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2021-12-29
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Mine

Summary:

In the dark of the night, Din always calls you by another woman’s name. And it’s starting to wear on you.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

By the time you join the Mandalorian he has already been through so much. 

 

The death of his parents, the loss of his people, the absence of his son.

 

It only makes sense that there was someone before you. Someone that knew him better than you, probably. Someone he’s shared his face with in the daylight, where you imagine the tone of his skin, the brown of his eyes, shines richer than it does in the dim of the hull.

 

Someone that you can’t make him forget.

 

***

 

He thinks you’re her the first time he kisses you.

 

Covered in sweat, delirious from heat stroke and exhaustion. The first time he’s taken his helmet off with you, placed into your hands. You’ve patched him up the best you could in the dark, dabbed at his forehead with a cold cloth. 

 

You suspect she did a lot of that. Taking care of him.

 

He looks at you like you’re the sun and mutters her name. 

 

You open your mouth to correct him, but he’s straining to reach his hand around the back of your neck. Slides his gun-calloused fingers behind and pulls you down to meet his lips. You crush the cloth in your hand, so tightly the water wrings out of it as he parts your lips with a swipe of his tongue.

 

Despite how the anticipation burns in your stomach, how every part of you aches for him, you pull away to remind him that it’s you. You say your name and he grunts gruffly, and nods.

 

He knows it’s you.

 

Still her name falls out of his mouth, and his fingers dip below your waistband, sliding down to explore where your arousal has started to seep through your pants.

 

You decide to let him. Let him imagine you are whoever he needs you to be.

 

As long as he doesn’t stop touching you.

 

***

 

He stops just calling you her name. He starts talking to you as if you’re her in the night.

 

“I love you,” he says to her, even though he’s pressing his lips against yours, and his seed is seeping out of you, “I love you.”

 

“I love you, too,” you say. But you mean it.

 

He says her name so sweetly. You wish you could hear him say your name that way.

 

You know you’re probably just a stand in for her. A too-small bandage for a gaping wound. It doesn’t bother you most days — most days, you want Din in any way you can get him.

 

But you’re falling deeper. Every part of you itches to be his, even in the daylight, when he keeps his hand from yours, when you follow after his swishing cape like a pup. When he denies to the people at the markets, at the cantinas, that you have anything romantic between you. You travel together, but you are not his.

 

It’s starting to hurt. 

 

Even though Din is a man of few words, you get most of the stories, overtime. You hear stories about his people, the armorer, the covert. You hear stories about his small, green son and his connection to the Force. You hear the stories about his scars, that he tells you in the dark, as you kiss the raised skin across his chest.

 

You even get his tears, however brief they fall before you get to kiss them away, and he turns to busy his mouth with yours.

 

He trusts you. And you’re happy for it. That he knows you would never do anything to hurt him, not intentionally. That he knows you would go to the ends of the universe for him.

 

But when you’re laying beside him in the dark, cradled in his arms with his chest at your back, his lips press against your shoulder and he whispers her name again.

 

You start to stare into the dark, the pain in your chest pounding too loud, keeping you from sleeping every time you hear it.

 

***

 

“What happened to her?”

 

Din freezes in the pilot’s chair. He looks sideways at you, the helmet tilting slightly.

 

“Who?”

 

“The woman whose name you call me,” you say.

 

You start to lose your nerve when Din leaves several beats of silence between you, just staring from behind the black visor. You’ve touched a nerve. You’ve gone too far.

 

You had to shoot for the moon and now you might lose it all.

 

Dread and regret are injected into your bloodstream, rushing quickly to your pounding heart.

 

“It’s okay,” you shoot to your feet, trying to hurry away before you dig yourself into a deeper hole, “Forget I said—” 

 

“What name?” his voice cuts you off through the vocoder.

 

“It’s fine, Din, we don’t have to—”

 

“What. Name.”

 

You gulp, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. The fear of losing him, of what little you have between you, is stronger than anything you’ve felt. He’s all you have. But worse than that, you’re pretty sure you’re all he has.

 

But now the door is open, and he won’t let you close it.

 

You struggle to pronounce it. You’ve never said it out loud before, never heard it anywhere but the dark. “Xia Ray?” you try, your stutter matching the shake of your hands, “Shahrae?”

 

More silence. More quiet. You must be standing there for months, years, waiting for his pain to pour out of him.

 

Finally, he heaves a quiet sigh. 

 

You flinch.

 

But he says your name, so carefully and so soft, and it feels like sunshine tumbling out of his mouth.

 

He stands to his feet and crosses towards you. You look up at his helmet, tilted downwards at your face, feeling his eyes on you despite the barrier between you.

 

“Cyare,” Din reaches forward and holds your hands in his, his gloved thumb sliding over your trembling knuckles soothingly, “means ‘loved one’ in Mando’a.”

 

Oh. 

 

Oh.

 

“Oh,” you say quietly, your nose growing stuffy, your eyes filling with embarrassed and shocked tears. They feel heavy, too heavy on your lashes, pushing at the waterline of your eyes. 

 

“All this time,” he nearly growls, “you thought my heart belonged to someone else?” 

 

You would be ashamed, if you could process what he has just said to you, after months of torturing yourself in the dark.

 

“How could you not know I meant you?”

 

“I…” you shake your head down at your hands, joined together, and feel his grip tighten around them comfortingly, “You don’t… call me that in the day. You don’t touch me when we leave the ship. You tell everyone that I’m your companion, and nothing more. I just… I thought…”

 

“Oh,” he says your name, tuts his tongue, “I thought I was protecting you. Thought it was safer if they didn’t think you were mine.”

 

Your head shoots up. A tear escapes with the force of it and he reaches out to wipe it away. If this were any other conversation you would tell him that you can handle yourself, that safer is relative when it comes to this life, but you’re stuck on one part in particular.

 

“I’m yours?” you whisper.

 

“I would hope so,” he murmurs, his voice sounding simultaneously amused and shy, “Because I’m yours. You have all of me.”

 

Your heart flips. You’re scared of waking up. You’re scared of having already died at some point along your journey.

 

“I do?” is all you can ask, quiet as a mouse.

 

Din shakes his head, but not at you. 

 

“We’ll have to rectify this,” he says. 

 

He turns your palms over in his hands, pressing a gentle circle into the center of your palm with his thumb, before he pulls them up to either side of his helmet. He bows his head slightly, to make it easier for you.

 

“Go on,” he urges softly.

 

The helmet disconnects with a hiss, and you pull it off like you do for him most nights.

 

But it’s the first time you’ve seen him in the light. Even with your vision blurred with tears, you already know he’s even more beautiful than he is in the dark. Not just a silhouette of curly hair and the curve of his beautiful nose. He has the softest brown eyes. His face is gold beneath your skin. He smiles ever so slightly at you, and you see the crinkles at the corner of his eyes, the dimple in the corner of his mouth, the things you’ve felt a million times with your fingertips but have never actually seen.

 

He takes the helmet from you, placing it back onto his seat, before he lifts your hands up to his mouth. He places a gentle kiss to each palm. Then he pulls you in forcefully, so you stumble into his chest, his arms wrapping tight around you.

 

His forehead drops to yours and you close your eyes, breathing in the smell of steel, of soap. He doesn’t wait for you to close the distance, like he usually does. He presses his lips against yours, hungry and desperate, sliding against your bottom lip until you part your lips for him.

 

You, he’s saying with his kisses, you, you, you.

 

You’re both panting for air by the time he pulls away.

 

“Come on,” he says gruffly, and starts to pull you towards the ladder. You can’t keep your hands off of him, can’t leave his lips for too long, not with how you’re bursting at the thought of each night you thought you were alone, when his thoughts were only of you. 

 

The moan you let out when his bare hands even touch the skin beneath your shirt, is embarrassingly desperate. A reaction that usually waits for his mouth on your breasts, his tongue on your clit.

 

You, you, you. 

 

He drops you onto the bed, immediately leaning back to start stripping. You bite your lip and watch, rubbing your thighs together as he reveals more and more of himself.

 

When he’s completely bare, he climbs over top of you, his erection pressing down against the cloth of your pants. You whine, and can’t help but rock into him. 

 

He growls again, reaching out to grip your chin.

 

“You’re going to know exactly who I mean when I say I love you,” he says, “And you’re not going to forget it.”

 

***

 

“Cyare,” he chants into your ear, as you ride him to release, “come for me.”

 

“Cyare,” he gasps, before it’s just your given name, falling out of his mouth as he shoots his release as deep into you as he can.

 

“Cyare,” he says, pressing his lips sleepily against your shoulder as sleep washes over you, “Mine.”

 

***

Maybe it’s more dangerous to be standing in the market, with your Mandalorian at your back. But to be doing something so pleasant as picking through fruit, with a leather-clad hand at the small of your back, pressing soothingly against your shirt. His hand grasping yours as you weave through the town, tightening around your shoulders when everyone turns to watch him walk into a cantina.

 

He doesn’t correct anyone when they call you his girl. And nobody mistakes you for just a travel companion, not with the way he reaches out for you, keeps a hand on you, when he can. Not with the way he ducks to whisper in your ear, just to hear you laugh at whatever dumb joke he’s made. Not when he calls your name with such urgency, tossing you his weapon in the midst of danger.

 

And now… now you can’t sleep, until he kisses your lips, runs his thumb along your chin, and calls you cyare.