Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The True Mandalorian Matchmaking Committee was having a rough go of things.

Sure, the official riduurok announcement was a solid victory. Arla had basked in the glory of it for a solid forty-seven minutes. 

The general consensus across multiple military units and one covertly eavesdropped jetii holocall was that the matter was settled. Jaster Mereel and Lok Vizsla were officially scheduled to be bonded in political matrimony and mutual oblivious yearning.

It should’ve been a turning point. It was a turning point. Unfortunately, it was turning the wrong way.

Apparently, getting engaged and acting like you’re engaged were two very different things. Who knew?

That would’ve been tragic enough on its own, but no, that wasn’t enough. Pre had simultaneously decided to enter his villain arc. 

Precious, previously neutral, now inexplicably moody, Pre seemed to have developed a sudden and thoroughly inconvenient attitude toward Jaster that hovered somewhere between aggressive territorial posturing and outright romantic sabotage.

Arla didn’t know what his problem was, but she knew it was ruining everything. 

Everyone was so busy, the only real window they had to shove their two rulers together without work as a convenient distraction was family time. But all it took was one noise of protest from Pre and Lok would tell Arla that he understood if she wanted to go next door to eat with Jango, but he wasn’t going to force Pre to do it. And because Pre was an adiik , Lok would stay with him.

Sweet in theory but infuriating in practice. It meant Arla had to balance the mental gymnastics of meddling, countermanaging Pre, and also keeping Jango from breaking something out of secondhand frustration. All at the same time.

It was a thankless job.

On top of that, even without being fully aware of the plan, Pre realized he had this inconvenient little thing called leverage. And oh, did he start using it. The caliber of his demand for bribes was getting a bit out of control. 

First it was candy. Then it was imported candy. Then it was candy plus a promise to “never see Jaster ever again,” which was obviously not going to happen, but it didn’t stop him from demanding it. And then the kitchen staff started asking questions about why the dessert stock kept mysteriously vanishing, which led to Arla having to explain that the sweets were being used in the noble service of the True Mandalorian Matchmaking Committee’s mission.

To their credit, the kitchen staff immediately began baking specialty desserts for strategic deployment. But even those were starting to lose effectiveness.

Pre was simply more committed to keeping Lok and Jaster apart than he was to any of the usual bribes or incentives that once worked like magic on him. But any time Arla asked him why, all he gave her was an impassioned, “He’s stupid!”  

Super helpful. Really cleared everything right up.

Interrogating Lok about what was going on with Pre didn’t bring any insight. All she got was a soft “don’t worry about it, Arl'ika." That was it. No amount of poking, prodding, or snooping has yielded any insight.

The whole thing reeked of unresolved grief and deeply buried abandonment issues, which, while valid, were not helpful to the greater romantic trajectory. 

Thankfully, for the moment, she had some blackmail up her sleeve. That was helping keep Pre compliant enough, but it was a finite resource. 

She was exploring alternatives.

Goran Kobr had also shown up around the same time Pre started acting out, which Arla didn’t mind personally. It was fun to tease the goran about being her vod, even though everyone knew that was nothing more than a technicality Lok used to circumvent Jorad’s power trip. 

However, Goran Kobr coming to Keldabe meant something was up. Couple that with the suspicious amount of time she was spending with Pre, and Arla was drawing some conclusions.

All of those conclusions were strictly not Arla’s problem. That particular subplot fell outside her emotional jurisdiction. She was not equipped to handle whatever Pre was working through in his tiny, rage-filled heart.

Besides, she was already carrying this entire love story on her back. Her spine could only take so much. 

So, Arla had done the only reasonable thing: she bribed Pre with even more sugar, a new datapad game, and the heavily implied promise that if he left the house for the rest of the day, no one—specifically Lok—would be informed about the modified jetpack stunt he tried in the stairwell last week. 

With the potential saboteur temporarily neutralized, she grabbed Jango by the collar, rallied Myles, Silas, and any other competent warm body within arm’s reach, and declared a tactical regroup.

Operation RIDUUROK might have been a success, but clearly, their work was not done. Operation SMOOCH was back in session. 

The mess hall table had become their war table. Crumbs had been pushed aside to make room for maps, datapads, and one suspiciously detailed psychological profile of Jaster Mereel that Myles absolutely swore he did not compile himself.

Arla tapped the screen in front of her like a general addressing her troops.

“So,” she began, tone bright and foreboding, “we need to talk about the unfortunate outcome of Phase Kad’ika.”

That particular phase was implemented to keep their momentum going right after the riduurok announcement and fell disappointingly flat. She still maintained that, had Pre not turned on them and grown super clingy overnight, it would have been successful, but what’s done is done. 

They simply needed to recalibrate to the change in circumstances.

Jango, who had been nursing a bitter caf and even bitterer opinion of adult romance, groaned into his cup. “Please don’t call it that.”

“Too late,” Silas muttered, flipping through a list Arla had color-coded for dramatic impact. “It’s logged.”

“Phase Kad’ika was not a failure,” Arla continued, undeterred. “It was just… underwhelming. And tragically sabotaged by outside forces. Namely: a volatile combination of emotional repression, miscommunication, and one small child with unresolved issues.”

“Pre bit him, Arla,” Jango said flatly.

“He snapped at him,” she countered, because details mattered. It was an attempted bite but he didn’t break skin, so it doesn’t count. Besides, Jaster thought it was copikla.  

“But anyway. The point is, we recalibrate. We adapt. We escalate.”

That should probably be their motto at this point.

Myles perked up. “Escalate how? Like, emotionally? Or with weapons?”

“Emotionally first,” Arla said, in a tone that suggested she wasn’t ruling anything out. “The problem is, they’re stuck in ‘political arrangement’ territory. What we need is something that nudges them back toward actual romantic development.”

There was a pause.

“...Combat?” Silas guessed.

“Tried that,” Jango grumbled. “But they won’t fight each other because of ‘optics’. At least not until after the riduurok.”  

“Was that why Skirata got his shebs kicked?” Myles asked, eyes a little too eager for it to be healthy. “Too much pent up tension?”

Arla’s lips pressed into a thin line. “That was a multilayered situation.”

“Oh?” Myles arched a lavender eyebrow. “Would these layers happen to include the sudden increase in menial assignments handed down from Mand’alor Mereel? You know, the ones that mostly involve Skirata doing warehouse inventory, desk audits, and cataloging folding chairs?”

Arla cleared her throat and declined to answer on the grounds that it would definitely incriminate her. 

Yes, she may have casually implied that her buir and Skirata had a… thing. (Gross.) And yes, she may have done that specifically to light a fire under Jaster and get him to finally make a move. Not that it worked.

Hypothetically, it's possible that she hadn’t considered how…reactive Jaster would be to a perceived threat. And it’s also possible that Skirata was still dealing with the consequences of that…rumor.

But Kal didn’t know about the seeds planted in Jaster’s mind, which meant he was under the impression it was regular old jealousy. For safety reasons, it was going to stay that way.

In her defense, no one told the di’kut to push Mereel’s buttons like that. That was completely on him and he can deal with the consequences of his own actions. 

“We all know that they’ll hide behind the political side of all of this for as long as we let them, so we need to remind them they’re not just co-governing Mandalore,” Arla asserted with a solid amount of authority. “They’re married. Or they will be. And if I have to manufacture a scenario where they realize that in a moment of unexpected, inconvenient vulnerability, then so be it.”

“That sounds like a threat,” said Myles, who was grinning now.

“It was,” she replied sweetly.

She leaned forward, tapping the screen again to pull up the preliminary notes for Phase... hmm. No. The current working title was “Sweaty Proximity Crisis,” but that lacked a certain poetry. “Phase Locker Room Revelation” maybe? “Shower Thoughts”? She could workshop it later.

That plan involved rerouting half the palace’s maintenance requests, subtly sabotaging the climate control in exactly one quadrant of the recreation wing, and arranging a scenario in which Lok and Jaster ended up locked in a communal locker room, one broken door sensor, and a series of increasingly implausible mechanical failures that—completely coincidentally—forced them into prolonged, uncomfortable proximity.

It was, in all fairness, a pretty aggressive maneuver that landed somewhere between creative and crime. Something she’d filed under desperate measures just below “get them drunk and lock them in the archives.” 

Was it invasive? Technically.

Was it a misuse of palace infrastructure and a violation of at least six maintenance regulations? Arguably.

Would it work?

Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, but if it did…maybe. She had real faith in the bunker and look how that turned out. She’s learned to manage her expectations. 

For now, she smiled to herself, scribbling one last note under Romantic Escalation Tactics, and circled it twice.

“How are you solving the latemeal problem?” Myles asked with a frown and finally treating this like the serious operation it was. 

Arla suspected that had something to do with the ridiculous amount of credits he had riding on the two Mand’alore kissing before the riduurok.   

The bets had gotten a lot more specific. Times. Locations. Wardrobe conditions. It was borderline unhinged. Arla respected it.

Her grin turned just the tiniest bit evil, but before she could unveil her genius plan, Jango cut in with a world-weary sigh.

“It’s becoming a real problem. Pre really doesn’t like my buir, even though he seemed fine with him before the riduurok was announced. But now, one pout and Lok cancels. Plus, he’s getting greedy with the bribes. I had to steal a power converter for him the other day.”

Arla’s eyes narrowed. “You got caught, didn’t you.”

“I got intercepted,” Jango corrected, which was not at all the same thing, “by Kal. Which meant instead of a lecture, he just handed me a box of spare parts for future bribes. But he said if our buire are still being di’kute by the time we run out of those, he’s putting me on inventory duty. So we need to speed this up.”

Arla frowned. That was deeply disappointing. If he was out here getting caught like that, clearly, she’d been neglecting her ori’vod duties and failing in her sacred responsibility as Jango’s designated bad influence. 

But correcting his criminal education would have to wait. There were more pressing concerns. Various clan heads, delegations, and other miscellaneous wedding guests would be arriving over the next week and that would only make things more complicated. The window for easy-access scheming was rapidly closing.

“Okay, yes,” she allowed, “the sudden loss of Pre’s tooka-eyes puts us at a tactical disadvantage. But I’ve accounted for that.”

Several skeptical looks were shot her way. She didn’t dignify any of them with acknowledgment. Honestly, after everything she’d pulled already, you’d think they’d have learned to just trust the process.

“For tonight, we won’t need bribery to manufacture some family time,” she declared confidently. “And Pre won’t be there to ruin it either.”

The skeptical looks only got worse but she didn’t let it get to her. They really should have more faith in how well she knew her buir.  

Okay, so Pre had mastered the fine art of weaponized pouting, and sure, Lok was susceptible to guilt trips—especially when said guilt trips came from small children with abandonment trauma and aggressively expressive eyes—but Arla knew better than anyone that there was a threshold. A line where Lok stopped letting himself be emotionally blackmailed and actually exercised his parental authority.

She knew because she’d spent her entire pre-teen life testing that exact boundary like it was her personal mission.

And yeah, she got away with a lot. But not everything. Which was how she knew that if she could just manufacture the right circumstances, then even Pre wouldn’t be able to derail her plans.

It was, admittedly, a little manipulative. But the moral high ground had been forfeited about six schemes ago. At this point, the line wasn’t even visible. It vanished in the distance like a speck in a rearview mirror.

Besides, she had a good feeling about this one.

Lok Vizsla and Tarin Wren were locked in a silent, slow-burning standoff that would’ve probably looked comical if anyone else were to enter the room. It was, in Lok’s expert opinion, a colossal waste of time. He wasn’t going to budge. There was quite literally nothing Tarin could do to change that fact.

Well, unless he was prepared to dig up some of Kyr’tsad’s vintage problem-solving techniques, but as far as Lok was aware, he valued breathing. 

Now, most days, Lok was more than willing to hear him out. He kept Tarin around for a reason and it definitely wasn’t his charming personality.

This decision was an exception. Was it ill-advised? Maybe. From a political perspective, anyway. A smidge vindictive? Absolutely. 

He couldn’t find a single osik to give.

What Lok didn’t understand was why Tarin cared enough to get heated about this. He wasn’t known for passion; he was known for precision and keeping his temper vacuum-sealed until absolutely necessary. Like most Mando’ade, Tarin had his volatile moments, but those were reserved for extreme circumstances. 

And the fact that this issue had Tarin visibly reactive set off more than a few internal alarm bells. 

The bitter, gnawing pit that had long since taken up residence in Lok’s gut twisted tighter, sour with the question he didn’t want to ask: Did Tarin ever fight this hard when Tor greenlit child torture and civilian massacres? Or was this level of outrage a privilege reserved exclusively for Lok?

Because if so, Lok would really like to know what earned him that distinction.

“You need to send him an invitation,” Tarin repeated through gritted teeth, each word sharper than the last as he tried to find the angle that might magically make Lok care. “I know you two have your issues, but he’s the Alor. It’s a matter of respect.”

Lok simply arched a brow, doing his best impersonation of Yan when someone said something particularly idiotic and he was politely refraining from eviscerating them for it. He’d been practicing. Yan would be proud.

Tarin, however, was not proud. Nope, he was still experiencing a concerning amount of frustration.

His eye twitched.

Lok mentally tallied a point on the board. That twitch always came right before Wren started talking with his hands, which promptly he did, shoving his chair back as he stood up.

“You can’t not invite the Vizsla Alor to your riduurok, Lok!”

Technically, no. He couldn’t. Mandalorian etiquette had some flexibility, but it did frown on that sort of thing. Especially when the whole point of the riduurok was to form a unified government. 

Excluding any Alor would be counterproductive. It was a provocation and a guaranteed diplomatic mess. When the House in question was ancient, obscenely wealthy, politically influential, and the backbone of a major faction within the Mando’ade—a buir to the Mand’alor no less, if only in the loosest, most reluctantly acknowledged technical sense—exclusion would be seen as an insult worthy of retaliation. 

So yes. Lok had to invite him. However, there was no rule that said he had to be gracious about it.

He checked. Twice. 

“I gave Naera a plus one,” Lok said coolly. “That will allow him to attend, if he can be bothered.”

There was a long beat of stunned silence.

Was it petty? Yes. Did he care? Not even a little. 

In fact, he’d very seriously considered writing Naera Awaud and guest just to really drive the point home. The only thing stopping him was a Kas’ voice in his head reminding him that technically, he was Mand’alor and technically, there were expectations. 

It was getting harder and harder to care about those too.

Tarin stared at him in disbelief. “Next you’re going to tell me you won’t let Jorad be your witness!”

Lok thought his silence did the talking for him. It must have, because Tarin's mouth dropped in raw shock, like he couldn't comprehend that Lok would dare.

"Who will you have in his place?" Tarin demanded, expression shifting from shock to anger.

In an ideal universe, Lok would've asked Sifo, but in that same universe, he'd be marrying for love. In this reality, he was marrying out of strategy, not affection, and having a jetii serve as his witness would be… incendiary.

"I do have two buire," Lok said, voice flat and eyes cold.

Tarin scowled. "It's Jorad's right and you know it."

“Why?” Lok asked, and this time, it wasn’t a challenge. It was a genuine, hollow thing.

Tarin actually seemed to falter at that, but he rallied. "He's Alor."

"And that entitles him to every honor?" Lok countered. "If he could, he would've disowned me the first time I failed my verd'goten. He doesn't get to use me to inflate his status now that he’s run out of ways to pretend I don’t exist.”

Tarin opened his mouth to argue before snapping it shut. Something almost apologetic flashed through his eyes, probably the product of a memory from his youth, but it vanished just as quickly. Lok thought he might have imagined it.

“This isn’t a game, Mand’alor,” Tarin hissed, infusing just enough venom into the title to make it clear it was legally and traditionally required, not personally endorsed.

“Oh, I know,” Lok replied blandly, “If it were a game, I’d be having fun.”

He didn’t need to be told how real this was. He felt it in the hollow of his chest, in the ache behind his ribs that never quite healed after Korda VI, in the way he couldn’t sleep without three weapons within reach, and in the daily struggle to accept that this was his life now.

He wasn’t signing up for an extra month, or another year, or even a decade. He was about to exchange vows that would bind him to both the title and a riduur until the day he marched on.

Sure, he could retire eventually. If he made it that far. But that end date he clung to like a lifeline whenever he felt like he couldn’t keep going was gone. Every time he comforted himself with the life he could have after felt like a cruel joke. 

If he coped by being petty with his invites, Tarin was just going to have to deal with it. There were more important things to worry about than Jorad Vizsla’s ego. 

“Jorad won’t take this well,” Tarin warned, which was a generous interpretation of what Jorad was likely to do.

“I imagine he won’t,” Lok replied. That was the point.

The real plan—one Lok was never, ever putting in writing or speaking out loud—was to bait Jorad into overplaying his hand. 

Was the riduurok an ideal venue for this? No. But he doubted he'd ever have a better opportunity to leverage Jorad's ego against his common sense.

Jorad’s seat as Alor had been a gift from Tor, and was currently one of the few remaining legacies Lok hadn’t found a way to dismantle yet. Unfortunately, short of a challenge, ousting him would require a formal vote, and House Vizsla was not inclined to do that at the moment. 

So, Lok was on a slow path toward provoking Jorad into doing something drastic enough to force it. 

Not that Tarin needed to know any of that.

“I’ll send it for you,” Tarin offered, switching tactics. “You don’t have to be involved at all. You don’t even have to see the invite. I’ll send one without a signature.”

Lok stared at the man across from him, briefly wondering if he’d suffered a head injury. “Let me make myself perfectly clear,” he said, because apparently all the previous times he said no left room for ambiguity. “If Jorad receives anything that could be interpreted as an invitation from me, you will be out of a job.”

Tarin blanched. Good. 

Unemployment wasn’t an inherently lethal threat, but they both knew Tarin would be with Kyr'tsad until he died. It was a promise Lok made months ago, and one he fully intended to keep. 

He held his stare for maximum effect, then leaned back, schooling his face into impassivity again. He could almost feel the ghost of Arla smacking him upside the head for the dramatics. He bit back a grin. Ruining the moment with levity would be a shame.

Unfortunately, for all the things one could accuse Tarin Wren of—and the list was long—cowardice wasn’t on it. 

So, rather than heeding to the obvious threat and backing down, he inhaled sharply, shoulders squaring, clearly winding up for another long-winded rant, but he didn’t get the chance to deliver it.

Thank the Manda for small mercies.

The door slid open, revealing— Jango?  

Lok straightened automatically, instincts overriding fatigue. “Is everything okay?”

Since arriving in Keldabe, he’d gotten to see quite a bit of Jango. They’ve shared meals pretty regularly and there have been quite a few random outings, but Lok didn’t think they were quite at the walk-in unannounced stage of their dynamic yet.

He hoped they’d get there. Eventually. But between the headaches of governance, the walking disaster that was the Unification Agreement, the looming riduurok, and the classified project he and Jaster were working on, free time was a theoretical concept. 

Jango seemed to understand that. Or at least, he hadn’t held it against him. They had a quiet trust, Lok thought. A foundation, if not a fortress. Something he could build on, once the dust settled.

“Do you have a minute?” Jango asked, eyes darting between Lok and Tarin, probably sensing the lingering tension. It was hardly subtle. “I wanted to ask you something.”

A pointed glare from Lok had Tarin muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like I give up before disappearing.

Lok hoped he meant it.

Jango took two stiff steps toward the chair and pulled it forward with an audible scrape that set every nerve in Lok’s spine jangling. He hated that sound. He hated a lot of things lately.

Lok took a slow breath and let it out through his nose, peeling away the irritation and tucking it somewhere beneath the surface. He could pick it back up later, when he didn’t have a nervous ad across from him, waiting to be heard.

Jango looked up with wide amber eyes that transported Lok right back to another lifetime on Concord Dawn, where an eight-year-old Jan’ika chased him around with a plushy. 

The memory was faded and worn thin, rough at the edges, but still lodged in his chest like shrapnel. 

Swallowing the surge of emotion, Lok leaned forward, resting his arms on the cluttered surface of his desk. “What did you need?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, careful not to let anything else bleed into it. 

“Arla said you make tiingilar like Ka’buir used to,” Jango blurted.

Lok blinked. That…was not the direction he thought this was headed.

Okay. He sat back slowly, brushing a few loose strands of hair out of his face and offering a tired smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He couldn’t really manage anything more at the moment. 

“We did our best to recreate it,” he said gently. “It’s not perfect, but we experimented until Arla was satisfied.”

They’d built that recipe from Arla’s memory when they were on Corellia, where many staple ingredients were not only hard to come by, but completely unaffordable, so they had to get creative. The only reason they ever got close was because Cador took it upon himself to gift them some ingredients in the early days. 

Now, those meals were just another memory wrapped in someone else’s betrayal, preserved under glass in the mental museum Lok never seemed able to stop curating.

“Can you make it for me?” Jango asked, words coming fast now. “Like, tonight? Can we come over for latemeal?”

Lok’s chest ached at the earnest expression, and burned, just a bit, at the trace of grief hiding behind it. “Of course,” he murmured without thinking it through. 

Jango nodded stiffly. “So… tonight. Latemeal. Uh. 18:30?”

Lok mentally checked his schedule. There were meetings, there were always meetings, but none that couldn’t be ignored or rescheduled or quietly sabotaged. “That works for me. But I’ll need to check with Pre about Jaster coming over,” he added, hating how careful he sounded.

Lately, Pre could barely look at Jaster without his little face curling into a scowl like he’d tasted something sour and was personally offended it had the audacity to exist. If that was the whole issue, Lok might be less inclined to accommodate it. The riduurok was going to happen no matter how loudly he protested it and he would have to accept that one way or another.  

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite that simple and Lok wasn’t going to do anything to make this harder for Pre. 

No matter how devastating Jango’s tooka-eyes were. 

“But I want Buir to be there,” Jango said, voice lowering, eyes turning suspiciously glassy. “I want him to try it.”

Seriously, how did Jaster ever say no to him? Lok was going to need lessons. A manual. Possibly a support group.

Osik. 

He cleared his throat. “I get that,” he said gently. “I really do. But Pre’s still having a hard time being around Jaster right now. And that apartment—it’s his home right now, even if it’s temporary. He should be comfortable there.”

“What’s he going to do after the riduurok?” Jango countered bluntly. “You can keep him separate from buir for now, but that’s not a long term solution.”

The delivery was a bit abrasive, but Jango wasn’t wrong. 

Lok sighed. “You’re right, Jango. It’s not a long term solution. And this is not permanent. But Pre needs us to be patient while he comes to terms with everything. Even when he’s being…” He trailed off.

He didn’t want to call his ad unkind, but…well, even though he was only eight, he had his moments. 

“An entitled pain in the shebs?” Jango offered helpfully.

Lok barked a laugh before he could stop himself. “I was going to say difficult, but sure. That too.”

“What’s his problem, anyway?” Jango asked, full of teenage irritation. It was probably well-deserved. 

Lok sighed and raked a hand through his hair, catching on a tangle he didn’t have the patience to fight. He mentally added ‘get a haircut’ to his never ending task-list.

“The details are not mine to share,” he said. “But when Pre lashes out—just try to remember it’s not coming from nowhere. That doesn’t mean you have to take it. He needs to be held accountable for his behavior. I just… I want you to know he’s got a good heart, even when he’s hiding it.”

He paused before adding, “And if he ever crosses a line, tell me. I’ll handle it. Or at the very least, make sure you get space.”

He’d seen the way Pre and Jango provoke each other like it’s a competitive sport, and while it hasn’t gone too far yet, Pre’ika didn’t always have a good grasp on where the line was. Their lives were about to be blended and Lok didn’t want Jango thinking he was expected to put up with it just because he was older. That would only breed resentment.

Jango was giving him an odd look, and something about it felt older than his fifteen years. It was unsettling in ways that it shouldn’t be. 

Lok tilted his head, studying the boy who still existed as an eight-year-old ghost in his memories. Except the more Jango grew into his features, the more familiar he looked.

But Lok wasn’t ready to confront that. 

“I’ll talk to Pre about latemeal,” he promised. “If he’s not comfortable with it, I can make it for you and bring it over so you can have Jaster there. If…if you want me there too—” no clue why he would, but that was the impression Lok was getting, “—I’ll see if I can arrange for Pre to have latemeal with Goran Kobr tonight. We’ll make it work without putting him on edge in his own space. That okay?”

“‘Lek. Vor entye,” Jango said, and there was something too heavy in the way he thanked him.

“N’entye,” Lok replied, softer than intended.

Then Jango launched to his feet so fast the chair protested with an offended screech and went skidding backward, narrowly avoiding a wall. “I have to tell the— Buir!” he exclaimed, and bolted before Lok could process the sentence.

He watched the door slide shut behind him and sighed, hoping he’d handled that right. 

Blending aliit through a riduurok was rarely a smooth transition, and while it helped that Arla and Jango were already vode, that didn’t mean it was without its challenges. Clearly.

Lok took a moment to send a quick message to Tahlis, asking if she was available to take Pre for the night. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but then again, nothing was these days.

He then turned back to his desk with the thin, delusional hope that burying himself in productivity might trick his brain into feeling like he hadn’t completely lost control of his own life. For about an hour, he almost pulled it off. Long enough to respond to two priority dispatches and redraft a proposal that somehow read more like a threat when Tarin phrased it.

He was just starting to make headway on his inbox when the door hissed open again.

He didn’t look up right away. Eye contact led to conversations. Conversations led to complications. And complications were already outnumbering solutions on his best days. Which this wasn’t.

Also, he was busy trying to recall when exactly he’d instituted a kriffing open-door policy, because he was pretty sure he hadn’t. Unless it had happened sometime between accidentally endorsing a small-scale revolution and forgetting to eat for three days. Which was… not outside the realm of possibility.

“I hear you’re hosting latemeal tonight,” said a voice his brain had long ago, and against his better judgment, categorized as safe, steady, and statistically likely to emotionally ruin him.

Of course. Like buir, like ad. He should've known it wasn’t one of his people. 

Kyr’tsad had its faults—endless infighting, deeply questionable hobbies, a mildly concerning enthusiasm for explosions—but they respected hierarchy and protocol. Even Tarin would knock.

Sure enough, Jaster Mereel was leaning in the doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame. The lighting was being rude. It always was around Jaster.

He looked good.

Which was inconvenient.

“That’s the plan,” Lok replied, keeping his tone neutral, his posture relaxed, and his heart rate absolutely not accelerating. Because he was a professional. A grown man. Immune, theoretically, to things like old flames and impossible hopes.

Jaster, oblivious or simply cruel, took that as the invitation it wasn’t, stepped inside, and let the door slide closed behind him.

The room suddenly felt very…small.

Lok shifted back in his chair, just enough to feign a comfort he didn’t possess, and offered Jaster the barest arch of an eyebrow.

“You know,” Jaster said conversationally as he crossed the room and dropped into the chair across from him—again, uninvited—“the last time I’ve seen you cook, you almost set the Protectors barracks on fire.”

Lok narrowed his eyes and pretended his face wasn’t already halfway to a blush. He briefly considered pulling on his buy’ce— purely for tactical reasons, of course—but decided that would look a bit desperate. 

“First of all,” he huffed, “that was over a decade ago.”

Jaster raised both brows, clearly unconvinced.

“And second,” Lok added, “the heating unit was defective.”

Which was technically true. In the same way he’d technically tried to compensate for a busted warming coil with the lowest setting on a short-range flamethrower.

It had not gone well.

It had also been his first time cooking. Ever. Give him some credit. He's learned since then. He had to.

“The fire suppression system short-circuited and we had to evacuate three barracks,” Jaster said, sounding almost…nostalgic.

Lok sighed, but his lips betrayed him with the edge of a smile he didn’t entirely suppress. 

Jaster chuckled, a low, rumbling sound, and something in Lok’s chest folded in on itself. “It wasn’t even your shift,” he added, eyes crinkling with amusement. “You weren’t on kitchen duty. You volunteered . ”

Lok shrugged, aiming for nonchalance, pretending the memory didn’t strike somewhere deep and difficult. “I was trying to impress you.”

The words slipped out before his mind could throttle them back.

Jaster blinked once, like he was surprised by Lok’s willingness to admit it. Well, that made two of them.

“Is that so?” 

Okay, so that smirk was entirely unfair.

Lok made a show of focusing on a datapad. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late.”

Nope. Lok wasn’t going to look at him because then he’d have to see that disarming grin and he wasn’t sure he’d recover.

So instead, he shrugged. “You were my partner,” he said, vaguely impressed by how steady his voice was. “I wanted you to like me.”

The words hung in the air with the kind of reckless honesty Lok usually had the good sense to swallow.

It wasn’t even in a romantic sense back then. Not yet, at least. Just a rookie in a new environment, trying to find independence from a family he never quite managed to belong to, hoping he might find somewhere he did. Overcompensating, maybe, for knowing that Jaster would have to put up with his visions and not wanting to be seen as something that got in the way.

Of course, Jaster never complained that Lok slowed him down. He only ever worried whether Lok was okay. But it took a while for Lok to trust that. 

“You didn’t have to try that hard,” Jaster said softly. “I liked you the second you told Cador to kriff off on your first day.”

“That was self-preservation,” Lok muttered.

Jaster gave a faint huff of amusement. “Looked like courage to me.”

“Well,” Lok said dryly, “you always did have questionable judgment.”

“Still do, apparently,” Jaster shot back, then softened just enough to let the moment breathe. “Do you remember that spice bust outside Mirrin’s old scrapyard?” 

“You mean the one where you dove headfirst into a dumpster because you thought you heard movement?” 

“I maintain that it was tactical.”

“You broke a tibula.”

“Tactical and committed.”

Lok shook his head, unable to suppress the crooked grin tugging at his mouth. “You reeked of rotten stimleaf for two weeks.”

“And still managed to close the case.”

“No,” Lok corrected, grinning now. “I closed the case. You spent the next two days passed out in the barracks because you got sick from expired spice fumes.”

“Semantics,” Jaster said, waving it off like he hadn’t been fever-delirious and hallucinating for thirty-six hours straight.

Lok laughed, a sound that had gotten rusty from disuse. He didn’t let himself do it often—didn’t have the time or the desire—but something about the way Jaster was looking at him made it feel almost safe. Like they could fold time in half and pretend the last ten years hadn’t happened. 

And wasn’t it pathetic that he still wished they could.

He leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk, eyes catching Jaster’s just a second too long before he looked away. “You were the worst mentor imaginable,” he said, not bothering to disguise the warmth in it.

“And you were the most insufferable rookie I’ve ever had,” Jaster replied, but the edges of his voice had gone soft.

It was too easy to fall into this rhythm. To wander into the trap of pretending nothing had changed and they were still those two stubborn idiots with badge codes and bad instincts and a standing bet on who could file more disciplinary reports in a week.

But everything had changed, and chasing the memories was like trying to capture smoke.

Lok cleared his throat, picked up his datapad to retreat to the safety of work. “Feels like a different lifetime.”

Jaster didn’t answer right away. When he did, his tone had shifted to something more hesitant. “Do you ever think about what might have happened if things were…different?”

Lok’s fingers stilled over the datapad.

A thousand images flickered across his mind—sunlight on duracrete, Jaster’s laugh echoing down a hallway, the smell of burnt tiingilar, late nights that bled into early mornings because they lost track of time again.

“Not if I can help it,” Lok said, keeping his tone light. All the memories would do is haunt him. “Feels kind of pointless. I'm not the same person I was back then.”

He meant it to sound like a shrug, but it landed more like a bruise.

Jaster’s silence was the worst kind of understanding. He looked at him in that steady, unflinching way of his, like he was trying to see past all the layers Lok had spent years learning how to wear. Like he remembered the version of Lok who believed in better endings.

Lok wished he didn’t. 

He cleared his throat, forced himself to meet Jaster’s gaze and gestured vaguely toward the datapads crowding his desk. “Anyway,” he said, with a little more effort than he would have liked, “I’ve got about seven hours of work left and a latemeal to prepare. Did you come to reminisce or was there something you needed?”

Across from him, Jaster shifted slightly in the chair, some of the humor dimming. “Yeah,” he said after a pause, like the word was being sifted through a dozen other replies before it was deemed the safest. “Actually. Jango mentioned something.”

That never boded well.

“About Pre,” Jaster continued carefully. “He said he didn’t want me around tonight. I’ve… noticed it too. He’s been looking at me like I kicked his tooka and laughed about it. But he was fine before the riduurok was announced, and I just—” He hesitated, then pressed on. “I wanted to make sure I didn’t do something. And if I did, I want to fix it.”

The words carried a careful concern that managed to feel like someone was knocking gently on a locked door in Lok’s chest. 

He hated that too. Because it made it harder to pretend.

“You didn’t,” Lok said, leaning back just far enough in his chair to simulate comfort, because actual distance wasn’t something he could find in a space this small. “It’s not really about you.”

Jaster’s brow furrowed. “Then what is it about?”

“It’s... complicated,” Lok said, the words scraping against his chest as they left his mouth. 

Wasn’t everything?

He ran a hand down his face, dragging the exhaustion with it. The truth was, Pre’s anger wasn’t clean. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could redirect with discipline or soothe with affection. It was knotted and tangled and pulsing with grief. And Lok couldn’t fix it. He could only stand there and take it when the adiik needed somewhere to throw it.

“I know keeping the two of you apart is not sustainable,” he added, voice quieter. “But right now, he needs space.”

Jaster looked like he wanted to argue, or at least offer some kind of counterpoint, but he hesitated—hands tightening around the arms of the chair like he was physically restraining the instinct.

“Spit it out, Mereel,” Lok said, tone dry enough to pass for amusement. “I can see the lecture building.”

That earned a faint huff of a laugh before Jaster cleared his throat. “Have you thought about finding him a mir’baar’ur? We’ve got a few specialists who work with adiike. Some even focus on ka’ra -touched ade. I can pull names, if you want.”

“He has one,” Lok replied, before the guilt could start to settle. “They’re a childhood trauma specialist from Alderaan. He does his sessions remotely. Progress is slow, but it’s there.”

He glanced up, met Jaster’s eyes, and felt the need to explain himself. He knew from the outside Pre didn’t look like he was doing well, and setting him up with an aruetii was probably not ideal, but he was working with what he had at the time. 

“Kyr’tsad wasn’t great about mental health when I took over.” That had to be a massive understatement but he brushed past it. “We’ve gotten better, but there wasn’t really anyone I could trust Pre with. So, I set him up with a mind healer on Alderaan with the experience to handle what he’s been through.”

He exhaled slowly, gaze dropping again. “By the time I had mir’baar’ure I trusted locally, he already had a rapport with them. The therapy was working. There was no reason to ruin a good thing. Besides, with all the traveling I was doing between bases, most of his appointments were going to be remote regardless. And I needed the in-house mir’baar’ure for the youth centers. Priorities.”

There was a little too much force behind the explanation, a bit too much detail. Lok clamped his mouth shut before he went on.

Logically, he knew he didn't need to justify himself, but it was hard to tamp down the urge around Jaster. 

“You’re doing good with him,” Jaster said, and it was so soft, so earnest, that Lok had to work not to flinch at the words.

He didn’t know what to do with it, or how to react to it. Part of him wanted to bask in it, because the validation felt like raw relief. The other part wanted to pretend he never heard it at all.

“I’m doing my best,” he muttered. And he was. Even if it never felt like enough.

“How did you get an appointment with an Alderaani specialist?” Jaster asked.

Lok straightened a little, a thread of genuine fondness weaving into his tone. “Senator Organa referred me,” he said. 

He and Kivan had their disagreements, but after the explosion at the youth home on Coruscant, they developed something close to a friendship. And he was always there when Lok needed someone to pull strings, which was nice.

“That’s…good,” Jaster said, sounding oddly…strained.

Lok leaned back in his chair and blew out a breath, some of the weariness bleeding into reluctant amusement. “Kivan can be… a bit much,” he said, tone tilting toward fond exasperation. “He’s incapable of whispering and owns at least three capes made entirely of sequins. But he’s probably the only senator I’d trust not to sell their sibling for committee leverage.”

“High praise,” Jaster muttered dryly.

“You joke,” Lok said, “but I had to suffer through one too many galas while I was his bodyguard. At this point, being genuine is enough to make him the moral backbone of the entire shabla Senate. It’s terrifying.”

Jaster huffed a laugh, and Lok didn’t let himself look at him for too long. Not with that smile starting to tug at his mouth and the light catching the grey at his temples, like starlight filtered through scorched glass.

He knew better than to let himself go there. 

“Was there anything else you needed?” he asked, pitching his voice just shy of polite detachment. “We both have a lot of work waiting.”

Jaster’s mouth twitched faintly, but he nodded, tapping two fingers against the edge of the desk in a way that might’ve been agreement or habit. “No, you’re right. The work’s endless. I’ll let you get back to it.”

He turned to go, pausing only long enough to glance over his shoulder with a flash of mischief that was entirely uncalled for.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he added, too casual to be safe. “Assuming the food’s edible.”

Lok rolled his eyes, but it didn’t have much bite. “You’ll survive.”

Jaster raised an eyebrow. “Will I?”

Lok didn’t answer—just lifted a hand in mock dismissal and returned his gaze to the datapad in front of him, the corners of his mouth tugging upward against his will.

He waited until the door slid shut behind Jaster before letting himself breathe again. 

At precisely 17:14 standard, Arla slipped into the refresher suite, scooped up Lok’s neatly folded change of clothes from the counter, and replaced them with a single towel.

An optimistically small towel.

With her offering to the romance gods made, she retreated to the hallway, swiped Lok’s comm and fired off a quick message.

Then, like any good shadow operative, she deleted the message from both the history and the local cache, wiped it against her shirt (no fingerprints, thanks), and powered it down like nothing had ever happened.

She pulled out her own comm and sent a second message.

Step one: complete.

Next stop: Pre’s personal disaster zone.

She edged into his room, gagged slightly, and took a moment to mourn the tragic death of her olfactory system.

She started gathering the casualties—two socks, a shirt she really hoped wasn’t bloodstained, and a pair of pants that had mysteriously fused with the floor.

"How do you even live like this?" she muttered, side-stepping what she hoped was a plush tooka and not a sentient dust creature.

Laundry in arms, dignity clinging on by a thread, she detoured past the karyai and dumped both Pre’s and Lok’s clothes into the wash. Then she hit a few buttons and hoped for the best.

With her tracks covered, she sauntered through the connecting door to Jaster’s apartment.

“Su’cuy, Jaster,”  she greeted, aiming for casual and landing somewhere around suspiciously rehearsed. Oops. 

Not that Jaster was paying attention. He was busy staring at his datapad like it had personally betrayed him. He blinked once, vaguely grunted something that might’ve been a greeting, and resumed his thousand-yard stare into digital despair.

Which worked perfectly for her purposes.

Then she grabbed Jango and left. Quickly.

Because she had boundaries. There were things she simply did not need to witness, even if she orchestrated them.

Jango gave Jaster a hesitant glance on their way out, like he was waiting for the designated adult supervision to intervene.

“Don’t look at him,” she said, dragging him out the door. “He’s emotionally compromised and probably can’t be trusted to make decisions right now.”

Jango opened his mouth. Closed it. Shrugged. Honestly, fair.

“We’ll be back for latemeal!” she called sweetly over her shoulder, right as the door hissed shut behind them.

Jango gave her a skeptical side-eye as they headed toward the turbolift, but followed her anyway, because he was smart and possibly a little bored. “What exactly are we doing?”

“Kyr’tsad’s got their mess hall rotation right now,” she explained, tone just shy of conspiratorial. “Lok’s cooking—so he’s busy. Jaster’s about to be emotionally preoccupied. Possibly psychically distressed.”

“And?”

“And that gives us one hour of minimal supervision and maximum opportunity,” she said, grinning as the turbolift doors slid open. 

“I think Wren’s up to something,” she added, stepping inside. “He’s been…suspicious.”

“He’s Kyr’tsad,” Jango deadpanned. “That’s the whole brand.”

“Yes, but he’s not usually bad at hiding it,” she shot back. “And now he’s slipping. Which means either he’s distracted, or he’s plotting something important enough to mess with his baseline paranoia.”

“Great,” Jango muttered, “so naturally we’re going to go poke it with a stick.”

“I prefer the term strategic reconnaissance,” Arla said with a smirk as the turbolift doors slid shut. “But yes. We’re going snooping.”

Jaster was sitting in his karyai, ostensibly engrossed in a centuries-old tactical manuscript from the last Great Crusade, though, if someone had asked him to summarize even a single sentence from the last ten pages, he’d have stared at them blankly before pretending to be interrupted by an urgent holocall.

The problem wasn’t the manuscript. It was the chrono. And his own kriffing nervous system, which had apparently entered a co-dependent relationship with said chrono and now insisted on checking it every two minutes.

17:13.

An hour and seventeen minutes until latemeal.

Not that he was counting.

He wasn’t impatient. He was preemptively preparing for a time-sensitive social engagement. Like a responsible adult. It just so happened that this responsible adult had been changed, pressed, and ready since 16:45.

There was, of course, a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he was a bit… eager for time to pick up the pace.

Lok was cooking.

Which was… bold.

Cooking hadn’t exactly been a necessary skill for a Vizsla raised in a stronghold with staff, status, and a generational disdain for domestic labor. The Lok he used to know couldn't reheat soup without at least two droids and a prayer. 

He may or may not have bribed the entire kitchen staff to be on standby. Just in case. 

But he was approaching this with an open mind. He even left his office early, changed tunics twice and was now sitting here rereading the same paragraph for the fifth time because his brain decided to spend all its limited resources picturing Lok in the kitchen. Sleeves rolled, hair tied back, probably scowling adorably at a spice blend like it had personally wronged him, or muttering to himself while aggressively chopping something with a combat knife that absolutely wasn’t meant for food prep.

It was a normal thing to imagine. Well within the realm of acceptable thoughts. He was allowed to think his ven’riduur was attractive. Objectively speaking.

Except Lok wasn’t really his, was he?

Not in the way Jaster wanted. At least not yet. 

It was a grey area. 

He sighed, set the manuscript aside, and reached for his datapad. If he was going to sit around like a di’kut while he waited to see his ven’riduur, he could at least be productive while doing it. The list of pre- riduurok logistics was never-ending.

In hindsight, they should have planned for a longer engagement period. 

The original timeline had made perfect sense. From a Mandalorian standpoint, it was practically excessive. Then the Republic got involved. Suddenly, an event that should have taken a week to throw together now had three separate teams just to handle logistics.

It was a nightmare.

Well. Lesson learned. 

He opened his inbox and got to work.

Skimming through the confirmed attendees, he frowned. Lok’s buire were still marked as pending. They were supposed to have finalized that days ago. 

He sent a quick message to Myles, asking him to check in with Lok’s people and confirm whether the delay was a data entry oversight. They were cutting it close and really needed final numbers. Everything needed to align perfectly. There was no room for last-minute mishaps or miscommunications.

He didn’t mention the part where it made him nervous.

The purpose of the union may be a united government and a lasting peace, but it would be foolish to ignore the lingering tensions between their factions. Throw in a bunch of senators and jetiise, and—well. There was a lot of room for a lot of things to go very, very wrong. 

Despite the inherent risk, it was still the smart move. As Mand’alor, he knew that. As a person and soon-to-be riduur, he despised it.

Nothing about this event had anything to do with them. It was politics wrapped in tradition, dressed in ceremony, and weaponized for unity. And yeah, he knew their marriage wasn’t exactly the product of a great romantic courtship, but did they need to be reminded of that every step of the way?

He couldn’t wait for the whole thing to be over, for the dust to settle and the chance to actually explore what their lives might be, outside of their titles and obligations.

In another life, he would’ve wanted them to choose each other. He would have spoken his vows without any doubt about who either of them belonged to. 

They didn’t have that luxury. He couldn’t change that. But even though the riduurok was the product of a political arrangement, the vows were real, the commitment to each other was real. 

He wanted to make this work for them, not just Mandalore as a whole.

His eyes flicked back to the chrono.

17:14.

Time was crawling.

He sighed and refocused on his datapad, prepared to endure another mind-numbing string of correspondence when the screen blinked. A sharp chime broke the quiet, indicating a message from Lok.

Jaster sat up straighter before he even processed what he was doing, already opening the message.

Do you want to come over?
Just for a bit. Thought it might be nice to spend time together. Without the ade.

He stared at the words.

His heart, previously pacing itself with slow military discipline, promptly tripped over itself and faceplanted into a sprint.

Jaster blinked. Then blinked again. Just to make sure the words hadn’t somehow rearranged themselves into something disappointing while he wasn’t looking.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew better than to read too much into it.

Things between him and Lok were…fine. More professional than he’d like them to be, but nothing to indicate Lok was unhappy with the arrangement. 

Still. Sometimes he…well, he missed Lok, even when they spent most of their days working together.

They saw each other often, but they only really spoke about work. Even the riduurok was discussed in terms of guest lists and napkin colors. 

This was the first time since arriving that Lok actually expressed any interest in his company that had nothing to do with either their respective roles or ade.

That probably meant something, right?

Behind him, the apartment door hissed open and Arla strode in. “Su’cuy, Jaster,” she said casually, already heading for Jango’s room. 

Jaster managed a grunt that vaguely resembled a greeting, but his eyes were locked on the datapad. He barely registered the clatter of armor or the echo of the door sealing behind them.

Lok wanted to spend time with him.

Just him.

He sat there with the message open for another thirty seconds, doing his absolute best to make sure his face didn’t scream “My ven’riduur just asked me to hang out casually and I’m having a moment about it” before moving.

When his knock on the connecting door went unanswered, he gave it a respectful three seconds before pushing it open anyway. The lights were on, and Lok asked him to come over, so… logically, that made it an open invitation. Practically a summons. Definitely not trespassing.

He stepped through the doorway like a reasonable man with entirely reasonable expectations, reminding himself that, realistically, this was likely going to be yet another discussion about seating charts and ceremony logistics, or whether the attendance of both Clan Wren and Clan Saxon meant mandatory weapons checks at the door. 

Nothing to be excited about. Well, except the part where he got to see Lok in a domestic setting. That part was always nice.

“Lok?” he called, stepping farther into the apartment, careful to keep his tone neutral. Warm, but neutral. Not desperate. He was not desperate.

The air smelled like tiingilar. Sharp, spiced, and warm in a way that wrapped around his ribs with something terrifyingly close to comfort. 

His stomach made a frankly embarrassing noise in agreement. 

It smelled good enough that Jaster actually paused, a little disoriented, mentally recalibrating the backup plans he’d made to sneak down to the kitchens later after politely enduring Lok’s cooking. 

Apparently, Lok had learned a few things over the years.

The realization landed with a bittersweet sort of sting in Jaster’s chest. He was excited, genuinely, to learn something new about his ven’riduur. But it came hand in hand with yet another reminder of all the years spent apart and how everything between them eroded with time.

Lok had grown into someone quietly radiant, steady and tired, stronger than he’d ever been, and Jaster was left circling the edges of a life he wanted more than anything, waiting for permission to belong to it.

Shaking it off, Jaster tried to tell himself that the time and distance only meant they had so much more to learn about each other. He ignored the part of him that wondered if Lok even wanted that.

“Lok?” he called out again, but received only the same silence in response. 

He wasn’t in the kitchen or the karyai. Which was strange. Maybe he was on his way home and wanted to meet here? 

It occurred to him that Lok might have been waiting for a response before Jaster let himself in and wasn't actually expecting him.

His eyes scanned the apartment as he moved through it. The space still leaned toward neutral—all muted walls and utilitarian furnishings—but the signs of life made it feel just a touch warmer.

A blanket tossed across the back of the couch; a dead plant by the window; a cracked mug drying by the sink that definitely belonged to Arla, because it had teeth marks in the handle and a glitter sticker peeling from one side; a datapad half-buried under the throw pillows; droid parts on various surfaces.

They were small things, insignificant really, but they made the sterile space feel less temporary and more like a home.

And damn it, he knew he lived right next door, but Jaster wanted to be part of that.

He wanted to know who Lok became when no one was watching. The version that existed between duty and exhaustion, not just the one who fought and lived for everyone else.

He wanted to know which pillow he claimed when he dozed off reading tactical briefs too late at night. If he still paced when he was overthinking and muttered to himself when he was trying to solve problems that had no easy answer. If he—

A soft rustle broke through his thoughts as he stepped into the hallway. He turned, expecting…he didn’t even know. A draft, maybe. What he got was Lok stepping out of the ‘fresher in a veil of steam and temptation.

And a towel. 

Just a towel.

The rational part of Jaster’s brain promptly went offline. All higher order cognitive functions suffered a spontaneous systems failure. Every neuron slammed into a wall and died. His mouth may or may not have fallen open. He couldn’t say.

His entire internal monologue collapsed into a single, static loop: Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t lo—  

He looked.

In his defense, what else was he supposed to do? There were limits to mortal restraint.

Lok froze mid-step, blinking in confusion. “Jaster?”

That was probably a reasonable question. Maybe even an important one. But Jaster was too distracted by the vision in front of him to process syllables.

Freckles mapped across flushed skin like constellations, scattered over a canvas of old scars. Damp curls, darkened to burnished gold, framed Lok’s face in lazy spirals that made Jaster’s fingers twitch with the urge to touch. It would be so easy to reach out and learn the texture of them—if they were as soft as they looked, or if they'd catch slightly between his knuckles like they were meant to be touched.

He told himself to look away. Really, he did. But his eyes had other plans and refused to be reasoned with. They were too busy tracking a bead of water that slid from the curve of Lok’s shoulder down his chest, caught briefly in the hollow of his throat, then continued lower, tracing a line of shimmering sin straight into the realm of fantasy.

He wanted to lick it.

Wait.
No.  

No. No, he did not want that.

…Well. Maybe a little. But they weren't ready for that. Yet.

Before they could go there, there needed to be a serious, adult conversation about the political realities of their situation and boundaries and…stuff.

It was fine. He was fine. Everything was under control.

Then Lok moved and the towel shifted slightly, riding low enough to be genuinely disrespectful to Jaster’s continued emotional stability. His fingers twitched like they wanted to reach out and pull, just to see if Lok’s breath would hitch when he did. He wanted to push him back against the wall and taste the water sliding down his skin, trace every scar with his tongue and claim each one like a vow.

Right. Okay. Never mind. Control was a myth. 

A throat cleared, followed by a wry voice. “My eyes are up here, Jaster.”

Jaster valiantly ignored the heat crawling up his neck and reluctantly lifted his gaze. When their eyes met, he knew he was truly a lost cause. 

Midnight blue, and glittering with amusement. A soft, crooked smile, half-shy and all lethal, curled at the edge of Lok’s mouth like he had no idea what it did to people. 

It was a problem.

“Jas?” Lok tilted his head slightly, a furrow forming between his brows. That should not have been attractive. And yet. “Did you need something urgent?”

Yes. Air. Dignity. A restraining order for his own thoughts.

Lok’s expression shifted from confusion to concern. “Everything okay?”

Right. He needed to produce words. Preferably ones that didn’t make him sound like a malfunctioning droid. Jaster was capable of those. In theory.

“Yes,” he said too fast. “I mean. Sort of. I was just—uh—checking. On you.”

Lok’s brows crept upward. “I’m… fine,” he said carefully, as if this could still go several ways. “Were you trying to reach me? I was in the shower, so I wouldn’t have seen it.”

“Yes. Yes, I noticed. That’s—That’s why I…” Jaster trailed off, then cleared his throat like he could physically cough up a better excuse. “I was just checking. Hydration. That you weren’t—dehydrated. From the shower.”

Hydration.

Seriously? 

This… wasn’t going well. 

Lok tilted his head again, expression somewhere between amused disbelief and growing concern. “You thought I was…dehydrated. From showering.”

So. That made just as much sense as he thought. Wonderful.

Now would be a great time to retreat. Cut his losses, blow something up for dramatic cover, and disappear into the wilderness.

Unfortunately, he was committed. 

Jaster nodded. Once. Very seriously. “It happens. There’s… surface area. And water.”

That was—wow. That was so much worse out loud. He should stop.

Or he could try to fix it. It wasn’t like it could get any worse.

“Excessive exposure to warm, wet environments can be… physiologically destabilizing” He was pretty sure he read that somewhere. “You could pass out. Hit your head. You need… preventative inspection. It’s basic safety protocol. Your whole… situation is a hazard. Might even require… routine monitoring.”

Okay. So yes. It could get worse. Much, much worse. Good to know.

Lok stared at him.

Jaster stared back.

There was a beat of silence. Then another. Then a third, just to really let it marinate. 

It was finally broken by Lok’s laughter.

It started like he didn’t mean to, a soft, startled sound, and then grew into something bright and unrestrained. He threw his head back, laughter spilling into the hallway like a song, beautiful and loud and completely disarming.

And Jaster knew he’d do almost anything to be the reason Lok laughed like that again. Even make a complete fool of himself.

When Lok finally sobered enough to look back at him, he was still smiling, cheeks pink with lingering amusement, and a light in his eyes that made him look younger, somehow. 

Jaster wanted to bottle that look and keep it for the days Lok wouldn’t smile at all.

“You’re an idiot,” Lok said fondly.

Well. The evidence did support that conclusion. 

Jaster swallowed, trying to remember how to be a person. Usually, he was fully capable of speaking to attractive people without turning into a cautionary tale. Or, he used to be. At the very least, he maintained a functional relationship with spoken language.

Apparently, his entire operating system was incompatible with the sight of Lok Vizsla half-nude and blushing like a sunrise.

Lok seemed to finally remember that he was standing in the hallway wrapped in nothing but a towel. He glanced down at himself and flushed deeper, which was frankly unfair. Jaster was already trying not to fall harder. This wasn't helping. 

It took an impressive amount of self-restraint to stay where he was and not close the distance between them, just to see how Lok would react. If he’d pull him closer or push him away.

“I need to get dressed,” Lok mumbled, now staring intently at the floor. “You can make yourself comfortable in the karyai. I’ll, uh… I’ll be right out.”

Right. The polite thing to do would be to leave. Give the man some privacy. Something he should’ve done approximately three seconds after the steam cleared.

Instead, Jaster was fighting the urge to press Lok against the wall and not let him go anywhere for a very long time. 

He nodded. Or at least, he thought he did. His brain had rebooted on emergency settings. Motor function was spotty. Language support unavailable.

His mouth could not be trusted. It was one impulsive breath away from blurting don’t bother or I’ll help. 

So, he nodded again. Twice. Just to be safe.

Then stood frozen as Lok turned and disappeared into his room, leaving behind the faint sound of a closing door.

Jaster took a long, steadying breath, as if oxygen could compensate for whatever series of system malfunctions had just produced…whatever that was.

Well.

That could’ve gone better.

“Preventative inspection,” he muttered to himself, dragging a hand down his face like it might peel off the memory. “Might require routine monitoring. Manda. What is wrong with me?”

He hadn’t fumbled words like that since he was a young teenager with a crush on his fencing instructor. And even then, he hadn’t tried to cite safety protocols as justification for staring at someone’s collarbone.

Groaning, he dropped his forehead against the nearest wall, seriously debating the merits of collapsing on the floor and starting a new life as a throw rug.

Tempting. Very tempting.

But instead, he peeled himself away from the wall and trudged toward the kitchen in search of water and what remained of his pride.

Lok stared at his reflection like it owed him an explanation.

Unfortunately, it offered none. Just the same dark circles under tired eyes, uneven freckles across his cheekbones, and a subtle flush that refused to fade no matter how many deep breaths he took.

He had to leave the room. The food needed tending, and hiding in here for the rest of his natural lifespan—while incredibly tempting—wasn’t a sustainable long-term strategy.

But Jaster was out there.

Waiting.

Why? Who knew. But statistically speaking, it was probably Arla’s fault.

He sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face.

She was well passed her verd’goten and independent enough that discipline had stopped being a realistic or effective strategy. Which meant the parental options were either A) a calm, respectful, emotionally mature discussion about boundaries and consequences, or B) vengeance. Subtle, strategic, and deeply inconvenient vengeance.

He’d think about it later.

Right now, he had a meal to finish preparing and a very large, stupidly attractive man to face. Who had—unless he’d completely misread the situation (again)—spent a solid thirty seconds staring at Lok like he wanted to devour him.

Which was…a lot to process.

Oddly enough, he didn’t feel embarrassed in the way he expected to when he thought about Jaster seeing him mostly naked. He was sure the mortification was there, somewhere. Probably buried underneath the laugh that kept creeping back up when his mind helpfully replayed Jaster’s bizarre disaster of a response to Lok asking why he was there.

It was a mess. A genuinely stunning, deeply awkward mess. 

And none of it answered his question.

It was so very different from the Jaster who was all smirks and smooth lines, with the kind of casual confidence that made it difficult to form coherent thoughts.

Lok didn’t know where that skillset had gone, but it clearly hadn’t made it into the hallway with the rest of him. 

As awkward as it was, it was also… comforting, in a way. Like the universe was finally leveling the field.

Watching Jaster’s entire personality short-circuit felt like justice. For every smile that made Lok’s stomach do that weird little drop, and every time he leaned in too close and Lok’s brain blanked like a corrupted datapad.

It was nice to know meltdowns could be mutual.

And it was endearing. Stupidly so. But it was hard to believe Jaster was reacting that way to him.  

Lok studied the tired face staring back at him, with uneven features, a jaw sharpened by stress, and a faint scar near his temple that he kept forgetting existed. 

He wondered what he looked like to someone who wasn’t raised with constant comparisons to perfection and trained to identify everywhere they fell short. 

His looks weren’t something he typically gave much thought to. Most of his days were spent covered in beskar’gam, and his body was more of a tool than something he thought of in terms of aesthetics. That tool was a bit rusty at the moment, courtesy of all the existential exhaustion and a severe shortage of sleep, but the point stood.

It wasn’t objectively beautiful. It wasn’t ugly, either. It just…was. It fought. It endured. It protected. It kept him alive.

And apparently, it made Jaster completely malfunction in a hallway.

So. That was nice.

Lok knew he wasn’t great at picking up on romantic or sexual subtext. Or text. Or bolded, underlined signage. He’d been told this. Repeatedly. 

After one particularly uncomfortable run-in with a vendor that Arla deemed “painful to witness”, she staged a full intervention that included flashcards and sock puppets. According to her, the vendor was offering much more than just a steep discount. 

Lok still wasn’t sure how he was supposed to know that. He wasn’t sure how Arla knew that. The sock puppets did not clarify.

Parenting a mouthy teenager had its challenges. That incident was one of them.

Still, even he couldn’t misread what just happened.

Sure, it could’ve been drugs. Or a mild stroke. Or maybe all nudity made Jaster uncomfortable. But tempting as it was to fall back on outlandish explanations, that felt like overcomplicating it just to avoid confronting the obvious.

Jaster Mereel was attracted to him. 

Lok had no idea what to do with that information. 

Attraction wasn’t something he could control or request. Neither was love. But somehow, it felt like less of a personal failing to simply be unwanted than to be wanted for his body but not the rest of him.

He didn’t know where that left them.

Lok bit his lip, trying to summon the resolve to walk back out there and act like a fully functional adult.

It was moments like this that made him really, deeply regret that kriffing letter. Had he known he’d end up here—if it even felt like a far-fetched possibility—he never would’ve asked Skirata to deliver it. Never would’ve let Jaster read every ugly, bleeding confession he’d carved from his heart and thrown into the void, all in a failed effort to finally let it go.

At least then he could pretend Jaster was oblivious. That by some miracle, he couldn’t see right through him.

Even a decade ago, Jaster had always been kind. He met Lok’s feelings with that same damnable mix of warmth and restraint. As if they were sweet, maybe even flattering, but ultimately unwanted.

He never shamed him for it, or made him feel bad about it, or used them to his advantage. He let them both pretend he didn’t see it. 

And Lok appreciated that. He did. But appreciation didn’t dull the ache. 

He’d made a sort peace with the fact that his heart wanted what it wanted, regardless of logic, reason, or basic self-preservation. He couldn’t shut it up, so he stopped trying. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

He was so tired of being the one who cared too much, wanted too much, and couldn’t stop hoping for things he’d never have.

And this time, Jaster knew that, too. It made pretending that much harder and it made navigating everything so much more complicated.

He stepped back from the mirror and squared his shoulders. Rolled them once. Took a breath.

He wasn’t that inexperienced rookie anymore, with a crush he couldn’t control and emotions written all over his face.

He wasn’t even the shell of a person who wrote that letter in a desperate bid for closure that might let him finally stop bleeding.

He was a grown man (most of the time). A Mand’alor (depending on who you asked). And sure, he had… feelings —but if he could fake his way through rulership every day, he could fake composure for one evening.

Right?

…Right.

Jaster was standing in the corner of Lok’s karyai, nursing a glass of water like it contained something stronger—preferably toxic—while mentally evaluating the logistics of faking his own death.

After what felt like hours but had to be less than ten minutes, Lok finally emerged from his room wearing a dark tunic and loose-fitting pants, his hair curling gently at his temples as it dried in soft gold waves.

The man had the audacity to look composed. And edible. It was almost cruel.

Jaster took another sip of water, mostly to buy time to rehearse the carefully neutral, non-disastrous script he’d been building since he managed to drag himself out of that hallway.

“I didn’t mean to intrude like that,” he began, grimacing at how formal it sounded. “I thought you wanted me to come over right away, but I shouldn’t have…stayed. It was completely inappropriate. This is your space, and I shouldn’t have—”

Lok cut him off with a hum, moving to grab a glass from the cupboard like none of it was weird. “It’s fine.”

“I don’t want you to feel…” Jaster hesitated. “Uncomfortable.”

Lok shrugged, but his attempt at playing it off was betrayed by the darkening of his cheeks and the way his eyes trailed over Jaster’s chest. “Let’s just call it even and be thankful we didn’t have to call a baar’ur this time.”

Jaster chuckled. ”Yes. That was…unfortunate.”

Lok made a strangled noise of agreement and retreated toward the kitchen, muttering something about never wearing shoes with laces again. He set his glass on the counter, already switching gears like they hadn’t just stumbled over half a dozen landmines of awkward. 

“I need to finish latemeal prep.”

Jaster pushed off the wall, following Lok to the kitchen and setting his own glass aside. “I’ll help.”

“Will that require a preventative inspection?” Lok asked, perfectly deadpan.

Jaster tipped his head back with a groan. Ka’ra, he was never going to live that down.

“Please. Can we agree to never speak of that again?"

“Shame,” Lok murmured, rummaging through the spice rack. “I was just starting to feel flattered.”

As he should.  

“I was concerned about head trauma,” Jaster muttered instead of voicing the thought out loud. 

It was a valid concern. 

“Your own?” Lok asked pointedly, not looking up as he retrieved a spoon.

Which—yes. Obviously. But he wasn’t about to admit that.

Lok just chuckled softly and shook his head, opening the nanowave to retrieve a covered dish. “Pre’s staying with Tahlis tonight,” he said offhandedly. “So you don’t have to worry about him… attacking you.”

Jaster offered a noncommittal grunt at the deliberate change in subject. He’d been on the receiving end of Pre’s death glare more times than he could count lately, so he understood why Lok might make other arrangements.

It still stung that he had to.

“I’ve been ambushed by better,” he said dryly in an attempt to keep things light.

“You say that now,” Lok replied, turning to grab the napkins and completely missing the way Jaster’s gaze lingered. “You haven’t had your hair set on fire yet.”

“Yet,” Jaster echoed solemnly, lips twitching.

Honestly, it felt like a matter of time.

It wasn’t his place to tell Lok how to handle Pre, nor did he know the adiik well enough to pass judgment. Lok was a good buir, so if he thought letting Pre dictate when he interacted with Jaster was the best strategy for now, it probably was. 

He just hoped things improved before they escalated to the point where arson became a real concern.

Lok brushed past him on his way to the stove, and Jaster watched in silent suffering as he scooped up a small spoonful of tiingilar, and tasted it with a little tilt of his head. A low, satisfied hum slipped past his lips—a soft and indulgent sound that should not have been allowed in a room where other people were trying to behave.

He might’ve been a little jealous of the spoon.

Osik.  

He was karked, wasn’t he?

Jango didn’t even like tiingilar. Okay, sometimes he did, but not when it came with a heaping side of emotional pressure.

He wasn’t even hungry. This whole plan had been Arla’s idea anyway. Well— mostly. Maybe seventy percent. Eighty, tops. He was just the logistical consultant with a minor field-work assignment and he was having some light regrets about going along with this one.

He only did it because if he and Arla were going to keep pushing their respective buire together, they needed more proximity. More latemeals. More forced bonding. Maybe a broken sink or a mysterious power outage that required sharing a blanket. 

He hadn’t worked out the details yet.

The annoying part was that he couldn’t even be mad at anyone but himself. He agreed to it, and there were plenty of opportunities to say no, so he couldn’t use that excuse either. But he only said yes because he didn’t think it would matter.

He thought he was over it. Honestly, he really did. He had told himself he was fine—totally fine—right up until he found himself sitting in Lok’s office. 

That’s when it hit him. He was not fine. He was never going to be fine.

It was way too late to undo any of it now, so he was here. He was in. He was committed. And he wasn’t going to back out because he was reliable like that, but he was going to be miserable the entire time and spend the rest of the evening on the sparring mats.

And if this didn’t get them at least one sign of romantic progress, he was going rogue. He was going to implement Phase Love Note.  

The idea was simple enough. If their buire refused to confess to each other, they’d do it for them. But everyone else said that one went too far. 

“Too invasive,” Arla said. “Too ethically questionable,” Myles said. “Legally actionable,” Silas added.

So fine. Jango was holding off. Out of respect. For now. He didn’t actually want to cross any lines, he just wanted to see some progress.

Arla was already hyped about tonight, practically skipping beside him on the way back to the apartment like this was date night for her and not their romantically oblivious buire.  

With the recent string of frustrating failures, Jango would admit he didn’t have high hopes. He had wishes. Dreams. But realistically, if these men could spend four hours alone in a bunker and make zero progress, one more latemeal with their ade present wasn’t going to do it, whether they all had proper clothes on or not.

So it was a pleasant surprise to walk into Arla’s apartment and find Jaster standing next to Lok at the kitchen island. Leaning in closer than he technically should be, laughing at something. Looking comfortable. 

Jango stopped dead in his tracks. Arla grabbed his sleeve and yanked him behind the nearest wall to spy on them. Like the emotionally mature and subtle teens they absolutely were.

“Look at them,” she whispered, peeking around the edge like a sniper. “They’re bonding. And Lok isn’t looking for escape routes. This is progress.”

“Are they…” Jango narrowed his eyes. “Are they making eye contact? Outside of a meeting?”

“I know,” Arla said, practically vibrating.“Do you think they’re touching hands under the counter?”

“I will vomit,” Jango muttered, even though his heart was definitely doing something weird and fluttery about how close their buire were standing.

They’d only been hiding for maybe thirty seconds when Lok called out, “Are you two going to keep whispering behind the wall or are you joining us?”

Oops.

Busted.

They pretended like they’d just arrived, which fooled exactly no one, and shuffled awkwardly to the table with the galaxy’s worst attempt at casual innocence.

The tiingilar was already on a warming plate, steam curling up like it was contractually obligated to look homemade and heartwarming. 

Arla reached for it first, scooped out a generous portion, and slid a plate in front of him with a proud little flourish.

Jango stared at it like it might explode.

He didn’t touch it. Not even when everyone else started eating. He watched the steam rise, tendrils curling in the air like familiar ghosts. He didn’t know why he hesitated. Maybe because it smelled like memories he spent years locking behind steel doors.

It made his heart hurt. Like a ball of grief and nostalgia, all tangled up and indistinguishable, was stopping it from beating properly. 

Thankfully, no one called him out on it. Arla dove straight into a dramatic retelling of her combat class this afternoon, complete with gossip and embellishments. Jango bit his tongue every time she exaggerated. 

Next to him, Jaster took a bite and gave a hum of pleasant surprise. “This is… really good,” he said, like it hadn’t occurred to him that Lok might know how to season things.

While Lok stumbled through his attempt to wave off the compliment, Jango figured that since he made a whole big deal about it and literally asked Lok to make it for him, he was obligated to at least try it, not just stare at it. If only to avoid looking like a spoiled di’kut. 

There could only be only one spoiled di’kut in this aliit, and that title was safely in Pre’s hands.

He was expecting disappointment, maybe secretly hoping for it, but the moment the tiingilar hit his tongue, everything stopped, like someone yanked the sound out of the room.

It tasted like home.

It was his mother humming under her breath while his father tried (and failed) to sneak extra fire pepper into the pot. It was the two of them teasing each other over the seasoning while he and Arla fought over who got to stir the pot and he licked the spoon behind her back.

It tasted like before. Like what he used to think normal meant.

His throat locked up.

He blinked hard, looked down at his plate like it might help. Swallowed.

Tried to breathe.

Nope. Too late. His eyes were already stinging, breath catching like there was something sitting heavy in his chest trying to crawl its way out.

He wasn’t crying, though. He wasn’t. There were just… spice fumes. Probably. Maybe Lok had used too much fire pepper. That stuff was lethal.

Across the table, Arla’s smug face softened, like she could feel it too. Jaster reached out without a word, a warm, steady hand landing on his shoulder like he knew. Which was somehow worse. Because Jango didn’t need comfort. He needed to not be falling apart in the middle of latemeal over tiingilar.  

“You okay Jan’ika?” his buir asked quietly, voice pitched low enough that only he heard it.

Jango stared down at his plate, tried to scrape the words out of his throat, and finally managed, “It tastes like Ka’buir’s.”

Even though Arla told him it would, he didn’t really believe it. And he didn’t think it would come with so many memories. It was just food. It shouldn’t be such a big deal.

Jaster’s hand squeezed his shoulder again, a quiet reassurance that said more than anything words could. 

Jango wiped his face with the sleeve of his kute, cheeks going pink with the mortifying horror of feeling things in public.

“We spent forever testing different recipes,” Arla explained, all too bright, like she knew if she got sentimental she’d lose it too. “Lok cooked, and I taste-tested. We tried to get it as close as we could to what I remembered.”

“I know it’s not exact,” Lok added softly, “but I’m glad it feels close.”

It was. It was close enough that it felt like something he thought he’d lost forever. 

The tiingilar they grew up with tasted different from every other version Jango had tried, no matter what clan it came from. He never knew why. He wondered, sometimes.

He tried not to.

There was a lot Jango didn’t remember about growing up on the farm because he was too young, but he knew their buire always made a big deal about it. Ka’buir was always very proud of the clan tiingilar recipe. He remembered that much.

They even started teaching Arla how to make it on her tenth nameday, just like they promised, but that was only a few months before they marched on.

It wasn’t enough time.

Jango stared at his plate for a long moment, chasing the memory of that taste, of that time, until he finally found the nerve to look at Lok.

“Can you teach me?” he asked, voice weirdly small even to his own ears. “Is it weird to ask that? Since you’re not… you’re not my buir.”  

That was the tradition. Everyone knew it. You inherited your clan’s recipe from your buire. It was one of the few things in Mandalorian culture that was almost universal. After the riduurok, couples sometimes blended recipes. Some clans had three or four variations, all in one generation. Others had one sacred version so ancient it probably predated utensils. But one thing was always true— buire passed the recipe to their ade.  

Only those without them learned from someone else.

Jaster had taught him the Mereel recipe, and it was good. He liked it. He was proud of it. But it wasn’t…

It wasn’t the flavor that lived in his bones, the one he couldn’t describe but still recognized in an instant.

This one…it wasn’t an exact recreation, but it was close. It felt like a living memory connecting them to their maan’aliit. It belonged to Clan Fett, and they were the only two left.

“I could teach you if it feels better that way, but it’s not weird. Your buir is marrying my buir,” Arla said, like this was simple math. “That basically makes him yours too. So it’s fine.”

When the words registered, Jango just… sat there, unsure whether to latch onto them or throw them back in her face. 

He hadn't really thought about that part. He'd been so focused on Operations SMOOCH and RIDUUROK, on pushing this slow-motion romance between their two incredibly stubborn buire, that he never stopped to ask what it meant for him. 

Like, yes, obviously, he wanted the riduurok to happen. And once they exchanged vows, that would automatically make them one big happy, slightly unconventional aliit.  

He wanted that, he just hadn't paid much attention to the technicalities.

Did he want Lok as a buir? Or did he just want him to be Jaster’s riduur?  

That should be enough, right? 

Jaster would be happy. That was the point. As a bonus, their aliit would officially be reunited. But Arla was already his ori’vod regardless, and Pre…

Well, Pre would be his vod’ika, he supposed. Jango always kind of wanted to be the ori’vod for once anyway. 

Pre was a bit of a pain in the shebs right now, but he was raised by Tor kriffing Vizsla for most of his life. Of course he turned out prickly and thought the universe revolved around him. But he wouldn’t always be awful, he just needed time to grow out of it. 

Jango could work with that.

He could also admit, in the privacy of his own thoughts, that he was kind of a bit like Pre when Jaster first took him in. Just with less privilege and more trauma. Still. He could do it. He could be a decent ori’vod to Pre. Maybe even a good one. Eventually.

But he didn’t need another buir. He was happy with Jaster. Why would he need anyone else? 

And even if he did want another buir, he didn’t know if it could be a Vizsla.

Lok was… complicated.  

After his aliit was murdered, Jango was angry for years—angry at Lok for being a liar, at the universe for being cruel, at everything that burned down around him on Concord Dawn for not fighting hard enough. 

But he remembered playing with Lok that day. Remembered liking him. That memory was also the reason he hated him for six years. Because only the worst kind of person pretends to be your friend and comes back the same night to kill your aliit.  

He was wrong about Lok, and about what happened. He knew that now. That didn’t mean it stopped being complicated.

He didn’t like Kyr’tsad, or Vizslas, and he didn’t need a buir.  

He already had one. 

Lok waited patiently for Jango to meet his eyes before he addressed Arla’s bold declaration. “You don’t owe me anything just because I’m marrying Jaster. And I’m not going to expect you to see me as a buir if that’s not what you want. But I’d be happy to teach you either way.”

Which was great. Really. Very grown-up and considerate. Extremely healthy boundaries. That’s probably what his mir’baar’ur would say.

It wasn’t how Jango felt, though. He felt something hot and sharp twist behind his ribs. 

He hated it.

Because he was trying very hard to act like he was above this, and it was working, and now suddenly it wasn’t. 

Because the moment Lok said he wouldn’t expect it of him, Jango heard I don’t want you, and his brain panicked so loudly it shorted out whatever filter he had left and suddenly none of the other stuff really mattered. 

The sharp pain behind his ribs was louder than all of it.

“You don’t want to adopt me?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

Lok looked like the question physically hurt him. His eyes snapped to Jango’s, wide and soft in a way that made Jango want to slide under the table and never come out again.

Lok reached across the table, wrapped a hand around his, and squeezed like he meant it. 

“I’d be honored,” he said quietly, so sincere that Jango immediately hated that too. Because it made his chest feel weird and… itchy. He pulled his hand away and fought not to squirm in his seat. It was…too many emotions.

See? He knew this latemeal would be miserable. Except miserable sort of felt like the wrong word. Maybe…intense?

“I didn’t want you to feel pressured into it because of the riduurok,” Lok added. 

Too late. He was very close to convincing himself he didn’t want it, and then he thought Lok didn’t want him, and that hurt for some reason, and it felt like being rejected, and now everything’s all mixed up.

Jango hasn’t spent that much time with him, but he knew Lok wasn’t one of those old adults who got pushy or acted like a lecture was a parenting style. 

Arla loved him. A lot. And she didn’t love easy.

Jango was pretty sure Pre also loved him, and Pre didn’t even like anyone. 

Besides, he passed his verd’goten already. It wasn’t like when Jaster took him in. It wouldn’t be someone else taking charge of his life. It was more of a—what? A promise, maybe. A gesture. It didn’t have to change anything.

It didn’t really matter.

No. It shouldn’t matter, but it obviously did.

The two seconds where he thought he was being rejected wouldn’t hurt like that if it didn’t matter, right? He didn’t think so. 

And that wasn’t fair. He wasn’t supposed to care, but apparently, he didn’t have much of a choice. He didn’t even know why he did.

Jango didn’t have the words to explain any of it, so he did the only logical thing a highly composed, emotionally mature fifteen-year-old could do in such a moment.

He shoved another massive forkful of tiingilar into his mouth, chewed like his life depended on it, and muttered around it, “You can adopt me after the riduurok.”  

It came out aggressively casual. Which was the goal. There. Now he didn’t have to think about it anymore.

After the initial shock wore off—along with the suspiciously misty eyes Lok definitely pretended weren’t happening—the conversation shifted to lighter topics and Jango happily let it. 

He wasn’t built for follow-up emotions and he’s had enough unwelcome feelings at latemeal tonight. 

He needed a break.

Which was why he spent the next ten minutes studiously not making eye contact, operating under the flawless logic that if he acted like nothing happened, then nothing did. 

Everyone at the table seemed to agree. Even Arla, who had a long and well-documented history of poking emotional bruises just to see what happened.

When dessert was finally served, Jango reached for a slice of uj cake the moment it hit the table, only to freeze mid-motion. 

Something was off.

There were pieces missing.

“Wait,” he said, narrowing his eyes like he was analyzing a crime scene. “Did you pre-slice this?”

“I set some aside for Pre,” Lok said calmly, like he hadn’t just confessed to food crimes in front of a table full of witnesses.

“Suspicious behavior,” Jango muttered, piling two slices onto his plate anyway because even moral outrage had limits, and the cake was still warm. 

Still. He happened to know Pre got more than enough sweets, treats, and desserts. Seriously, they should probably be worried about his sugar intake at this point. The kitchen staff even baked things specifically for him. He didn’t need to be claiming extras from meals he didn’t even want to be at. 

Of course, saying that out loud would lead to uncomfortable questions about where Pre was getting all those extra sweets, and how often , and with whose authorization. So Jango wisely said nothing.

Now that he thought about it, there was a small chance he and Arla were… contributing to Pre’s spoiled tendencies. Slightly. Just a touch.

He shrugged internally. Pre was their vod’ika. Corrupting the youth was basically a rite of passage. If anything, they were taking their responsibilities very seriously. By the time they were done, he’d be an absolute terror.

Well. Even more of one.

“So,” Arla said casually as everyone settled in with their uj cake. “Jan’ika told me the original plan was to merge these two apartments. Are you still planning to do that after the riduurok, or are we moving into one bigger place?”

She aimed the question directly at Jaster, who was halfway through a bite and totally unprepared.

Jango perked up, suddenly very invested in the answer. He also scowled, because Arla knew he hated being called Jan’ika. Aside from sometimes when Jaster did it. But still. Only sometimes.  

“I don’t—” Jaster started, clearly caught off guard.

“No,” Lok said. His tone wasn’t harsh but the way he said it felt final. 

Jaster blinked, and Jango really didn’t like the look in his eyes. He couldn’t tell what it was, exactly, but it wasn’t good.

Jaster frowned. “No to renovating or no to moving?” 

“Both,” Lok replied.

“Why?” Jaster asked, his voice even, but not light, and definitely not warm.

“Buir’s been planning the renovation for years,” Jango jumped in. “So it was going to happen anyway. You can probably help choose some furniture and stuff. And like, designs.”

He knew absolutely nothing about how this osik worked but if Lok got input into how they remodeled, they could make it in the way he wants and then he’d have no reason to want to live anywhere else.

Problem solved.

Lok winced. Which Jango also didn’t like.

“We can talk about it,” Lok said, turning to Jaster with something that sounded a lot like regret. “If it’s important to you, we’ll figure it out. But... Pre’s still adjusting. I don’t want to overwhelm him. He needs stability right now.”

That sounded reasonable. Respectful. Thoughtful, even.

Too bad it couldn’t be allowed to stand. 

Jango could read between the lines easily enough, especially after the stuff Lok said about Pre earlier. 

The issue wasn’t moving or renovating. It was Jaster. 

Pre didn’t like him right now, and Lok wasn’t going to force them to live together. But he also wasn’t going to leave Pre behind. Even with a literal connecting door between them, Lok wouldn’t do that. He’d never risk Pre feeling abandoned.

Which meant that even after the riduurok, Lok thought they were going to keep living separately. Because Pre had issues, and Lok wouldn’t budge until Pre was ready. 

That kind of thinking could potentially push the whole projected timeline back by months. Maybe longer, depending on how stubborn Pre felt like being.

Yeah. No. This was unacceptable. 

Jango met Arla’s eyes across the table. She nodded once, telling him she also heard what Lok wasn’t saying. 

Right. They were going to have to fix this too.

He sighed and took another bite of his uj cake.

Their buire were exhausting.