigh, still looking everywhere but at Cobb’s direction. “Got a problem with that?” The question has no bite, but it stings a bit anyway, as if the Marshal would actually stop a random man from spoiling the people of Mos Pelgo. The Maker know they all deserve a little kindness.

“Not at all, sunshine. Just trying to understand your angle, that’s all.”

When the other man speaks, he turns around to finally face Cobb. He looks tired, but not physically, only exhausted by swirling thoughts, by phantoms, maybe, and invisible pains. “Must everyone have an angle?”

“In general? Or in my own experience?”

Even in the dying light he can see Din opening his mouth to answer, but they are both taken by surprise by another voice. Cobb winces, not too happy to have been sort of ambushed, even if their attacker is a young woman with a steaming bowl of food in her hands and a child strapped at her waist with an old piece of cloth.

“Marshal!” She exclaims. “If I knew you were here, I would have brought food for you, too.”

“No need,” Cobb says at the same time as Din adds “We can share.”

Is this guy for real?

“Bahbahbah!” the kid comments. His little legs moving around like crazy, freeing themselves from the cloth.

They both stand up and Valtas sets the food on the little space the vaporator offers. There’s only one spoon, obviously, but yeah, they could always share. The woman stares at them with open kindness and disbelief. She’s not pretty in the literal sense of the word and she insists on hiding her beautiful red hair under a black shawl, but her face is round and open, and somehow the shape of her hands reminds Cobb of another woman that always gave half her food to the kids, back when he lived in the slave barracks. Valtas’ clear eyes are a little bit like that woman’s too: almost always sad, especially since her husband died when the town went up against the Krayt Dragon, but now they look surprised and pleased.

“I can’t believe you fixed it!” she exclaims, bringing her hand to her face, covering a smile.

“For now,” Din reminds her. “You’ll need that missing part.”

“Maybe the next lunar cycle…” she agrees distantly, untangling her baby from the mess he made. Cobb know the little brat wants to be on the ground, as he just started to walk around.

For a moment they all look at the boy that puts his hands in the sand and pushes himself up.

“Tell him to stop growing, Valtas, or we will need a bigger school soon!” Cobb jokes. The little one looks like his father, a good man, a good shot, too. Freben was devastated by his son’s death, and still, now that Cobb’s thinks about it, he just promised his own son’s speeder to a literal stranger. Cobb looks at Din Djarin from the corner of his eye and he wonders if the man figure that out yet. But Din seems transfixed by the little boy moving around, testing his own strength.

“Sand is very good,” he comments, as if he’s not really there with them. Then, when he realises none understood him, he clears his throat, and he looks away with such a longing in his gaze that it almost forces Cobb to take a step back. “I mean, the sand’s good to learn how to walk. It moves with his feet, not against them.”

He probably doesn’t realise that on Tatooine everyone starts walking on sand before even thinking of walking on solid ground, but it doesn’t matter. Cobb can see the way he looks at that kid, the way he flinches when the boy comes closer and grabs the fabric of Din’s pants to balance himself. It’s like he wants to pick him up, but he physically can’t.

Valtas doesn’t notice anything is amiss, of course. She smiles again and takes back the baby that now is looking up at Din with a curious expression, a little smile without teeth, his cheeks rosy and plump. Cobb imagines he’s sort of cute.

“I’ll leave you to your dinner. Gotta bring him to bed… You can leave the bowl here when you’re finished. And, yeah, thank you for all your trouble. It’s—”

“No trouble.” Din’s voice is raw, as if it’s coming right from his core and someone is pulling it out by force. He has just turned around to grab the food, so he doesn’t look at the woman and the baby walking away. When he faces Cobb again, he looks more or less normal and Cobb doesn’t lose any precious time: he sits down on the sand, pushing away the droid that throttles back to the house alongside his owner.

The Marshal pats the sand right next to him, where the little boy’s footprints are still visible, and for an instant Din looks conflicted, then he accepts the silent offer, sitting right next to him. In front of them is the Dune Sea, behind them, the flickering lights of Mos Pelgo.

“A good family,” Cobb comments, refusing the food that Din immediately offers him. “Looks like they like you.”

“They lost someone,” the man deadpans, eating slowly.

You lost someone, Cobb wants to say, but for once in his life he keeps his mouth shut. “Freben’s son.” He nods, keeping his gaze fixed on the horizon. He’s vaguely aware that the man beside him is all scrunched up on himself, inside himself, like that first morning in the cell. Like he wants to disappear.

“How that happened?”

“None told you the dragon story, yet?” It’s frankly unbelievable. The people of Mos Pelgo rarely speak about something else with strangers.

The man hums. “They did. I just didn’t know it was in that occasion.” Then he smiles a bit, turning over to Cobb. “And anyway, I understand that you are the best storyteller, around here.”

Cobb laughs then, pleased and also somehow disappointed with the sudden change in mood. He knows the kids around town beg him to tell that particular story over and over, but he didn’t think someone would tell this guy. “And what? You wanna a bedtime story, sunshine? I can tell you’re not much of a chatterbox yourself. Probably horrible at storytelling.”

Din scoffs. “Not that hard to figure out that about me.”

“What? Never told a story to your own little ones, then?” It’s a long shot. Maybe a bit too private to ask. And maybe Cobb should mind his own business and all, but well… he loves to push a man, doesn’t he?

Din puts down his food and turns around to half-face him. He tries to make his expression obey him and present his face as blank and motionless as possible, but he fails, like he’s out of practice. Cobb can read right trough him, and he doesn’t like that spark of fury, that boiling rage simmering under the surface. “I give out father vibes, to you?”

Oh, sweetheart, Cobb thinks, if you only knew what kind of vibes you are giving out…

“The way you handled Scott, for once,” the Marshal tries to explain. “With him not everyone can be that… how to put it? Mmmh… tolerant? The boy’s a brat and so full of himself, but he’s good.”

Din cocks an eyebrow, and the Marshal can clearly see the question there, so he rolls his eyes, annoyed and pleased at the same time: “No, he’s not my son. For fuck’s sake! Do I give out that kriffin’ vibe?”

There’s a chuckle, a little one and Din resumes eating his dinner. Cobb has the feeling that, as soon as he’ll finishes half of the food, the bowl will be pushed into his own hands, and he will be forced to accept it.

“So what? I lose some board game to a kid, and you think I’m a father?”

“Nah. But the way you acted with Valtas’ kid, well… kinda obvious. So. Where your kids at?”

The answer is there, clear as a morning sky. It’s a painful one and Cobb is reminded of the day he had to visit four families in Mos Pelgo, one after the other one, a mere half an hour after Mando left with his beloved piece of armour. He knocked at the small doors, he held their gaze, he told them their people were not coming back for dinner that day. He’s not the one that has to do the talking now, but he’s the one that’s knocking at the door. Fuck, he’s basically kicking the door in, at this point, but…

I wanna know, a selfish part of him whispers, I wanna know you. Who you are, what you want, what can I do for you and what can you do for me. I wanna—

“Lost them,” Din Djarin states grimly, staring at the soup now cold and lumpy. He still holds the spoon with his hand but he’s clearly not looking at it. The way he speaks, the way those two simple words come out of his mouth, like he’s pulling teeth, the way he holds himself, all of it makes Cobb’s skin vibrate, as if part of him wants to crawl out of his body and disappear in the sand, forget the whole conversation, forget he ever asked.

But he asked, and Din just spoke about his child like they are gone forever. Like they are dead.

Cobb holds his breath for a long moment, so long that he has to inhale rapidly when he realises if he keeps at that he’ll probably faint. “I’m sorry,” he manages to say at the end, and he feels like it’s the stupidest shit he ever uttered in his entire life.

“Now you know why I’m here, Marshal,” Din continues, as if he’s just been sliced open with a knife and all that is coming out of him is blood and loneliness. “No home, no family, no— Grogu…” The name is pronounced with some trouble, but at the end even that comes out and the desert can take it away with him. It can smear it in sand, polish it out and mellow it. A little sound for a little child, lost in a sea of evermoving waves.

“Did the empire…?” asks Cobb, because the silence is too much, and he can stand only a little bit of it.

Din coffs and he finally moves again, pushing his food in Cobb’s hand, careful not to touch him, not even by mistake. “You could say that.” He leans back, holding himself up with the elbow deep in the dunes and then he looks at the sky. The stars reflect in his big eyes again, but this time there is a little stream of tears that is taking away the grease from his skin. Troubled, Cobb shuts the mouth he didn’t realize he had opened and goes back to look at the desert.

Din’s voice travels the empty distance that the horrible conversation managed to build between them and when it reaches Cobb’s sorry ears, it’s somehow softer, kinder. “You should eat your dinner. It’s not bad, I promise.”

Cobb obeys like a child would (like a child probably did at some point in Din’s life), he takes a spoonful, he chews, he swallows, and on his tongue the food tastes like ash and gravel.

Chenini, up there, never stops with the fucking laughter.

Chapter Text

For days there’s only the sand, and the wind, and the rocks.

During the nights he hides in the earth holes, clawing away at his own life like a wounded animal. He feels the guilt and the emptiness that is mirrored back to him by the shimmering lights dancing in the desert. He shivers, cold and hot at the same time, plagued by dreams of the past and dreams of an impossible future.

He feels the tip-tap of little claws touching his helmet, he tries to lift a small, light body up, to hold him close, and there’s nothing but sand and rocks.

*

The bantha named Funnel (like the kriffin’ flower) finally decides to give birth in the middle of the day, when the suns are at their highest point and the general feeling of the town is that anyone that dares getting his nose outside will melt down in a puddle of their own sweat.

Cobb sighs, he moves his scarf around to get a little more air and breaths the hotness of the day in, he lets it sits down in the lungs. It burns.

“Just send in the doctor, if she can spare the time. Not much I can do,” he explains to the Deputy, as soon as the guy delivers the news breathlessly, as if he’d been running all the way from Freben’s stables. For a moment Cobb’s scared he may have a stroke, but then he realises Scott’s just excited. He supposes it makes sense. After all, not everyday one can assist to a bantha giving birth: sturdy animals, strong, incredibly long lives, but they don’t breed very much.

“Kara’s already there,” Scott says entering their office and squinting his eyes to the sudden darkness. “Brought all her fancy stuff too.”

“So that’s it. Not much else to do but wait.”

However, Cobb can sense the town buzzing. It’s not a sound per se, it’s more a gut feeling. He knows that the news is travelling fast, moving from home to home, from mouth to mouth. The children are gonna be excited, after school they’ll probably run up the hill, pooling in front of the stables, begging for a peek. There will be blood, and the bantha will be screaming, it won’t be pretty to watch. Maybe they should organize something nice for the children to attend. A little gathering, a waiting party, something like that. Cobb scratches the back of his head, humming. Some of the families will probably help, and the Maker knows there’s still tons of dried dragon’s meat to make a nice pot of soup. Who knows…? It may even be fun.

He smiles slowly and, since he’s the Mashal of Mos Pelgo and has more important duties to attend to, he tells his idea to Scott, and then promptly leaves everything in his two capable hands.

As for him, for once, he can just do his thing: moving slowly around town, checking the perimeters, playing with his gun, and looking intimidating. He’s sure that for one day he’ll probably get away with it, especially in a day like this.

Funnily enough, Cobb is wrong about that.

They send for him in the late afternoon. Cobb’s checking out some of their general vaporators at the far east of Mos Pelgo. The Jawas keep messing with them, steeling parts, replacing them with faulty equipment. Nothing serious, but Cobb likes to keep them on their toes, if he can, so he goes there daily, at different hours, just to see if he can get them with their little hands dirty. So far, no luck.

He hears the speeders before he sees them, the wind being in his favour. He stands up from where he was crouched down and looks towards the little clouds of sand and debris that’s moving towards him. He has immediately a bad feeling, and he moves a hand on the blaster, relishing the false sense of security. One of them is Issa-Or, the other a boy not older than fifteen years that normally works alongside their teacher at the school.

Issa-Or is the first one to dismount, sparing a glance to the green boy behind her. “Cobb,” says the Twi’lek with her lips pressed together.

“Spare me the pleasantries. What’s going on?” He looks at the young one that manages to reach the ground without falling. “The school?”

“Oh!” she says, touching absentmindedly her badly burned lek, a nervous habit she recently picked up. “No, nothing to worry about. Duek just wanted to tag along, and he needs practice on the speeder. It’s the Funnel!”

Cobb rolls his eyes. “What about her?”

“It’s not looking good,” Duek intrudes. “Almost the entire city is outside the barn waiting, but the bantha ain’t good.”

“Apparently,” Issa-Or explains with a lot more aloofness, “she’s expecting twins.”

Cobb opens his mouth but for a second nothing come out. “You are joking!” he decides to say at the end.

“I know how it sounds, but Freben himself told Jo, Jo told me, and Scott wanted to come and get you. I told him to stay with the people, to entertain them. The kids are getting impatient, and it looks like it will take most of the night for the second calf. The first one is out, by the way. A male.”

Cobb scratches his beard with a hand, thinking. A bantha birth is always a big moment, but a twin birth calls for a real party. And even an old desert relic like him is starting to get a bit excited about it. He never really believed about Tuskens’ lore of good fortune and incredible wealth every time a bantha delivers a good calf, but now, after the Madalorian, after the dragon, after the last year of relative peace, maybe he’s starting to see a pattern.

“It will be alright,” he says, mostly for the boy’s sake. “The doctor is there, and nobody knows these animals better than Freben. We’ll tell the news, and we’ll organize an even bigger party for tomorrow.”

Duek little face lights up immediately and he practically runs back to his speeder, whilst Issa-Or raises an eyebrow, amused. “Thought you hated big celebrations.”

“Thought you hated kids,” Cobbs deadpans, smiling.  

“I gotta feeling you’d like to know that the new guy is involved too.” Issa smiles back, eye twinkling. “Freben called him in after lunch. Apparently, he keeps the animal calm or some shit.”

“Really?”

She crosses her harms, looking at Cobb intently while he moves slowly towards his own speeder, ready to go back and disperse his people. “I find it weird.”

“What?”

“This fellow comes from nowhere and three weeks later one of our females gives birth to twins? Do I have to tell you how rare both occasions are?”

Cobb attaches his flask to the vehicle and looks back at his friend. “I never took you for the superstitious type, Issa. Did you spend a little too much time with the raiders the last lunar cycle?”

She’s used to Cobb ironic way to dodge a bullet, and so she doesn’t really reply. She simply shakes her head. “All right, Marshal. Let’s go back home.”

And they do just that.

Cobb is surprised (but not too shocked) when he noticed the four big tents that have been built right outside the stables, there are tables and chairs protected by the new shades, some people are sitting there, talking with each other, keeping an eye on the group of kids that every so often moves to the doors, and then moves back again. They shake their little heads, faces darkened by worry mixed with anticipation.

It takes Cobb, Scott and Issa-Or almost an entire hour to send everyone home with the promise that as soon as the situation is under control and the second calf is born, they will send words. There’s no use in waiting in the heat of the late afternoon, explains Scott with incredible patience. Everybody has something to do, and the kids will need to rest and be ready for the big day tomorrow. They listen to him, and Cobb feels something like pride blossoming in his old chest. He tries not to show it, but he probably does a bad job, as Scott looks at him with shiny eyes and a big grin.

“Keep them in line,” says Cobb to the Deputy while they both look at their people slowly retreating. “The older kids I mean. They will try to sneak in an’ I don’t want them to see something unpleasant.”

None of them says it out loud, but the possibility of having a healthy second calf is very thin. Cobb hopes it won’t die, or the village will be inconsolable, and probably the Tusken tribe won’t want to trade with them for at least awhile.

Issa-Or keeps him company, smoking with him under the now empty tents and they talk on what a twin birth may mean for all of them.

“One of my friends went out yesterday, to hunt. She spotted the caravan moving toward us… they’ll probably be here by tomorrow morning.”

Cobb lets the smoke circle his head, eyes fixed on the closed doors of the stable. “Frigging desert rats… how did they know!?”

Issa-Or shrugs “Fuck if I know, but I’m not surprised. What’s your plan?”

“Talk to them, let them see the cubs, probably invite them to the party… I can’t just send them on their way.” Then Cobb stops a moment to really ponder the question and he finally turns to her. “What do you mean ‘what’s my plan’?!”

The Twi’lek shrugs again, but her mouth is curved upwards. “It’s a great opportunity to strengthen the bond we are forming with them, even if the community is not yet convinced.”

A piercing moan comes from the stable and Cobb is distracted once again. Voices rise and then everything quiet down again. After a moment Valtas comes out from a side door with an empty bucket, she spots them and shakes her head, moving fast towards her house. Cobb and Issa-Or resume their conversation.

“I’m just saying that you should think about it.”

“About what?” Cobb asks, a little exasperated. He’s missing the point, and he knows, in his heart, that the point is not the only thing that he’s missing recently. He just cannot put his finger on it.

Issa-Or laughs, kills her cigarette with a last, long drag and stands up. “I’m guessing you’re staying until the end.”

“Seems necessary.” Cobb looks up at her, knowing very well that if she decides to speak in riddles there’s nothing he can do. He will think about everything, and maybe he will get the answer, whatever that may be. He has enough cigarettes, enough weird tobacco and herbs mix, and certainly enough time.

He has to wait until the stars above him start to shine to finally see the doors slide open and to completely make up his mind. The first one to come out is Freben’s grandson, a smear of blood on his cheek, a smile that’s brighter than the moons. Cobb instantly knows that everything is well, and the boy barely stops to acknowledge him: he rans straight to the village centre, to give the good news. Cobb, smoking slowly, is invaded by an incredible feeling of calmness, something that he has a hard job to recognise, until it dawns to him: it’s joy. The purest kind. Maybe it’s the mix of herbs in the Tusken tobacco, maybe it’s the fatigue of the day, maybe it’s the idea of the twin banthas suckling milk from their exhausted mother. Or maybe it’s the proud way Din Djarin is walking straight up to him, his brown eyes shining in the night lights, his face open and strong and something Cobb is getting a bit too fond of.

“Two males,” Din announces. He’s cleaning away some blood from his hands. He looks tired, but somehow determined.

Cobb looks up to him slowly, taking him in. His fingers are red, but also hardened by work, by battle, by a life non always well lived. In that, if nothing else, they are the same. There is something extraordinary in sitting under a piece of cloth, at the border of Mos Pelgo, witnessing the birth of two banthas alongside this man. This stranger from across the stars.

And still, Cobb is missing something. Something important.

“I’ve decided” he begins, chewing on his words a little, “to give one of the cubs to the Tusken leader. One for him, one for me.” He means ‘us’, he means his community, but he knows that for the people of the desert the symbolism is everything.

There is a moment of silence, and it’s a strange kind of trill the way Din’s eyes roam on him, an amazed look on his face.

Din stops cleaning his hands. “That is… surprisingly clever.”

Cobb throws away the cigarette and crosses his harms, smiling a little. He feels like he’s floating, the compliment burning on his skin in the same way it would if they touched. “Surprisingly?” he repeats, pretending to be offended.

“No, I mean—”

“It’s fine, I know.”

“That would be good,” Din comments in the end, looking away. “They’ll be here tomorrow, then?”

“Probably in the morning. Not that I’m surprised…” Cobb would like to thank him for his help with the animals, with Freben’s family. He would like to thank him for his presence there, in his town, a presence that seems to temper an absence of which Cobb wasn’t even totally aware, until now. But he knows that it would be too much to say to an almost stranger, he knows he gave him too much power already, and he shouldn’t keep looking at him like that.

Two banthas at once and a stranger from the desert.

Another incredible event and another impossible man.

“Oh, no…” Din says at that point, distracting him completely. But he’s not looking at him, his eyes are fixed on a little figure that’s moving slowly along the sand, almost entering the stable. It’s a little boy and it takes Cobb a few seconds to realize he’s Valtas’ youngest.

“Ah, shit…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll bring him back.” Din’s lips curve slightly upwards. “Got the feeling you smoked a bit too much tonight.”

“You ain’t wrong, partner,” Cobb admits after a second, looking as the other one moves fast to catch the toddler before he goes right where he shouldn’t be.

It’s a sweet scene, really. Din draws the boy’s attention with a kind word, and he’s immediately recognised. The little one stops, a bit unsteady, a thumb in his mouth, and stays still until the man is upon him. Then Din bends down and picks the child up slowly, murmuring words that Cobb can’t hear. They seem to find an agreement because after a moment Din props the child on his side and moves towards the house to bring him back to his mother.

It doesn’t take more than thar for Cobb to finally get what he was missing. It’s humbling, really, that it should have taken him almost an entire lunar cycle to realize what should have been crystal clear since day one.

But here they are: a man, a child, once again. Same man, different child.

And this time there is no dragon to slay, or at least not a physical one.

Chapter Text

He spends three days laying in a cave because moving is starting to be too much. The weight of the armour pushes him down and he obeys its never-ending demands, because, after all… didn’t he do exactly that for the majority of his life? Didn’t he follow what the beskar has told him? His duty, his creed, his existence. His way. Hard to change now.

He lays down, head propped on a rock, helmet nearby. The T-shaped visor looks straight at him with empty eyes, and he looks back: it’s like seeing himself in a mirror. He doesn’t really know his own face, but the beskar knows him and he knows the beskar.

He wonders, idly, if anyone would ever even recognise him without it.

*

The next day Cobb wakes up with a migraine and the annoying feeling of not being completely there. Staring at the blank wall, he drinks a cup of kaf that does nothing more than upsetting his already knotted stomach and, after a long and hard discussion with himself, he finally decides to absolutely do nothing about The Thing. He decides not to address The Thing, not to point The Thing out, not to talk about The Thing and, if possible, not even to think about The Thing.

It becomes almost immediately clear that the latter is, in fact, not possible.

When Cobb emerges from his small house, half of the village is gathering at the far south of the settlement: the Tusken are slowly advancing towards Mos Pelgo and, even if this is their fourth visit, the event is still somewhat not completely welcome. The elders look at the horizon with squinted eyes, suspicious expressions, and hands clasped on the weapons they insist on wearing. The children, on the other hand, can barely contain the excitement.

“I wanna see the babies again” wails one of them, pulling the mother by the hand. Cobb looks at the little girl for a second, face red and an impossibly wide smile, while her mother takes a deep breath. “In a little time, darling… Freben said they need quiet, they need to rest”. At those words Cobb’s attention moves forward, finding Freben and his family mixing with the crowd. It’s not hard to spot Din with them. He’s standing carefully away from the people and, judging from the nervous stance, it’s evident that he’s agreed to join the welcoming party out of sheer courtesy. He doesn’t want to be in the middle of the gathering.

The Marshal eyes the way Din stands, rigid, with his head erect, tight shoulders and gaze fleeing. He rarely looks at people in the eyes, that man, he almost never lets anyone touch him, as if he doesn’t really know how to approach another being. The way he moves, the way he talks… his kriffin tone of voice. Everything should have been a dead giveaway from the very start, but it took Cobb an entire moons cycle to realize The Thing and still, he’s not sure about…

“Marshal…?” Jo touches his arm and Cobb almost jumps out of his own skin. It’s not the first time she’s tried to get the Marshal’s attention, apparently.

“Yeah? Yes, Jo… what’s going on? I thought we agreed on no weapons,” Cobb says, clearing his throat and at the same time pointing at the people sporting blasters or vibroknives.

“We agreed on no rifles.”

Cobb feels his headache spiking. He can’t be too picky: it’s already a miracle if the council – called in an assembly the night before – agreed on giving away one of their new banthas. Speaking of which… “Right, well… how are the new additions?”

Jo immediately perks up, as if she was the one giving birth to the animals. “Good! Have you seen them this morning? Little things, but strong… It is a good sign, a real good one, Marshal!”

“You believe they bring good luck? I thought you were a clever one!” he teases her, watching closely as the woman narrows her eyes, annoyed.

“It’s a Tatooine tradition, not just a Tusken one! That’s why I don’t agree with--”

“Sure, sure…” Cobb cuts her off, knowing full well her opinion on the idea of gifting the animal to the Tusken. She rolls her eyes with a hard smile on her lips: she trusts him, and that’s the most important thing for Cobb right now. Still, he finds he can’t entirely focus, not when The Thing is still nagging him. Not when he can practically feel Din’s gaze lingering on his back. “Listen,” he adds after a moment of consideration, checking the Tusken silhouettes moving against the red sands. “I need Toms to speak with them when they arrive today. My signing ain’t getting any better, and I want no misunderstandings today.”

“Ah, boss, about that… Toms is outta town. He left two days ago. None told yah?”  

Cobb grits his teeth. “None told me.” But to be honest, he’s never asked, and it’s not like the people of Mos Pelgo aren’t free to come and go as they please. He looks around, scanning the crowd, thinking how to solve the little problem, when the solution almost hits him in the face.

Din doesn’t know that Cobb knows, and he probably never even wanted for The Thing to come out in the first place, what with his weird religion and everything else… But Cobb is nothing short of a bastard and he can use the situation to his advantage. At least to a point.

Also, he’s being lied to, and he believes he’s owed a little fun for that.

“No matter,” he mutters towards Jo, hiding a grin. “I got a replacement.” And then he turns around and moves straight to where Din’s still standing.

While walking he looks openly at the man and tries not to think about The Thing. It should be a secret, Din’s face: Din’s entire behaviour is telling him that that part of his life is behind him. However, like a lurking animal, that same life seems to be following him everywhere, ready to attack. Din can’t seem to shake it away, that piece of himself, but he looks desperate to do just so. And Cobb is not cruel, he would never reveal what he discovered. He does his best to separate the two men, the one that’s standing in front of him right now, welcoming him with soft, brown eyes and just a hint of a smile, and the other one, the one as hard as metal and as unyielding as a sandstorm. That one is not with them right now.

“Howdy, partner!” he starts, as cheerfully as he can, as relaxed as he can. Pretending not to be affected by the entire situation. “You managed to get some shuteyes after last night?”

“Some” is the terse response, but Cobb doesn’t lose the smile, which grows bigger when Din adds, awkwardly: “And you? I heard you called a meeting?”

“Slept like a baby,” he lies happily, ignoring the second question. “Listen, someone told me you can sign good.”

Din frowns, confused and suspicious at the same time. By the Maker, the man is still an open book. “Where’d you hear that?”

Cobb waves his hand, never losing his smile. “Not important… you see, I want this negotiation to go well, and I need someone who won’t fuck it up.”

Din’s frown grows bigger, and he crosses the arms on his chest. “You are giving them one of the little ones, right? It’s not a negotiation if it’s a gift.”

The suns are shining, the heat is rising, and Cobb keeps the smile up, even as nervous as he feels, and then he wonders briefly if there’s a way to make Din smile too. He tries to remember if he ever heard the man laughing, but he never really paid much attention to that, not before The Thing. Suddenly he realises that he would like very much to hear Din’s laughter.

“Same difference. I’m trying to learn, but it’s hard to get the words right…”

Din swallows, looks behind Cobb, at the Tusken that sometimes during their conversation have started setting up camp on the hills, then he looks back at the Marshal. “And you won’t ask me why I know how to speak their language?”

Cobb’s hands rise in mock surrender, “Hey, not my business, partner.”

There’s still distrust on Din’s face, but Cobb knows when he’s won an argument. After all Din himself has asked to be put to work… “Their leader will probably come down at the stables while the others build the tents. We can meet there in an hour or so.”

“Wait a second… I haven’t agreed yet.”

But Cobb is already moving away, strangely sure of himself now that he knows, he really knows, the person he’s dealing with. But he doesn’t think about it, oh no, not even if for days on end he has dreamt of little else but removing that helmet, peeling off those gloves, slipping that cape off those shoulders… Two different men, remember?

One hour later, after fighting with his deputy who of course doesn’t approve of his decision, the Marshal of Mos Pelgo, accompanied by a little delegation, part of which pretends to be totally on bord with the whole ordeal, set course to the stables, where Din and Freben are already waiting. Freben’s face is dark with malcontent, while Din’s is strangely emotionless, as if he finally discovered the secret of hiding his own emotions. Cobb hopes not.

“You’re still in time to back off, Marshal,” the Deputy whispers, somewhere behind his right shoulder.  

“Now,” Cobb smiles, “why would I do that? The council agreed that’s a good idea.”

“Barely half the council.”

“More than half the council and this is still a democracy, Scott. Now, shut up and let the adults talk.”

He can practically feel the boy swearing and at the same time forcing himself to obey. The impulse is to turn around and give him a pat on the shoulder, but Din’s looking straight at him now, a strange expression on his handsome features, and Cobb’s mouth is suddenly dry.

The Tusken leader is coming closer, he too accompanied by a few of his most trusted companions. That’s nothing new for Cobb: every time they visit the delegations repeat the same formal greetings to show their respect for each other. This time, however, Cobb feels suddenly, impossibly nervous.

Din gets closer to him, moving to his left. “What should I say?”

“That… they are welcome here and that they can stay as long as they like.”

That’s fairly simple, and even Cobb can master the sings to express friendship: he practiced those with Toms a few times, but still, he knows that he often mixes up the correct words, talking gibberish.

The raider’s leader gets in front of them, his companions at both sides, his masked face doesn’t say anything more than usual, but for a long time his gaze is fixed on Din. When he turns to Cobb the movement is sudden, sharp. He speaks fast, moving is hands quickly.

Din exchanges with him a few pleasantries, quickly and efficiently, and then glances at Cobb. “Among other things, he’s congratulating for the birth. He just heard the news about the two calves.”

“Thank you,” Cobb says automatically, talking to Din instead of the Tusken. He’s not used in having an interpreter and for the first time he thinks he bit off more than he can actually chew. Din however doesn’t seem embarrassed or out of place, even if the desert people could recognise him for whom he really is. In a flurry of hands movements, he conveys the short message and immediately the Tusken turns to him.

They sign back and forth for a bit, then Din exhales what Cobb can only describe as a breathy laugh. He’s the only one that hears it because they are standing so close, but for a moment he’s unable to hide his surprise. Immediately he wants to hear it again.

“What’s he saying?” the Marshal asks after a moment of stunned silence, realizing too late that his voice is breaking.

“He says that your signs are getting better, but that he’ll be happy to have a conversation with an adult instead of a toddler, for once.” Din pauses for a moment, looking sideways with a little smile. There’s a veil of sweat on his temples and Cobb wonders for a second what that would taste like on his tongue. “Coming from them, it’s a compliment.”

Cobb coughs, embarrassed by his own wandering thoughts and also a little irritated by the comment. “He’s saying that I speak like a child.”

Immediately comes the correction. “He’s saying that he appreciates your effort.”

“Alright then. Whatever. Thank you, I guess. Can you tell him now that our community decided to gift them one of the calves as a sign of peace?”

Din hesitates for a moment, then he moves a hand towards Cobb, maybe to grab him and create a safe space for them to talk in private, but suddenly he seems to rethink the action and goes rigid. “If you don’t mind,” he says after a second, “I’ll change that statement, just a little.”

Cobb looks back at his people, standing behind him. They look tense, on edge. When he turns again towards the Tusken he just nods once. “Do your thing, Din, but spell it out for us.”

“Ah…all right.” He clears his voice and then takes a long breath. “The Marshal” he begins slowly, “would like to gift one of the new-born banthas to you specifically, as the leader of your community, to grow and care and support.” Cobb tries to follow the fast pacing of Din’s signs, but it’s hard and he loses a few words here and there. He listens closely to his carefully drafted words, though, realizing that the speech is not coming from the spur of the moment, but that Din probably thought about it for some time. He loses himself in the deep, collected tone of voice. “And as the banthas are the connection between the desert and your people,” Din continues, “this gift can be the connection between Mos Pelgo and your tribe. May this connection grow as the two calves will, separated but forever united by birth.”

Hypnotized by the rhythmic movements of Din’s hands, Cobb doesn’t realize that the man has finally stopped and he’s looking at him now. “I know that this is a gift from your people to the tribe, but it will mean more if we say that’s from you personally to him. They share a bond with each bantha and—”

“It’s fine” Cobb whispers, interrupting him without much thinking. “Didn’t know you were a poet, on top of everything else.”

The sun is high, so it shouldn’t be very surprising if Din’s face reddens, but Cobb notices anyway.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Cobb opens his mouth to answer something sharp and witty, he hopes, but there’s no time.

“Marshal… he’s speaking again.” Jo tells him from behind.

Both men turn to look at the Tusken, who’s now making guttural sounds along with the movements of his hands.

“He’s… honoured, I think,” Din translates after a moment of consideration, his voice steady again. “I’ve never heard that before. He’s excited… his men too. They would like to see the calves, if possible.”

Freben, bless his old heart, moves before he’s even asked and, with Scott’s help, he guides Fennel out of the stables. Immediately the two new-borns follow her, trotting happily in the sand as they were born to do. They are smaller than they should be, but they look perfectly healthy.

The Tusken chatter excitedly between each other, pointing fingers and moving their hands fast and loose. It must be an incredible occasion for them, as Cobb can’t remember another situation in which they seemed so happy, save from the day of the dragon, of course.

“They say that the calf should choose his companion.”

In the end it’s easy enough: one of the animals moves happily in the direction of the humans, sniffing around, while the other one trots towards the Tusken, his thick tongue out in the open, the still-tender horns barely visible under the chunky fur. The Tusken break out in happy cheers and Cobb can’t help but smile proudly at his people. See? he wants to say. I was right, wasn’t I? I’m doing my best, and I’m doing good. I can protect you. But of course he keeps his doubts and fears well hidden and he just smacks his hand on Din’s shoulder, too happy to stop himself.

Cobb’s fingers linger there, in the liminal space between Din’s shirt and naked skin, dump with sweat. He can feel the heat coming from Din’s body, the soft texture of his skin… it’s like touching an open fire, but his fingers don’t get burned.

Din moves away swiftly, taking a step back while at the same time closing his eyes for a second. It takes no more than a moment, and none seems to notice, but Cobb does. Suddenly he wants to cut his own hand off and to touch him again at the same time.

“He says…” Din mutters after taking a deep breath, eyes fixed on the Tusken, hands clenched and shoulder rigid. “He says you should name each other’s animal. To strengthen the bond.” His words are barely a whisper.

There’s a moment of silence while everyone involved take in the proposal. Cobb speaks, because he’s staring at Din in disbelief and if he doesn’t respond he will certainly do something he will immediately regret. And that’s neither the time nor the place. “It’s gotta be something meaningful,” he declares finally, somewhat stupidly. Jo scoffs and rolls her eyes.

“No shit” she comments, but doesn’t offer any suggestion. Cobb looks at Scott, realizing the boy has exactly zero idea, like the Marshal himself. Cobb’s mind floats away from him as he realizes the hand that touched Din is as cold as ice.

The Tusken, unaware of their (his) inner turmoil, are looking at them, expecting an answer. Surprisingly, in the end is Freben that saves the situation. “Tusken follow Chenini, right? They worship that moon. Why don’t we call it like that?”

“Like what? Chenini?”

Freben nods once and the rest of them don’t seem to have any better idea at hand. And fuck if Cobb can be bothered anymore. He looks at Din with wide eyes. He wants to apologise, to ask forgiveness for the unwelcome contact, he wants to say I know you. He wants to touch him again and instead, with a broken tone, he asks: “What’s the sing for Chenini?”

Din, out of words probably as much as him, shows them the sign. His eyes are huge pool of brown lost on his face and he’s fighting against his clear discomfort. Cobb tries to remember if the man’s ever been touched since he moved in Mos Pelgo, and apart from the first day when Din was out of his mind for the alcohol and the dehydration, he doesn’t think someone really touched him yet. Suddenly the sun is too hot, the sand is burning the soles of his booths. He needs some water to drink, he needs to lie down. He cannot even begin to understand how Din’s feeling and he’s not sure he wants to.

Cobb repeats the correct sign, and he registers the Tusken muttering between themselves, apparently pleased. At one point he believes they are laughing, but Cobb was never really the best at identify the different sounds they make, so he’s not entirely sure.

They draw Din’s attention once again and the leader signs one final time, solemnly.

Din looks at him for a long time before repeating the last gesture with a little hesitation. The leader signs again, just one word and even Cobb, with his basic understanding of the language, gets the gif of what’s going on.

“He says,” Din explains looking straight at the Tusken’s face, avoiding Cobb’s, “he says that since it was the Kyrat Dragon that drove you all together, it would be meaningful to give your bantha the name of the man that help you kill the beast and started your friendship.”

The immediate silence is broken only by the two little banthas, suckling at their mother’s breasts, the little tails slapping the air happily while they eat.

“I don’t know his name,” Cobb mumbles after a moment, looking everywhere but at Din. His heart beats so fast that he can hear almost nothing else but its frantic drumming.

The raider’s leader moves his hand again, making a “T” shaped sign right in front of his head. He’s not looking at Cobb while he does that: he looks straight at Din.

“We called him Mando,” Jo explains after a beat, evidently not getting the full picture. “That’s what he’s signing, right?”

Cobb doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or run to the cantina and gulp down the entire town reserve of spotcha. Probably both. He can’t bear to look at the man standing at his side.

“Then we’ll call it like that,” Scott agrees.

“Yeah” Cobb nods, running a hand over his eyes. “Yeah, why not? Let’s call it Mando.”

He’s pretty sure from now on he’ll be perfectly able to tell if a Tusken is laughing.

Chapter Text

He hasn’t walked aimlessly across the Dune Sea. He would love to be the type of man who’s able to just lose himself in the wild without knowing perfectly well where he actually is; but unfortunately for him, he’s been trained too well. So, he knows where he is, and he knows what he needs to do to reach some sort of civilization.

What he doesn’t know is how long will he survive without the armour. He looks at the pieces of it, a dead exoskeleton, lying in the sand, detached from his body. He never takes the beskar completely off, not even when he cleans and maintains parts of it. Looking at it now, it’s like seeing his own body detached from his soul. He feels nothing.

Maybe he will die, walking the last distance that separates him from Mos Pelgo, maybe he will reach the settlement in one piece. He doesn’t care.

He buries his metal body under the sand, wrapping it in his cape, like a burial ceremony from another lifetime. With it, he buries the darksaber too.

He walks in the desert. His flesh exposed, his eyes unfocused, his skin touched by sand, wind, light, life. And suddenly it’s hard to breath.

*

In the evening, the party begins.

It’s an echo of the celebrations they held after the death of the Krayt Dragon, for they build great bonfires right outside the town, and they all gather around. They eat slow cooked meat and stew, and they drink cheap alcohol that’s immediately watered down as soon as the adults notice a bunch of older children stealing some bottles.

The raiders keep their distance for a while until their young ones decide they want to have some fun too. And so, for a long time Cobb is lost in the sight of a little group of their children playing with three of the youngest Tusken. They barely understand each other, but he supposes one doesn’t need great communication skills to sneak in the stables and pet little banthas until the animals roll in the hay, purring their content like domesticated sand skitters.

Nobody tries to stop them, and after a while they are seen running around to their heart content, their respective parents eyeing them with concern at first and then with something that for Cobb looks very much like indulgence.

It feels like a miracle in so many ways.

Cobb knows he shouldn’t drink much (especially because his deputy is already mostly fucked up, so much so that he’s been forced to take one of Scott’s glasses and replace it with some kaf), but he’s utterly unable to refuse the celebratory drinks his people push in his hands. He drinks slowly, eating a lot to compensate, keeping an eye on the sand people that dance happily around their own bonfire. Everything is good, but he can’t seem to relax. 

There is something electric dancing in the air that has nothing to do with the party, and everything to do with Din. And Cobb hopes he’s not the only one to feel it.

Din has actually disappeared sometimes after the music started and, like magic, he reappears right when the music stops, after three of the most excited kids have persuaded Cobb to tell The Story once again.

“For kriff’s sake!” Taanti swears, waving his drink around and hiding a smile. “Not again!”

“You’re welcome to leave.” Issa-Or looks innocently at her nails, smirking. “If you can still stand, old man.”

“How dare you—”

They bicker for a while, under the unfocused gaze of Scott, who’s the only one that will have some problem moving from the prone position he’s taken, right near the fire. Around them, children and other people start slowly to gather. Some of the Tusken move closer too, even if they will understand only parts of the story. But who cares? They were there, they lived it alongside Cobb and the people of Mos Pelgo. They all know what happened.

“What’s going on?” a voice asks right beside Cobb.

The Marshal looks up and finds Din frowning down at him. He’s changed in a clean shirt, and he’s trimmed his beard. From that angle he looks incredibly good. Cobb swallows hard and he wonders how he will climb up the cliff he’s just fallen into.

“This is your lucky night, partner” he explains lightly, even if he wants to say something very different and probably very stupid. “You know the story of how we defeated the Krayt Dragon? Well… I’m about to enchant everyone here with my incredible and renown storytelling skills!”

“Are you?” Din asks, still looking down at him. There’s a twinkle in his eyes, a sparkle of interest that Cobb is sure he’s not imagining. He has to clear his throat before he shifts his gaze slowly to the people around him: they are almost ready to hear the story, the children whispering excitedly between each other, the adults smiling, drinking, sitting down as close as possible to where Cobb has placed himself.

“Sit down, pal!” Jo exclaims, waving Din towards her. She has two cups ready, and it takes Din but a moment to join her, right in front of Cobb. The fire is the only thing sitting between them, and the flames draw dancing geometric shapes on Din’s seemingly relaxed face.

“Well!” Cobb exclaims after a moment, beginning as he always does. The children love to be part of it. “Where should I start?”

“The day the Mandalorian came!” is the unanimous shout from the little ones, and also from the ones too drunk to care about their reputation. Cobb smiles and he begins right from there: the glint of the metal touched by the sun, a lonely man approaching Mos Pelgo in the middle of a clear day; the town terrified by the weird stranger without a face who refuses to remove his helmet and is not scare of threatening their Marshal.

“‘Take it off or I will’, he said to me, pointing his blaster right here,” Cobb pushes one finger against his heart, smiling because that particular sentence always makes him giddy, and at the same time because he knows that somehow, even if Mando never pulled the trigger, there’s still something embedded in Cobb’s heart. And the impossible man who’s looking right at him from above the flames doesn’t make anything easier.

“But he didn’t shoot!” one of the girls whispers, the freckled face held in her hands, blue eyes full of stars, daydreaming.

“No, he didn’t” Cobb confirms, nodding and well understanding the girl’s fascination with Mando. “Because he was a good man and he had a child to take care of, and he knew we needed his help more than he needed my armour.”

The storytelling is smooth from that moment on. There are a few interruptions, a couple of question from the kids that he answers without losing sight of the main plot and for the whole time he can physically feel the weight of Din’s eyes on his person. It’s thrilling, more than he could ever imagine. The electrical charge in the air grows stronger and at one point he can’t do much else than look right back at Din. He’s nursing his drink, his lips are wet, his face red from the fire, his eyes unfocused. Cobb doesn’t breathe for a total of five seconds but then he remembers that he has to finish the story and that he has to do it in the right way. A little differently than he normally does, perhaps, but well… the occasion is a special one after all, even if he remains the only one to know.

“We were both flying away, all hope lost. There was nothing that could pierce the skin of the beast and I could see our people running away on the ground, saving themselves and protecting those who had already fallen. I simply thought we’d lost, that there was nothing else to do… until the Mandalorian decided to fly away again, to sacrifice himself, and he knew that he was about to face his death, because before leaving he made me promise to take care of his child, if the worst happened.” As always, from the crowd someone took a shaking breath, disbelieving, totally absorbed by the tale. Cobb didn’t stop but to take a long breath himself. “We all saw how he was eaten by the Dragon. The entire thing must have lasted four seconds at most. One moment he was there, keeping the bantha in its place, and then he disappeared, devoured along with all our hope.” My hope, he wants to say, but he’s not sure he was so invested in Mando wellbeing at the moment of the fight. Maybe he was already smitten, he doesn’t know. He can’t remember now, not with Din’s burning eyes fixed on him.

“I had barely the time to take off my helmet, realizing that he just saved my life and probably died in the process, when the Dragon resurfaced! We all thought the same thing: ‘we can’t win… we’re about to die in this fight’, when Mando emerged from the beast’s mouth surrounded by lightning! He flew away, pressing the detonator at the same time. And while the Dragon exploded from inside out, he landed gracefully at his feet, covered in green guts, like some hero from a child fairy-tale.”

The children burst in exuberant cheers, pushing their hands up in the air, eyes glinting with happiness. For Cobb their enthusiasm is always entertaining to watch, especially knowing that it’s only because of the Mandalorian that they are sleeping safe at night; but this day Cobb doesn’t spare a glace to the happy little crowd, because he’s too busy cataloguing every reaction from the man sitting right in front of him. He looks like someone has just slapped him, but most of all, he looks mildly embarrassed. It’s a very nice look on him.

While the children quiet down and resume their position and some of the adults retreat with a smile on their faces, Din moves from the crouched position he has taken for the entire story and slowly, breathily, says: “There’s no word for hero in Mando’a, you know?”

Jo, who’s been smiling the whole time, doesn’t lose her cheerful expression, but she looks at the man with puzzling eyes. She doesn’t have time to say anything, though, because Cobb is very fast in answering.

“Well” he muses heartly, “he may not be a hero to his own folks, but he’s a damn hero to me.” Then he realises what’s he’s actually saying and, almost as an afterthought, he adds: “For me and this town, I mean. After all… we ain’t Mandalorians.”

Din looks at him for a long moment. The people around them are impossibly quiet, and Cobb has the sudden feeling that everyone is gone. It’s just the two of them now, looking at each other’s, them and the space between them.

“No,” Din agrees slowly after a long moment, eyes never faltering. “No. We are not Mandalorians.”

The moment stretches around them like something elastic. Cobb tries to understand the dept of that sentence, the implications buried in those five words, but he simply can’t. Not that he’s lacking the willpower or the brains, but there is something broken in Din Djarin, and even if he wants, Cobb can’t do much about it.

“Yeah!” the drunken voice of Taanti breaks the charged silence. “Fuck those people! He gave us back our freedom! That’s why I say the town should be called Freetown, but do you ever listen to me? Of course not!”

“Shut up you old idiot!” Scott says, waving a tired hand in his direction. He’s sprawled on the sand and he’s barely looking at the sky, one eye half open, the other one already closed. Cobb wants to laugh at him and at the same time he wants to find a blanket and tuck him in.

“Who’re you calling old, boy? Come here and see for yourself if I’m that old!”

Issa-Or’s laughter brightens the evening, always so unexpected. She stands up, approaching Taanti and helping him standing up as well. “I told you already, if you wanna change the name of Mos Pelgo, call a town meeting and propose it to everyone.”

“Maybe I’ll do just that!”

“Good!” Jo says at that point, rolling her eyes and leaving her place. She dusts down her trousers, looking first at Cobb then at Din, thoughtfully. When she speaks again her tone is amused and she’s addressing Taanti. “But do it tomorrow night, when we won’t be all so drunk.”

They slowly leave, one after the other. The smaller children are collected by their parents, too tired to walk or too stubborn to admit it’s time to go to bed. The sand under Cobb’s ass is soft like a pillow, but he stands up anyway, making a show of filling is cup, stirring the flames with a stick and then moving around the bonfire to sit closer to Din. They are still facing each other, but if they stretch their legs, they will find their limbs intertwined. And isn’t that a thought?

Cobb wants to ask Din if he enjoyed his little story, but he doesn’t want to push his luck too much, so he takes a sip of the drink and keeps silent. Near them, Scott starts to snore lightly. The silence stretches. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s electric, full of things not said, because neither of them will know how to. The night grows steady, the people abandon the party, retire in their homes or their tents and the moons climb high in the sky. For a long time, the only sounds around them are the cracking of the fire and the deputy’s deep breathing. Somehow, it’s soothing.

“Where you gonna sleep tonight?” The question leaves Din’s lips and travel to Cobb on a whisper. He feels it on his skin, like a physical stroke, and suddenly he has to suppress a full body shiver.

Then, because he’s a petty bastard, he shoots Din a smile and says: “In my bed, I guess.”

The disappointment on Din’s face could be comical if it wasn’t so full of unexpressed pain mixed to a heavy wave of embarrassment. Cobb feels curiously guilty and tries to amend with a little nudge with his booth. “Let me guess…You wanted me to say something different?”

Din’s tone is full of pride when he looks away and answers a quiet “maybe” that gets almost lost in the desert. But every ounce of Cobb attention is on the man, and so he hears it perfectly.

“Yeah, well…” the Marshal reveals, standing up quickly, his hands begging to touch, his entire body barely containing the sheer want he seems to be coursing through his veins. “I think your bed would be too fucking small.”

Then, because Din is now looking at him with huge, scared, unsure eyes, he breaths out a laugh and beacons him with a slow head movement. Stand up, I want you, I’ll take care of you. He doesn’t say anything like that. He hopes he doesn’t really need to. Instead, he whispers a low “You coming?”, while he already started to walk away.

He hears his companion fighting to stand up quickly, his fairy-tale hero, a man who’s now without a sword and a shield, all the soft bits exposed, a man who’s following him like a moth follows a flame. And Cobb feels exactly like he’s burning up from the inside, every single nerve of his body tuned to Din’s mere existence: the silent breathing, the long steps on the sand, the rustle of clothes. Everything seems to be as powerful as the furious beating of Cobb’s heart, threatening to leave his chest and fly straight into the hands of the man behind him.

They walk into town, the streets now empty. They don’t touch, even if Cobb is seconds away to crawl out his own skin from the need to put his hands on him. They are almost at Cobb’s house when Din calls his name just once, voice cracked. The Mashal stops in his tracks, scared to turn around, to discover that Din’s changed his mind, that he doesn’t…

But when he turns, he finds him right there, right in front of him, half a breath away. His eyes are huge on his dark face, his hands shoot up, they grab at Cobb’s shirt, they bring him even closer, and Cobb thinks feverishly “that’s it, I’m gonna kiss him”, but instead Din moves away, pulling Cobb along with him. He walks backwards without faltering, until he has his back to a wall and Cobb is forced to put his own hands up to avoid a harsh impact against the clay. The sensation of sand under his palms is somewhat sobering.

“Now what?” Cobb asks, breathless. He’s not touching him, because he doesn’t know what’s going to happen when he actually will, but he has both hands planted around Din’s head, balancing their bodies so that, if not touching, they are still closer than normal. Mapping the face of the man in front of him with his eyes, Cobb moves two fingers slightly, and suddenly he can feel the soft texture of Din’s curls on his skin. It’s enough to make him take a ragged breath, to move his body closer. He stops himself before he starts grinding against the other man, but it’s a close call. He has to shut his eyes for a moment, breathing deep, calming breaths.

“Now what?” he asks again and under no circumstances he’ll admit that his voice sounds like he’s pleading.

Din is still clinging to Cobb’s shirt, both hands clutching at the fabric. He looks at Cobb like he’s dying of thirst, like he has a full glass of water in front of him, but he doesn’t know how to ask for it. Cobb inhales again, but it’s somehow even worst. Din smells of kaf and spotchka, of the relentless wind that blew sand in his hair all day, of cheap, almost unscented soap and, subtly, of metal. As if all that beskar left some particles under the epidermis. Cobb wonders what it would feel like to bit down to the soft side of his jaw, where the beard leaves space for the brown skin. He’s dizzy with the thought. “Din?” he asks again, but he sounds strained to his own ears.

And then, finally, gloriously, Din talks. “Touch me, please. Please…”

His voice is raspy, wrecked already and Cobb’s on him in mere moments. He doesn’t even kiss him: that’s a secondary thought. He pushes his fingers in his hair, grabbing at the soft curls, scraping his nails to the warm scalp underneath. He melts against Din’s body, every point of contact like a vertiginous shiver, even if they are both dressed, and the skin-on-skin contact is almost inexistant. Cobb buries his face in the crook of Din’s neck, pulling Din’s head back, feeling the man’s pulse rabbiting away where his lips are touching him.

“Touch me” Din repeats out of breath; a low, desperate sound stuck in his throat. “Touch me, touch me…”

“All right, darling,” Cobb replies, humbled by the pure, frantic need Din’s voice carries. “I’ll touch you all right.”

And he does just that, pulling away one of his hands from Din’s hair, finding some space to move his shirt on the side, grabbing as much skin as he can while at the same time he finds Din’s lips and kisses him. He wonders how many people have kissed him before, but it’s a fading thought, it leaves him as soon as Din parts his lips for him. Cobb licks the inside of Din’s mouth, breathing hard from the nose because separating just to inhale air is inconceivable by now. His teeth bite at Din’s lower lip, heat pools in his stomach, and Din emits a sound that goes straight to Cobb’s cock. He has to stop for a second then, to calm the fuck down.

It doesn’t work, though, because Din immediately follows him, moving away from the wall, pressing his lips along Cobb’s jaw, biting lightly and muttering again “touchmetouchme”, and the request is so incoherent that, to Cobb’s ears, the words are not even separate anymore.

Still, he touches him, pressing one hand on Din’s back, the skin burning up under Cobb’s fingertips, he touches him until he can barely see straight and breath properly, probably because the mere idea of stopping is, for both of them, impossible to even conceive.

Chapter Text

He turns around, while the suns shimmer on the horizon; he looks back at the entrance of the cave. He feels like someone is calling him, beckoning him home.

He knows in his heart he’ll be forever able to find that cave, to retrieve the armour, the darksaber that made him something he doesn’t want to be. His metal face all alone in the dark calls him again, but the sound is distorted, sharp and cold.

He doesn’t need that now, he doesn’t need sharpness and coldness, and for the first time in his whole life he’s acutely aware of it.

What he needs, is for someone to know him, his eyes, his face. The real one. The one he doesn’t recognise himself.

What he really needs, is for the desert of Tatooine to whisper his name, heard and learnt from the lips of someone who cares.

*

There are clothes on the floor, scattered around Cobb’s place like old rags. There’s a shard of light penetrating the darkness of the room, barely enough for him to see the shapes of objects, the crumpled sheets, the warm browns and blacks of the man who’s laying on the bed.

Cobb takes a grounding breath and moves slightly his hand, his finger buried deep inside Din, his other hand soothing the soft skin around his face: he wants to cling to him, and that’s a new feeling indeed. For his part, Din holds his breath and then releases it in some sort of moan. So far, he’s been so quiet that for every sound escaping his lips, Cobb’s mind goes a little crazy.

It’s amazing, how responsive Din is to the simplest of touches: he arches his back to follow the smallest caress, his eyes glazed, distant, his mouth slightly open and wet, his entire body clenched hard, his muscles tight. Cobb stopped caring for his own needs a while back: he’s barely hard anymore, by now totally focused on the man underneath him. He wants him to go over the edge, and he wants to be the one that pushes him. His fairy-tale hero, always so controlled. He wants to break that control, he wants to erase all of his pains and sufferings, if only for the fleeting moment of an orgasm.

“Wanna take care of you,” he whispers, laying down, reaching for Din’s mouth. He brushes slightly at his prostate and Din exhales a whimper that Cobb swallows immediately, licking his lips, drinking every single sound. He suspects he could live on them for a while, not eating or drinking anything else. He wonders, not for the first time, how many people have seen Din Djarin like this, exposed, open like a fresh wound that brings both pain and pleasure.

“Cobb…” Din calls, his name slurred and unreal. Cobb searches Din’s eyes to check for discomfort and he finds nothing else but want and trust. In some way, he feels blessed.

“What? What do you need, darlin’?”

Din rocks his hips down, just a reflex probably, but a welcome one. Parts of Cobb’s brain wonder how it would feel to be buried inside of him, to have all that hot darkness clenching around him, but this is not about Cobb: everything, this night, is about Din.

“I—don’t… I’m not…” He’s not coherent, but Cobb understands being touched so much, in so many places, in such an intimate way… it must be almost unbearable after spending so long without it. The fact that Din is allowing himself this should tell him something important, but Cobb is too far gone to care about that right now.

“I’ll give you what you want, Din. Just tell me... You wanna be good for me, right?”

Din eyes search for him, his face is red, teeth gritted. His hands are fisting the sheets so much the knuckles are white. You can touch me too, if you want, Cobb thinks, but again, this is not about him, not right now.

“I wanna be good,” Din answers after a moment, searching desperately for words that are escaping him. “For you.”

And Cobb is gone, oh so gone for this man.

“But you are good. You’re a good man, a good person.”

Din shakes his head and almost yelp when Cobb moves slowly down to take him in hand, precome giving him the slick he needs to pump him slowly.  “I bet you’re a good dad, too, eh, sweetheart? Now… you wanna tell me what you need?” He kisses his neck gently, sucking at the skin, keeping his mouth as busy as his hands. The position is slightly uncomfortable, but Din squirms beautifully under him, legs open, trembling at the smallest pressure of Cobb’s fingers. His skin tastes like metal and Cobb has to close his eyes for just a moment, to memorize the taste.

“Cobb…I need—I need to come, please, please it’s… much, too much.”

He doesn’t last for much longer after that. Cobb has only to increase the pressure on Din’s cock, moving his fingers just so, and Din is spilling on his hand, so quiet, so composed that for a moment Cobb wonders if he did something wrong. He wipes his finger gingerly on the sheets, looking at Din’s face, searching anxiously for pain or disgust, and he’s going to move away, to ask for forgiveness for whatever it is that he did, when Din, still shaking in the aftershock, breathing hard from his mouth and nose, grabs for Cobb and pulls him down onto him.

“Don’t go,” he begs in a hoarse voice, moving around the bed in such a way that Cobb finds himself completely sprawled on top of him. Not that he’s complaining.

He smiles, at loss for words. “Not going anywhere.”

“Good…” Din’s hands cling to Cobb’s shoulders hard, like he wants to make sure Cobb’s telling the truth and the only thing left to do for Cobb is nosing at the man’s hair, scenting him again, their sweats mixing where their bodies touch. It’s almost unbearably hot, but not even a Krayt Dragon would prompt Cobb to move away.

“I needed that,” Din explains after a long moment of silence.

Cobb exhales a little laugh. “I figured.”

“Gimme a minute and I’ll—”

“No need, darlin’. I’m all good here, like this.”

It’s like resting on top of someone who’s lost all his bones all at once. Din is loose-limbed and relaxed, his huge eyes are bright again, they look at Cobb sideways, searching his face, a million questions inside his head, probably. Cobb moves slightly to his left, so that he can kiss him.

They meet in the middle, and they kiss for a while, slow and steady like the waves of a real ocean in a clear day. Or so Cobb imagines.

“We should get some sleep,” he whispers against Din’s beard, biting slightly at his jaw. He finds it hard to stop touching him.

For a moment it seems like Din will want to say something or do something, but after a while they just move away from each other, albeit reluctantly, and they clean themselves in the semi-darkness, their legs still intertwined, as if neither of them wants to severe the contact completely.

They adjust themselves one around the other, legs and arms and little touches and soft brushes of lips and Cobb wonders how he’ll be able to survive, to go back to his life, to be the Mashal of Mos Pelgo once again, when Din will inevitably leave.

When he wakes up from his light sleep, a good three hours later, Cobb needs a few seconds to register where he is and who’s with. He feels Din’s lips tracing patterns on his shoulder blades. In his sleep he must have rolled around and now he’s face down, ass exposed, the scars on his back an easy find for a man as observant as Din.

Cobb realises he’s gone rigid when Din stops touching him. He’s still perched over his back, but a breath away.

“You were a slave.” It doesn’t sound like a question.

Cobb inhales sharply and then exhales more slowly, trying to relax again. “That I was.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You had no reason to. And besides… my story’s no different than many others.”

Din’s fingertips replace his lips and Cobb imagines him tracing the jagged edges of the star on his back, the remnants of old wounds, the memory of yet another whipping. The flesh is tender there, either because it’s really like that or because Cobb perceives it that way, it doesn’t really matter. The way Din touches him is almost as painful as the whipping itself, mostly because Cobb knows it will never happen again.

He’d like to move away and instead he melts down into the mattress, turning his head so that he can see a small section of Din’s face, dimly lit. He looks concentrated, preoccupied.

“I’d like to hear it.” Did murmurs after a long moment, resuming the conversation.

“What, my story? Not much to it, really.” He tries for smooth and unassuming, as if revealing that particular story is not painful anymore. It shouldn’t be, for fuck’s sake, it’s been so long, now. “I was good with a blaster, so I escaped. I lost people, like everybody, but then I gained an entire village.” He smiles a little. “Some people are not as lucky.”

Din bends down and licks one of Cobb’s scars. Cobb shivers, but again he doesn’t move. “You, for example,” he pushes, instead.

“I never gained a village, as far as I know.”

Cobb lets out a small laugh, the sound half lost in the pillow. “I wouldn’t be so sure, darlin’…”

There is another long moment of silence. Din adjusts himself on the covers, tossing and turning until he has one hand on the small of Cobb’s back and the other one supporting his own head. Cobb blinks away the sleep, the horniness: he gazes at him like this is the last time he will have the pleasure. Maybe it is. Feels that way, anyway.

“Before the riders came, I finished fixing Freben’s speeder,” Din announces, conversationally.

“Meaning you’re not staying.”

“Mmmh…”

They don’t say anything else for a while, both completely still now. Din’s looking at the ceiling, Cobb’s looking at Din and he sees someone he doesn’t really know. He knows pieces of him, sure, his name, the few details he let escape in their conversations, but Din is not entirely present, as if a part of him is constantly missing. Calling him away.

“Tell me something,” Cobb starts abruptly, pushing himself up with his elbows. “That child of yours… you called him Grogu. He’s not dead, right?”

Din looks back at him instantly, confused. “You thought he was dead?!”

“The way you talked about him, and your family… It felt like grief. What you want me to say, here? You’re not a man of many words, sweetheart. I had to fill the gaps.” He smiles kindly, pushing a strand of hair away from his face. Even if he tries his best, he can’t seem to be able to read Din’s expression. That’s a first, for sure.

Din blinks slowly, probably thinking on how to answer without giving himself away. “Not dead. No one’s dead. I just… I did something and now I can’t go back.”

“You mean that literally? Or metaphorically?”

Din rolls his eyes, pursing his lips, probably hiding a self-deprecating smile, but he doesn’t answer.

“Metaphorically it is, then. Have you ever heard of this new, revolutionary practice? It’s called ‘making amends and apologizing for our mistakes’. You should try that with your family. And with your kid. If this is the reason you wandered for days in the desert, I don’t think is a very good reason at all. I think--”

Din interrupts him with such a piercing gaze that Cobb wonders, not for the first time, how many feelings remain normally hidden under a helmet. “Grogu’s with his… other father.”

“Divorced, I hope.” He has to make a joke, to release a little tension, or else he would obey the urgent need to flee the room and that wouldn’t be a very good thing at all. Not when Din’s finally decided to talk about himself, about the parts of his life that interlace with Mando’s life.

“That’s his place. He’ll have a more balanced life. He’s better off without me.” His voice is so controlled when he states these facts that Cobb has to reach out to kiss his lips gently. They are as dry as the words they just uttered.

“Did you ever stop to ask your son?”

Din eyes are watery, distant again. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”

“Wow,” Cobb smiles again, lightly. “And here I thought you were an intelligent one.”

“You always insult your bed mates, Cobb?”

“Only when they deserve it. Listen… you fixed that speeder so you could leave, right? Seems to me that you made up your mind already. When we met you told me you wanted to… how did you put it? ‘stay still’…? A man can’t stay still forever, and I told you already: Mos Pelgo isn’t a good place to restart a life.”

Din lifts an eyebrow, confused. It’s stupidly adorable. “You trying to send me away?”

“Go and apologise to your family.” Cobb shakes his head, wanting nothing more than keeping this man put, preferably in Cobb’s bed. But he was never very good at keeping the things he wanted, was he? “Do what you gotta do, Din. You want your son back, don’t you? You don’t have to answer that, I’m not stupid.” He takes another breath, pointing first at Din and then at himself. “You would have never allowed yourself this, if you were not going to leave at some point.”

“This…what? Sex?”

Cobb rolls his eyes fondly. “You think this is just sex?”

“What else would you call it?” Din has that tone of voice that adults use sometimes with children to amuse them, taking heed to their nonsense.

Well, fuck that.

“Intimacy. I’d call it intimacy.”

For a second it seems that Din would try to argue, to deny, to diminish whatever it is that they have, but instead he pulls Cobb closer, the length of their bodies touching once again, their faces close. “You talk so much.” Now that he’s not pressed down to the mattress, Din’s hands lay heavily on him, grasping at Cobb’s flesh, nails scraping at the back of his neck. Cobb hears himself inhaling shakily right when Din adds: “You smell good.”

“Yeah, I bet. Like sand and sweat?”

They’ve reached some sort of agreement, there. It lays, as always, in the words not said, in the feelings not shared. It’s fine, Cobb thinks, happy that the man he’s holding can’t see his face, right now. It’s fine, and if it’s not really fine, it will be soon.

“Mmmh. Good,” Din repeats, eyes closed, hands roaming over Cobb’s body like he’s trying to memorize a pattern known only to him.

Cobb lets him. He would let him do almost anything, now that he thinks about it.

He lets Din take the lead for their second round, calm and focused, as he was the day he slayed a dragon for him; he lets Din clean the both of them afterwards, following him as he moves gingerly around the bedroom. He lets him pick up their clothes, still scattered around the place. He lets him pour two cups of kaf in the fragrant sunrise’s light that brightens his eyes until they glow almost golden. He lets him say goodbye at the door, not many words, very few touches.

He lets him hike all the way to Freben’s house to take the newly fixed speeder before anyone is up to see him leaving. He lets the sound of the engine wash away the sudden loneliness he feels.

What Cobb doesn’t do is letting himself go up the hill, to gaze at the desert as Din rides the dunes, disappearing in the sands from which he came from.

And, mostly, he doesn’t let himself think about when, and if, he’ll see him again.

Chapter Text

What do you know? In the end, the Mandalorian comes back to Mos Pelgo. Now better known as Freetown, of course, after Taanti’s tireless persistence, but it doesn’t really matter.

Mando, a metal man inside a metal shell, jumps down his spacecraft. And the Marshal knows instantly that the reason that brings him there once again has nothing to do with him. So, he acts as if the last time they saw each other was after the dragon, the last brief touch they share was a handshake and perhaps a too-long glance. It’s hard and easy at the same time.

He flirts a little, because he’s no saint, and because having Mando in his town makes something deep in his guts twist and knot painfully. But nothing happens. It’s all business, as usual.

They share a drink, they talk a little, they shake hands and Mando leaves, again.

Looking at the dust the starfighter produces as the Mandalorian goes back on his way, the Marshal knows he’ll do almost everything to help the man.

But, in the end, the desert has other plans for him.

And one can rarely argue with the desert. 

*

When he lands his ship in Boba Fett’s hangar, Din has reached that level of sleep deprivation that makes him see colourful shapes inside his helmet. Flying for almost two days straight and stopping only to feed and change the child, hasn’t help his mood at all. Grogu too is grumpy, unhappy, he keeps fussing and complaining with high little screams that penetrate Din’s foggy brain, keeping him fully awake, at least.

He’s grumpy too, when he exits his aircraft and reaches up to retrieve the child, but maybe he’s better at hiding it.

“I told you to send for me before he woke up.”

Or maybe not.

Fennec doesn’t seem bothered by the sudden burst, but then again, Fennec never seems bothered by much. She’s leaning at the hangar entrance, probably waiting for him, and she cocks an eyebrow, looking straight at Din, as if she could see his face under the beskar. “I would have, Mando, but your guy is a tough one: the med-droid estimated for him at least three more days in the bacta tank, and he was awake in one.”

There is a mix of pride, guilt and affection that twist its way into Din’s belly, but he hasn’t got the time to unpack all of it now. He needs to set straight a few things, if possible. Making amends, asking forgiveness, as one wise Mashal once told him.

Din and Fennec start walking together, Grogu half hidden under Din’s cape. “How is he?”

“Like someone that lost half of his arm.” She shrugs. “To be honest, better than I imagined. He asked after you, you know?”

“Yeah?” He wants to keep the hope out of his voice, but he wonders if he really managed it when Fennec sends a little smile in his direction, her eyes sparkling.

“Wanted to know if you survived.”

So that he can kill me himself, probably. He knows he deserved whatever degree of anger Cobb feels toward him: he lied and endangered his people, Scott died because of Din, and he keeps remembering that game of dejarik they played together in the cantina, the way the guy’s eyes lit up every time Din made a stupid move and lost some more of his credits. Not to mention the fact that Cobb himself almost lost his life and definitely lost his arm to help him. His shooting arm. The one that gained him his freedom.

“You wanna see Boba, before—?”

“No,” Din interrupts her quickly. “No, I have to talk to the Marshal.”

Fennec seems slightly amused, but Din’s to tired to care. “You arrived really fast, Mando. I thought Boba contacted you only last night. Weren’t you quite far from Tatooine?”

Din doesn’t bother answering: he’d missed that about his armour, his silence was always better accepted when his entire body was hidden. Grogu fusses, probably sensing his discomfort, the anxiety creeping up his spine. The kid is surprisingly more tuned to Din’s moods after spending that time with the Jedi.

They all stop in front of a door of Boba’s new palace and Din looks pointedly at Fennec, who looks back at him with her lips pursed in a little grin. “He’s probably asleep,” she explains after a moment, pointing at the door.

“I won’t disturb him, then.”

“You’ll patiently wait near the bed until the fallen Marshal is awake again, then?”

Din sighs. “What’s your point, Fennec?”

She desists her sarcasm, but she doesn’t lose the grin. “Relax, Mando, I’m just—"

“Could you keep an eye on the kid?” he asks before she can say something they’ll both regret. He pushes Grogu in her arms, even if the boy turns around with a little screech of displeasure. “Just for a few minutes, kid, I promise.”

“I’m not your babysitter.”

But he’s already opening the door, giving his back to the pair of them. He has to do this now, or he will probably delay it forever until talking will have no meaning anymore. He wonders if it still has any meaning at all.

The room is huge. Probably bigger than the whole of Cobb’s house in Freetown. Maybe it’s for that reason that the bed seems so small to Din’s eyes, and the man lying on it even smaller. But the light surrounds him the same way it did the last morning they spent together, when there wasn’t a single bit of the Marshal that wasn’t glowing in the sunrise. Some part of Din regrets not being able to see him with his own eyes, but then he remembers that his eyes are right there: the T-shaped view of the world he’s always had. And if that day in Mos Pelgo the Marshal looked all silver and sharp angles, now, in the sunset light he’s all gold and soft curves, and Din realises he’s finally able to breath properly after days of anxiety paralyzing half his thoughts. .

It doesn’t matter if, after everything will be said and done, Cobb won’t forgive him. It doesn’t even matter if he won’t understand why Din did what he did. The only thing that matters are the gentle movements of his chest, the heat signals Din’s visor is giving back while looking at him, sleeping. Alive, alive, alive.

But maybe, not really asleep.

“You know?” from the covers comes Cobb’s voice, unexpected. “You walk louder than you think.” He turns a little, while greeting him, just enough for Din to see his crooked smile, his eyes shining, maybe still a bit feverish; his silvery hair are combed quite nicely, for someone who’s bedridden. And Cobb moves just enough for Din to see the new, shining mechanical shoulder, glinting in the sunlight. He takes a breath and then he walks toward him.

“I’m sorry,” it’s the first thing he says, and he feels like he never meant those words more than now. He’s sorry for so many things, he doesn’t even know where to start. But after a long moment of silence, it’s Cobb that starts, as Din should have expected.

“I’m sorry too,” he says while sitting up with some difficulty. Din wonders briefly if he should offer his help and then those words hit him.

He takes two steps forward and he’s suddenly beside the bed, so close to the Marshal it almost hurts to look at his new arm. “Whatever for?” he hears himself asking, and for a moment he doesn’t recognise his own voice.

“For missing all the action, partner!” Cobb moves gingerly on the bed, adjusting himself in a more comfortable position. He’s wearing a loose blouse, not the usual red, but some sort of cream colour that blends with the shade of his skin, the parts not touched by the Tatooine suns. “Not only Fett rode a kriffin’ rancor, but he also killed the son of a whore that murdered Scott and gave me a shiny new piece of furniture.” He looks up at Din and they both graciously ignore the way his voice cracks when he pronounces the name of his late Deputy. “Heard you almost sacrificed yourself. Again.”

“What else did you hear?” Din asks, grabbing a chair and sitting down, flipping his cape away. There is an invisible wall between them, it’s thin, almost imperceptible, but it’s up to Din to tear it down, this time. He doesn’t know if he’s strong enough, not when he feels like they are running in circles around each other, like feral animal hiding in the sands.

“Not much. They pulled me out of the bacta tank yesterday and I slept a lot... Fett didn’t seem too angry about his armour, you know, the armour I stole…” He looks pointedly at Din, mischief on his face. “He takes it off, apparently. Sometimes.”

Din doesn’t really know how to answer to that. But he doesn’t need to. The door opens with a rapid whoosh sound and Grogu enters with a loud coo and a little jump. Walking slowly after him, Fennec looks completely unamused and indifferent at the same time. She rolls her eyes, looks emphatically at both men and then steps away, closing the door behind her once again.

Din tries to stop his kid, or at least to scold him, but he can’t do much when the little one decides to jump again, this time right on the bed near Cobb’s left hand. Grogu looks up at the Marshal with huge, starry eyes and he coos once more, full of sudden joy. Din can see it in his little green face: it’s almost the same expression the kid made when they were reunited. For some reason he senses that Grogu’s feelings are now deeply connected with his own. The kid’s joy is his joy, the kid’s relief is his relief too.

Cobb smile is only for the child and it’s a bright thing, smooth around the edges, soft and warm. Din kind of wants to save it and keep it tucked away inside his beskar.

And then. “Grogu!” says Cobb, still smiling, holding out two fingers to hold the child’s little hand. “You found your way back, then…”.

The kid gives out a little exclamation, a sign of recognition. And then he crawls up to Cobb’s chest, unaware of the fact that Cobb shouldn’t know his name, because that name was given to him by another man, a man named Din Djarin, a man with no armour, no helmet and no mission.

Din, in his Mandalorian skin, sits perfectly still.

“Ah yes,” Cobb is saying now, following the kid’s movements. “That’s new, isn’t it? Nothing to worry about. Just don’t… sit on my shoulder, maybe. It’s still tender.”

Grogu looks with interest at the point where Cobb’s skin meets the metal. There’s red scar tissue, inflamed, difficult to look at if Din himself didn’t know very well those kinds of injuries. Besides, he would never look away at something that was his direct responsibility. The kid holds out his hand, the same way he did with the rancor, and once again Din’s not fast enough to stop him.

Little as he is, he pours all his kindness and energy into Cobb’s wound, absorbing the pain, releasing it into the universe, like stardust. Cobb looks at him with huge eyes, speechless. “What…?” he says, holding up his left hand to catch the little one. “No, wait, you shouldn’t…” But it’s too late and by now Din has learned that if the kid wants to do something he will find a way to do it. And so he watch his son lay down in the crook of Cobb’s left arm and go to sleep right there, his head resting on the Marshal’s chest.

He shouldn’t be so moved by the sight, but he is.

Then he looks back at Cobb’s face and the fact that he knows, he really knows, hits him in the chest with the force of a speeder.

“How long?” he asks, because some things don’t change, and he was never good with his words.

“Is he OK?” Cobb echoes, almost at the same time, checking the kid up and down.

“He’s fine. Just exhausted.” He reaches out, then hesitates. After a second, he pulls his gloves off, one finger after the other until his skin is touching the naked air and only then he adjusts Grogu in a more comfortable position. He gazes up at Cobb, tilting the helmet a little. He’s suddenly glad that his face is hidden from the man’s burning stare. Din’s voice comes out in a whisper when he repeats: “How long have you known?”

“Ah…” Cobb tries to adjust the covers with the right hand, which of course doesn’t respond to him properly, cold metal still and silent on the sheets. “Kriff,” he mutters, not looking at Din anymore, staring blankly at the clogs and cables that run from his shoulder to his fingers. “Look… Mando, you have every right to feel angry. And I am sorry, truly.”

Din blinks away his confusion. “Angry?” he repeats, somewhat stupidly.

“Furious? I don’t know. Listen… if you want, I can pretend I didn’t know, it’s not like—”

Din has to interrupt him, because he feels on the verge of going completely crazy. “What are you talking about?! You are the one who should be furious, Cobb! I lied to you, I lied again and again.” He can’t believe that he has to explain it, but with the surprised expression on the Marshal face, Din wonders suddenly if he just made a mistake, if they are actually talking about two different topics.

But no, they are talking about the same thing, just from two different points of view, apparently.

Cobb shakes his head, he’s smiling again, albeit a bit hesitantly. His face looks good, even after being on the brink of death. Suddenly Din doesn’t know how to continue, how to explain himself. He’s prepared a few words, he’s said them out loud, when he was deep in space, and none could hear him. But now they all feel… useless. Not appropriate enough.

“Din,” says Cobb, and he calls him in the same way he used to when they were together in Mos Pelgo, before Mos Pelgo was Freetown. There is the same kindness, the same care. He says his name like it’s something precious, like the person it’s attached to matters more than anything. “Din, does it really matter how long?”

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. Din knows that it doesn’t and still… “I lied. I put you and your people in danger and I didn’t tell you… I couldn’t.” He can’t explain why. He wants to, but it’s hard for him to understand himself, to explain his action, the feeling of overwhelming loneliness that pushed him to cross the desert and knock at Cobb’s metaphorical door.

Cobb looks tired, maybe more than Din. And still he holds Grogu as if he was the most cherished thing in the world, he stares at Din’s metal face with the same intent focus he did the only night they spent together, when Din’s face was bare, an open wound in the dim light. “I met two men, once.” He’s saying now, slowly, like approaching a scared animal. “The first one came to me to save me, and the second one to be saved. It took me a while to realize they were the same person, but it took him even more.” He smiles once again, so bright, so full of pride and regrets, pain and understanding. “As far as I’m concerned, this may be the first time we properly meet, Din Djarin.”

After that little speech, for Din it’s suddenly very hard to breath. He feels like the first time Cobb touched him, the first unexpected skin-on-skin contact, he feels like the whole planet shrank down to the point where their epidermis was connecting. His shoulder burns, and he’s pretty sure his eyes are red and full of unshed tears.

“I can’t,” he tries, he stops, he starts again. “I can’t be only Din.” Not even for you, not even if I want to. He doesn’t say it, he doesn’t need to.

With a grimace of discomfort Cobb forces his new arm to obey. It’s immediately clear that’s not the first time he’s tried and succeeded, but it’s also clear that’s painful. Din doesn’t stop him, doesn’t help him: he feels like he’s glued on the chair, tethered to the man in front of him by some invisible string.

Cobb pushes himself as much as he can and he finally manages to grasp Din’s hand, free from the glove. His metal fingers hold Din’s naked hand kindly, and he looks right into the black visor of the helmet, probably unaware of the turmoil born from that simple contact. Metal and skin; wrong metal, wrong skin. “Of course not,” Cobb says, almost whispering. “I wouldn’t ask you to. This armour is a piece of you: without it something is missing, and I don’t mean something physical… I mean inside of you.” He falls back to the covers, metal arm resting again: his eyes are so clear, so bright that Din is suddenly scared of falling inside of them.

“I need to make my amends,” Din says after a long time. So long that Cobb is now taking deep breaths, eyelids half-closed. “To many people, to Grogu, to my creed, my covert…”

“Not to me, Din.” Cobb opens his eyes again, serious. “Never to me. Scott didn’t die because of you. I didn’t choose to endanger my people because of you: they chose themselves; they chose to fight for their planet and their freedom.”

“Your arm…”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t stay on Tatooine.”

“I’ll be fine!” There’s that pride again. The same Din has noticed in the way the Marshal walks, the way he speaks, the way he won’t talk about his past as a slave, the way he fiercely protects his people. Din moves closer.

“I’m saying that I’d like to come back.” Then because there’s a long silence in which Cobb just stares at him and Grogu silently drools on his blouse, he adds with not little uncertainty, “to Freetown, I mean. In between missions.”

Cobbs cocks an eyebrow, a little smile on his lips. “You are always welcome in Freetown,” he says noncommittedly, adjusting his arm around the kid, waiting.

Din takes a long intake of breath and rolls his eyes fondly. “You want me to say it out loud?”

“Hey, I just lost a limb… maybe I just need a little reassurance.”

Din crosses his arms, even if it means moving away from him, but this is easy, this is like sharing a cigarette, looking up at the Tatooine sky and checking for new stars on the horizon, laying down in the sand, fingers almost touching, but not quite. “I thought you said the arm wasn’t my fault…?”

“Still need that reassurance, Mando.”

“I’d like to come back,” Din says, and while he talks, he doesn’t feel half as stupid as he thought he would. “To you. If you want.”

“And what if I want to come with you?”

Din stops moving, for a second he even stops breathing. “I—I never—"

Then Cobb laughs, shaking his head slowly, eyes feverish and beautiful on his tired face. Din suddenly wants to touch him. “I’m joking, Din… You can’t teach new trick to an old massif, you know? My place is here, on Tatooine: your place is up there, between Chenini and Guermessa, with this little guy.” He cradles Grogu for a moment before bringing back his attention to Mando, half serious half smiling. “You can come back anytime, though. My door will probably be open.”

“Probably?” Din echoes, feeling his skin prickle with anticipation.

“Definitely.”

It’s not a promise, but it’s not not a promise. He can’t expect much more, though: he’s already asked so much from Cobb… he can’t ask anything more than what he seems ready to give, and even that, for a man like Din, feels like a treasure. A safe port, a person willing to share some nights with him. Someone to trust. It’s more than he ever hoped for.

The creed thought him not to need anything, not to want. But he’s changed, with Grogu one has to change, to embrace the new. And now even the Mandalorian wants something more. But he has to be clear about how things would be, as Cobb deserves a little truth.

“You’ll have to compromise,” Din says, hoping he’ll understand. It comes out breathless even from under the helmet. It sounds like a matter of fact, but there’s a question hidden there, a plead, a small, faint hope.

Cobb grins. “I’ll compromise,” he assures him, not a drop of uncertainty in his tone. “Don’t you get it? I want it all. All of it… you, the green bean, your armour, your helmet, the soft man that’s hiding under there.” He takes a quivering breath, and Din can faintly hear himself doing the same, shock cursing through him like a wave. It’s weird: he feels like Cobb he’s looking right at his face, his human face. “Kriff! I want it even if it means I’ll never see your fucking eyes for the rest of my life.”

There’s silence, long, charged, like that night around the bonfire, when Din couldn’t keep his gaze away from him.

“Will you keep your eyes closed?” he finally asks, because he can’t communicate anything with his words, not right now. The only thing left to do is to show him, what Cobb means to Din, what he did for him, to him, why Din will forever look up at the sky, now, lightyears away from Tatooine, always searching for two suns, three moons and a red planet.

“I’ll wear a damn blindfold, if you want.”

“I mean now.”

Cobb blinks, cocks his head, smiles again, and does as Din asked.

The helmet hisses open with a quiet sound in the too-big room. Cobb doesn’t move a muscle and the only other sound around them is the light snoring of the child. Din looks at the kid first, because he likes to look at him with his own to eyes, and also because he wants to make sure he’s really asleep.

He is.

He covers Cobb’s eyes with the hand that doesn’t hold on to the helmet, not because he doesn’t trust he’ll keep them shut, but because he needs an excuse to touch him as much as he can. He can feel Cobb’s eyelashes fluttering under his palm, he imagines him with a blindfold, in a smaller room, a smaller bed, his hands searching for him, finding metal, yes, beskar, his flightsuit, but also some sliver of skin, some part of Din that only Cobb knows how to reach. He breaths right in front of his lips, to smell him again, even if the scent of sand is almost all covered by the bacta residue. Din’s head spins and he drags the moment as much as he can until he can’t anymore.

He kisses him hard, because he almost lost him, the man who called him a fairy-tale hero, but that saved him in so many ways that he has now lost count. The man who understands all the layers of metals his person is made of: the Mandalorian, the father, the creed follower, the man, the little child who still remembers the colour of his mother’s hair.

Cobb pushes his face against Din, murmuring his name once again between kisses, sharing breaths until both of them are panting and somehow Din is standing up, towering over him. It’s weird that Cobb cannot touch him, but he has a baby in one arm and a new implant in the other, so it’s up to Din to do all the touching, this time. He doesn’t complain.

“I’ll remind you that there’s a child present” Cobb pants, after some time.

“I know,” Din agrees, feeling a smile creeping on his face. “Keep your eyes closed.”

He puts his helmet back on, looking at the way the Marshal face is now flushed, probably not different than his own. He takes his time looking at Cobb, eyes closed, lips red, hair messed up, but then he taps at his hand and the Marshal is again free to look.

“Well,” he says. “That was something.”

Din, protected by the beskar, can’t do much else but grin. “That it was.”