Archive of Our Own

They haven't been at the market on this planet for more than an hour, and the kid's already wandered off again.

It hasn't been too long since the kid was sent back to him, just a month or so. Since the kid came back to him, chose him. Chose Din. It's taken a while for it to feel real and to not wake up every morning with that particular ache of loss, or the nagging conviction that it's not going to last. Likewise, he hasn't stopped feeling that sharp stab of fear when the kid decides to go exploring or otherwise. Though from what he understands about kids, that apparently comes standard with the territory.

But whatever Din thinks of the Jedi and his way of life and his methods—who fucking sends a kid alone back into a war zone with nothing but a goddamn droid for company and a brief holo—Grogu came back with far more abilities than he left with. Even if he hadn't seen what the kid was able to do with the rancor, or the way he can jump now and seems to delight in doing it whenever Din least expects it, there's something else there. It's not just the kid's powers, it's his character. He's still curious, but he's more confident, less afraid. He learns faster, reacts with more enthusiasm. And Din can hardly peel him out of his beskar shirt to clean him up without the kid throwing a fuss, and then sulking until Din gives it back.

So, the kid's not without his defenses, but Din will feel much better when the kid's back in the new birikad he rigged. Besides, in a place like this brimming with food and trinkets, it's not so much danger than Din thinks he needs to look out for than it is potential for the kid to cheerfully help himself to anything that catches his eyes.

Din checks the most likely candidates first: a cluster of stalls grilling strips of meat and sausages on skewers, and the one with a counter crowded with jars holding sticks with clusters of candied fruits skewered on them and flimsi cones full of roasted nuts, and another one with long ropes of deep-fried dough twisted around sticks—food on sticks seems to be a theme in general here—but nothing. He finally finds the kid in front of a stall with no food wares at all, mesmerized by the display. It's admittedly eye-catching. The stall is filled with hundreds of glass-blown globes of all different colors and sizes, most of them hung with long strings from the ceiling and shimmering as they twist and sway with every draught of air, ringing and tinkling delicately whenever they clink together. Most of them glow and sparkle, with single lights within the smallest ones barely bigger than Grogu's favorite shifter knob, and whole fields of drifting starry lights within the largest globes that could fit over Din's helmet.

"There you are," Din says, and immediately scoops Grogu up before he can make another one of his jumps up to the counter. It all looks fragile and expensive, and the last thing he needs is to pay off some irate vendor for any breakages. "I told you to stop running off on me."

The kid coos and points at the orbs, the rainbow colors reflecting against his wide, dark eyes. "Very nice," Din says. "You hungry?"

The kid chirps, but his eyes are still fixed longingly on the hanging orbs. He probably thinks he's found an unbelievable treasure haul of eggs.

"Come on," Din says. "We'll eat back at the ship." He expects that to work; Grogu still gets excited even if Din only shoves his helmet halfway up past his nose and mouth to eat a quick meal in the privacy of a locked room, or sitting in the ship's cockpit with the transparisteel shield toggled to opaque.

But the kid whines and keeps reaching for the orbs, squirming in Din's arms. The noise of the orbs clinking together increases, and Din can actually see several of them suddenly swaying in an unnatural arc, straining towards them—

"Hey," he says sternly and gives the kid a little jostle. "Stop that. You'll break something." He tucks the kid into his birikad. "We can look at them closer. But no pulling or touching."

The kid pouts, but all the orbs relax and sway normally again, no invisible pull. Din steps closer to the stall and hoists the birikad up for a better viewing angle, but he keeps a firm grip on both it and the kid. Some of the larger orbs are set on the stall's counter, too temptingly close for the kid's grabby little hands.

The stall's owner is a Wookie, smaller than Krrsantan, which isn't saying much, but with much lighter graying fur. She growls an amiable greeting, and even though Din's Shyriiwook is minimal (and thanks to Krrsantan, doesn’t include much that can be used in polite conversation), he can pick up a few words, including cub and good. She nods at Grogu, and Din nods back in polite acknowledgment. The kid coos again and waves, and the Wookie chuckles.

Although all they do is continue to stand there for another few minutes, she doesn't push her wares or try for further conversation, just goes back to methodically polishing more orbs piled in a basket at her feet, packing them away in other boxes when she completes each one. When the basket is empty, she rummages under the counter and then comes up with a smaller box; she puts it on the counter, opens the top, and beckons to Din.

Din leans forward to check before actually stepping closer; the kid leans forward too. The box has pastries in it—cookies, actually, round and a little lumpy, but the kid's eyes widen and he leans even closer, almost purring in excitement. He notices that the fur on her forearms and hands is trimmed exceptionally close; there are a few long-healed weals of scars tissue he can just about glimpse through the short hair. They remind him of something, and he can't think of what.

The stall owner proffers the box and says something else; this time, Din definitely catches cub again, and Life Day.

Life Day. He's not unaware of it—it's an exceptionally profitable time for bounty hunting work; targets of all species slip up around Life Day and get more predictable. They stay closer to home or inevitably try and return there; they indulge in alcohol and reckless behavior; they spend credits they don't have. And they seem to believe that everyone else is going to take it easy as well. Other bounty hunters aren't immune to it either; Din used to line up jobs quickly and knock them off in less time because fewer members of the Guild would be working.

The last time he wasn't working on a Life Day had been years ago, when he was laid up in the covert with a collapsed lung and a significant amount of blood loss after a mark had stabbed him in just the right spot between his cuirass and pauldron, the vibroblade slowed but not stopped by his kute. He'd still brought the job in, but the covert had been low on bacta at the time, and the Armorer had sided with the tribe's medic that he was to recover within the covert instead of heading out immediately again.

He'd missed most of the celebrating and spent the majority of it sleeping in the covert's medical bay, something that probably helped him almost as much as the limited bacta. It was a luxury to be able to sleep without worry in a place he knew was secure, waking up on occasion to swallow whatever medication or food the medic shoved at him. The foundlings' footsteps and laughter came and went from behind the closed door as they raced up and down the halls, voices called and answered, and later they rose to the tune of Vode An once the covert was inevitably drunk and emotional enough about the motherland. Paz crept in, inasmuch as he was capable of creeping, to share a celebratory shot of tihaar with him and to shit-talk him for getting stabbed.

When the stall owner shakes the box again, Din takes a cookie from it and hands it to the kid, who promptly crams most of it in his face. Still thinking of the covert, another memory rises from the depths of his mind. He recalls another brief moment from that recovery period, of waking up in the medical bay to the sound of the Armorer testily arguing with the medic, and then the sound of leather and fabric shifting, and the medic muttering under his breath. It was the only time he'd ever seen the Armorer's bare skin: a patch of her burnt kute cut away on her forearm, as the medic sprayed bacta on the raw burn wound beneath. The scars on the stall vendor's arms are similar, remnants from some past burning splatter.

"Thank you," he says, when she puts the box away. "Do you make all of these yourself?" he asks, indicating the orbs.

The vendor nods and barks an affirmation.

"They're incredible work," he says sincerely

She growls with pride, and then shrugs. Grogu nibbles at the remains of his cookie but keeps staring at the orbs. He reaches out slowly, looking up to check with Din first. He touches the closest orb hanging to him with delicate care, one tiny finger barely brushing it as he looks at his own reflection in the shining surface.

Din does some mental calculations about the cost of a room in the hotel attached the docking bay versus sleeping upright in the cockpit of his ship again, and sighs.

***

In the end, he winds up buying a whole box of the small, multi-colored orbs, Grogu painstakingly selecting each one with long pauses to determine the subtle merits of various green, blue, yellow, silver, and white balls that were all identical to Din's eyes. And then, because it was trembling ominously on its stand every time Grogu looked at it, and because Din's armor protects him from blades and blasters but not the kid's soulful, pleading stare, he also buys one of the larger orbs that's blue and holds more of those starry lights. It's bigger than the kid's head, and Din would take good odds that it's going to wind up cracked or broken before they even get back to the ship. The stall's owner swathes it in several layers of flimsi-wrap and plastic pop-wrap, which at least means there'll be something else for Grogu to play with later on.

"No more," Din says. "I don't know where we're even storing these in the ship."

The kid ignores him and makes gimme-gimme hands for the big orb, but Din tucks that package under his arm and gives him one of the smaller blue orbs out of the box to hold instead. This keeps the kid occupied as Din thanks the Wookie vendor once more—she slips him another couple of cookies, finished with several hearty pats on his shoulder that nearly makes him drop the parcels and undo all the work she did to secure them—and makes his way back towards the docking bay.

Weaving his way through the stalls, Din notices things that are obviously Life Day related: other hanging decorations for sale, strings of lights and garlands of greenery, wreaths and bunting, spools of ribbons. When be briefly adjusts his helmet's filters, he gets a variety of scents in the air, incense and burnt sugar and spices; he's surprised the kid isn't more interested in all the food. There's even a vintage LD-1 Celebrator hoverbike strung with lights and parked in the middle of the market square that various beings can pose for a holo-pic on, right next to a holo-tree that must have a bad connection, because it keeps flickering in and out sporadically.

The market is bustling, but there's less discord than he'd expect. Lines are long, but the shoppers simply shuffle and chat and grouse pleasantly with each other as they wait. Vendors hand out samples freely. There's a slight chill in the air, and it sharpens the mid-afternoon sunlight; everything seems both polished and crisper under it, a little more eye-catching.

Din slows down a little, observing. He's used to taking things in from a distance, due to the space his armor tends to give and his own preferences. Most of his own memories of Life Day celebration are from early on, vague and mixed with his time in the fighting corps and blended with Mandalorian traditions. There were gifts each year, small ones and usually related to weaponry or clothing, but cherished. They'd all get extra uj'alayi and oranges and candied varos slices handed around, and no one chided them for staying up late.

Din remembers Ivyn risking Instructor Shikyaa's wrath by picking the behot from the hydroponic garden space she'd maintained in whatever spare corner she could stake out in every covert location, and then walking around with the fresh sprigs taped to the top of his helmet, daring or wheedling keldabe kisses from anyone he ran into. Ivyn also waiting until Paz had fallen asleep, taping the behot to Paz's helmet, and then running a lucrative betting pool on how long it took Paz to figure it out. The three of them stealing tihaar from the senior lieutenant's private stash, and being made to run laps, hungover, until they'd puked it all out again the next day.

The last time he saw Ivyn, it was just his helmet, in the Nevarro sewer, and there was nothing alive on or in it. The last time he saw Paz—

Grogu is trying to climb out of the brikikad. Din pats him twice, and then picks up the pace. "Hang on, kid."

He buys a to-go container of some kind of stew—bantha, from the smell—and a couple of flatbreads, and then he heads towards the docking bay and his assigned landing pad. If they get there before the evening rush starts, he'll be able to eat with a little more leisure. Otherwise, he'll feed the kid first, and then just wait until later.

Only a few people are in the hangar. That's fine, he can do some maintenance on the starfighter and clean the pieces of his arsenal that he's beginning to rebuild. It's a slow process, not the least issue being that he just doesn't have the same amount of storage space that the Razor Crest gave him. But Fett had been not only fair but generous after the battle on Tatooine, and when Din had refused credits again, he'd simply sent Din with Fennec into Mos Espa where Fennec had politely bullied various weaponry dealers into presenting the best of their stock at significant discount. Between that and various contacts he'd gathered through Karga, it's a steadily improving situation.

But as he sets the various parcels down, Grogu is already climbing out of the satchel and up to Din's shoulder, scrambling for the ship. Din lets him, but Grogu doesn't try to climb in the modified astromech socket as usual; he heads right for the cockpit and seems bent on getting to the controls. Din snags him by the collar before he can start pressing buttons. "Hey. Don't mess with that."

Grogu wiggles until Din puts him down. He eyes the kid for a few seconds, waiting to see if he's going to make another attempt, but the kid just plops down on the ground. Din digs in his pouch for the gear shifter knob, a sure distraction. "Here. I'll be right back."

Din goes around to the other side of the ship to find a couple spare crates to sit their dinner on, so the kid can eat. He can eat his in the cockpit right before they take off; if they're not getting a room tonight, they might as well head for the next job. When he comes back around the ship, the kid's already made it back up onto the ship's nose and Din has to sprint the last couple steps to grab him.

"What's gotten into you?" he asks. There's unguarded food and his special ball; Grogu's never passed up either thing.

The kid chirps at him impatiently and claws the hell out of his pauldron, trying to go up over his shoulder. "Patu! Peh, feh!"

"You're going to sit down and eat," Din informs him. "And not in the cockpit, because you made a mess last time."

"Lu!"

Din sighs. "What's wrong?"

The kid squirms again, but Din doesn't let him down. A few seconds later, something zips by his head to land in the cockpit and Din instinctively ducks, hand dropping to his blaster. The kid squalls and Din pauses. He leans over and sees it, the little blue orb he'd let the kid play with while they were walking back. Miraculously, it didn't break.

"I'm going to put this back with the others," he says, but the orb is invisibly yanked from his fingers and into Grogu's hands. "Kid. You're pushing it."

Grogu's face crumples, and tears slide down from each eye. He clutches both the silver knob and the blue orb to his chest, and then he starts to whimper. Din immediately sits down on the crate. "Hey, no, no. It's okay. You just can't mess with the ship controls, you know that. What's wrong?" He turns the kid to face him, stroking one hand over the back of his head and tracing the shape of his ear. "You tired?"

The kid's face scrunches up and then relaxes. He opens his eyes and stares at Din. A shiver goes through his body, and then he lets go of the orb and the ball, and both objects rise into the air.

"Kid, we shouldn't do this where people can see," Din says quietly. He grabs both balls quickly and Grogu squawks. "No. Wait a minute."

Dank farrik, he misses the Razor Crest. He leaves their dinner sitting on the crate, shoves the balls parcel into the cockpit, and takes the kid to the back of the hangar where they're blocked from view by several stacks of crates. As soon they're back there, Din sets Grogu down on one the crates.

"What are you trying to tell me, kid?" he asks.

Grogu stamps his little foot. Din sighs and holds both balls out; they shoot out of his hand and into the air again, hovering at face level.

Slowly, they move apart. The blue orb drifts farther away while the silver ball stays close. Then, the silver ball moves over to the blue one, gently clinking against it.

"Kid, I still don't understand, I'm sorry," Din says, but Grogu's face is clenched with concentration again. He pulls the silver ball back and floats it around Din's head, and then sends it back to the blue one again. He does this twice and then looks at Din hopefully. Din spreads his hands.

There's a light clink of metal on metal and something else joins the two balls floating in the air: Grogu's pendant, the mythosaur he's worn around his neck since Din placed it there on Nevarro. It rises up next to the silver ball and they float together, and then over to the blue ball where all three objects hang in the air. They hover for another minute, and then all three drop to the floor and the kid slumps down on the crate.

Din picks them in one hand, puts both balls away in his pouch, and puts the pendant around the kid's neck again. "I know you want something. I don't know what. We'll figure out how you can tell me."

The kid makes a low whine and flops his entire body limply into the crooks of Din's arm, his arms and legs sprawled out like he's going to die from sheer annoyance.

Din takes them back to the ship, and Grogu points to the parcel of orbs as soon as he sees it and gestures. Not without some misgivings, Din unwraps the big orb he'd bought, and hands it to the kid to see if it was all about getting his hands on that. But when he steps back, something pushes him, invisible but firm.

"Pfassk," he mutters, and takes an inadvertent step forward. It feels like being nudged and yanked at the same time, pulling him over to the kid with his arms wrapped around the orb. "Okay. You don't want it? You want me to take it back?"

Invisible push so he takes a step away, followed by an invisible tug that brings him back to the kid. The kid holds up the orb, shaking it. He pulls on the pendant and pats that against the orb as well.

"Kid, okay, Grogu, I don't speak Jetii or whatever—" Din manages to grit out, and then his brain finally catches up with his mouth, and things click into place like a wire into a connector.

"Dank farrik," he says after a moment, because what else is there to say. "Right. Okay."

***

The Jedi is there and waiting to meet them when they land on Ossus in the middle of the night, which is disconcerting, especially when he steps out from the trees, solitary and black-cloaked like he was back on Gideon's ship. But under his cloak, Din catches a quick glimpse of his clothes, which are a threadbare pair of gray pants with a hole in the knee, unevenly jammed into his tall black boots, and an equally threadbare dark blue shirt that says I BEAT DEX'S MEAT: GIJU SLIDER EATING CHALLENGE WINNER in bold red letters across the chest. He has his hood up, so Din can't quite get a good look at his hair, but there's a hint of bedhead in the few strands peeking out. Din doesn't see the green laser sword, but he assumes it's there.

"Hello, Mandalorian," Skywalker says formally, like he isn't in his sleep clothes, in a forest clearing in the middle of the night, greeting unexpected intruders. It’s cold out, and the breeze rustles through the leaves of the trees and bamboo.

"Jedi. Skywalker," Din says, just as stiffly.

Now that they're here, most of the scenarios he'd considered for if he ever saw the Jedi again seem to be mostly untenable. It doesn't feel very sporting to punch or yell at a man who was probably on his way to if not already in bed (even if he's done it before; bounty hunting tends to mean hauling targets around in all manner of dress and undress); it seems equally awkward to realize the Jedi could still likely kick his ass while dressed for bed. Din could abandon all dignity and thank the Jedi for giving back the person Din loves most in the world, but if Din isn’t even sure the kid is really back with him to stay.

"Patoo," Grogu says, head popping up out of the bag.

The Jedi doesn't startle, but something about him shifts and changes in a way that Din can't immediately identify. "And hello, Grogu," he says. There's warmth in his voice, at least. His hands are clasped in front of him; he releases them, then clasps them together again. He's still wearing the one black glove over his right hand, with the left one bare.

"Beh," Grogu says, and Din waits, not knowing of what the next move is, unsure if Grogu will jump from his arms or whine to be let down to walk back to the Jedi and away from Din. It's his choice; it always will be.

"It's late. I think you'd better come inside," Skywalker says.

Din looks over at the trail that leads to the temple he'd watched the ant droids build. He doesn't see a single source of light or energy through his HUD in that direction. He wonders if Skywalker got around to adding a floor or running water yet, or if he just sleeps on the bare rocks. Dressed like that. Skywalker looks over in the direction of the temple himself and then looks back at Din like he can guess what Din is thinking, and that he also knows Din slept sitting up in there for the past three standard days and he's not above pissing in an empty cassius tea bottle when it's too long of a trip between stations, and that there's one such bottle in there now. He's going to add a waste evac-tube to the starfighter cockpit once he can figure out how to fit it in without shifting the induction intake charger lines; he just hasn't gotten to it yet.

"I have a spare room you can bunk down in. Over here," Skywalker says, and walks off in a different direction.

Din starts to follow, but Grogu chirps urgently at him, "Beh, beh," before he can take more than two steps. One little hand holds up one of the small decorative orbs. Din has no idea how he got that out of the box.

"Hold on," Din says, and goes back to the starfighter to rummage until he can find both the box of small ones and the large wrapped one. He shoves a few ration packs in his pockets as well, because who knows how far Skywalker's hospitality will extend, and adds the compact slugthrower he'd picked up on Tatooine in case things go really wrong. Skywalker stops and waits patiently, though Din's HUD catches him stifling an enormous yawn when he thinks Din's focused on the ship.

Din climbs back down with his arms full, and grunts. Skywalker leads them away again, not to the temple, but down another path and to a different building Din hadn't encountered last time. It may very well have not even been there; it looks like a basic New Republic pre-fab duracrete model, though some customizations have been made. There's a small pourstone addition on the side of the building, unusual for a planet with as much rainfall as Ossus.

Skywalker waves a hand while they're still walking up and the door opens, light spilling out onto the path in front of them. "This way, please," Skywalker says, and walks in. The hair stands up on the back off Din's neck, but he follows.

Inside is…not what he expected. It's warm and well-lit. Despite the new exterior, all the furniture is comfortably shabby and mismatched. It's normal, nothing about it indicating a school or a temple or any mystical wizard weaponry and powers, unless he counts the piles and piles of datapads and flimsi-books, the majority of which are in various states of what can most charitably be described as "moldering." Din takes it in at a glance, running through his usual mental checklist for every unfamiliar setting: potential hidden occupants, doors, windows, things that can be used as weaponry if he needs them. Due to the kid, he's also started automatically clocking refreshers and any visible food. He puts the parcels down as soon as he can so that his hands are free. Grogu is already trying to wiggle out of the birikad and Din pats it twice. Grogu makes a disgruntled squeak, but calms down, recognizing the routine and signal.

Skywalker pauses in the middle of the room with his hands hovering at his own throat. He waits for a second, and then sighs. "Kriff," he says, and shucks off the cloak, brushing one hand self-consciously over his chest and arms. He sits down on a nearby low armchair and starts working his boots off as well. "Sorry. You actually caught me on an early night for once. Normally I'd still be awake and a little more presentable."

"It's important to let people know you beat meat," Din says. "It sets the tone right away."

Skywalker shakes his head ruefully. "I didn't even do it," he says. "It's Han's shirt. I just borrowed it off him a couple years ago. I don't think he's forgiven me. He loved this shirt."

The shirt does look too big for Skywalker's frame. Han, whoever he is, must be a bit taller and broader in the shoulders.

"So," Skywalker says. He crosses both legs under him in the chair once he gets the boots off, bare feet—ugh, bare feet inside those boots, they really did rouse him at short notice—tucked neatly one over the other. From where he sits and Din stands, Din looms over him, but Skywalker doesn't get up to make the difference less pronounced. His face shows nothing but mild curiosity. He looks up at Din, and then shifts his gaze down to Grogu at Din's hip. "Welcome. Why are you here?"

Din considers and discards several responses, and finally settles on the only one that matters.

"The kid wanted us to come here. I think he wants to talk to you."

Skywalker blinks. "All right," he says, as though that's perfectly reasonable.

Din pats the side of the birikad once, and Grogu immediately starts clambering out. Din lifts him the rest of the way, puts him on the ground, and steps back. The kid waddles over to the chair the Jedi is on and looks up; Skywalker looks down. He slides off the chair so he can sit cross-legged on the ground, and Grogu climbs up on his leg.

Skywalker has that same internally focused expression that Ahsoka Tano had when connecting with Grogu. He and the kid stare into each other's eyes, and then Skywalker nods and slowly closes his eyes. He puts one hand out to Grogu, palm facing up. Grogu lays one hand in the center of Skywalker's palm, and them pulls away. He reaches up to Skywalker's face, the same way he reached up to Din's face that first time he'd removed his helmet, and Din feels the memory hit him with a stab of emotion too intense to be recognizably pleasure or pain.

The kid pulls back again. He turns to look at Din, and then back at Skywalker. Skywalker opens his eyes.

"He wants you to hold him, please," Skywalker says to Din. Skywalker raises his hands in front of him to about face level, fingers loosely spread outward. "About this high. He likes it when you hold him; he feels safe with you. Could you do that?"

Din needs to clear his throat before he responds. "Sure, kid," he manages to say. He lowers himself to the floor across from Skywalker, and the kid immediately climbs into his lap. Din picks him up under his arms, holding him so he faces towards Skywalker and away from Din. He rests his own elbows on his knees; the kid is light enough, but it steadies his grip and lessens the weight.

Skywalker closes his eyes again and bows his head slightly forward. In Din's grip, the kid reaches down and holds Din's thumb with one hand, leans forward, and places his other hand on Skywalker's forehead. Skywalker's breath hitches slightly, but he doesn't flinch.

They stay like that in silent communion for several moments. Neither of them is still during it; Grogu tilts his head back and forth, and Din can see the Jedi's eyes moving back and forth under his closed lids, with other small flickers of movement from his facial muscles. Din observes their communication without any idea of what it's about. It feels like that first glimpse he'd had of them on the hillside together when he'd first come to Ossus, present but removed at the same time.

Without much else to look at, he takes the opportunity to openly stare at the Jedi's face. He's even younger than Din had first thought, somewhere in his twenties, maybe. He has some faint scarring on the right side of his face, on the cheek and below his lip, and another mark on his chin. Dimple in his chin, too. Good-sized mouth, well-shaped, with a bottom lip that has just the right amount of swell to it. Pale skin, but there are faded freckles and sunspots that speak of at least some extended time in the sun. Dark blond hair that's long enough to curl at the back of his neck and over his ears. Long eyelashes. All of it combines for a fresh, wholesome type of attractiveness that almost begs to be disheveled, but Din isn’t sure how much of that is influenced by his own tastes. He's always found contrasts intriguing. Skywalker may look soft and non-threatening, but Din knows firsthand that's not at all true.

"Oh," Skywalker says after nearly ten minutes have gone by. When he opens his eyes, Din's surprised to see that they're wet with tears. He takes a long, slow breath. "I see. Thank you for sharing that with me, Grogu," he says, and then quickly looks over at Din, lips quirking up. "Don’t worry, it's nothing bad," he says. "Grogu wanted to share a memory of his time back in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. It was…very vivid."

Din settles Grogu down on the ground, resting his arms. The kid moves over to Skywalker and pats his knee gently. Skywalker scrubs the heel of his bare left hand over both eyes, wiping the tears away and smiling at the same time. When he raises his arms like that with the short sleeves, Din can see the lean muscles of them, and that he has much more pronounced scarring on his bare arms, unusual branching marks that twist and tangle like tree roots along his skin. The scarring disappears under his shirt and Din wonders how much more there is.

Embarrassingly, his cock twitches slightly. Probably a little inevitable, after spending the last ten minutes staring at Skywalker's face and analyzing his attractiveness. And scars are—most Mandalorians prize them, and Din's no exception.

"Has he—" Skywalker starts to say, and then stops himself. "Sorry, wait. Grogu? Can I talk to the Mandalorian about what you showed me?"

Grogu squeaks, and then he scurries back to Din's lap. Din gathers him in.

"All right," Skywalker says. He props his chin on his gloved hand. "You know he was raised in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant many years ago, right?"

"Yes," Din says. "Ahsoka Tano told me that. She said…" He hesitates, remembering the exact words. "He was trained there by many Jedi masters. At the end of the Clone Wars when the Empire rose to power, he was hidden. She said someone took him from the Temple."

Skywalker exhales through his nostrils and worries his lower lip with his teeth. "Yes. That was one of the things we remembered together when he was with me. It was difficult for him to unlock those memories. They were very painful ones. He was very brave, though."

"Who stole him?" Din asks.

Skywalker looks almost startled. "Stole?"

"From the Temple. Who took him away?"

"He doesn't remember," Skwalker says. "It was probably done to save him. The attack on the Jedi Temple was the start of the Jedi Purge. The Emperor sent troops in to take the Jedi unaware and slaughter them, as well as the Jedi who were fighting out in the field." He licks his lips and exhales. "Many of the Jedi who were at the temple were the younglings and padawans. The children. Grogu saw his teachers die trying to defend him and the other younglings, and he was one of the very few to survive."

Din has to stop himself from convulsively tightening his grip on Grogu. He bows his head, looking down at the kid in his lap. "I'd thought—" he says abruptly, stops, and then goes on. "I thought the Jedi and Mandalorians were very different. But that's something the two have in common. At least, their history with the Empire."

Skywalker nods. "My sister and I were born immediately after the Jedi Purge. We were also taken away for our own safety, like Grogu was. I grew up without knowing any of the Jedi history, and my training came much later than normal and was… unusual."

He takes another deep breath and then straightens up. "But that wasn't the memory Grogu shared with me. He wanted to show me what it was like at the Temple before that. We talked about it a little once, a while ago. I have a friend from Kashyyyk, and he met Grogu once while he was visiting, so we talked about Life Day. Grogu just showed me what he remembered about how the Jedi Temple used to celebrate Life Day. They were wonderful memories. He showed me gifts they gave, songs they sang, decorations, food they ate…" He chuckles. "Quite a lot about the food, as a matter of fact."

"Figures," Din says. "Little womp rat thinks with his stomach as much as he can."

"He does," Skywalker says, and the smile he sends towards Grogu is so genuinely delighted and warm, Din can't understand how or why Skywalker ever sent him away. "He even showed me memories of Jedi I'd known before who've passed on now. Some of my old masters and… others who had been at the temple. It was very special. I don't know if he knew how much that would mean to me. But it was a wonderful surprise."

"Yeah," Din says. He thinks back over what Skywalker says. "Wait, decorations?" He looks down at Grogu in his lap again. "Is that why you wanted those kriffing orbs from the stall so much, kid?"

The kid looks innocent. Din snorts.

"Okay. So he wanted to celebrate Life Day," Din says. A reasonable thing for a child to want. And he'd needed to drag Din around the Outer Rim until he could find someone to actually voice that to, because Din was incapable of fully communicating with his own damn kid.

Or the kid was having second thoughts about the Jedi lifestyle and where to call home. And that… was also reasonable. The Temple had been his home and his family, and that was the whole point of Life Day, to come home, to be with family, to remember family that was gone.

"With you," Din adds, because if that's what the kid wants, he won't keep that from him.

"Grogu's not trying to leave you," Skywalker says immediately. "That's not why he wanted to come here."

"Okay," Din says. And because relief makes him gracious, he adds, "I'm sorry we've barged in on you."

Skywalker shrugs. "It's fine. I told Grogu he could always reach out to me for anything. It makes me happy to know he's happy and doing well." He tucks his arms so his elbows are in his lap and his hands are clasped; it curls him into an even smaller figure. "I should apologize to you. I think he brought you out here because…"

Skywalker trails off and doesn't say anything. Din waits him out.

"I think he felt sorry for me," Skywalker says at last. "I think he thought I would be lonely on Life Day. And he wanted to help with that. He's a kind child."

"Yeah," Din says. "He is."

Skywalker laughs, self-deprecatingly. "I do have family. But my sister and her husband and their child are taking a trip this year, it's been planned for months. They're down in the Core. I didn't want to tag along because it's important for them to have some time just to themselves. They rarely get it, and Ben will probably need to come here for teaching in a few years, so they should have time with him, and he with them."

"Yeah," Din says. "Kids deserve that."

They deserve parents and family, and to get a little sick on too much candy and staying up late, and to look at decorations that are a pain in the ass to store and have no purpose other than looking nice, and to sing songs with embarrassing lyrics, and receive gifts that prove someone wants to give them something to be used for nothing but joy.

Din makes up his mind. Skywalker seems sincere enough, and he's already offered to let them stay the night, and the worst he can do is have them leave immediately in the morning.

"I'm sorry for the imposition," he says. "I have some credits if it would help. But this means a lot to the kid, and he sort of suckered me into buying some decorations and Life Day shi—stuff. I don't want to put you to trouble but—"

"You know, that's funny," Skywalker says, cutting him off. "I just so happen to have a Life Day tree and free time on my hands."

***

"Huh," Din says when Skywalker's come back into the room with the object of his quest.

"Okay, I know, I know, but it has character," Skywalker says. "And Grogu and I talked about how someone's size doesn't matter."

"Yeah," Din says.

As they both look at it, several needles drop from the sickly-looking wroshyr sapling in a little patter-shower, and it visibly lists more to the right in the large container. It's bigger than the kid, but not by much. It barely comes up past Din's knee.

"You know, they make good holo-trees these days," Din says.

"Chewie dug it up for me on Kashyyyk and sent it so I could plant it afterwards," Skywalker says. "He wanted to send a small one because that was easiest for transport. I think Han forgot to water it during the trip."

"It's very… compact," Din says.

"It'll look great once it's decorated," Skywalker says.

"I think we could hang three of the small orbs on it," Din says. "Four, maybe."

Grogu makes a sad noise and pats the tree gently. More needles fall off.

"No, you're right, Grogu," Skywalker says. He squats down. "It needs help. Do you want to help it?"

The kid looks up at Skywalker and makes a questioning noise.

"Yes, like that," Skywalker says. "Can we work together to help it?"

"Are you going to… heal a tree," Din asks. "Because that tires him out. Healing in general."

"Not exactly," Skywalker says. "We're just going to encourage it. Everything is part of the Force."

He settles down on the ground beside the tree, crossing his legs. The kid scrambles over to a spot next to him, mirroring his pose. Din decides this is a Jedi-only thing and doesn't require him to strain his own back, and takes a seat on the nearby couch for observation purposes.

At first, there's not much to observe. All Grogu and Skywalker do is sit there, eyes closed and breathing in and out. slowly and evenly. It's the longest Din's ever seen the kid sit still—well, ever. When Skywalker finally speaks, it's in a low, soothing tone.

"Reach out, Grogu. Feel the Force all around you. Inside and out, in you and me and all living things everywhere."

The kid hums a little, almost the same way he does when he's playing with his ball. The light in the room seems to have a different quality. When Din looks at Skywalker, it almost feels as though the light is coming from him, streaming from beneath his skin. If you cut him, he would shine instead of bleed.

It happens so gradually that Din doesn't notice at first, but then there's another light patter of falling needles. And when he looks at the tree, it's growing. Slowly, so slowly, but more needles fall off, pushed out by the tiny specks of new bright green needles budding from the tips of branches and emerging in more places along the way. They lengthen as they fully emerge, growing in feathery clusters that are thicker and longer. The bark of the tree splits in some places as it grows upward and outward, pale golden sap oozing out from some of the cracks.

Din can't stop watching it. It’s happening much more slowly than the time the kid healed Karga's arm, but it's fascinating. The tree doubles, then triples its height, taller than the Jedi would be now if he were standing upright, and a little taller than Din would be in his boots and helmet. Slim new branches sprout and split away; more needles grow on them. Strips of the bark peel further off in long curls and reveal new bark beneath; more sap overflows in sticky trails down the trunk. Tiny cones sprout on the branch tips along with the needles, and then grow bigger. The tree is almost to the ceiling now, taking up nearly all the back space along the wall; an errant branch takes out a lamp on top of a bookshelf. Din grunts as it crashes to the ground, half-rising up on the couch, and then sitting down in resignation.

'That's good," Skywalker says. He opens his eyes and looks up. "No more."

The kid's eyes are still shut, his little face concentrating fiercely. Skywalker reaches out and gently taps the kid's head. "Grogu. Enough."

Grogu opens his eyes and squeaks. "Patoo?"

"It's grown so much," Skywalker says, smiling. "But if it grows any bigger, the tree's root ball won't fit in the container and that will hurt the tree. Feel its energy, though. Feel how much healthier it is?"

If Din hadn't been watching the whole time, he wouldn't have recognized it. Aside from it being so much bigger now, the tree practically glows with life, a far cry from the dry, straggly collection of sticks it was before. Lush sprays of bright green needles adorn all the branches, most of them tipped with clusters of the cones as well. The kid stands up, stretching his arms up in mimicry of the branches and looking upward. Din's keeping an eye on the kid to see if this took too much out of him, but he seems content to simply stand and stare. Skywalker uncrosses his legs and stands up as well. He looks over his shoulder at Din and winks.

"And if you keep trying to make the tree bigger, your dad and I won't be able to move it out of the house later," Skywalker says lightly. "And then I'll have to cut a hole in the roof for it when it keeps growing. And we won't be able to put any decorations on the top."

"Pefht."

"Oh," Skywalker says. He smiles. "Grogu doesn't think that's a problem a jetpack can't handle."

"Oh yeah, kid?" Din says. Grogu waddles over to Din and starts pulling on his cape. Din allows himself to be tugged over to the tree for a thorough examination and admiring; he scoops the kid up in his arms before the kid can touch some of the sap trails and get it all over him. Some of it manages to get on Din's gloves anyway. "Great job, Grogu. I'm proud of you. "

The kid purrs and leans his head against Din's chest. Din pats him.

"He loves it when you say his name," Skywalker says quietly. "For a long time, no one said or knew his name. He was afraid he would forget it. Every time you say it, it's like—oh, I wish you could feel it. It's just pure joy inside him. It's like the sun."

For a moment, Din can't say anything, chest too tight. "Names are important," he finally manages. The words come out haltingly. "For Mandalorians—for those I grew up with, names were something you had to be. Careful with. We were taught, our secrecy is our survival. Our survival is our strength. We don’t give out our names except to those we trust. We don't remove our helmet and show our faces except. Except."

He swallows hard. "Does he know I do it to protect him?" he asks Skywalker. "It's not because—I say it when it’s just us. I don't say it around everyone. I thought I was keeping him safe."

"He knows. He feels safer with you than anywhere else," Skywalker says gently. "He knows you would do anything to protect him."

"That's good," Din says hoarsely. "I don't want him to be afraid."

He keeps learning things from the Jedi he would never know otherwise, things of immense value. It's only fair he repays that in kind.

"My name is Din," he says to the Jedi. "Din Djarin. You can call me that. If you want."

Skywalker smiles at him, an expression just as sweet and open as the one he'd given Grogu when he'd thanked him for the shared memory. "It’s a pleasure to meet you, Din Djarin," he says. "My name is Luke Skywalker. I'd like it if you'd use my name too."

***

Skywalker—Luke, Din reminds himself now, because his mouth won't follow his mind if he doesn't put the effort in—has made three trips back and forth between the room and the kitchen with water to pour into the tree's container, frowning each time as he does. "My uncle would have been out of his mind if he saw this," he mutters more to himself.

"Not a fan of celebrating Life Day?" Din asks.

"No, just a hard-working moisture farmer from Tatooine who would have seen no point is using good water when a holo-tree would have worked," Luke says. "Oh Force, I never even offered—my Aunt Beru would pinch me. Are you hungry or thirsty? I should have remembered."

Din's last meal was a couple mouthfuls of cold bantha stew and half of a crumbled cookie that he'd fished out of the orb parcel, washed down with a bottle of tea. The kid perks up. He's been looking steadily sleepier ever since they grew the tree, even though his excitement had gone up as Luke and Din had shoved the tree into a slightly more convenient corner of the room, and Luke had gone outside to the pourstone addition and then come back in with several large boxes floating behind him.

("I have a workbench and some tools out there for repairs I need to do," he'd said. "Eventually I'll build a proper place. I was using it for storage for some old things." Several of the boxes haven't even been opened, but Luke pulls a variety of things from them that delight the kid: strings of lights that Din is assigned to wrap around the tree's trunk and branches, garlands of shiny paper, and a half-cannibalized radio transponder that plays tinny Life Day music from some backwater channel after Luke messes with several of its wires and jiggles the dial wheel halfway, as long as no one touches it. Grogu touches it every time he can and then fusses until it’s fixed again.)

"I'm sure Grogu could eat and then he might bunk down," Din says. "I'm fine."

"Bu!" Grogu makes an indignant noise. Luke glances at him, and glances at Din.

"There's plenty of food," he says. "I'll put some out, and then I need to go get the other bedroom ready anyway."

It's subtle and kind, but Din is already too aware of the fact he's essentially crash-landed into Luke's home and is putting him to a lot of unnecessary effort. Making him leave when Din can just as easily duck outside to shove a ration bar in his mouth seems too much.

"I can eat later," he says. "Or outside, or in another room. I just… can't take off my helmet in front of others. Except Grogu."

Except of course he has, and he waits for Luke to say something, but the Jedi just frowns a little.

"Oh. Well, why don't I just wear a blindfold?" he asks. "You can eat, and I won't see. No one has to go outside or leave."

"…but you'll be blindfolded," Din says, when Luke doesn't seem to grasp the full situation. "In your own home."

"I train blindfolded and with a blast shield," Luke says. "We use the awareness of the Force to navigate. I can't see you, but I'll be able to sense where you and things are. It's fine."

"It's not necessary," Din says shortly, doing his best to untangle strings of lights—how the kriff did they get so tangled despite being new and never been out of the box before?—and drape them along the branches.

"Grogu wants to see your face," Luke says. "I think he'd push me outside if I let him. But he's hungry and he's mostly being polite. For now."

"Kid. No," Din says over to Grogu and sighs. "You know you can't just keep doing things for us and saying it's because it'll make Grogu happy."

"Why not?" Luke asks seriously. "Isn’t that a good enough reason?"

"He needs to sometimes behave without bribery," Din says. "Otherwise I'm going to be in even more trouble with him."

"Okay, point," Luke says. "But it really would make him happy."

"You also can't make me do things by saying it'll make Grogu happy," Din says.

"It works so well, though," Luke says. "Look, I'll go make up the room because I don't know how much longer Grogu is going to last, once he eats. I'll call out before I come out, and I'll have a blindfold on. You can decide if you want to take your helmet off or not. It’s up to you. Whatever you decide, I won't see you until you say it's okay to not have it on. Also Grogu is about to get to the transponder again."

He turns on his heel and goes into the kitchen while Din lunges to rescue the music, the transponder abruptly squawking in its transition from "All I Want For Life Day Is You" to some Gungan cover of "Life Day Wrapping."

Luke takes much longer than he probably needs to put sheets on a bed, and Din gives up after Grogu stares at him and takes the saddest, slowest bites ever from the sandwiches Din slaps together. He unlatches the seal of his helmet and shoves it up, keeping it on his head but exposing his face. He wolfs his sandwiches down as quickly as he can, and the kid chortles in glee, imitating him. Although it goes against every instinct, he sits with his back to the room where Luke is puttering about and loudly humming. As promised, Luke calls out before he emerges. He's wearing a blindfold; Din checks in the reflection of the tray he'd brought the sandwiches in on.

"All good?" Luke calls.

Din braces himself. He takes the helmet off entirely, turns around, and waits. Luke continues to stand there tranquilly unaware. Grogu chirps.

"All good," Din responds. He almost means it. He tries to, anyway. When the kid coos and wants to be picked up so he can press his forehead against Din's, it becomes much easier. Maybe that's the only way forward, and the only way he'll get used to it.

Grogu holds out valiantly after he eats, long enough to insist on toddling to the box full of orbs and making Din lift him up so they can tie some of them to the branches. He gets through five of them before he's yawning wide enough to swallow one, and Din sets him down. Luke's washing dishes in the kitchen, still blindfolded. Din's itching to put his helmet back on, but now he holds on, holding up the orbs and making faces in their reflections to amuse the kid.

"We can do some more tomorrow, buddy," he says, getting Grogu under one arm and his helmet under the other. "Let's get you to bed."

In the other room, the lights are low. It's mostly bare but for furniture—an armchair, a bookcase, a wooden chest of some kind, a regular bed set against the back wall, and a crib placed next to it. The bookcase does have several toy ship models placed on its shelves; Din can ID a T-16 skyhopper, a T-65B X-wing starfighter, and a Z-95 Headhunter. Din closes the door and puts his helmet on the table. Grogu heads right to the crib, where several blankets are heaped up inside.

"Is there where you slept before?" Din asks him softly. He picks the kid up, presses his lips to the kid's head, just holding him for a moment, and then puts him in the crib. The kid blinks up at him sleepily before flopping on his side in the blanket pile and making a little nest. Din covers him up, tucking it in, and the kid purrs. He reaches up with one finger and Din reaches down to touch it; the kid's eyes close and he's out like a light.

Din lingers for a few minutes anyway. The crib is simple but well-made, carved from some kind of faintly sweet-smelling wood. The blankets are soft and still fluffy, also clean-smelling. Din takes that in and thinks about Luke bringing in boxes from his workspace, things he said he was storing. Boxes full of new-looking things and decorations. Lights that all worked. An actual kriffing wroshyr tree. Not really things that someone who'd planned to simply spend the holiday alone might have had on hand for no reason, not with the way they'd been stored.

"Your Jedi kept your bed up in here, didn't he," Din murmurs to the sleeping child. "And he must have thought he was going to be here with you during the holiday instead of with the sister and all. And then he ended up putting it all away."

In the bed, Grogu sighs and turns over. Din sighs in echo.

Din picks up his helmet, softly closing the door behind him, and walks out to see the Jedi has already cleared the plates from the table and lowered the lights slightly in the main room as well. There's brighter light coming from the kitchen, which is where he must be, confirmed by a quick clatter and splashing noise, and a muffled curse. "Kriff!"

Din coughs.

"Oh." The Jedi raises his voice, but only a little, keeping it soft. "Is Grogu asleep? I still have the blindfold on."

"Yeah. Thank you," Din says. Then, while Luke is still in the kitchen and before he can regret it, he asks, "Why did you send him back like that to me? With just your droid? You cared for him. You said you would protect him with your life. I don't understand. You don't seem like a person who would do that."

It doesn't make sense, and Din wants to understand this. None of the easy kindness offered by the Jedi or his obvious affection for the kid add up to the actions of someone who would just send the kid away, let alone in the way he did.

The noises from the kitchen go silent. Din hears a sigh. "I'm going to confess something. I didn't. I told Grogu I'd take him back the next day to Tatooine after he chose to return to you rather than continue his training. But I woke up and he and Artoo had already boosted my X-Wing. I'd already loaded in the coordinates and Artoo has access, plus he's a great slicer. I commed them, but it was too late and they were already almost there. There wouldn't have been fuel to get them all the way back to me if I manually reset and rerouted them. It's very embarrassing to admit you got outmaneuvered by a droid and a toddler."

A clink of glass, or maybe metal. The sound of water running again.

"And since he was so eager to get back to you that he couldn't wait one night longer…. How could I do that to him? Make him feel bad for it, or take that away? So I recorded a holo and sent it to Artoo to leave for you, and I waited until he confirmed he was safe with Peli Motto. I used to live on Tatooine; I know her. She's a good person. No one's safe from her if she's swinging a hydrospanner."

Din snorts; he can't help it. The water shuts off.

"He chose you, Din Djarin," Luke says. "I understand why."

A long, low sigh. Din can picture the Jedi leaning over the sink, shoulders pulled in. Hair steamed limp from the dishwater and falling over his forehead. It's so vivid and the Jedi's voice is so clear in his ears that for a moment it's like Din does have his helmet on, or that he's in the kitchen himself, standing right behind Luke.

"Choices are important. We make them all the time. We have to honor them. And I honor Grogu's."

Din doesn't say anything. He stares at his helmet, between his hands. He could put it back on now. There's no reason not to.

By Creed you must vow.

Some day it might be easier. Maybe it won't. Maybe he can't choose how to feel about that, but he can choose what to do to see if… his feelings ever will change.

He puts his helmet on the table.

"Can you use your Force power to finish decorating a tree while still blindfolded?" he asks, pitching his voice towards the kitchen.

Quiet footsteps approach, and then Luke stands in the kitchen doorway, a slim dark figure against the light of the other room, a broad dark band still across his eyes.

"As easy as riding an eopie," Luke says, smiling.

***

It starts with a sneeze.

Din does it first. It catches him off guard. He so rarely has to sneeze, given the filter protection from his helmet, that he doesn't think to muffle it in the crook of his arm or anything else; without his helmet on it echoes as loudly as a kriffing blaster shot off the walls of Skywalker's room. He automatically flinches and hopes Grogu stays asleep.

On the other side of the room, Luke turns his still blindfolded face sharply in Din's direction when he hears it, and the orb he was floating towards the top of the wroshyr tree drops (he's been blatantly showing off for the past few minutes, using his power to tweak lights that Din's already twined, and tie orbs on the topmost branches of the tree without touching them at all). Din sneezes again and lunges to catch the falling decoration at the same. Luke also tries to catch it with his sorcerer osik, and Din stumbles against the invisible force of it and knocks into the wroshyr tree's trunk with his shoulder. The decorations clink ominously, and he gets a sprinkling of needles in his hair. A couple of the little cones fall off as well.

He sneezes again.

"Are you all right?" Luke asks. He makes his way across the room without any hesitation, despite the blindfold, and he reaches out to Din. "Did it break? Did I break it?"

"It's fine," Din says thickly. His throat itches. He leans down and picks up the fallen orb; it's one of the blue ones. Like Luke's eyes, back on Gideon's ship. Pretty.

"You sneeze louder than Han, and until now I didn't think that was possible," Luke says. "I mean, Han can out-sneeze a Wookie."

"Thanks," Din says. He uses the string tied to the top of the orb to secure it to the closest wroshyr branch. "I'll add that to my Guild profile. Everyone will want to hire me because of it."

Luke laughs. There's some kind of dust on his shirt, probably from the workshop. There's another smear of it on his face, but he probably has no idea of that. It's even in his hair; Din can see a faint gold trace of it floating away when he shakes his head.

"I have a couple things," Luke says a little too casually. "I picked them up, figured my nephew would like them. But he'll be getting plenty of stuff from his parents, and my sister always says I give him too much anyway, so if you think Grogu would like having them…"

"You don't have to pretend," Din says. "I know you had them for the kid already."

Luke huffs a sigh. "Was it that obvious?"

"Yeah," Din says, and then belatedly realizes that Jedis might have their pride too, and stumbles on regardless. "It's good. It's—knowing you were thinking ahead, that you were planning things for him, before."

Before he chose to leave Luke and to come back to Din, and Luke quietly put those things away and went on doing whatever Jedi did. Which is something Din still feels no closer to understanding, but which seems very isolated and lonely the more he observes.

"It's good," Din says awkwardly. "I don't think I have anything—well, there's the big orb that he kept staring at, but it's not really a surprise."

"Some of the stuff is from Chewie and my sister and her family," Luke says. "It's in the box on the couch. Take a look and tell me what you think he'd like the best."

It's a mixture of things—mostly toys, including a soft plush bantha that he knows the kid will sink his teeth into and joyfully disembowel as soon as he gets his hands on it, some books and puzzles, a few ship models even smaller than the ones in the bedroom, and even a palm-sized toy droid that looks like a variation on the BD units. Din buries it beneath some of the other items, but pulls out the bantha and some of the smaller toys. They're still traveling light, and there's only so much that can be carried along.

There's one more item he can't bring himself to put back: a small, red robe, just the kid's size. The color is familiar. If the kid doesn't like it, there's no shortage of ways material can be used for ship maintenance, though something in him instinctively bucks at the idea of using it for rags. The material feels soft and well-woven; he's glad he can see the color of it as it is, the deep-hued red of the dye, instead of the more muted way it would have looked through his helmet.

"If you want to wrap them, I've got some flimsi around here somewhere," Luke says from across the room. It looks like he's hung nearly all the orbs on the tree and now he's just poking the tree branches, shaking them here and there to make the orbs sway, and the lights flicker.

"Sure," Din says. "Hey, save a few for the kid to put on tomorrow or he'll probably yank them down himself."

Luke laughs. "My nephew, Ben, he used to do that. His first Life Day that they had a real tree, he practically pulled the whole thing down; he was worse than a tooka. After that, my sister insisted on a holo-tree. He'd sit there and scowl at it, and do his best to yank the hologram over, and then cry when he couldn't."

"I thought Jedi couldn't have family," Din says.

Luke winces, visible even under the blindfold. "That's… a complicated topic," he says. "I don't know if I would say family so much as—"

"Attachments," Din says, remembering the Armorer's words.

"In a sense," Luke says, but cautiously. He moves towards Din, stops short, and then he sneezes. Somehow, he's collected even more of that dust on himself; there's a smear of it on the blindfold, vivid against the dark fabric, and streaks of it on his forehead and cheeks.

Din's got it on the back of his own gloves and some of the sap too, which he notices absently as he's reaching for Luke's face, thumbing at the dust there and trying to brush it off. Luke flinches but holds still.

"You have stuff all over your face," Din informs him. He swipes his thumb back and forth, just below the edge of the blindfold. "Worse than the kid."

His thumb rests at the corner of Luke's mouth, near the scar that's just under his lip. He moves his thumb just enough to touch it. It's the kind of mark he notices on others, and the sort of thing he finds himself drawn to. Imperfections have always moved or interested him, the little flaws: the different shade of skin where scar tissue twists, a crooked smile, a spray of freckles. Those were the spots he'd inevitably used to hone in on back when he'd still gone to the trouble of having sexual partners, the places he'd find with his hands and eyes, and that he'd fantasize about putting his mouth on.

He doesn't think about that much anymore or what it says about him, whether it was a need for identifying points of consolation or exploitation. His creed had made sex a more complicated transactional process than usual, anyway. It was eventually easier to just rely on his hand instead of partners. But his own tastes stubbornly remain, and his mind inevitably returns to some of those memories whenever his own hand is taking care of things.

Luke opens his mouth slowly enough that Din could move his hand if he wanted to. He doesn't. He lets Luke shift slightly, close his lips over the tip of Din's thumb. It's barely inside his mouth at first, just enough to cover the orange tip, and then Luke takes it deeper and closes his lips over it. Din rubs it against the roof of Luke's mouth

Things seem to move very quickly after that.

"Floor," Luke says, "no, wait. Couch."

And that's where they end up, Din sitting down hard on the couch and the Jedi climbing directly into his lap, arms around Din's neck and his forehead pressed against one pauldron. He grinds his ass into Din's lap and cock, and Din grabs him around the waist, pulling him in close and pinning him there. He digs his thumbs into the crests of Luke's hips and then slips his hands further down to grab both cheeks of his ass, squeezing. A perfect ass, just the right amount to fit in his hands, soft and firm at the same time. Din never should have left it out of the list he'd compiled of Luke's assets earlier; he should be fucking shot for not acknowledging it.

"How much of this can come off?" Luke asks, turning his head so Din can feel his hot breath of his panting against the sliver of his throat exposed by the cowl of his cloak.

"As much as you want," he says, and means it. He's never done that before and he doesn't care; why should he care if it means he gets to press more of his skin against Luke's. But to take any of it off, he has to let go of Luke's ass, which he reluctantly does.

Then Luke lifts off his lap and that's not at all a positive development; that's the opposite of what he wants. But Luke slips through his hands when Din tries to seize onto him again, and slides all the way to the floor to kneel between Din's. He puts his hands on Din's thighs and pushes them wider apart. "You take off what you want," he says, and then looks blindly up at Din and grins. "But if you want to leave some of it on, I don't mind. Can I please blow you?"

"Kark, please," Din says. He's already got his gloves off, and he's working at the clasp of his cowl. "Yes, fuck."

Luke undoes the buckle of Din's belt, and then pauses to presses his cheek against one of Din's thigh plates for a few seconds. "Your armor is cold. It feels so good."

Nothing about Din feels cold right now, but Luke moves forward to mouth against the crotch of Din's kute, fingers working along to find the line of his hard cock, trapped under layers, and then searching for an opening.

"Okay," he says after a few seconds. "So your flightsuit seams are a little better made than the ones we had during the Rebellion and I might need some help here."

Din grunts and stops working on his pauldrons to get at his bandolier, and then the magnetic attachment points of his cuirass. Once he's loosened that enough to get a hand under it and the padding layer beneath it, he can slide the zipper open down his chest and crotch enough to give Luke access. Luke makes a little triumphant noise and wiggles in closer, now rubbing his face against the material of Din's undershorts. It's not enough, and Din wants to pull his cock out, and he wants to grab the back of Luke's head so he can guide that mouth where he wants it, and he wants to rip that flimsy pair of pants and shirt off Luke so he can see Luke's skin, and he wants to get his hip plates off and he wants another couple of arms to manage all this at once.

But then clever fingers work their way into the gap in his undershorts and pull him out, and Luke's breath flickers warm and moist over Din's bare cock, finally. He licks the head, just one quick flick of tongue, and Din nearly drops a pauldron on him.

And then those lips close over the head of his cock the same way they'd closed over his thumb, and Din thrusts before he can help it, only just remembering in time not to grab the Jedi's hair. His hand sweeps over the curve of Luke's skull, wanting to press but holding back. Luke makes a little noise and then opens his mouth enough to say, "you can, you can pull my hair if you want."

Din slides his hand down the back of Luke's head and squeezes his neck instead, scratching his fingernails against the nape where the hair is now darkened with sweat and starts to curl. Luke moans, wraps his left hand around Din's cock, and he's guiding it deeper into his mouth now. His other hand is down between his own legs, presumably working his own cock. "Ngh," he says, and his mouth slides farther down the shaft.

Din's not small. It's been an advantage before. Past partners weren't initially enthusiastic about the lack of reciprocation when it came to anything involving mouths; his cock's size was a selling point and he learned how to draw it out and not be an iviin'yc tracy'uur, going off before it could do anyone any good. He's used to easing into fucking. But Luke just swallows him, stretching those pink lips out and relaxing his throat until his nose slides into the hair at the base of Din's cock, and Din counts in Mando'a, Tusken, and Huttese to keep from thrusting.

Luke holds it and then draws back slowly, his spit-soaked chin glistening, mouth reddened. Din watches and lets his hand drift over to pet and encourage as Luke takes a breath and then swallows him again. He has to touch. He uses his thumb, bare this time, to trace around the stretched-wide O of Luke's mouth; he presses his thumb to the corner of his mouth and then the side of his jaw and then down the line of his throat. Luke's throat hitches and bobs convulsively as Din drags his thumb down it, and when he digs the edge of his nail in unexpectedly, Luke chokes. The convulsive squeeze of it makes Din choke down a grunt as well.

He gives in to temptation and he tangles his fingers in the Jedi's hair. He doesn't pull too hard yet, but he explores the silky texture and twines short loops of it around the tip of a finger, makes an experimental tug. Luke moans around his cock again and just sucks in long, slow pulls. When he tilts his head up slightly at Din's tug, Din looks down at that black strip of fabric wrapped his eyes and imagines taking it off. Would the pupils of his eyes be blown so far as to nearly eclipse the blue of them? Would he look up through those lashes and keep eye contact the entire time, or would he be unable to hold their gazes together?

Din imagines both ways, and he imagines pulling that mouth off his cock and putting his own mouth to Luke's. Biting the swell of that lower lip between his teeth, licking the inside to see if he'd press back. He waits for the inevitable guilt, the memory of the words that still echo in his mind: then you are a Mandalorian no more.

But he doesn't care. He can't. He's repeated those words in his own mind every day since he's heard them, and now he treats it the same way he's treated everything else in order to survive. He walls them off in a part of himself that he will have to observe later and decide whether to keep or leave behind, whether they warrant destruction or salvaging.

Luke pulls his head away and even though Din has his hand firmly enough in Luke's hair to stop him—inasmuch as he could stop a Jedi, which Din supposes he actually can't—he lets go. He does make an undignified noise that he hopes Luke won't hold against him.

"I’m just—all right, sorry," Luke gasps, licking his lips. "I wanted you inside me, but I want to swallow, and, and I thought, I should ask."

Din's mind can't make sense of that. He's the one who should be asking if Luke would swallow him. But his mind is stuck, trapped in images as sticky-gold and clinging as the sap on the wroshyr tree trunk, of Luke's mouth swallowing down his come, of fucking Luke facedown over the edge of the couch, or on his back on the floor, or bouncing in his lap.

"Yes," he says.

Luke laughs, with a ragged edge to it. "Which one?"

Din is going to die of blue balls. "Your mouth," he rasps, because he doesn’t think he has it in him to last more than a few thrusts, and that's a shitty tradeoff for Luke. He'll make it better when he can think, get his own hands and mouth on Luke and see what he can do with them.

And Luke just bobs his head and dives right back down to Din's cock to the root, no hesitation. The pressure of his hands—Din can feel both Luke's hands, gloved and bare, too unselfish, he's not even jerking himself—on the base of Din's cock and rubbing against his balls grows along with the wet suction of his mouth. Din gives up and tangles both his hands into Luke's hair, barely heeding the blindfold and probably yanking his scalp too much.

"Haar'chak!" he gasps and curls over, hunched over Luke and his too-perfect mouth and nearly far enough to rest his own forehead on top of Luke's head. He traps Luke between his legs and hands, grits his teeth, and holds on for pride and a desperate wish for it not to be over yet, teetering on the edge with what feels like every muscle in his body pulled taut. "Gonna come," he warns, and Luke pulls him in closer instead of back and hums.

Din's struck with a brilliantly vivid mental image of what it would look like if he did pull back: splattering white all over Luke's face to paint each small scar and mark, across the bridge of his nose and on his cheeks and in his eyelashes—in his mind, the blindfold is gone, and Luke's eyes are wide and fixed on nothing but him—and that sends him over the edge in long, blissful convulsions he couldn't hope to stop if his life depended on it. Luke's throat contracts around each swallow, milking him dry. He pulls back, a strand of saliva connecting them for a second, and then leans his head against Din's thigh to breathe.

Din's cock is still twitching, and despite coming what felt like the entire contents of his balls down Luke's throat, his cock hasn't completely softened. That's probably something to be concerned about. Currently, it feels like a Life Day miracle. He opens his legs, leans down, and gets an arm around Luke's waist, hauling him up back onto the couch. Luke scrambles up as agile as a lothcat, one hand already in his pants and frantically working at himself. Din tugs it away.

"No, let me," he says. But first, he yanks Luke up enough to pull his pants and underwear down past his ass, letting him thump back onto Din's lap. Luke's ass makes direct contact with Din's still buckled-on thigh plates, and he gasps and writhes. Din pulls his pants and underwear off far enough that Luke kicks one leg out free, and they hang rakishly off the other ankle. Din gets under his shirt as well, yanking on it at the collar to pull it over his head.

"Don't rip it!" Luke protests, even as his head disappears, and then pops out the bottom. His arms are briefly trapped against his chest in the sleeves in front of him, and that has some possibilities, but Din wants full access now and he's never been in a situation where he couldn't find at least two ways of restraining someone. There's aways time later.

"Don't worry," Din says. "I'll let everyone know that you've beaten your meat."

"It was technically Han's meat," Luke says. "I would be beating mine if you weren't stopping me, oh, mmm, ahh," he trails off, as Din rolls his balls in one hand and then grabs the base of his cock.

He settles sideways on the couch and settles Luke on him as well, Luke's back to his chest. Luke won't stop moving, squirming against every edge of piece of Din's armor that's still there which is—most of it, since Luke was so incredibly distracting earlier. He rubs his face in the crook of Luke's neck, the same way Luke did to him earlier, and tries to think clearly about points of contact and attack. He wishes he could spread Luke out in full on clean sheets and look him over to touch at his leisure, but that would mean letting go of him and he's not willing to do that. He thinks about what he wants to do, and how even though he came just a few minutes ago, he's still burning up inside. But Luke hasn't come at all, and that means Din has to narrow his objective.

"What do you want the most?" he asks, right into Luke's ear. "Want to come right now? Want me to go fast or slow?"

Luke's still squirming. "I want you to fuck me," he says. "Can you, will you do that?"

"I want to be in you right now," Din says. "But I need a minute. It's, I'm actually close, but I need another few minutes."

Luke groans. "I never had any patience," he says a rueful tinge in his voice. "It's, um, kind of a problem." He takes a deep breath and stops squirming. "I'm going to be honest with you. You're exactly my type and I was attracted to you as soon as I saw you on the star cruiser. But, uh, even so, I don't usually do this right away and I think we're both under the influence of, um, something right now."

"You think?" Din grunts. He tries to stay still as well and clear his mind. "Yeah. Though. You're also. Very attractive. To me. You would have been before, too."

"So we're steering the same ship," Luke says brightly.

"I'm pretty sure you can stop me if I do anything you don't want," Din says. "Tell me if I do anything you don't want."

"I want you to do everything to me," Luke says. "Okay. All right. My sister says I never know when to shut up, and Han says I'm kind of a slut sometimes, maybe I would have said that anyway, but I care a lot about not looking stupid in front of you, and, um." He stops again. "You know, this is one of the reasons I wanted to blow you," Luke says. "I couldn't keep saying things."

Din knows he's under the influence of something, because he says, "Do you want me to say things to you?" He bites at Luke's neck, just a little. "Also, do I need to fight Han? Whoever he is," he asks.

"I mean, maybe?" Luke says. "A lot of people fight him on general principles. But my sister would be mad, because he's married to her. Plus, his other best friend is a Wookie. And I'd be upset, too. Probably."

"Okay," Din says. "That's fine."

"And yes, please, please say things to me," Luke begs, to Din's pleasure and also trepidation. "Anything."

Luke's smaller than Din, and Din's been able to mostly manhandle him to his preference. He can wrap one arm around his waist and hold him there. But stripped bare now, he's nothing but lean muscle and bone and a beautiful, terrible tangle of scars underneath that twine around his entire body. Even without the vast invisible power Din's seen him wield without effort, he'd be a threat to take note of. It's that strange sense of contrast Din noticed before, an odd combination of of fragility and strength at the same time. The delicate bones of his wrist and the calluses on his hand from his lightsaber; the flushed bud of one nipple and the star-shaped splotch of scar tissue from a blaster shot on his shoulder.

His hands look large against Luke's skin. Luke is warm beneath his fingers, burning so hot that he feels like he's holding a star. And he should be helping that right now, so he strokes his palm up the curve of his hip, runs it up the line off his throat, and cups his jaw to tip it back.

"Spit," he says. Luke licks instead. One finger at a time, running each into his mouth. "Oh? Like a lothcat. Little tooka. Have to have something in your mouth, don't you?"

He feels ridiculous, but Luke hums around his fingers. Din runs his other hand up over Luke's ribs, tracing the scars. Further in, he finds a nipple tight from arousal. He rubs one finger over it, and then pinches it lightly. Luke sighs and pushes into the touch.

"Sensitive?" Din asks. Luke nods. Din files that away for later. "They're pretty. Everything about you is. You're so… you fight like no one I've ever seen, and you're so beautiful. I want to touch you everywhere all at once. It drives me crazy that I can't."

Din pulls his fingers from Luke's mouth and drops them down to Luke's cock. He squeezes up and down, trying to get it slick all over, head to base. When his hand glides down to Luke's balls, Luke shifts and hitches himself up a little.

"No?" Din asks pulling his fingers away.

"No, yeah. I mean, yeah," Luke says. "You can put them in. Just don't laugh at me."

"Why would I laugh at you?" Din asks, dipping back down. When he runs them under his balls and finds his hole, though, his fingers slide through unexpected slipperiness. It's more than what should be there from sweat and pre-cum. He delves deeper, feels them slip just inside. There's resistance, but it's still far slicker than it should be.

"Don't make fun of me," Luke says again. His hole twitches and clenches a little around Din's finger pressing in.

Din would rather die. "When did you do this?" he asks, putting his mouth as close to Luke's ear as possible. "How did you—was it when you were making up the bedroom or outside in the workroom?

"Outside," Luke pants. "When I was getting the boxes. I wouldn't do anything in a room where Grogu was going to sleep. I had to be fast, did it by my workbench. It was cold out there. I didn't, didn't know we would do this, but I thought maybe after you two had gone to sleep, I'd be in my room and this way I'd be able to do something, and, and I'd be prepped already so I wouldn’t have to wait and you wouldn't hear me."

Din thinks back to how long Luke was outside—barely a couple of minutes, certainly not more than ten. Does he remember hearing the door the pourstone addition close? He pictures Luke with his pants shoved down and one leg out, foot up on a workbench or box, preparing himself—reaching inside and opening himself— with his fingers. Opening himself up for Din, even if he hadn't meant it. Trying to smear whatever lubricant it is as deep as he can, a couple fingers at once. No patience, all quickness. Quick little hitching breaths that fogged in the cold, trying to be quiet.

"I'd never laugh. That's incredible," Din says to him. Luke stretches and squirms, but he can’t get quite enough leverage. When Din swats his hands away from his cock again, Luke groans and grip Din's thigh with one hand, hard enough that there will be bruises, and gropes behind him with the other, fingers brushing to search for Din's face.

"You're so good for me, jetii," Din says, eluding him. He pushes his fingers into Luke's hole, and then pulls them out and grabs his cock. "You’re so kriffing perfect. Where do you want my hands? You want them around your cock? Or you want them in here?" He lets go, and probes downwards again. "Where you want them, I'll give it to you. And you want it so bad, don’t you? Want more? Harder?"

Luke drops his hand and slumps back into Din. "You want to stay like this?" Din asks. "I can turn you over my knee and put my fingers in you. Give it to you nice and soft and slow. Or I can give you both my hands like this—"

He centers Luke so that he can slip both arms around his waist, and then pushes both hands into his crotch, cupping and rolling his balls with one and starting to jerk him with the other, hard and fast and just on the edge of vicious. Even through his kute, he can feel the muscles in Luke's hips and legs working, he's thrusting into Din's hands desperately. When Din hooks his chin over Luke's shoulder, he sees Luke's hands on his own chest, pulling at his nipples.

“Can you come now? Take the edge off?” Din says. "I'm almost ready to go. You can have it now, and then you can have it again. All night if you want."

Luke makes one last gasp, stiffens, stops breathing, and floods Din's hands with wet warmth as he comes hard. His body convulses and would jolt off Din's lap if Din wasn't gripping him with the strength of beskar, like he was the most precious thing in the world.

***

They do figure it out eventually. By the fourth round, they end up on the floor after all. Under the tree, which gleams with the various decorations that shiver and swing and clink whenever the activities under them become vigorous. Din is currently flat on his back with Luke (who'd recovered faster than Din in a way that make Din think wistfully of his teens and twenties, and also uneasy about asking Luke's actual age) determinedly working his way to sitting down completely on Din's cock. When his ass comes to rest in the hollow of Din's hips, he tilts his head back and sighs.

He's radiant in the low light, rising above Din and gleaming. Din's been staring at him in almost a stupor before the part of his mind that's been trained to notice everything, even under the most distracting of circumstances, manages to register that the golden flecks that drift and shimmer around him seem to be drifting down directly from the tree above them.

"Luke," he says.

"Yeah?" Luke asks, now beginning to work his way back up again.

"It's the tree," Din says.

"What's the tree?" Luke asks. He's nearly all the way up now, the crown of Din's cock just barely snagged within his rim. If he goes any higher, it will slip out. Din keeps himself still. He’s got better control now, or maybe he's just finally tiring out after coming three times, an accomplishment he's still marveling over in the distant part of his mind that remembers he's 39 and perpetually sleep-deprived.

It wasn't the usual way it was with coming more than once either, facing diminishing returns on the multiple rounds. Everything worked, everything felt good even when it chafed and dragged, buzzing beneath the skin. Just wave after wave of frantic building pleasure that crests each time in an explosion of burning gold, but that doesn’t burn out.

Din wants to pull Luke down by his waist to bounce him on his cock, his gasping cries muffled into the heel of his hand to keep from waking the kid up, but he doesn't. He flexes his hands against the floor and continues to watch the tree. On one of the closest branches, a cone cracks open with a near infinitesimal noise, and a slight puff of gold dust glitters in the air briefly.

"The tree is giving off pollen," Din says. "I can see it. I think the pollen is doing this to us." He thinks of the sticky smear of sap on his glove, of his thumb in Luke's mouth. "Maybe the sap as well."

"Oh," Luke says, sounding a little drunk. "I didn't know wroshyrs could do that. Chewie never said so."

"Maybe it's from you and the kid juicing it with your wizard magic," Din says. He runs his hands up the inside of Luke's thighs, deliberately avoids his cock, and circles them outward to his hips.

"Maybe, yeah," Luke says. "Ah!" he gasps, as Din gives in to his impulse and drags him all the way back down again, all at once, sheathing himself despite Luke's squirming. Luke doesn't try very hard to get away.

They should probably get out from under the tree. Or open a window, at least. At some point. If he'd had his helmet on, he might have seen it earlier. If he'd had his helmet on, it might not have done anything to him at all.

All of Din's senses—sight, touch, taste, sound, smell—feel sodden with pleasure, suffused with Luke. This might have something to do with the pollen but since at least two of those had rarely featured in his past sexual encounters, he thinks it's at least equally that factor, as well as simply Luke. Din wants to bury his nose in Luke's hair or along his throat and keep inhaling. He smells amazing and it's indescribably good. His skin is warm and salty wherever Din tastes. It had taken some time and a round and a half of sex, but eventually the rest of Din's armor and flight suit had been properly removed, and now there's nothing between their skin but sweat and come in various stages of wet and drying. And pollen.

"It's probably fine. We can take a shower later," Luke says. "There's a refresher in my room. And we'll open a window."

"Good plan," Din says.

He doesn't mind this position so much because it's actually giving him time to catch his breath and hopefully unfuck his back from the various terrible things he brazenly did to it on the third round, when he'd picked Luke up with his legs around Din's waist and fucked him against the wall to show off, supporting all his weight. He regrets nothing, but having someone else temporarily doing all the work lets him take a moment to tactically regroup.

The downside is that parts of Luke are tantalizingly within view but out of easy reach and access, namely his mouth and throat and collarbones and nipples and—everything above the waist, basically. Din despairs of this poorly fucking designed universe that aligned in this way, and consoles himself by kneading Luke's ass some more.

"My Life Day tree made me decide to have sex with the single father of my past student," Luke says, still flexing himself up and down on Din. "Force. This is just like one of those terrible holodramas Han loves. I can never tell him about this. He'll send it as an anonymous suggestion to the Holomark Channel, and then he'll make me watch it with him when the holo comes out. It's already got a lot of the stuff they like to use anyway."

"What?" Din says a little foggily.

"You don't secretly own a wroshyr farm or a small business of some kind that's getting pushed out by a major corporation or something, right?" Luke asks, paused mid-bounce.

"I'm a bounty hunter," Din says. "Mostly I shoot people for a living. Sometimes I kill them, but sometimes I just cut parts off them."

"That's… actually weirdly comforting," Luke says, resuming motion. "And hot. Sorry. I think I'm still saying more of the stuff inside my head that I usually remember not to."

"It's fine," Din says. It is. He likes to watch Luke's mouth moving and shaping words; he likes it when it rounds out in less articulate noises as well. He'd like it best if it were down closer, and he could put his own mouth on it.

"But seriously. There's been about five holodramas about my life on that channel. They're awful. They get everything wrong and they keep casting actors who're much taller than me."

"Uh huh," Din says. He could use his towline to bring Luke down closer to his mouth, except he can't. At some point, he took off his vambraces. Poor planning on Din's part. Another consolatory ass squeeze for him.

"The pornos, though, it's the opposite casting problem. I swear, I'm not that short."

"You're fun sized," Din says, and then doubles back mentally. "Pornos?"

"Yeah," Luke says. "It's, it's a thing."

Din takes a deep breath. It probably includes another shitload of pollen. He doesn't care.

"Anyway, the trashy holodramas on the Holomark Channel of the Holonet and all the pornos have the same two basic plotlines about the Jedi anyway. We're all wanton sluts who love everyone and express that by fucking anything that moves, or we're frigid and have to be fucked into acceptance. Usually we love it, then." Luke shrugs, and also lets himself slide all the way back down, staying impaled on Din for the moment. "So, I guess it's more like one and a half plotlines."

"Pornos," Din says, still anchored on that concept. "Of you."

"Don't sound so surprised," Luke says.

"I'm not," Din says. "I don't think I am."

He knows about porn; he has an extensive relationship with it. Hard not to, when it's the safest option for getting off; porn holovids never try to paw at his helmet or bitch about his assumptive lack of talent in giving head. He's more surprised he's never managed to run into something featuring even just a passing reference to Luke, given his own tastes. Something does tickle his mind, though.

"Does one of them have a character named Lick Mycocker?" he asks.

"Yeah, that’s one of mine," Luke says. "Actually, they almost always leave my first name and they just change the last name. Some of them are better than others. Some of them are really terrible."

"You're going to tell me, aren't you," Din says.

"Lick Mycocker had a sequel featuring with Lick Ballsucker," Luke says. "Then they just go with the easy ones. Skyfucker, Skysucker, Skycocker, Skywanker, Skyhumper, Skysquirter. Then there's the Guy ones, Guyfucker, Guybanger, Guyballer, and Guysucker. Um. There's the body part ones, like Cocksucker, Buttsucker, Thighwalker, Assfucker, Cockchugger, Handwanker—I hated that one, by the way, it's mean—Nutsucker, and Bonewhacker. And then there's just the typical porn ones. Luke Cumsucker, Cumslutter, Slutfucker, Slutsucker, and Rawdogger. Duke Rawdogger, actually. They changed my first name in that one, too."

"Bonewhacker is stupid. It's not even a logical variation on your name," Din says after doing a hard reset on his own brain, seizing on the first stupid thing he can focus on. "It doesn’t even have similar sounds."

"Yeah," Luke says. He sighs. "Almost makes me miss the pre-Republic ones when people didn't know my name. Then it was just like, stuff like, 'Red Five Does Ten.'

He pauses. "Ten guys," he adds. "That was a gangbang one."

"I figured," Din says.

He does know that one. It felt like everyone in the galaxy, not just the Guild, had known about the Red Five bounty when it was active. Checking out any lead on who the hell Red Five was had been a given, even if it was a backroom-produced porn holovid that featured a lot of terrible facial hair and underrated athletic talent. Din's been in the Fighting Corps; that level of physical group coordination, even if it was fuck-related, is worthy of begrudging respect.

He adds Is also Red Five to the short mental list of things he knows about Luke Skywalker, and also a note to cross-check his memories of that stupid porno. There was a sequel, he thinks.

"Han thinks it's funny most of the time, but then there was a really popular one where they also had a character called Hung Solo, and he… you know, with me. With the actor they had who was pretending to be me. And it made so much money that they made, like. Nine of them, I think. Last I checked, anyway. It became an actual franchise. And so it was really awkward being around him for a while."

"…which name did they use?" Din asks after a long pause when he realizes Luke is expecting some kind of response. "For you."

Luke frowns a little. "That one was Twink Skycocker," he says. "I'm pretty sure."

Din thinks about what it must be like to have a life where there are so many pornographic parodies of it that you can legitimately lose track of what people call you in them, and if all the blood in his body wasn't already being redirected from his brain and circulating solely in his lower half, he'd probably pass out in horror.

"And it just keeps happening. With anyone I talk to for more than five minutes. There's a bunch of them about me with my droids," Luke says mournfully. "And there's even ones of me and my sister, except most people don't know she's my sister and we try not to spread that around so I can't even say anything about it, really. Though there's not as many of those as there used to be, thank the Force."

"Lawsuits?" Din says.

"Yeah, some," Luke says. "My sister has a lot of connections in the New Republic and she's actually much scarier than I am. But also, well. There were more of those movies earlier on, but Han saw how much it was bothering both of us, so he waited until there was a public event we all had to go to, and then he waited until there were enough holocams recording, and then he grabbed me and kissed me in front of them. With tongue. Then he kissed Lando. Then he shoved me at Lando."

"Who's Lando?" Din asks. "Did you kiss him?"

"You can’t meet Lando and not kiss him," Luke says. "It just doesn't work that way. And I think he meant to kiss Chewie after that and really confuse everyone, but Chewie shoved him and he landed in some bushes."

"High signal to noise ratio," Din says. "Not the worst idea. Did it work?"

"It actually did, he never shuts up about it," Luke says. "Two months later, the first Hung Solo and Twink Skycocker holo came out. It won a bunch of awards. Porn ones, but I guess that's something. Do you want to see the picture they used to promote it?"

Din's still too hung up on trying to remember the high points of Red Five Does Ten and the sequel, and also if he had or hadn't watched Lick Mycocker, and can't come up with a cogent objection. Luke waves across the room, and a datapad comes zipping across to land in his hand. He types a few words onehanded, and then turns it around for Din to see. Din blinks and is confronted with an amazingly filthy holo-pic that features a slim, blond young man with a more than passing resemblance to Luke, a taller dark-haired man with rumpled hair and a vest, and several pieces of weaponry being used—well, more like stored—in unconventional places.

"Is that an RSKF-44 or a DG-29 blaster?" he asks, and takes a closer look for professional interest. The difference in barrels between the two are pretty distinct, but from where and how this one is lodged, he can only see the butt of the blaster. He tries to manipulate the pic to see a better angle.

"Not sure," Luke says. "The one I used to carry was a DL-44, anyway."

"It's like no one even cares about accuracy these days," Din says, and to his surprise, Luke immediately starts to laugh, full and genuine, giggling hard enough that it eventually turns into hiccups that Din can feel it all the way through his body from where he's still sunk inside Luke.

"Oh, I know," Luke says, still alternately snickering and hiccupping on top of Din, little shivers and ripples that are very distracting. "But actually, where they really go wild is the lightsabers. I can't tell you how many times those end up somewhere inappropriate. Wedge told me Rogue Squadron had a drinking game based on it. There's a point system and everything."

"Huh," Din says, immediately picturing it. "Doesn't seem safe."

"You're picturing it," Luke says.

"No, I'm not," Din lies.

Luke wiggles his ass against Din. "I can tell. You got harder."

"That's the pollen," Din says. "Anyway, I've got one of those, and I've never thought of putting it up someone's ass."

Not until now, anyway. His mind, traitor that it is, is figuring out the logistics. Though not even the golden allure of the wroshyr pollen can fully smooth its way past the memory of various Fighting Corps instructors and what they would scream about over the concept of using the emitter end. But there's enough length and circumference left in the hilt for it to be plausible at least, and Luke's hole swallowing up the dull gleam of the beskar, inch by inch—

"Wait, what," Luke says. "You have a lightsaber? What? How?"

"Beat someone else in a fight and got it," Din says. The hilt guard would be a major issue, no doubt. He doesn't remember if Luke has that same kind of guard on his own lightsaber. He doesn't think so. It had a more rounded, cylindrical hilt than the Darksaber, and that spawns a whole new array of images, Luke with his own lightsaber. Or, gods help Din, his and the Darksaber.

The Darksaber is a more noble weapon for you to wield.

The memory of the Armorer's words manages to break through the golden haze and the pictures his mind is creating, and Din has a sudden urge to laugh wildly because, if fucking only. But he centers himself and manages to not think quite as much about the contrast of metal and flesh, one disappearing into the other. It does make him think of something else that's been lurking in the back of his mind,

"Beat who?" Luke asks.

"Moff Gideon. What were you going to use on yourself if you were alone?" Din asks. "If we hadn't done this?"

It's Luke's turn to blink, derailed. "I have things that are meant to be put in…. places," he says with dignity. "Not weapons."

"I'm a Mandalorian. Weapons are my religion," Din says. The words come out so automatically, that he doesn’t need to think about them. When he examines them cautiously, they still feel true.

"Is that what this is?" Luke asks, bearing down to squeeze around him. "A weapon?" Din reaches up enough to flick his nipple again.

"Anyway, I don't know if you know much about Mandalorian porn," Luke starts, and by now Din's had enough of a break. He also has much less body fluids than he started the night with—in a good way for once—but he has to move now before Luke goes back to riding him to death, those thighs rising tirelessly. His life and emotional outlook have taken at least three radical shifts he wasn't prepared for in the last forty-eight hours; he doesn't regret them, but he's made a career out of knowing his own limits and capabilities. He is fast approaching the event horizon of sexual and mental exhaustion, and his kid is probably going to be awake in a few hours. At some point tonight—today, if the graying light he can see through the window is any indicator—he wants to sleep in a bed. Preferably with Luke there as well, but they'll never get off the floor at this rate.

Luke writhes when Din flips them over, putting Luke on his back and his legs over Din's shoulders as Din bottoms out in him. He looks down at Luke, debauched so far beyond that clean, slightly rumpled figure who'd met them at the landing site. He makes sure Luke's legs are securely hooked over him before he starts rutting into him with purpose. They're both filthy with come and sweat, sticky and sore, but Din can feel the last wave rising, and hopefully the worst of it out of their systems.

Or they'll just pass out, and it'll be whoever wakes up first's problem to deal with. It's fifty-fifty odds at least.

"Fuck!" he gasps in surprise, as Luke shoves himself up to pull Din down just far enough to mouth at him, kisses that slide along his jaw, the tip of his nose, the corner of his eye, and everywhere but his mouth. Without letting himself think about it, Din slides his hands up to cup Luke's face, holding his cheeks, and then sliding them under the blindfold.

"Close your eyes. Keep them shut, just. Let me," he says, not knowing what's coming next. "Please, just let me."

Luke stills, and then nods. Din pushes the blindfold all the way off but keeps his hands over Luke's eyes at first before shifting them to the side to just hold and look at his face without anything hidden. He looks at Luke, spread before him like a banquet. He could gorge forever and never want to stop. All he wants is one thing though, and he slots his mouth to Luke's to kiss him. Not deeply, nothing forceful. Just a careful exploration and nuzzling, a gentle pressure of lips against lips, in contrast to how he continues to thrust below. Luke hums into it, soft and pleased, and it's his turn to stroke the back of Din's head, the vulnerable curve of his skull.

Din shudders and closes his eyes silently at the feel of fingers carding through his hair and lightly scratching against his scalp, and it's that more than anything that sends him over the edge. When he comes and Luke comes against his belly, it’s not like the rising fire from before that never felt like it was enough, it's just a long, slow, golden wave of bliss, lapping at every corner of him to leave no part that isn't shining and content.

They lay there, breathing. Din pulls back enough to get Luke's legs down and in a more comfortable position, though he stays between them, on top of Luke. "You can open your eyes," he says.

And Luke does.

"Hello," he says, and the light coming through the window from the rising sun is enough to show them as blue as Din remembers, shining.

"Hey," Din says for lack of better options, and he strokes Luke's face.

"In the morning—well, afternoon, probably—we're going to talk about why you have a lightsaber," Luke says, and reaches up to touch Din's hair again.

"Will we," Din says.

Luke smiles guilelessly. "It'll make Grogu happy," he says.

"That's not going to work forever on me," Din says.

"Yes, it will," Luke says.

"It probably will," Din agrees. "It's supposed to belong to the ruler of Mandalore," he adds.

"Is that you?" Luke asks.

Din shrugs. "I have no idea."

"Okay," Luke says. He starts to smile, inexorably. "Not that it matters. But, like, secret royalty. The Holomark Channel would love that."

The first rays of morning sun brighten across the room; they shine on the couch with its faded, mismatched cushions; they shine on the wroshyr tree's branches; they shine on the large blue orb full of stars that he'd convinced Grogu to leave displayed on the table; they shine on his helmet. Everything is radiant under it; everything is bright. He could lie here forever, looking at it.

Din gets up. His joints hate him and make that audibly known. He offers Luke a hand and pulls him up as well.

"Shower," he says. "And then we'll see when Grogu wakes up."

"I'll get the water going, it's a little tricky. I'll be waiting," Luke says. He looks back over his shoulder before he leaves the room, pausing with another smile. "Din," he says. "Just to be clear. I'll be waiting for you."

"Oh," Din says. "Good. Thank you."

When he's alone, Din holds his breath and walks across the room and opens the window closest to the tree. He goes back and he stops by the table. He picks up his helmet, and he tucks it under his arm.

It's a choice, whatever he does next.

For a few seconds, he watches light flash against the glass of the orbs within the tree; he watches the branches sway. In a few days, he'll help Luke get it outside somehow. And Luke and Grogu will probably plant it somewhere, far away and on a different planet than it came from, but it has a chance to keep living. There will be wind and rain and sun, birds and animals to fly and climb through it, and maybe Luke or maybe Grogu will sit under it and put one hand on the trunk to feel its life force, and maybe it will grow or maybe it won't, but it’s all possibility at this point.

Din stretches, bare and bruised and sticky, and yet, feeling better than he ever has for a long time. When he leaves the room, he's going to something, not away, and that makes all the difference.