#Do not read below the cut if you still want to play with the pilot transferal theory for another day

[bekolxeram]

In the latest episode of "how the hell did I miss that", I just realized something no one has brought up yet.

I know, there's been debate over whether a certain hot pilot would repel into the cockpit and land the plane safely, an homage to the classic Airport 1975 stunt. If not so, what's the purpose of a human sized hole in the cockpit, right?

Sigh... You guys are going to hate me for this, but...

There's currently only one hole on the plane, and it's the one at the back. The one with a piece of debris sticking out like a fighter jet speed brake panel that's going to have sparks flying out of it next episode.

It's the same reason why we can still hear Athena talk in the cockpit, instead of everything being drown out by the wind.

There's a jump seat plugging up the hole in the cockpit. It managed to stay up there throughout the whole dropping out of the sky then climbing rapidly ordeal without falling back down or joining Captain Dominguez outside, it's thoroughly stuck there.

It's not a speculation on my part, or a stylistic choice that slipped through the writers either. It's in the script.

[deadbeat-motel]

ᑕᕼEᖇᖇIᗷOᗰᗷ ᗩᑎᗪ ᔕIᖇᑭEᑎTIOᑌᔕ ᖇEᗪEᔕIGᑎ

The last two designs for the main cast. With these two done, I can finally work on miscellaneous characters that I've been eyeing the most.

Again, thoughts below the cut:

My issues with their Original designs:

Sir Pentious:

I thought I would only have one thing to say about him (the unnecessary eyes) since he was my favorite in the entire original cast but having taken a closer look at him for this, I saw a lot of things that bothers me.

Too many eyes. specifically the lower half of his body has too many eyes and it seems detrimental to him. It's kind of painful to think about it since I do not think we ever see those eyes close. Is he just slithering on the ground with those exposed eyes? That's got to be irritating at best and damaged at worst as he continuously slithers on them.

There are eyes on the bowtie and the hat? There are already 4 extra eyes on his hood, so why have even more? I get that the original Pentious design was basically a monsterous amalgamation of eyes but the eye thing could have been scrapped altogether.

While his palette was the least red out of the cast (More so composed of yellows), it still blends in with the rest of the reds.

The claws are an unnecessary repeating design trait (Alastor and Vox notably have them too). I don't think it would've been too big of a difference to just keep his fingers fully black.

The stripes on his suit are too thick. It's called pinstripes for a reason.

I don't like how the hat is shaped to fit the head, It's awkward.

not a point, but I just wanted to say how the blue color palette works really well with him in that last episode.

CherriBomb:

She's not that bad of a design (She's sort of bland in my opinion) but it's the little small details about her that makes her so simple and also so complicated at the same time. There are so many batches of freckles scattered everywhere, little explosion lines on her skirt as well as the X on her chest, the tattoos are a jamble of random loops and bombs, and her tattering doesn't have an easy shape to consistently draw.

The thought process for these two:

Mx. Pentious:

Pentious goes by both Sir/Miss/Mx. but uses she/they pronouns.

Minimized the actual amount of eyes on her, I kept it only to her actual eyes and those on her hood.

Gave her a butterfly-shaped hood. It's nothing deep since it stems from the fact the notches in Sir Pentious' hood almost looked like one to my bad eyesight. I decided to play more into that idea.

I read some posts where people talk about how Sir Pentious should have a snout and while I understand why and fully support people giving him one, I really didn't want to add the snout to this design. It drove me crazy since I'm not a big fan of it. I tried a compromise where her head was shaped more like Phineas.

Kept the tophat but removed its eye and mouth. If I remember correctly, Viv took that from one of her co-workers from the pilot. I decided to just have it as a regular tophat.

It doesn't have all the colors, but her design does have the Neptunic flag.

I'm not sure if this even is a real snake but I based Mx. Pentious' design on this:

CherriBomb:

Scraped most of her features in exchange for a sukeban theme. I personally have zero knowledge about the punk scene in Australia.

A majority of the suggestions I received for her rough draft had something to do with the skirt. I elongated it and gave it a slit in which the magenta from the inside is able to pop out.

Thought it would be a cute detail to have her hair explode if she's angry.

----

Apologies this took too long to be posted, Life got in the way as well as the fact I was feeling shitty about Pentious' first draft. Her skin was an awkward and ugly shade of green and seeing some posts critical of Pentious' design got me to think a little bit more about what direction I'd like to move her redesign.

You could see this in the earlier rough sketches but this was how Pentious' first redesign looked like

[senjusonlygirlfriend]

Hospital visits

SPOILERS FOR THE LAST EP BELOW THE TWO CUTS! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!

𝑪𝒘/𝑻𝒘: 𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍, 𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒚, 𝒇𝒍𝒖𝒇𝒇

𝑪𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒚𝒂 𝒙 𝑮𝒏!𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

𝑺𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚: 𝑮𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍 𝒔𝒂𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒃𝒐𝒚𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒋𝒐𝒓 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒑𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒌𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆, 𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒂𝒇𝒆. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒏 𝒕𝒐 𝒗𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒕 𝒉𝒊𝒎 𝒕𝒐𝒅𝒂𝒚, 𝒂𝒔 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒅𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒔𝒆𝒆𝒎 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚.

Chishiya laid in his hospital bed, thinking. A lingering feeling of forgetting something had floated around in his mind, making him scratch his head. He only had to stay in the hospital for three more days, then he could go home. The thought of seeing you again in both of yours shared apartments put a small smile on his face.

He would finally be able to go home and change out of these hospital clothes, and have a real home cooked meal. During his daydreaming the door opened, as the person's footsteps walked closer to his bed. He glanced over to the left side of his bed, only to see your amazing face.

"Sorry, did I wake you?"

You had pulled up the chair closer to his bed, giving him time to take in your features. You were wearing one of his jackets, a white vip up one that gave him an odd sense of familiarity. A plain tee shirt was worn over it along with a pair of black jeans. You had your normal backpack, and he deduced that you just got out of your college class.

"No, just thinking."

The tv played softly in the background, some random soap opera show running. You had slid your backpack off and sat it down on the floor, and took off a tote bag that was under your arm. Sitting it down on his bed, you looked around in it before pulling out a crocheting hood and a ball of yarn. Chishiya moved his pillows so that he could now be sitting up.

The two of you sat there in a comfortable silence, as his cat like eyes watched you loop the yarn. Soon you had a full square, and had started the next one with a different color.

"That's a stylish jacket you got there. Where did you get it from?"

Chishiya's voice stopped you in making a loop in the yarn you were using. You looked up at him and smiled. He knew that smile, it was one you made before you were going to tease him.

"Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I got it from a certain someone's closet."

The both of you were smiling like idiots at each other. Chishiya then patted at the empty space on the bed on his left side. You giggled, climbing up on the bed as if you were a little kid again. Chishiya's arms had wrapped around you, tucking you into his side.

Your hook and a long piece of yarn was still in your hands, as if they worked on auto pilot. You sighed, enjoying being in his presence again.

"I missed you, like a lot. "

"Didn't you see me yesterday though?"

He had a sly grin on his face, a glimmer of mischief in his eyes. Your hands had stopped their work as you set the hook down at the end of the bed. Shoving your face into his chest, you rub your cheek into it. Your voice came out muffled against his clothes.

"Ok and? I could stop visiting if you want?"

He knew you were joking, but still caught a little bit of a sad tone in your voice. The first time you visited him you cried, a valid reaction to your s/o almost being killed. He had held your hand, telling you all about how he was alive and wiped some of your tears. He deduced that you visiting him and making jokes a little more than normal was your way of coping with what was happening.

"As if I would ever let you do that."

He squeezed you a little more against him, as your laughter filled the room. Chishiya was finally happy to hear that beautiful sound again. Once the two of you had died down he had realized something. That something was that you fell asleep on him. He had looked at your sleeping form, scanning every perfect detail in your face.

Leaning down he kissed the crown of your head, promising both himself and you mentally that he would do better for the both of you. He didn't want to waste a chance for a second life with you now, would he?

[discount-elysium]

Pale Static Exchange Gift

Happy Pale Static Exchange @nonsal! I wrote a fic for your requests. You can read it on ao3 here, or under the cut below, whichever you prefer! I hope you had a lovely holiday season, and that you enjoy your present!

FIC: (You are) the life I needed all along

PAIRING: Harry/Kim, Harry & Kim

Summary: Harry invites Kim to a nice dinner, and it does not, in fact, go spectacularly wrong.

YOUR APARTMENT’S SHOEBOX OF A KITCHEN - The room is warm, the dough under your hands is pleasantly sticky and forming well, the radio is softly playing, and you’re in the middle of making dinner for your favorite person.  Life, for the moment, is good.

SHIVERS [Medium: Success] - Outside of your window, the grey expanse of cloud hangs low and dismal over the rain-dampened street.  Few people brave this temporary lull in the downpour: a man rushing to meet his sister, a woman coming home early from work, two sticky-faced children sharing an adventure.

Revachol no more sleeps than her people do–but perhaps even she’s afforded a moment’s repose, in all this rain.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - And you, Harrier Du Bois, have a stew pot full of broth, several pounds of farmer’s-market-Lynne’s best chuck, onions, carrots, potatoes, and a fuckload of herbs cooking on the stove.  From the smell of this kitchen right now, you might as well be the best cook that ever lived.

YOU -

Fuck yeah I am!  I’m a superstar chef.  Gorący Kubek eat your heart out.

Admittedly I did once light my kitchen a little bit on fire.  But it was a very little bit!  Barely worth bringing up any more, really.

…I do okay.

YOU - For a moment, you put a little more force into kneading your bread dough than is probably strictly necessary.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Aw, who cares about the kitchen fire?  That was two months ago.  Might as well have happened to a different person.

HALF-LIGHT - There’s still scorch marks on the counter.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - And?  Nothing here’s unblemished, including Harry, but that’s not the point.  Can’t you feel the saliva pooling under your tongue, Harry?  Can’t you smell the air?

PERCEPTION (Smell) [Easy: Success] - It does smell very nice.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Thank you.

YOU - Of the various pastimes you tried your hand at post-Martinaise–and there were many–

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Knitting, journaling, bird-watching, cooking, drawing, wood-working, knitting again–

YOU - Cooking is the only one that seems to have really stuck.  It does you good, having something to keep your hands busy that produces tangible results.  It doesn’t hurt that recently, those results have been delicious.

And today, you’re finally going to do the thing you’ve wanted to do for months!

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Medium: Failure] - Sleep with Kim!

VOLITION - Khm.  Ah.  The other thing Harry’s wanted for months, Feel-good.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - No one appreciates genius in its time. :(

VOLITION - …

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Medium: Success] - …fine.  Feed Kim your food.

YOU - Homemade bread and stew may not be the fanciest fare, but they’re still good, and you’re confident that you can make them well.  Kim’s going to come over to dinner and eat something you’ve made him, and he’s going to enjoy himself.

LOGIC - This is going to go over better than the scarf did.

YOU - You pause, momentarily, in your kneading. 

EMPATHY - Hey, he said he liked the scarf!  

RHETORIC [Easy: Success] - No, he said it was ‘thoughtful.’

EMPATHY - Which is a way to say you like something!

LOGIC - If he liked it so much, why doesn’t he ever wear it?

PERCEPTION [Easy: Success] - It was a little…lumpy.

INLAND EMPIRE - Warm, soft white wool, cloud-like under your fingers.  You were in the craft store for a case and touched it in passing–you left without it.  That night you thought of aerostatic pilots with long white scarves to ward off the chill of interinsulary travel; you thought of Kim, blowing warm air over his cold fingers in alleyways and turning up the collar of his coat.  You went back to that little store a day later.

HAND EYE COORDINATION - I did my best!  Speaking of which–

YOU - Idly, your hands move.  The warm dough stretches, elastic under your hands.  You’ve oiled a bowl already; you put your dough into it for its first rise and cover it.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Like the pupa in its chrysalis: warm, enclosed, waiting for change.

YOU - With your stew cooking and your bread rising, there’s not much else you need to do in the kitchen.  You putter out to your living room with the intention of tidying up, but it’s…honestly not that bad?

COMPOSURE - Khm.  Yeah.  That would be from the compulsive nervous cleaning you already did a few hours ago.  I can only hold this ship together so much, and luckily this time, the nervous energy was constructive!

LOGIC - Kim’s been to your apartment before, Harry.  He’s seen it worse than this.

YOU - The only other thing you were planning to do was pick out a post-meal board game.  You don’t have very many board games–they’re expensive–but you’ve started a little collection since Martinaise, and you’re hoping Kim will want to play one tonight.  You think you’ve narrowed it down to two options, Beyond the Pale–

ENCYCLOPEDIA - A two to four player semi-cooperative game about aerostatic pilots lost in the Pale, desperately trying to repair their aerostatic while fending off possibly-hallucinatory creatures from the Pale–but the pilots may have hidden motives…

YOU - And Tailor Made.

ENCYCLOPEDIA - A shorter, but very charming two to four player game about sewing custom blankets to attract various cats to sleep on them.

YOU - But maybe only giving Kim two options is too restrictive?  Maybe you should just pull your whole collection out and let him pick?

EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] - Harry.  Try taking a deep breath.

YOU - You take a deep breath.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - You can breathe deeper than that!  Put your diaphragm into it!

YOU - You take a second, deeper, manlier breath.  Then you take another, because real athletes always give 110%.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Your hands stop shaking.

YOU - Oh.  

EMPATHY - Yes, oh.  

YOU - I was panicking, wasn’t I?

EMPATHY - Mmhm.  Want to make a guess about why, Harry?

YOU -

What is this, introspection?  Self-awareness?  I don’t like it.  Real men keep their mysterious emotions bottled up inside their chiseled and rugged chests until they, for unrelated reasons, abruptly die of bleeding ulcers or heart attacks.  (Opt out)

I can do this.  I can have a whole entire thought about my emotional state and I probably won’t even cry about it.  (Opt in).  

ESPRIT DE CORPS [Medium: Success] - In the halls of Precinct 41, Satellite Officer Jean Vicquemare is abruptly struck by the irrational feeling that he owes Patrol Officer Judit Minot 5 reál.  He shakes his head, and the baffling certainty passes.

YOU - In preparation for this terrifying new endeavor, you take a quick lap of your living room.  Then you close your eyes very tightly–

LOGIC - Is that really a necessary step?

EMPATHY - Shush.

YOU - And you confront the question.  Why are you worrying?

YOU - 

Because you want tonight to go well.

Because since minute one of your haphazard reentry into this world, it’s been a little bit about Kim, hasn’t it?  Not all about Kim–he would hate the thought of that–but a little.  His Kineema called you back to life.  When everything in the world was terrifying and nonsensical, he was a steady point against which you could orient yourself.  You rebuilt yourself painstakingly, and he didn’t help, exactly, but he gave you grace.  He was gentle with you when you stumbled.

And in the months since Martinaise, he’s continued to be your friend.  He’s not perfect, and neither are you.  There have been arguments, and doubts, and low points.  But when you need him to have your back, he has.  Every time.

And it’s not that you want to repay him, exactly, because you don’t owe him.  But tonight, you want him to feel warm, and well fed, and appreciated.  You want him to feel good with you.  Because of you.  

….because you love him.

YOU - You get the oddest feeling that there was a more honest choice you could have made–a thought there you turned back from fully confronting.  But that’s a silly thing to think about!  Haha.  Ha.  Phew.  Emotions sure are hard.  Good thing you won’t be looking directly at yours again any time soon.  

EMPATHY - …Harrier.

YOU - Anyway, that was a productive realization: you really want tonight to go well!  And you definitely know exactly what you can do to make that happen, and to not have to think any more deeply about this whole thing: make dessert!!

EMPATHY - …I give up.  I don’t get paid enough to manage this mess.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Amen, brother.

…

YOUR APARTMENT - By the time Kim knocks on your door that evening, you’ve got the stew ready in the nicest bowl you own, homemade bread waiting on a cutting board beside it, and a berry crumble ready to pop in the oven once dinner gets started.  Your slightly-lopsided kitchen table is as neatly set as your mismatched silverware allows for.  Your apartment is clean.  Your boardgame choices are set out.  You’re all set to woo–khm.  What an odd slip.  You’re ready to impress the hell out of Kim.

KIM KITSURAGI - Kim knocks on your door at 19:30 on the dot, precisely on time.  When you open the door–

REACTION SPEED [Easy: Success] - HE IS WEARING THE SCARF.

KIM KITSURAGI - With his collar turned up, and the scarf tucked in around his neck, the lumpiness of it is less noticeable than it was in your memory.  He looks warm, and comfortable.  For no particular reason, your breath catches in your chest.

YOU - “You look nice!”

KIM KITSURAGI - Taken slightly aback, Kim blinks.

SUGGESTION [Medium: Failure] - Uh, shit.  Uh–try saying more?  That’ll fix this.

YOU - “In my scarf, I mean.  Or–your scarf.  Because I gave it to you, so it’s–it’s your scarf.”

PERCEPTION [Medium: Success] - Kim’s smiling, now.  It’s small, but it’s there.

YOU - “I should probably invite you inside.”

KIM KITSURAGI - “Yes, detective.  Unless you’re planning to serve dinner on your doorstep.”

YOU - You lead Kim inside, and offer to take his coat.  Kim shrugs out of his coat and scarf and watches with a faint air of confusion as you hang them up on coat hooks for him–something he could very easily do himself.  Out of the bright orange jacket which you sometimes privately think of as his armor, Kim always looks a little softer and smaller.  It’s a good look.

KIM KITSURAGI - When you pull out a chair at your kitchen table for him, Kim goes still, briefly.  His dark eyes search your face for something, and you’re not sure exactly what he sees.  “Detective,” he says.

RHETORIC - He sounds almost wary.

COMPOSURE [Medium: Failure] - Unable to bear the weight of his gaze, you wave vaguely towards his seat at the table.  “Go ahead.  Sit down, get started.  I’ll just–uh.  Pop in the crumble.”

YOU - If you take longer than you need to, strictly speaking, to find your oven mitts, open your oven, and set the dessert in–if you wait until you’re sure you’ve heard Kim’s weight settle into his chair, and the click of serving utensils–well.  Hopefully the other detective in the room isn’t going to call you on it!

KIM KITSURAGI - By the time you join him at the table, Kim has in fact started eating–he, like many other people who grew up in the years following the Antecentennial Revolution, doesn’t tend to leave food sitting long before tucking in.

INLAND EMPIRE - Memories of hungrier days linger long after they’re gone.  You’d know, Harry.

KIM KITSURAGI - He passes the cutting board towards you, an evenly-cut slice waiting for you there.  “It’s all very good.  Thank you.”

COMPOSURE [Challenging: Success] - The sting in your eyes comes as a surprise, but you blink, hard, and manage to push it back before you do something horribly embarrassing like cry over Kim complimenting your food.

KIM KITSURAGI - Kim settles a hand on your elbow, gently.

REACTION SPEED - Not fast enough for Kim not to notice, though.

ESPRIT DE CORPS [Medium: Success] - Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi is an excellent detective.  From the moment you opened your door, he’s been gathering evidence: your uncommonly clean living room, the way you took his coat, the way you pulled out a chair for him.  Nothing you do goes unnoticed.  He’s coming close to a conclusion, now.  

EMPATHY - Are you actually willing to hear it?

YOU -

Distract him.  Open your mouth, say something outrageous, and draw his attention away.

[Volition: Challenging] - Look at Kim, and wait for what he has to say.

VOLITION [Challenging: Success] - You steel yourself.  It’s difficult to meet Kim’s eyes–those eyes that, for all their far-sightedness, see so much–but you bring yourself to do it.  You wait.

KIM KITSURAGI - “Detective.”  He pauses a moment, then, “Harry.  You know you don’t need to impress me.”

YOU - “Can’t I want to?” Suddenly the words are bubbling up at your lips, urgent.  “Don’t you deserve to be impressed, Kim?”

RHETORIC - You know that sounds like–

EMPATHY - Shut.  Up.

YOU - “I just want you to stay.  For good food, and for berry crumble, and for–to trounce me at board games, after.  I want you to have a good time with me.  Is that too much?”

PERCEPTION [Challenging: Success] - Kim lets out a very controlled breath.  He’s looking at you very steadily.

KIM KITSURAGI - “No, Harry.  That’s not too much.”  His hand tightens for a moment on your elbow, and then he lets go.  He takes the bowl from in front of you, and ladles stew into it, setting it back in front of you full.  “Eat, before it gets cold, hmm?”

YOU - The rational thing to do would be to do as Kim says, but instead you say, like a child in need of reassurance, “So you’re staying?”

KIM KITSURAGI - There’s something in the way he’s looking at you, now, that you cannot fully parse.  “Yes, I’ll stay.”  He looks away with a smile–an almost private little curve of his lips.  “We have plenty of time.”

[kikidoesfanfic]

Peter Parker's Guide to Romance

KikiDoesFanfic on ao3

James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark/Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier/Tony Stark, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Precious Peter Parker, Matchmaker Peter Parker, Not Clint Barton Friendly, Not Wanda Maximoff Friendly, Bucky Barnes & Winter Soldier are Different Personalities, They jaeger pilot the same body, POV Multiple, Insecure Tony Stark, Misunderstandings, Fluff Rating: T Marvel Cinematic Universe No Archive Warnings Apply Words: 20,481 Chapters: 5/5 On Ao3

Summary:

Upon coming to Mr Stark for advice about his own romance woes, Peter realises something he hadn't paid much attention to before, Mr Stark hasn't dated in ages.

He definitely deserves his own special someone, and Peter knows just the Sergeants for the job.

Time for Peter to play matchmaker. Preview below the cut

"But she acts like she hates me!" Peter despairs, hands raising in the air in spite of the tools in them. They're working on one of Mr Stark's sports cars, it's so cool. Peter doesn't think he'll ever bother having a car in the middle of NYC, but getting to work on Mr Stark's is enough to make him consider it, he even said Peter could borrow this one some time if he helps tune it up.

"Kid I've seen her with you, she's teasing, she likes messing with people, she's at least a friend." He slides out from under the car to point at Peter with a wrench, "she does act like she hates everyone, but she also acts like she hates you and Ned the least, do with that what you will."

"What if I like her as more than a friend?" Peter asks, leaning under the hood of the car to hide his now burning cheeks. It's not that he's embarrassed about liking her, he thinks, it's that he hasn't really had anyone to talk to about this, Aunt May is not the best at love life pep talks. He knows Mr Stark has been in the tabloids as more of a... playboy? But he's definitely learnt since becoming Spiderman that you can't trust everything you read in a gossip rag, plus he hasn't seen Mr Stark date anyone since Miss Potts anyway.

"Well, first you decide what you'd like to happen, do you want to just date her? Do you want to be friends? Do you want a relationship?" And okay, that's a good point, what if he dates her and it doesn't work out and they can't be friends anymore? Would he make Ned have to split time between them to keep both his friends? Is that selfish? But what if it works out and they stay together? They are in highschool though... how many people end up together forever with their highschool sweetheart? Peter doesn't know anyone that has.

"Geez kid don't over think it, I can hear your brain whirring from down here." He wheels out again, hand feeling around for a tool while he looks at Peter. "Sometimes it's worth it even if things don't work out, the experience, the memories, learning about yourself. Sometimes you can still be friends even if you break up, look at me and Pep, we still get along even if it took some awkwardness to get there in the beginning."

He finally looks down to the floor at the now scattered tools, sighing exasperatedly with a smile on his face.

"Butterfingers, daddy needs that, you have your own tools to play with," he looks back to Peter, stage whispers "I think he wants to be an engineer when he grows up too."

Butterfingers trills a few beeps that Peter thinks sound like agreement as he returns the tool, and Mr Stark pats the side of his body fondly.

"If you like her, you like her Petey, and if you think the chance of it working out would make you happy, what's the harm? She doesn't seem like the kind of person to hold a grudge," Peter gives him an incredulous look, "or not over something like that anyway. Just, don't miss your chance kiddo, it's better to try and know either way, than to look back at what ifs with regret."

He looks wistful as he says it, staring off at a bench against the wall absent-mindedly, and Peter thinks he looks kind of... sad?

"Yeah, you're right Mr Stark." He thinks a moment, with Liz things sort of just happened, but with MJ maybe he should try and flirt? A little? See how she reacts. Problem being he hasn't really done that on purpose before.

"How do I show her that I like her without just saying that I like her? Just blurting it out seems," he pulls a face.

"Not a dramatic love confession kind of guy? It's okay you can work with that, though you'll have to tell her with words eventually, relationships, communication, all that jazz." He waves a hand in a gesture Peter assumes is supposed to encompass said jazz. "That is if she doesn't decide to do it for you, she seems like she would enjoy that."

And yeah, that's probably a fair assessment, she totally would. They talk a while longer, Mr Stark having great advice about showing someone you care that he eagerly notes down, ideas already forming for school the next day.

"And, if you want to give a gift make sure it's something they want. Going over the top for going over the top's sake is less appreciated by most." He has a wry, self depreciating grin on his face as he says it, likely a lesson learned by experience then. "You know her, Kid, you got this and if she doesn't feel the same that's okay too."

Peter thanks him, and while he's thinking of something else to ask Friday's voice chimes in.

"Boss, Mr Barton is quite insistent that he speak to you about an issue with his equipment, I told him that you are busy, but he is refusing to vacate. Would you prefer for me to lock down the lab, or alert someone to have him removed?" Mr Stark sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose for a frustrated moment before pushing himself up from the floor.

"It's alright, I'll take care of it this time, I'll just get harrassed in the hallway otherwise." He's halfway to the door, smoothing his shirt and running a hand through his hair to look less ragged, when he turns back to Peter. "Sorry this should just take a moment, I'll be right back."

He heads out, lab doors closing behind him and Peter huffs. Too many people are demanding of Mr Stark's time these days, he needs a break, a nice night off with someone who just wants his company... like a date? He should definitely go on a date, and not just because Peter is feeling quite enthused about romance right now. Or okay, maybe a little... but also Mr Stark really deserves to have someone special in his life, someone who cares about him, and will look out for his best interests, and make sure he relaxes and takes a night off when Peter's not around to pester him into it.

"But she acts like she hates me!" Peter despairs, hands raising in the air in spite of the tools in them. They're working on one of Mr Stark's sports cars, it's so cool. Peter doesn't think he'll ever bother having a car in the middle of NYC, but getting to work on Mr Stark's is enough to make him consider it, he even said Peter could borrow this one some time if he helps tune it up.

"Kid I've seen her with you, she's teasing, she likes messing with people, she's at least a friend." He slides out from under the car to point at Peter with a wrench, "she does act like she hates everyone, but she also acts like she hates you and Ned the least, do with that what you will."

"What if I like her as more than a friend?" Peter asks, leaning under the hood of the car to hide his now burning cheeks. It's not that he's embarrassed about liking her, he thinks, it's that he hasn't really had anyone to talk to about this, Aunt May is not the best at love life pep talks. He knows Mr Stark has been in the tabloids as more of a... playboy? But he's definitely learnt since becoming Spiderman that you can't trust everything you read in a gossip rag, plus he hasn't seen Mr Stark date anyone since Miss Potts anyway.

"Well, first you decide what you'd like to happen, do you want to just date her? Do you want to be friends? Do you want a relationship?" And okay, that's a good point, what if he dates her and it doesn't work out and they can't be friends anymore? Would he make Ned have to split time between them to keep both his friends? Is that selfish? But what if it works out and they stay together? They are in highschool though... how many people end up together forever with their highschool sweetheart? Peter doesn't know anyone that has.

"Geez kid don't over think it, I can hear your brain whirring from down here." He wheels out again, hand feeling around for a tool while he looks at Peter. "Sometimes it's worth it even if things don't work out, the experience, the memories, learning about yourself. Sometimes you can still be friends even if you break up, look at me and Pep, we still get along even if it took some awkwardness to get there in the beginning."

He finally looks down to the floor at the now scattered tools, sighing exasperatedly with a smile on his face.

"Butterfingers, daddy needs that, you have your own tools to play with," he looks back to Peter, stage whispers "I think he wants to be an engineer when he grows up too."

Butterfingers trills a few beeps that Peter thinks sound like agreement as he returns the tool, and Mr Stark pats the side of his body fondly.

"If you like her, you like her Petey, and if you think the chance of it working out would make you happy, what's the harm? She doesn't seem like the kind of person to hold a grudge," Peter gives him an incredulous look, "or not over something like that anyway. Just, don't miss your chance kiddo, it's better to try and know either way, than to look back at what ifs with regret."

He looks wistful as he says it, staring off at a bench against the wall absent-mindedly, and Peter thinks he looks kind of... sad?

"Yeah, you're right Mr Stark." He thinks a moment, with Liz things sort of just happened, but with MJ maybe he should try and flirt? A little? See how she reacts. Problem being he hasn't really done that on purpose before.

"How do I show her that I like her without just saying that I like her? Just blurting it out seems," he pulls a face.

"Not a dramatic love confession kind of guy? It's okay you can work with that, though you'll have to tell her with words eventually, relationships, communication, all that jazz." He waves a hand in a gesture Peter assumes is supposed to encompass said jazz. "That is if she doesn't decide to do it for you, she seems like she would enjoy that."

And yeah, that's probably a fair assessment, she totally would. They talk a while longer, Mr Stark having great advice about showing someone you care that he eagerly notes down, ideas already forming for school the next day.

"And, if you want to give a gift make sure it's something they want. Going over the top for going over the top's sake is less appreciated by most." He has a wry, self depreciating grin on his face as he says it, likely a lesson learned by experience then. "You know her, Kid, you got this and if she doesn't feel the same that's okay too."

Peter thanks him, and while he's thinking of something else to ask Friday's voice chimes in.

"Boss, Mr Barton is quite insistent that he speak to you about an issue with his equipment, I told him that you are busy, but he is refusing to vacate. Would you prefer for me to lock down the lab, or alert someone to have him removed?" Mr Stark sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose for a frustrated moment before pushing himself up from the floor.

"It's alright, I'll take care of it this time, I'll just get harrassed in the hallway otherwise." He's halfway to the door, smoothing his shirt and running a hand through his hair to look less ragged, when he turns back to Peter. "Sorry this should just take a moment, I'll be right back."

He heads out, lab doors closing behind him and Peter huffs. Too many people are demanding of Mr Stark's time these days, he needs a break, a nice night off with someone who just wants his company... like a date? He should definitely go on a date, and not just because Peter is feeling quite enthused about romance right now. Or okay, maybe a little... but also Mr Stark really deserves to have someone special in his life, someone who cares about him, and will look out for his best interests, and make sure he relaxes and takes a night off when Peter's not around to pester him into it.

On Ao3

[avastrasposts]

Hello!

So I just realised about 300+ people decided to follow me and, I suppose, read my stories? And 300 is such a small number but to me it's surreal that so many of you want to read what I write!

So I thought I'd introduce myself a little, just to be polite you know, and be like those author blurbs they put on the inside flap of books. So read on if you want to know more about me and my writing, or just keep scrolling if you'd rather I remain a redheaded mystery with a thing for Frankie Morales.

Also, chapter 16 of The Pilot and his Girl will be posted tomorrow, it just needs another round of editing.

Also, again, this got long, so if you can't be bothered reading all my ramblings below the cut, I totally understand. I have a habit of getting wordy....

So, I'm in my 40's and I've been writing for most of my life, starting with embarrassing little short stories in adorable misspelled fashion when I was just wee. I aspired to be a journalist and then went on a completely different tangent career wise, ending up with a PhD in an area I no longer work in (fifteen years of higher education never to be touched again but you definitely want me on your team in a pub quiz!). I have vague memories of writing fan fiction in my early 20, I think? (I'm old, give me a break). But I only got back to it late last year as a way to kick start my imagination and discipline around writing again. I needed a creative outlet and writing is something I always enjoyed and found easy to do.

I live in England, in the amazing but fucking expensive city of London. I look pretty much like my profile picture, only more wrinkles and maybe a bit of silver in all that gingerness. I'm a very good cook and baker (Pedro, I'll teach you how to cook any day!) and I'm married to my very own sweet Latino man. He's not called Frankie but he does call me cariño. I have big chunk of family in Sweden and I speak a little bit of Swedish (it's actually where I am right now, we're over here celebrating midsummer).

I started writing fanfics for The Boys fandom and Karl Urban as I was binging the whole show after finishing season 4. Then I stumbled into the Pedro Pascal fandom as I watched The Last of Us.

TLoU has a very special place in my heart. I've been gaming since my early teens and bought a Playstation 3 after saving for months, my first console after playing on PC for years. When TLoU came out in 2013 I bought and played it straight away and I, like so many others, had an experience playing it. It's the only story, in any medium, that's made me cry after just 10-15 minutes of game play. The scene were Sarah dies, still gets me every time. And the rest of the game...I turned up at work the next week in a daze, just needing to tell people about this incredible story and experience I'd had. It was like no other game I'd ever played, before or since. And I've replayed the game about once a year since 2013. Back then, that kind of game was totally unique, there was nothing like it. Some games had explored stronger story telling elements, but not on this level, nothing came even close to creating such a bond between gamer and characters. Now days we're spoiled by powerful storytelling in video games, in 2013, The Last of Us was totally unique (sorry, I'm blabbering, but I could go on at length about TLoU and the impact it had).

So when I heard there was talks about turning into a tv-series, I was scared. Really worried. The gaming community have seen so many horrendous adaptations of video games, my beloved Assassin's Creed was butchered in 2016. But then I heard Pedro Pascal had been cast as Joel and I was carefully hopeful, and then Bella Ramsey as Ellie and I got really excited. I'd seen them both in Game of Thrones, both of their performances sticking in my mind. I even remember reading about Pedro being cast in GoT and looking him up and being disappointed because he looked nothing like I'd pictured the Red Viper when I read the books. But then he just swanned in and crushed it, he was so damn good, he won me over straight away. I can't imagine anyone else playing Oberyn.

And then of course, the first few trailers of TLoU dropped and we got glimpses of the show and I remember texting my equally TLoU obsessed friend and we squealed in delight at how good it looked! And the first time I heard the clicker sound....I shuddered, it was a very real physical reaction. If I'd been on the actual set and heard it, I think I would've run a mile.

And then, as I was still writing The British Connection, a fic set in The Boys fandom, I watched Triple Frontier, and, like so many others, fell hard for sweet Frankie Morales. So jumping the gun a bit, I decided to write something with him, just a drabble, to get used to writing him and to write in the Reader insert format. But it kind a grew in scope and when I had the idea of sticking him and the rest of the Triple Frontier boys into TLoU universe I knew I had to create something bigger.

Looking back I would've made the story tighter, less lengthy, had I known from the start that's where it was going to go. But part of the fun of fan fiction is posting as you go, I think. I get feedback from you guys and it makes me think of other elements to add to the story. There isn't always a set road map for how a fic is going to develop.

If you've made it this far, congratulations and thank you, I'm impressed you read all that rambling from some stranger on Tumblr! The Pilot and his Girl has a set plan now, I have chapters drawn up and although I'm not sure how many chapters I'm going to end up with, I know where the story is going. You'll find out what's happened to Pope, Will and Benny. And Joel and Tommy will of course come back to the story later on. There will be more trauma and angst as the story continues but there will be a happy ending, of sorts, in the end.

And again, thank you all for reading, commenting and reblogging! I love you all!

[marjaystuff]

Matthew Quirk interview

Inside Threat by Matthew Quirk is a political thriller that will remind readers of Vince Flynn’s Transfer of Power and David Baldacci’s characters Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, retired Secret Service Agents. The plot has secrets, lies, and betrayals with the readers not knowing who the bad guys are and who are the good guys.

The book begins with an attack on the White House, obvious that it has been breached.  The President, his wife, the most trusted officials, and the best Secret Service Agents move to a secure underground facility known as Raven Rock.  Most impressive is how Quirk drew a simplified version of this complex.  It is a facility 700 feet under a mountain near Camp David.  

Secret Service Agents Eric Hill and Amber Cody, soon discover the threat is locked inside with them. Communications have been cut, exits sabotaged, and bodies piling up. Hill and Cody must use their skills and instincts to determine who can be trusted.  Are the perpetrators the officials, or those in the Army, or the Secret Service? Both know they must do whatever it takes to protect the institution they have been sworn to serve and protect.

Given the current events, this concept of a threat to the government from within is very scary. Wondering who is a friend and who is a foe has readers taking the dangerous journey with Hill and Cody. The many twists will keep people reading, not wanting to put the book down. The Q&A below comes from notes from a conversation with Quirk that has been condensed.

Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea?

Matthew Quirk: I try to strike a balance between a conspiracy shadow behind certain powers, while adding hope, realism, and not feeding into the cynicism.  The premise has what would happen if a President came under attack?  I played with these questions for the readers to think about. What is the drive behind someone going against the office they are protecting? Are they protecting a larger value by taking matters into their own hands? Is going rogue part of the problem or solving the problem? Who can be trusted? This is my go at a Die Hard or Seven Days in May story with a bit of Agatha Christie thrown in.

EC: Was the President based on anyone?

MQ: This is an interesting time for politics, with such a high temperature. I try in writing a plot to be non-partisan. Some readers of my books have diametrically opposed views.  They find corollaries of what is currently happening. For them, the story will often confirm their views of how they perceive Washington DC.  For instance, if there is a crooked President in the book, each side thinks the President is part of the other side. For me, it is interesting that I can write these political thrillers in an incredibly polarized time and still have them appeal broadly. 

EC:  How would you describe President Kline?

MQ:  Some think he is paranoid, elitist, aloof, but others think he is caring and protective. One of the mysteries of the book is, can the President be trusted to defend the Constitution?

EC:  What is real in the book?

MQ: “Yankee White,” a special background investigation, basically a clearance, required of anyone who will hold the President’s life in their hands such as a chef, helicopter pilot, and a doctor. There is this distinct circle of people that would single handedly be able to kill the President. 

The saying “shut up and color,” which is military slang for “do your job and follow orders.” This was one of the themes of the book because what if doing the right thing and following orders are at odds.

My friend had written an entire book on Raven Rock, the bunker 700 feet under a mountain near Camp David. I tried to find a bunch of imagery. In the beginning of the book, I drew a simplified layout of the architectural buildings and tunnels.  I wanted the reader to follow along with the action I did take some liberties to streamline things, but everything in the book comes from real life. 

The Presidential Emergency Action Documents, which are documents that can be invoked by the President.  No one knows what is in them. The President could possibly create martial law, suspend Congress, nationalize industries, and ignore the Constitution.

EC:  Do you think Secret Service Agents can be flies on the wall?

MQ:  I have this book quote, they “can see everything and see nothing.” I did talk to Secret Service people for the book. Their job is to protect the person and yet they are seeing Washington politics up close. They still do their job, which is protecting the office. Even if it someone they do not respect they are still willing to protect them, even to the point of sacrificing their life. This is very honorable.  

EC:  How would you describe the Secret Service Agent Eric Hill?

MQ:  Direct, a straight talker, protective, has a slight temper, loyal and suspicious.  Because of his backstory he is disillusioned. 

EC:  How would you describe the rookie Secret Service Agent Amber Cody?

MQ:  Tough, smart, stubborn, enthusiastic, disciplined, and feels she needs to prove herself to be brave.

EC:  There is a book quote about the Secret Service that reminds me of those in the military.  Please explain.

MQ:  You are referring to this book quote, “The Service was in many ways closer than family.  Agents spent more time with each other than they did with their wives and husbands and kids. They gave everything to the job, including their lives… They lived together, ate together, counted off endless hours driving through the sticks, standing in the rain, staked out in cars, and holed up in hotels.” Many of them are former military.  Talking to the real-life Secret Service Agents gave me this impression. They are so dedicated. It is like a military brotherhood.

EC:  A movie or TV show being made?

MQ:  Yes, we just announced that Chernin Entertainment has optioned the book for a feature film. I’m really excited to be working with them. The Night Agent has been renewed for season two with the plan to be out in 2024.

EC: Your next book?

MQ:  It’s early, so this could change, but the premise is that an actress who always plays tough characters and is well trained in weapons and martial arts has her friend gone missing. While looking for them, she is drawn into the world of espionage and diplomacy.  To save her friend and survive she needs to become as tough as the characters she plays on TV.

THANK YOU!!

[no-droids]

Mercy, Sabotage, and Dead Space

(gif credit to @redwyyne-archive)

Part One of The Bet series

Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 12.7K

Summary:

1. No sex.

2. No touching yourself.

3. No orgasms.

Warnings/Tags: DUBCON/NONCON elements, fuckboy Poe (OOC), Enemies to Lovers, degradation/humiliation, mentions of oral sex, SMUUUTTTTTTTT also I’m not sorry for what I did but you’re not allowed to read if you’re gonna get mad at me okay byeeee

***

This.

This shit, right here.

If the question was ever, “What’s the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever let Poe Dameron somehow talk you into doing?” then the answer is this stupid shit, right the fuck here.  This is like.  You remember that one game, Mercy?  The one where you’d dig your nails in and twist arms and just needlessly inflict pain on each other as children until one of you cried uncle because someone somewhere once decided to turn torture into a matter of pride?

You always thought those games were fucking ridiculous.  Who can hold their breath the longest, who can handle a lit deathstick against their flesh the longest, who can take the hardest punch—who cares?  It’s child’s play.  It’s self-inflicted agony for the sake of bragging rights and even as a youngling, you refused to fall for it.

But then you met… fucking Dameron.

You know those people that… they don’t just rub you the wrong way, but literally every single aspect about their personality is sandpaper against wet skin and your whole entire being feels chafed raw just by existing in their general vicinity for an extended period of time?

You’re… you’re not usually a competitive—much less aggressive person.  You never have been.  It’s just not part of your nature.  If you ever excel at anything in life, it isn’t because of some secret, deep-seated desire to win or be better than anyone else.  You just… do you.  You do whatever you do, and if it’s good, it’s good.  And if it’s bad, it’s good.  Because at the end of the day at least it’s still you, and you’re okay with that.

But this?

This shit?  Right here?

“This is fucking dumb,” you say, because you know it’s what you both must be thinking so you may as well just get it out in the open.  “This is the dumbest fucking thing, Dameron.  What are we doing?  Why are we doing this?”

The grumpy, orange-jumpsuited figure sitting behind you just sighs heavily and slumps even further down in his bucket seat, as if it isn’t the first time you’ve tried asking this incredibly valid question (it totally is), bringing a palm down to thunk the top of the guidance controls between his legs in a quiet irritation you’re almost certain has everything to do with the very topic you’re trying to bring up. 

“Because,” comes that infuriating drawl.  You can only see his face from this angle by looking at his reflection in the transparisteel barrier directly in front of you, but even just imagining the way his mouth moves while he rounds out the words makes your jaw clench.  “The coordinates we picked up were scrambled and this rendezvous could be going down at any one of thirty-six locat—?”

“No,” you interrupt him with a scowl, “not why I’ve been floating in dead space in this Maker-forsaken ship with you for eight fucking hours a day since… fuck, what’s today?  Thursday?  Friday?  Nope, can’t be Friday, Friday’s our off-day.  Thursday, then. …Thursday?”  You shake your head.  “Ugh, see?  Time doesn’t exist when I’m not allowed to cum, life is like one never-ending nightmare.”

“Oh.”  He takes a second to think about it in silence, the calloused tips of his fingers scratching the side of his face while he considers.  It wouldn’t usually be as loud as it is right now.  Maybe it’s the haunting quiet of space surrounding the ancient powered down hunk of metal you’re both stuck in, inadvertently isolating and amplifying the sound—or maybe it’s because your copilot’s jaw is currently covered in a thick, dark beard that you swear barely took his testosterone-overloaded ass a fucking week or two to grow, if that.  Regardless, the dark bristles crunch loudly under his short fingernails and it takes you about a grand total of five whole uninterrupted seconds of the scraping sound to realize you’re grinding your teeth along with it.  “Well,” he finally says, “that was your stupid idea.”

“Hmmmmmmmno,” you contest firmly, wiggling your elbow back to poke at his shin with your index finger once, twice, thrice, until he finally slaps your hand away in quiet irritation.  To the misfortune of you both—and likely the other hundred or so pilots concurrently taking rotating shifts in these tandem x-wings in a glorified mass stakeout, the cockpit of this ship is just way too fucking small.  Your arm is squeezed uncomfortably against machinery and electronics to get to him from this angle and a light slap isn’t going to stop you now that you’re here.  “You—” (poke) “—have a superiority complex and decided to turn it into a competition, not—” (poke) “—me.”

“Oh, I have a superiority complex, okay,” he scowls and nods in vehement, fake agreement, finally giving up and letting you poke at will, but the appeal is lost as soon as you realize he’s over it and your arm eases back into your lap.  You watch his reflection look out of the viewport and scan the empty void of space for the twentieth time in the past five minutes, clearly just as desperate to get back to base as you are.  “So what is it you call saying—wait, no no, not even saying, loudly declaring—‘Of course I can go longer without sex than “wham bam thank you ma’am” Dameron, you brainless fucks, it’s a simple fact!’”

“Alright—I don’t sound like that, fuck you very much,” you return, in reference to his shrieking, high-pitched impression of you surrounded by your fellow pilots in the rec room when you’ve had a bit too much to drink.   “Also, you don’t have to finger-quote literally every single syllable of my fucking sentence, Dameron.  First and last word, that’s all it takes.  And if it’s so superiority complex-ey of me to state simple facts, then what is it you call saying ‘betcha two weeks worth of pay you can’t, pretty baby’?”

“Uh, easy credits?”  He immediately asks, side-eyeing your reflection through the transparisteel.  “ Easy credits.  Just begging for it.  Two weeks of your slutty, sexy, easy fucking credits just begging to be taken and used— ”

“You need to get laid,” you cut in to tell him bluntly, scrunching your nose in what you hope looks like disgust.  As per protocol, the power to the x-wing was cut at the beginning of your shift—what feels like a fucking eternity ago—as a preventative maneuver in case the target falls out of hyperspace unexpectedly.  Avoiding the scanners of a fleet that may never actually show means it’s cold and dimly lit in here—just starlight in front of either you, but you’re hoping he can gauge the severity of your revulsion with your back to him.  “You just turned my money into a sex object.  It was vile.  I feel violated on its behalf.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who needs to get laid,” he tosses carelessly back at you, and you roll your eyes with as much sass as you can physically muster, so tired of all the dodging.  You know this hasn’t been easy for him either, he just has too much pride to admit it.  “Besides, you’ve gotta be past the withdrawal stage by now.  Is it really all that bad?”

“The fuck you mean, ‘Is it really all that bad’?”  You snap at him, shuffling around grumpily in your seat, hating the way the bulky weapons controls sit right between your thighs and prevent you from closing them.  Withdrawal stage, ha.   “Of course it’s all that bad.  It’s horrible.  It’s the fucking worst.  And more importantly, how are you not having any trouble with this?  Oh, wait—that’s right,” you answer yourself before he has a chance to.  “Because you cheated.”

“I did not cheat,” Dameron’s reflection immediately challenges with an accusatory finger pointed at you.  “I did not.  When the fuck did I cheat?  I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half—all because you don’t believe in the honor system—just so you could tell me I fucking cheated?”

You scoff, feeling your annoyance spark even more.  He’s always been able to get under your skin, but the neglect you’ve been forcing your body to endure is just throwing gasoline on an already roaring fire.  “Okay, first of all?  Rude.  I am a fucking joy to have as a roomie, alright?  I put up with your snoring, your 2:00 AM dinners, you blasting your radio while I’m trying to sleep, I barely complain about your body odor—”

“My snoring is adorable, I get snacky at night, only sad people with fucked up lives hate music, I smell amazing,” Dameron casually lists off on his fingers, the self-confidence so easy and unshakeable that you swear he’s almost preening at the compliments he just gave himself by the time he’s finished rebutting everything you can think to throw at him.  And, while you’d never admit it, he does smell good.  He smells… unbelievably fucking good.  Always.  Something dark and woodsy, you can never quite put your finger on.  It pisses you off, so much that you’ve made a habit of pulling a face of disgust whenever the warm, rich scent noticeably reaches you, hoping it deflates his ego just a little bit.  No such luck so far.  

“Whatever.  The point is I’m a good fucking neighbor, alright, I’m neighborly as fuck,” you grumble, crossing your arms over your chest defensively.  “And don’t make it sound like I’m putting a chastity lock on your balls every night, because you can fuck anyone you want.  In fact, I strongly fucking encourage it—I just want to know about it when it happens.”

Dameron smirks and you groan, already knowing what’s coming.  “You wanna hear it?”

Yep, there it is.  “Second of all—”

“Feel the whole bunk rock with it?”  He goes on, completely ignoring you.  “Use the excuse that you’re trapped up top so you can just stay there the whole time and listen?  You know you can do a lot more than just—”

“Second of all,” you project over him, “you’re seriously telling me you haven’t had any wet dreams then, hm?  No snorgasms?  Hmmm?  No happy naps?  No captain midnights?  No mattress fracking?  Hmmmmmm???”

His voice very quickly sounds… shocked.  “How many fucking euphemisms—?”

“Wait wait, one more—” you quickly interrupt, too much momentum to stop now, “—sleepskeet.”

You watch in immense satisfaction as his expression seems to progress through all five stages of grief, before he exhales a long, unamused sigh and scratches his beard again.  You want to pluck each strand of it out of his face one by one.  “Anyways.  Wet dreams are totally different and don’t count.”

“It’s not different!”  You burst out, unable to help yourself, “it’s an orgasm, and rule number three is no orgas—”

“I know what the rules were, Gold-Ten,” he returns calmly, and it infuriates you, how he’s always able to make it seem like you’re the instigator who’s overreacting.  And he knows exactly what he’s doing by calling you by your flight designation, and it pisses you off even more because calling him Black-Leader in any other situation besides active warfare just feels like an unnecessary reminder of his skills.  Why he’s currently behind you manning the guidance controls and why you’re currently stuck in the front seat with the bulkier weapons systems.  “The question is if you’re seriously that bad enough of a sport to automatically disqualify me because of something that happens to any human with a dick indiscriminately when we blueball ourselves.”

“But that’s the entire fucking point, Dameron!”  You shrill, throwing your hands in the air in pure exasperation.  “There it is!  You need it more than I do, you just said it yourself!  Not to mention I said I can go longer without sex than you can— sex , not orgasms, but as it turns out I win at both.  Now can we please call this shit off so I can finally cum?  This isn’t fun anymore.”

“Nope,” he says immediately, popping the P with a bit too much hard emphasis to be genuinely amused.  He’s frustrated, too—his voice is too pleased, too fake to not be masking irritation underneath.  “Sorry.  But this was also your stupid idea, so.”

“You’re insufferable,” you grumble, anger flaring equal to his, just way more… verbal.  And descriptive.  “Wet dreams don’t count, fucking right.  Tell that to the oceans of Kamino I got going on down there, huh?  I move on this seat wrong and I’ll slide off it—”

A loud slam of a palm against the controls suddenly echoes throughout the small cockpit, causing you to jump slightly.  

“Don’t,” Dameron snarls, “... say shit like that to me.  Not right now.  Not right now, fuck .”

You go quiet for a moment, not expecting that much of an outburst at something you considered to be a throwaway remark, but then… oh.  Something occurs to you, something… sinister.  Oh, well, now there’s an idea.

Everything inside you immediately surges up and burns at the thought—the mere whisper of a way out of all of this, quickly, without giving in and letting him hold your surrender over you for Maker knows how long.  It’s so fucking simple, you don’t know why you didn’t think of it before.  You don’t have to wait him out at all; instead, you just need to… entice him into giving in first.

Neither of you say anything for a while, and you don’t know what he’s thinking (nothing, probably—a dry tumbleweed bouncing across an empty desert landscape, you imagine) but you take the dip in conversation to consider a plan.  You can’t go at it too outright, it’ll be too big of a turnaround and he’ll see it coming lightyears away.  A halfhearted joke about your pussy tossed out without thinking is what catalyzed the most substantial reaction from him you’ve seen, so… maybe you can keep steering the conversation towards the idea.

“How many wet dreams have you had?”  You suddenly ask, your heart beginning to pick up in your chest as soon as the words are out of your mouth.

“Excuse me?”  Dameron grunts from behind you, and you catch his reflection raising a thick eyebrow at you.

You take a deep breath and disguise it by stretching your back out just a little bit, lifting your shoulder blades and arching the sore muscles there, before settling back down in your normal crappy posture once more.  “Now many times did you cum in your sleep?  Had to at least been once for you to claim they don’t count.”

“Why does it matter?”  He asks, completely sidestepping the question for the second time.  “It was involuntary.”

You shrug.  “Just so I know how many freebies I can get tonight.”

“No,” Dameron instantly counters, his voice dead serious.  “Not fucking allowed.”

“Why not?”  You ask, and this time, there’s significantly less challenge than you’d typically deliver it with.  Instead, your voice is soft, questioning.  Not argumentative, but curious, and there’s just enough of your point left unsaid that it’ll seem like he conjured the rest of the image himself.

There’s silence while he considers his response to the perfectly executed bait.  You assume you’re both picturing the same thing, because it’s what you’ve pictured almost every single night spent in this celibate hellscape.  The cool darkness of your shared quarters, the standard-issue sheets that still feel crispy and rough on your skin no matter how many nights you’ve slept in them, with one of your hands pressed tight over your mouth and two of your fingers circle your clit.

“You only get to do it if I’m in the room,”  he poses instead, and you swallow thickly, feeling your body tighten with an unintentional drop of pure heat through your tummy at the thought.  Maker, it must be really bad if Poe fucking Dameron is getting to you like this.  The bane of your existence shouldn’t make your insides twist in on themselves—at least, not in a good way.

“Not like I’d have much choice,” you eventually respond, keeping it purposefully ambiguous.  “It’s your room, too.  Unfortunately.”

Stars, it’s been so long since you’ve done this, since you’ve walked the fine line between flirtation and seduction, wanting to turn on the charm slowly—gradually ease it up like a hyperdrive lever under your fingertips so that you’re at maximum by the time he realizes you’re even there.  You take a moment to glance at his reflection, watching Dameron look back at you curiously, a flash of interest in his eyes.

“By the way, how does that one girl feel about us doing this?”  You ask out of nowhere, suddenly remembering the existence of his pretty little number.  You’ve seen her under his arm around base at least a few times, which is more than you can say for the rest of them.  “Red-Six.  Tall brunette with the tattoos—I don’t bother learning names, they all come and go.”

“Nihla,” Dameron nods with a wistful sigh, tilting his head to rest against his shoulder.  “Or, wait… Neah.  No—it was… Nalal.  Yeah, Nalal, I think that’s right…”

“Unbelievable,” you mutter.  “One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is how many people get in line for you, I’ll never fucking understand it.”

“They just want me for my cock,” he tells you without missing a single beat, sounding like he’s not joking in the slightest.  “It was starting to get obnoxious.  Glad I finally have an excuse to turn them down.”

“Unbelievable,” you repeat, stunned by how truly, mind-blowingly full of himself he is.  “You’re… fucking…”

You end up just staring at him and making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, at a complete loss for words, and Dameron eventually shrugs and continues on after you fail to form a coherent thought in the allotted time frame he provides.

“Now I can just tell them I’m in a long-running bet with Gold-Ten over who can sexually deprive themselves the longest and weirdly enough, they don’t seem all that interested anymore,” he remarks, tilting his chin up and rubbing at his beard again, and for some reason… the sound of it bothers you somewhat less now, the way he phrased that resonating deeper inside you than it should.  Lower than it should.  You blink a few times, almost shocked by your body’s unprecedented response to his admission—Poe Dameron uses you as an excuse to turn down sex with pretty girls?  Happily?—and your mind goes blank for a second while he watches you through the transparisteel.  “It’s alright,” he eventually goes on, tilting his head.  “Sometimes a sabbatical is good.  I do really miss pussy, though.”

“Well,” you finally tell him, oddly not having much else to offer at the moment.  “I’m sorry?  And… you’re welcome.  I guess.”

Dameron shrugs once more and makes an apathetic sound without opening his mouth, and you drop your stare down to the machinery between your spread thighs after feeling like you were looking at each other for too long.  The position started uncomfortable and seven hours later, it’s still fucking uncomfortable.  At first the discomfort twinged at your hips and lower back, but now the sensation seems to be… centering itself a bit more, finding a spot right between your legs, especially when his words echo through your subconscious and make you naturally want to push your thighs together.  I do really miss pussy, though.

You try to snap out of it a bit, try to stop hyperfixating on the way your underwear has felt sticky and wet for fucking hours now, but it’s so fucking difficult to chill yourself out when your body already went into this whole situation with a month and a half long stumbling block.  He’s not really doing anything at all—he’s leant back in his chair and staring out the window into the black emptiness of space when you steal a look once more, but something about how his casual responses are affecting you makes it seem like he’s the one currently seducing you.

Maker, you have to focus.   You have to control yourself.  You’re starting to feel a little warm in your thick jumpsuit—a particular shade of orange that does not compliment your complexion but you normally rejoice in wearing regardless.  It’s baggy and uniform and hides most of your curves and most importantly, it keeps you toasty on missions like this.  Space is cold —especially this far out in the Cauper Void, and there’s no fucking reason this powered down hunk of floating metal should feel as muggy and stifling as it does in here.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you suddenly hear yourself say, spontaneously, no thought put into it whatsoever.  One last try, one last attempt to avoid it, a last-ditch go at flight before he gives you no choice and you’re left with this one remaining option.  “This isn’t a good idea.  It’s… not healthy.  I don’t want to do this anymore.”

This gets a small chuckle out of him.  “I know you don’t, pretty baby.”

“Then let’s just call the whole thing off,” you propose once again, trying to lighten your tone, make it a… a friendly thing.  It sounds so fake, even to your own ears—since when would you be desperate enough to let the dreaded petname slide?—but granted, you know what they say about time and measures and all that shit.  “We can call it a tie, just go back to the way things were befo—”

He cuts you off and pins you with his gaze through the reflection.  “You realize that you begging me to put an end to your suffering is—ridiculously hot, mostly—but also only an incentive to make me keep pushing until you finally give in?”

You groan and comb some of your hair off your forehead, not liking the way it’s getting just the slightest bit damp.  “Fine, we won’t call it off, but can we at least just stop—”  You immediately catch yourself, not wanting to unintentionally push this too far too quickly, but your hesitation is clear and compelling enough for him to prompt you.

“At least just stop what?”  Dameron asks, and though you don’t think it’s intentional or even noticeable from his perspective, something about the way his voice sounds… husky.  Low to the ground.

“Stop dragging it out,” you breathe, your heart pounding.  Why is your heart pounding so fucking fast?  This is a fucking sting op, a facade, so why are you getting so caught up in the lie you’ve spun for yourself?  “Finish it.  Sooner, rather than later.  Quit being masochists about it, just fucking put it to—”

Maker, your eyes instinctively snap to his at your poor choice of wording, having almost said bed on complete accident.  Genuinely, you didn’t mean to phrase it that way, but at the same time, the thought of it almost burns you alive.  Fuck.  Dameron, and you, in bed.  It could be mean.  It could be rough.  A fight for dominance more than anything.  He’s bigger than you and he could make it fucking hurt, especially after going without it for as long as you have, but something about how double-edged that type of relief would be isn’t really sinking in for you right now.  Like a person slowly dying of thirst that’s fantasizing about drowning.  Regardless, the idea of a night with him and the sudden assortment of vivid imagery it provides is enough to get you to shut up and take a deep breath, just wait with your mouth shut for whatever his response is.

Unfortunately, you don’t have to wait long at all.

“This is cute,” he suddenly tells you, and you jerk back and sputter a bunch of consonants stupidly like he smacked you.

“Fuck you?”  Are the first recognizable words that can be heard.  “I’m not—this isn’t fucking— cute?”

“It’s cute,” Dameron repeats, hiding a soft smile from you with a few of his fingers pressed to his lips.  “You,” he says as he points at your reflection, twirling his finger around in circles, “trying to be all sneaky about it, go about your little performance.  It’s like… watching a little kid just blatantly fuck up a magic trick but they’re naive enough to think it’s working.  Keep going, I’m enthralled.”

You hold still for just a second as ice suddenly sinks through your tummy and clears away any trace of warmth you may have once felt from before.  Of course.  Stupid.  Stupid, you shouldn’t have even tried something like that, you don’t know why you thought…

Horrifyingly, you go dead silent and the lack of an immediate response from you hangs awkwardly in the still air.  You’re usually so quick with him, so fiery, letting the things he throws at you just glide right off you, but for some insane reason, you’re actually fucking… embarrassed?  A little bit?

You should say something, but your whole body is just frustratingly blank, almost buzzing in mortification, and it gets worse and worse the longer you stay quiet.  You don’t usually put yourself in a position to be compromised, and you certainly didn’t think the place he decided to jab this time had particularly thin skin.

You… you’d forgotten what it’s like to have someone laugh at you when you’re genuinely trying your best to flirt.

Well, it’s too late to say anything now, you think.  Now it’s just uncomfortable in here—true discomfort, not the typical angry silences.  You’re used to that, you’re used to huffing and crossing your arms and ticking your jaw through the breaks in conversation, refusing to say a word because you’re beyond pissed off.  This is different.  This quiet sits different in the air, this emotion hits different in your chest, somewhere vulnerable.  A crack in your armor he found without even necessarily intending to, but at this point, the stupid way you can’t seem to hide the wound from him is just as much to blame.

“So, uh…”  Dameron clears his throat as you shut your eyes tight against the awkwardness, but you can still feel a strange little shift in the air from behind you.  There’s something about the enclosed space, the quiet darkness surrounding you both, you feel… too close to him.  Sharing his air, feeling the energy when it’s cramped and you’re not able to just get up and storm away from him like normal.  You don’t like it.  You don’t like that you can immediately tell something has changed without being able to see him, that type of intimacy between you is pushing a boundary you can’t quite pinpoint but know exists.

You snap your eyes open and look over at Dameron’s reflection when he’s quiet for too long, and though you try to glare as fiercely as possible at him while you do it, the look on his face almost stops you dead.  The pure intensity raging in his expression, the way he’s got his eyes narrowed, flicking back and forth between yours, carefully studying you, wondering if perhaps he may have gotten it all wrong.  “I mean, y’know.  Theoretically speaking, and all.  If I broke, you’d let me fuck you?”

You… aren’t expecting that.

You don’t know why but your heart suddenly starts to race again, but it’s not the same as before.  Before it was speeding up and at an angle, like a rocket trying to escape a body’s gravitational pull, to go somewhere, search for something.  This time it just feels like it’s ricketing downhill, unsteady and out of control, about to break apart with every single pothole that rattles and slams through you.  Shit.  You didn’t expect the ultimatum would be presented to you so up front like that—you thought there’d be… some resistance, at least.  

Fuck, you take way too fucking long thinking about it, and your face feels warmer and warmer the more you mentally pick apart his specific phrasing, wondering where you should even begin.  You still haven’t said anything, but the damage is already done.  What should've been a firm, instantaneous go fuck yourself is left suspended, unanswered, open for interpretation.  You miss your window of opportunity to shut him down, you overshoot it by a longshot, and then you feel that spark of a what-if flare deep down once more.

No, fucking stop it.  Stop it.  Maker, your eyes do everything they can to not look at him while you concentrate and work to tap into your anger, stoking the flames of your fire to avoid feeling… temptation.  How dare he?  How fucking dare he do this to you, especially when there’s no chance to get out of here, to abort mission and cut your losses?  You clench your jaw and isolate that fury, magnify it until it’s the only thing you can feel anymore.

“My turn now,” Dameron eventually breaks the silence to clarify, blinking at you, and by this point you’re so fucking pissed off that you don’t recognize that isn’t actually a question.

“No,” you immediately snap, strung far too thin to deal with this new, treacherous territory with him.  Defaulting to normal is best, it’s easier.  “No, it’s not your turn, and fuck no, you can’t fuck me, not even if it means I win this stupid bet.  No to everything that has anything to fucking do with you, alright?  Don’t talk to me.  You’re lucky if I agree to sleep in the same fucking room as you tonight.  And—and?—I think your beard looks dumb.”

Okay, so maybe the last part was just a little bit childish, but you’re in such a bad fucking mood and you want to insult something he’s clearly just trying out for right now, hasn’t yet solidified as part of his usual appearance and unshakeable confidence in it.  It’s a downright lie—you think he might look more attractive with it than he ever has.  Effortlessly rugged and masculine, framing his face and making his eyes all the more piercing.

You don’t think it works, but regardless, he heeds your sharp words and says nothing for a good few minutes at least.  You had hoped the break in interaction would allow you the ability to reset a little bit, give yourself time to work through it, but it’s like the pressure in the air steadily increases regardless of how silent it is in here—or perhaps, because of it.

You can’t help it.  You flick your eyes to the transparisteel in front of you once more and catch his reflection staring directly at you, unmoving.  It jars you as much as it sparks your anger, and you glare down at your hands and give him a few seconds.  A few seconds of grace, of mercy, before you try again.

Sure enough, he’s still got his dark eyes pinned to you when you go to check once more, like he’s actually fucking thinking about something right now, which is just… astounding, for obvious reasons.  Mainly, the nerve of him.  The fucking nerve of him to be able to look at you like that, like he’s just entitled to study your every feature, searching your eyes for things you’ve never looked deep enough to find within yourself, making incredibly loud assumptions with his mind that he has absolutely no right to be making.

“Shut up,”  You snap at him defensively, feeling like you’re sweating buckets even in the freezing emptiness of dead space.  You can’t figure out if it’s a cold sweat or if your body is legitimately just malfunctioning under his stare.  “Shut up.”

You watch as his reflection suddenly drops his head back against the seat and rolls out the stiffness of his neck, blinking his eyes shut and raising his eyebrows like you’re completely overreacting, like he has absolutely no idea.  “I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re not that dumb,” you challenge.  “You’re… plotting.  Evil plotting.”

A thick eyebrow drops so that only one is quirked up, and a grin pulls at his lips.

“You’re right,” Dameron admits casually after a moment with his eyes still closed, his voice pitched low in the cramped ship.  “I was thinking about what it’s gonna take to get you to lose.”

You swallow against the dryness in your throat, starting to unintentionally bounce one of your legs up and down without even realizing it.  Fuck, this ship is small, it’s too fucking small in here—you gaze wistfully out at the vast endlessness of space, wanting to grit your teeth at the irony of being surrounded by the one thing you so desperately wish you had.

“I just have to find a weakness,” he shifts forward in his seat and reveals to you, bewilderingly shameless in his honesty.  Like all of a sudden you’re an accomplice to this endeavor instead of its target, as if he isn’t spoiling the secret by letting you in on it.  “Something that you like, that gets you going.  Something that riles you up, gets you all hot and bothered down there—”

“So you can exploit it,” you huff, slouching over a bit and trying not to sound like you’re pouting.

“—so I can exploit it,” he finishes happily, collapsing back into his seat like he’s glad you caught on so quick and he doesn’t have to explain further.  “Now we can do the whole routine—the bickering, the tension, the undeniable sexual chemistry we have—or we can skip all that and you can just tell me flat out what it’s gonna take to rev that pretty little engine up, because I want it purring.”

And, it’s so fucking weird, because the specific verbiage that would normally make you cringe just hearing it spoken aloud doesn’t inspire the typical response, even though it feels like it should.  It feels like you should be grossed out, it feels like a moment you should screw up your facial expression and act offended, but you’re… not.  This is actually fucking working, it’s unbelievable.  The undeniable fact infuriates you just as much as it stumps you.

“You do realize that everything you say is a game that two can play at, right?”  You point out, not really sure where you’re going with this but feeling heated about it all the same.  “What’s stopping me from exploiting something you like?”

“See now that’s a great idea,” Dameron announces, clapping his hands together happily and sending you jumping a few inches in your seat at the sudden sound, your hand automatically shooting up to rest on your thumping heart.  “I can tell you what I like, and you can just listen.”

Alright, no, wait—backtrack—

“How about I tell you what I don’t like,” you snip breathlessly, tucking your hair behind your ear and feeling all the blood rush to your cheeks.  Default to normal, default to normal.  “Your fucking attitude.  Your demeanor.  The way you talk down to me.  You don’t listen.  You walk around like you’re such hot shit just because you’re a good pilot but none of that means anything when you don’t ever fucking listen.  You’re terrible at it, doesn’t matter who’s talking—you don’t listen to me, you don’t listen to people who actually like you, you don’t listen to orders, you don’t listen to reason—”

“You think I’m a good pilot?”  He suddenly asks, and you have to take a second.  This cockpit isn’t designed for anything other than sitting, much less turning all the way around, but you’re sure you can find some way to throttle him from here.  He chuckles as you let out the loudest sigh you’ve ever heard yourself make—which, is an incredible feat you think both of you should be congratulated for—before Dameron eventually carries on.  “You could tell me that,” he admits with a shrug, a hidden smile on his face that he’s trying to bite back.  “Or you could tell me the truth.”

You shouldn’t encourage him, but you just can’t fucking help it.  There’s something inside you, something you can only compare to a morbid sort of curiosity.  Maybe you’re just a glutton for punishment, even more so than agreeing to this bet has already confirmed.  “And that would be—?”

“That you use anger as a defense mechanism because I touch a nerve you didn’t realize you had,” Dameron replies breezily.  “Have since the moment we met.  And that you maybe want me to touch something else, but you’re too stubborn and proud and committed to hating me to ever admit it.  You can admit it, it’s okay, I can touch whatever you need me to tou—”

“How about the emergency eject button?”  You hiss, finally feeling your frustration peak.  “Pop the top on this bitch.  Put me out of my fucking misery, right now.  You’ve got such a big head that the blood flow will probably keep your tiny little brain warm enough as long as you strap yourself down beforehand, I’ll wait.  And then you can go back to base, alone , and find another poor girl to emotionally torture since you probably don’t get enough of it from the ones you work your way through but can never remember the most basic things about.”

Remarkably, that actually shuts him up.  You’re doubtful the jab really hurts him, but you’re not going to feel bad about it either way.  He deserved that.  You cross your arms over your chest and don’t even bother looking at him, huffing and flushed with the climax of your ferocity, now left feeling strangely exhausted in its wake.  Eventually your breathing evens out and disappears into the silence, until nothing at all can be heard.

It’s like that for a moment—only a moment, before the loud tearing of velcro suddenly shreds through the quiet in the cockpit, completely rattling you.  Automatically your eyes shoot over to his reflection, watching large hands pull the orange jumpsuit apart at his chest and then shrug it over broad shoulders.  It’s not sexual.  It can’t be sexual, because there’s just no fucking room to allow it—it takes him forever to pull the long sleeves down his arms, but the way he drags it out somehow just increases your anticipation for an event you should have absolutely no interest in spectating.  He’s wearing a white sleeveless undershirt underneath and the jumpsuit bunches at his waist, making him look all the longer and more defined as he finally collapses back into his seat and reclines in it, the distant constellations bathing his lean torso in dim speckles of starlight.

Your gaze catches on every good part of him—it falls down the muscular lines of his neck and follows the thin gold chain wrapped around it, disappearing into the white of his scooping neckline.  His toned body finds a place to rest and stretch out without looking awkward or uncomfortable, coarse hair darkening his jaw and dusting the strong lines of his forearms—but it’s his eyes that make your heart stutter.  They’re endlessly deep and dark and knowing , and you can’t seem to look away from him, not even when he opens his mouth to address you.  

“You’re always so fucking mean to me,” Dameron remarks, and for just a split second—just a split second, you feel a stab of regret.  “I should eat you out tonight.”

Fuck, he hits the nail right on the head on his very first try, and just hearing the words come out of his mouth so effortlessly makes your pussy clench in on itself in need.  Nothing about his inflection changed from one sentence to the next, nothing in his voice made it seem like he just flipped the fucking galaxy upside down with just a few words.  To an onlooker who doesn’t speak Basic, they’d have absolutely no hint as to why your face is suddenly radiating heat at an industrial capacity, blazing hot enough to warm the whole cockpit.  You feel like you’re literally burning up with it.  You have to put a palm to your cheek to make sure it’s not actually on fucking fire.  “What— what did you just say to me?”

“That’s what you need,” he drawls, unbothered by the sharpness of your tone.  “What you’ve needed, ever since I can remember.  Should’ve done it a long fucking time ago, now that I’m thinking about it.  How long’s it been?  Tell me the truth, I know it’s been awhile.”

You feel like you’re being roasted alive like one of those hairy little Kowakian monkey-lizards that you’re pretty sure have sentient designation but are the first to be skewered and cooked over the firepit regardless.  Your heart is slamming against your sternum and you scramble to come up with an even slightly clever response after such an ambush.

“This is your plan?”  You raise an eyebrow at him, feeling a bead of sweat drop down your temple and onto the corner of your lashes.  Oh fuck, be cool, be cool.  “You think this is gonna work?  Ask me if I want a weak orgasm and rugburn on my thighs?”

“I can shave,” Dameron proposes quietly, lifting his chin and gently scrubbing the side of his cheek.  The sound of the thick bristles against his fingers makes you swallow thickly and push back very vivid thoughts of how his face would feel between your legs.  How soft and wet his mouth would feel at the center of that thick, coarse beard.  “Tonight, I’ll shave it off.  Make it nice and smooth for you.”

Something inside you surges up to assure him he absolutely should not shave, and you actually have to bite your tongue to keep it buried at the last second.  Stars, that was a close one, what the fuck prompted that?

“I don’t give a shit what you do,” you quickly return, resisting the urge to wipe your brow.  “Beard or no beard, makes no difference.  Foreplay is overrated, I’m not big on wasting time.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” he immediately laments—so quick , and the worst part is that the sympathy in his voice actually sounds sincere.  You’re having trouble looking him in the eyes right now, hearing the genuine pity come through in his tone.  “Who… who did this to you?”

“You said you want to figure out what I like, what turns me on,” you return, tucking your hair behind your ear once more and trying not to sound self-conscious.  Maker, how long until your shift is over?  You need to get out of here, this shit is… way out of your league.  “I’m not into it, so try again.”

“Really?”  Dameron takes a moment to look at you, furrow his thick eyebrows at you in barely concealed curiosity, before his head tilts sideways and drops to his shoulder.  “Normally I’d respect that, but I meant it when I said you need it.”

“We fucking hate each other, Dameron,” you hiss, a reminder to him as much as it is to yourself.  Fuck, you really don’t like where this is going.  “You don’t know anything about me, you don’t know what the I n—”

“I bet you think we’d fuck hard,” he murmurs, low enough that you have to take an unsteady breath and physically brace yourself for whatever is going to come from that dirty mouth next.  “You think that maybe I’d throw you around a little, give it to you from behind, teach you a fucking lesson for always talking back to me.  But that’s primitive shit, Gold-Ten, that’s not for you.”

Resist.  Resist .  You’re part of the fucking Resistance, for Maker’s sake, you’re taught to hold out until death in torture scenarios.  Since when did this tin can suddenly become a new POW camp simulation you have to train for?

“I want to take you apart so slow that you can’t talk at all,” Dameron continues quietly, and you close your eyes, biting your bottom lip hard enough to sting.  “We don’t even have to fuck—I mean, I want to, but mostly I just want to taste you.  Go nice and slow.  I want you on your back, so I can look in your eyes and see all that anger just… fade away.  I want to watch you try to fight how fucking good I’ll make it.  How hot it’s gonna be when you can’t glare at me anymore, when your pretty doll eyes go all soft and sweet and you finally realize that I’ve never hated you at all.”

Maker.  This is a trick.  It’s not a question, it shouldn’t be presented like one—this is a dirty rotten trick , and you’re not gonna fall for it.  You can’t fucking fall for it.  It’s a low blow, and you refuse to even acknowledge he said anything at all.  He’s lying to get your guard down.  He laughed at your flirting.  He’s a shit person, he’s using you, this isn’t real.

Real or not, you still gulp loud enough for him to hear it.

“We could go back to our room after our shift is over,” he offers out of the blue, and you have no clue why, but when he pauses and lets it hang in the air for a second, you don’t interrupt him.  You stay completely silent while he waits for you, waits for your typical snarky comeback.  You have it in your head instantly, you know what you’d normally say.  Your room.  It’s not ‘our�� room, it’s fucking your room that you’re generous enough to let him bunk in, a privilege he’s this fucking close to losing—but you can’t find it in yourself to say it right now.  Your anger is gradually losing the war to your arousal and you’re forced to watch every single small defeat inside you happen from the sidelines.

His reflection blinks at you through the transparisteel, his eyebrows raising just slightly at your prolonged silence, before he suddenly sits up a little and leans forward.

“And I could lock the door,” Dameron continues, lowering his voice, both in volume and register.  “The lights in there are way too fucking bright but I don’t want to be in complete darkness, so maybe we can turn them off and open the port shade, let just enough light come through to see.  I could turn on the radio, find something quiet, easy to listen to.  Something you like, I’ll let you pick it out.  And then… Wait, hang on, which bed?”

You clench your jaw and purposefully say nothing even as your pussy squeezes, glaring right through his reflection into the black void of space.

“Mmm.   Your bed,” he eventually decides.  “I want you comfortable.  You shower at night.  Your hair will be wet and you’ll be in those baggy pajamas that you think I can’t see your nipples through, the ones that I know you take off under your covers and then put on in the morning when you think I’m still asleep.  That’s good, I want you relaxed, so that maybe… maybe you’d let me take your panties off at some point.  And you could lay back and open your legs, and I could go down on you for a little while.  However long you need.”

Fuck.

No, this isn’t fucking happening.  Your lower muscles aren’t twisting in so hard that it actually fucking hurts, your pussy isn’t leaking through two layers of fabric under your jumpsuit, your body isn’t outright revolting against the sheer neglect you’ve put it through.  Maker, it’s fucking painful.  You have to clench your hands into fists and dig your fingernails into your palms before you can open your mouth.

“You want to know what I need?”  You nearly wheeze, a drop of sweat sliding down the back of your neck this time.  Your body feels like it’s three sizes too big for this cockpit and your skin feels like it’s three sizes too small for your body.  “I need you to shut the fuck u—”

“What you need,” Dameron purrs, sliding up closer behind your seat and sighing soft against the worn material of your headrest, “is a warm mouth to cum in.  Don’t be shy, pretty baby, you can tell me.”

You growl out his last name as threateningly as you possibly can before he purrs yours right back in your ear, and fuck, you’ve never heard it sound so sexual before.  Last names allow pilots to maintain a respectful distance from each other.  Flight designations are Resistance-wide, but last names are just… allies.  Not friends, not companions, but a vast network of people brought together by a common enemy.  It hurts to lose a first name.  But the way yours sounds rolling off of Dameron’s tongue is just too sinful, too intimate when calling you that is meant to sever intimacy by design.  He says it slow and makes it dirty, muddies it in the back of his throat as he slides up even closer to you, until his face is right next to yours as you stare at each other through the transparisteel.

“I’m really…” he pauses, before exhaling through his nose and swallowing thick enough to make his Adam’s apple drop and bounce up again, his tongue coming out to wet his plush lips as he blinks slowly at you with a heavy gaze, “… really good at it.  Call me Poe and I’ll do it for you all night.”

Shit, your pussy is just a fucking mess right now.  It feels like it’s melting sweet and syrupy all over your thighs, throbbing and pounding and clamping up and screaming at you to do something, at least press your hand down there to alleviate some of the aching tensi—

No— stars, no touching yourself is rule number two.  You drop your hands to your thighs and squeeze them, trying to reign yourself back in.

“I think you’re—just projecting,” you try, but turns out responding in general is just an all-around bad idea.  Nothing about it comes out right.  The ‘just’ sounds like your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth and your voice cracks on the word ‘projecting,’ but you don’t even have time to be self-conscious or embarrassed at how much you’re giving yourself away—all your energy has to go towards fighting the tightness between your open legs, how you’re so fucking turned on that you’re worried you’ll cum without even touching yourself.  Oh Maker, can you imagine?  How fucking proud of himself he’d be?  You can’t let that happen, but fuck, holding back something so appealing is so much harder than it sounds.

Tap into that anger, tap into that anger—only, you can’t suddenly find it.  Where’d it go?  Fuck, doesn’t matter, conjure it.  Quick, before it’s too late, get mad —don’t let him lure you into a… a false… 

Dameron tilts his chin down towards the line of your shoulder and then slowly turns his head towards your neck, breathing you in gently.

A false sense of…

His soft exhale makes goosebumps break out all the way down your arms.

… What?

“Maybe you’re right,” Dameron acknowledges, talking just under your ear.  You watch his eyelids dip and the dark beard brushes against your skin and you catch just a hint of that woodsy, spicy scent engulfing you.  Like… teakwood, maybe?  Stars, you don’t know, you think you’re starting to lose your mind.  What the fuck does teakwood even smell like?  “Maybe it’s just what I need.  You should exploit it, chances are I’ll still cum first.”

That rockets another painful spasm down low.  It hurts so fucking bad—fuck, maybe you could… rub yourself up against these weapons controls?  Just a little bit?  That joystick, right there, just ease yourself up against it just to nurse this wound a little bit…?

No, fucking— bad.  That’s bad, you have to stop—

“This isn’t real, this isn’t—y-you just…”  You flutter your eyelashes shut, digging your fingernails into your thighs like it’ll help break through the fog of his lulling voice, how fucking amazing he smells right now.  “You just want to win th-the b—”

“ Fuck the bet,” he tells you quietly, his head dipped low enough now that his lips brush against your neck, and you shudder so hard at the sensation that your shoulder almost knocks into his chin with it.  “You really think I’m doing all this for a fucking bet?”

Don’t trust him, don’t trust him, don’t—

Your deep breath is so stuttery and uneven that it’s technically just a series of shallow inhales all anxiously strung together, too desperate for oxygen to go about it legato.  It’s painfully obvious to him by now, it has to be, but you very quickly miss the shaky breathing as soon as he takes away your ability to do it all together.

“Let me taste you,” he whispers, his voice almost breaking with how gentle it is, how it sounds like it flips in and out of his register when he speaks this low.  “Right now, let’s make it real, let m—I know you have to be soaking fucking wet, baby, just let me try a little bit of it, please—I’m… holy shit, I’m so hard just thinking about it.”

“You c-can’t,” you stammer, reaching up to pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration.  At him, at the situation, at the painful throb of emptiness between your legs.  “Fuck, it’s not allowed, it’s against the rules—”

“It won’t be,” he assures you, and you hiccup when you suddenly feel his hand brush against your side, strong fingers branching out to curve against your ribcage.  “You don’t have to do anything, you can stay just like this.  Just a few seconds and then I’ll stop, I promise.”

Oh, Maker, it’s on the very top of your tongue, so unbelievably close to telling him something—but you don’t know what it should be.  You’re right at the tipping point, on a tightrope right between what you want and what you should want.  And, knowing you’re this close to giving in, Dameron slowly eases his hand down your side and starts to trail it inwards, and just the lightest brush of his warm tongue against your neck shatters any composure you have left.

You whimper and instinctively try to close your legs, but you fucking can’t— your knees are forced wide apart by controls and your whole body freezes when his hand slides down and folds gently along the curve of your pussy through the thick fabric of your jumpsuit.

The feeling of being held like this by him is just too good , cradled so perfectly in his palm as he opens his mouth and flutters his tongue out to taste your skin again, giving you a little more of it this time and letting you feel the roughness of his beard with the way his lips move.  Your breath catches, then he hooks his fingertips up just the slightest bit and pulls back, and you suddenly have to smack your whole hand over your face in a terrible attempt to stifle your loud gasp.

“Oh, Maker, I c-can’t,” you stammer against your fingers, not being able to trust him or your own body.  You continue to protest even after he moves back up, resting his palm low on your abdomen, letting the heat bleed through the fabric and transfer directly to your floor muscles as he lifts his head up from your shoulder.  “I can’t, we can’t, I…”

You can’t see him, but you know he’s looking at you.  He’s staring right at you through the reflection, studying the way you’re hiding your face from him, how you’re still melting, still losing your composure just from the warm palm pressed tight your tummy.

His touch leaves you for a second. But then the deafening sound of velcro ripping at the crotch of your jumpsuit has you dragging your hand down your mouth and your eyelids dipping.

“Dameron,” you breathe into your fingers, just as his carefully slip into the small opening and begin to work at the button to your pants. “Dameron, this isn’t—you don’t want—”

“You don’t get to tell me what I don’t want,” he grunts at you, and you try not to bite yourself at the sound of him unzipping things and yanking fabric to the side.  “What I really fucking want is the real thing, but I guess this’ll have to do for now.”

“I—”  Your mind whirs desperately, trying to process when his fingers wedge under your panties and down.   But he doesn’t give you a single fucking second.  As soon as the tip of his middle finger reaches your slit, he’s dropping it and sliding it through your slick, hot, unbearably neglected cunt.

“Fuck,” he spits, and you feel like you might be about to break your own fucking jaw with how hard you’re clutching it, trying so desperately not to make a noise.  The pad of his finger is rough and calloused as it drags against your clit in slow, tight circles, and you clamp your eyes shut and try to breathe normally, but it’s no use.  Fuck , it’s been so long .  You’ve been aching for it for a full fucking month and a half now and you know that even if he couldn’t feel it, he can hear how drenched you are right now.  It’s making an obscene sound as he steadily masturbates you with one heavenly finger, giving your body what it’s desperately craved for so many weeks.  “Fuck, baby’s pussy got fucking wet hearing me talk about how good I’d lick it, huh?”

That sends a bright flare launching through you and you gasp raggedly, both hands whipping out to snatch at his forearm where it disappears between your legs.  “No, shit, wait, stopstopstopstop stop , I—”

His hand slips out immediately and yet you continue to tremble like his finger is still right there, like your clit is just imagining it so vividly that it’s successfully convincing itself of the illusion.  The aching bit of flesh is burning, that good burn, the one that’s searing and bright that makes your muscles continue to chase the sensation long after the stimulation is gone.  Fuck, he almost made you cum.  He barely touched you for a few seconds and yet your fingers have to tighten into claws to slow your body down the fuck down, flexing against your thighs and trying your best to halt the impending climax.

By the time you’re able to wrangle yourself back from the edge and look at his reflection, his middle finger is already in his mouth and he’s blinking slowly at you, his pupils blown wide.  You’re breathing hard at him, staring open-mouthed at the way his lips are closed below his second knuckle, how he takes forever dragging it back out again.  You have to close your eyes.  You have to clamp them shut and keep them that way, knowing you won’t be able to look at him through whatever he’s going to say next.

Except, oddly, he doesn’t say much.

“Shit,” he breathes, dropping his mouth to your neck once more.  “Shhhit.  I…”

Your eyes snap open in sudden, blind panic when he doesn’t continue, horrified at the possibility that he doesn’t like it.  Dameron always has something to say, he doesn’t go speechless.  “Oh—Maker, is it not—?”

“Mmmfuck, just—” he grits, panting hot air against your skin, “—fuck.  Give me a second.”

You can only see the crown of his head with the way he’s angled, but you can see his shoulders a little further back.  They start… moving slightly.  Just the littlest bit, a smooth motion, like his whole body is slowly easing back and forth—

The nav controls are between his legs, you immediately realize.  He’s grinding up against them with how close he is to you and your seat.

And suddenly, it’s like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  A ray of sunshine that breaks through the raging storm.  Dameron might cum in his pants like this.  Which means you’ll win, and arguably more importantly, you’ll finally be able to cum.  You don’t even take a moment to consider the potential consequences—how you’re going to have to withstand the stimulation until he succumbs to it, how you’ll have to outlast—but you’re not thinking straight.  You’re not really thinking at all.

“You can…” you suddenly hear yourself whisper, and your heart pounds in your throat when he instantly stops moving.  “One… one more.  If you want.  You can put your finger inside this time, it’s where I’m the… w-wettest.”

“Fuck,” Dameron croaks into the crook of your neck, his voice scraping low and rough and sending a tremor through you.  “Fuck, okay, yeah—”

His hand slides across your hip and down, but you catch him just in time.

“But don’t touch my clit.”  You try to sound as firm as possible through the breathlessness, still trying to put your foot down even when you’re giving in, and Dameron’s teeth come out as he stifles a soft groan into your neck in response.

“Yes, baby,” he murmurs obediently as his hand sinks down once more, and so diligently, he avoids it altogether.  His fingers slide under your panties and fall straight down to your entrance, down to where you know you’re the hottest, where your pussy is flexing and pushing wetness out with a steady, wicked throb.  The pad of his middle finger presses gently against the tight muscles there, rubs just the slightest bit to feel that resistance, and then the length of it eases inside you so slowly that your knees rattle against bulky metal.

“Fucking Maker , ” he hisses as he slides it in, his body making a sudden jerk against the controls.

Your eyes roll back at the feeling of something inside you after so long, after such a torturous buildup, and you grasp at his forearm again when it curls naturally up against searing pleasure.  Oh, it’s so good, it’s so good, your hands shake while he very carefully moves it in and out, the raw sparks of heat threatening to incinerate you as your muscles cling to every ridge of his finger.  He gets it sopping wet, bathes it so completely in your slick that you’re almost certain it’ll come out pruny and drenched.

“Shit, okay,” you pant, squeezing desperately around his finger, “o-okay, fuck, that’s enough.”

His hand pulls out… slower this time.  He slips his finger out of you quick enough, but he drags the tip of it through your folds as he retreats, just barely grazing your clit and making you jolt in your seat.  Shit, you don’t know if it felt intentional enough to fault him for it—mostly it just excites you, thrills you to have him edge you like this without really needing to put any effort at all into it.

Dameron lifts his head to sink his finger deep into his mouth once more, and you tremble as you watch him enjoy it, staring at the way his shoulders seem to relax as soon as your taste is on his tongue, how his face goes soft with it and he almost slumps.

Relief.  Genuine, not embellished.  He still doesn’t say anything after he slowly slides it out and blinks at you, no sugar sweet drawl telling you how amazing you taste, no candied words to make you give in and let him have another go.  You’re both breathing hard at each other, staring, waiting to see who will break first.

Stars, you… fucking like this.  You want him to keep going, but you can’t offer it again.  It’s just too exposing, too revealing to let him you’re actually really fucking enjoying this, you can’t—

“Do you w—?”  Your voice automatically comes out through the silence without your permission, sounding just absolutely fucking wrecked by this point, but his palm is already slithering back down as soon as you speak, and you make the softest little submissive noise in your throat at him taking immediate initiative like that.  He’s not as careful about it this time—his hand finds its target with less frill, his finger slides in quicker, sinking deep into your heat with little hesitation, lighting you on fire from the inside out, and you bite the meat of your thumb to stay quiet.

“Fuck, this is so hot,” he suddenly breathes next to your ear while your legs spasm and you gasp brokenly.  “This is so—fuck, pretty baby letting me do this to her, I can’t fucking believe—”

Dameron eases a second finger inside you this time, letting you feel that delicious stretch from this angle, unable to lift your legs or shuffle around to help and subsequently resigned to simply experience it the way he gives it to you.  Your teeth have probably permanently indented your bottom lip from how hard you’re clamped down, a testament to how much you’re trying to hold back the loud moan you miraculously haven’t released yet.  Somehow it makes it sexier, not letting him hear you, not having your own noises to drown out the spark of urgency in his voice beginning to peek through.

Shit, it’s too much.  You can only let him touch you a few seconds at a time before you feel that familiar tug towards mind-numbing bliss, and the more he does it, the more appealing that feeling then becomes.  It’s teasing you, floating right in front of you and calling into question what could possibly be so bad about just reaching out to meet it?  You could.  You could cum right now.  What’s two weeks of pay?  You could cum all night long if you want, that is a thing you can do—

Quickly snapping out of your hypnotic downfall, your trembling hands snatch at his forearm once more, and Dameron, the fucker, drags his fingers slowly over your clit on the way out— so not accidental, not even close to it this time, but the sensation makes your hips stutter upwards and chase it nonetheless.

“Fuck you,” you groan at his audacity, your chest arching as you drop your head back, “I said don’t touch my—” but two wet fingers slipping past your lips and onto your tongue muffle the rest of your sentence.  Your heart does half a somersault before slamming down early, the taste of your pussy filling your mouth as you automatically start sucking on them.

“None of that,” Dameron tells you softly, massaging his fingers along your tongue before pressing a sweet kiss under your ear.  “Be nice.  I’m being nice.”

You should bite him.  Instead, you just close your eyes and mphh weakly around his fingers, your body sagging as you give into it and let him explore your mouth with them, your lower muscles cramping up in painful desperation even when he’s not anywhere near that part of your body right now.  Your tongue even comes up to lick between them, swirl around them so soft compared to how hard you’re puffing through your nose.

Dameron slowly inches his fingers out, letting the tips of them rest against your bottom lip for just a brief moment, before his hand is moving again.  Not down, but back and around, so he can open his mouth and taste you another way this time.

Shit, you feel like you’re dying.  You need air.  Your hands clench into fists and you use the back of one to wipe the sweat from the bridge of your nose while he takes his time sampling you like this.  If anything, he looks just as blissed out as before, continuing to rub his crotch up against the solid metal between his legs and teasing you with it as much as he’s teasing himself.

“Maker, let me do this for real tonight, okay,” Dameron pants after dropping his fingers from his mouth, sounding like he’s fighting for his breath while you can’t find yours at all.  Your eyes flick down to watch the way his hand disappears behind the chair to grab the controls and push his cock up against them even harder, how he drops his forehead to your neck like he just can’t fucking handle it anymore.  “Fuck, I’ll shave, I’ll do anything you want, just let me—”

“Cum,” you gasp out before you can stop yourself, and there’s a moment after it where his hips suddenly stutter against the controls, and you both freeze.

Shit.  Shitshitshit, did that actually work?

No, you very quickly realize, his body isn’t spasming like it would if he finally emptied his load after a month and a half.  He’s just… holding there, his head buried in your neck, completely still.

You didn’t mean it like that.  Well… fuck, you did, but you didn’t realize you’d be that reckless about it, that upfront about reissuing the challenge.

Dameron pulls back to look at you from the side this time, but it’s too cramped—he keeps his head turned facing you even as his eyes flick up to the transparisteel to take in the finer details of your features, the thin sheen of sweat on your forehead, and the slightly alarmed way you’re blinking back at him, worried you just shot your blaster at him in the midst of a mutual ceasefire and you fucking missed.

You see the understanding in his eyes instantly fall into place, and it’s not fucking good.  Ohhhhhh no, it’s not good.  Your chest starts rising and falling rapidly, suddenly registering the position you just put yourself in.  Fuck, you didn’t think—you saw your opening, so clearly, you didn’t have time to think about the consequences.

“D-Dameron…” you try your best to placate.

“Don’t touch your clit?”  He asks quietly, the raspiness of his voice ripping a hole through you while his hand suddenly shoves its way back down your body once more.

“Dameron,” you whimper, your heart stuttering in panic as you grasp weakly at his arm reaching between your spread thighs, “Dameron, this is—this is against the r-rules—”

“You keep saying that,” he comments, his fingers easily finding the opening in your jumpsuit no matter how hard you flex your thighs against bulky mechanics to try and close them.  “How clearly do you remember the rules?  What were the rules again?

You open your mouth to respond but his hand sliding under your panties and down just obliterates any chance you were going to attempt.  No words, nothing comes out but a shaky whine as his finger sinks into your soaking heat, going right for the kill.

“Come on, baby, the rules,” Dameron reminds you when you never give him an answer.  “Tell me.  No fucking, no jerking off, and…?”

You suddenly struggle forwards in a last-ditch attempt at preventing the inevitable, hoping you can scoot up enough in your seat to escape his reach from behind.  But fuck, your thighs have been shoved wide open for nearly eight hours—none of the muscles are working the way they should be anymore.  There’s just enough room in front of you to get there and you probably would’ve been able to do it at the beginning of the shift, even with his hand between your legs like this, but you’re sluggish and your thighs pull sharp and urgent with the movement.  The frantic maneuver enough to veer his fingers off course just slightly, moving one of your lips to the side at an angle, and you keep pushing against the pain no matter how useless it is.

“—No cumming,” he finishes for you, and his other hand is slithering up under your arm and groping one of your breasts through the jumpsuit before shoving you back tight up against your seat once more, totally helpless against it.  “Probably have another fifteen minutes or so before our shift ends.  Better hold it in, pretty baby, because this one is all you.”

“This—this isn’t fair, this is—”  The second the slippery pad of his finger presses hard against your clit, you’re biting your lip to cut off a breathless whimper that slips out.  “This is… is sab— sabotage— ”

“Oh, I know,” he moans next to your ear, mocking your high plea of distress with a fake, overly sympathetic whine.  “Feels so fucking good though, doesn’t it?”

Fuck, it does.  The build feels like an orgasm in itself, just working your way to it.  You’re already so unbelievably close after just a few seconds of direct stimulation, an obvious consequence of originally agreeing to such a hardcore edging workout.  You’re pouring sweat, so swollen and tight between your legs as you do everything you can to revolt against your body’s needs.

“Oh fuck, stop touching my clit—” you gasp raggedly, heart thundering in panic while your lower muscles start to immediately seize up, “oh—fuckfuckfuck— Poe, take your finger off m—”

Instead of doing it, his hand just slows down until the tip of his finger comes to a halt, maybe less than an inch over top of it.  You still can’t catch your breath though, not when you feel yourself throbbing against absolutely nothing, the calloused pad holding perfectly still over the bundle of nerves.  The swollen bud still arcs and flares at a steady frequency, building and building, and you choke out a wordless garble, absolutely fucking furious that this is what’s gonna make you cum.

“Don’t make me cum,” you switch up your sentence but not the terrified plead in your voice, the way it’s pitching up and out of control in the dead quiet of space.  He doesn’t even acknowledge it.  “Don’t make me cum, don—”

“Say it again,” he prompts instead, and lightning arcs up your spine.

“Poe,” you wheeze, the words coming from you without thought, your fingernails digging into his forearm even as your hips jerk up into his touch, “fuck, don’t make me cum, Poe—please don’t make me c—”

“But it’ll be so good,” he counters lowly, and your clit throbs in desperation at the richness of his voice when he speaks like this, saying things from deep in his chest.  “It’ll be so fucking good when it happens.  Stars, you’ll feel so much better, won’t you?  Cum right now and I’ll give you as many as I can until we have to go home.”

“N-No,” you whine, feeling his teeth scrape at the crook of your neck.  “No, I can’t—”

“Cum for me,” Dameron raises his voice, sharpening it into a direct order.  “Right now.  Come on— fucking make yourself lose.”

“But I—I—” you sob, starting to feel your body curl inwards, nearly about to succumb to the burning, the tightening, right on its last breath, “I-I don’t want to cum—”

“And I don’t fucking care,“ he hisses while your hands start flexing unintentionally, grasping helplessly at his immovable forearm where it disappears between your legs, the dark hair sliding under your fingertips as you claw desperately at it.  “You’ll fucking cum when I tell you to cum and you’ll like it, you disrespectful, cock-deprived, bratty little—”

And then everything goes dark.

No, literally.  The stars disappear.

The cockpit is suddenly shrouded in pitch blackness, and you’re almost certain it’s because you pass out, except then Dameron is all but ripping his hand out of your jumpsuit and cursing repeatedly in alarm.  You crumple in on yourself, eyes clamped shut and not hearing anything, right at the peak of your ecstasy and ready to soar into the light completely unassisted, your muscles doing all the work on their own—

“—shit, they’re way too close—” you hear his voice shout, “—we have to turn the engines on—Gold-Ten, baby, turn the fucking eng—”

You’re almost there, you’re almost there, you’re gonna cum, you’re gonna fucking—

Your first name, roared out in startling, blinding panic.

You don’t often hear it.  Just during roll calls mostly, but only if you’re flying with a different squadron and need a new temporary flight designation for the day.  First names hurt.  You can’t remember a time you’ve ever willingly told anybody yours.

Your head jerks up to look at his reflection but something else beyond the transparisteel takes immediate precedence.  Your brain takes about two seconds to catch up before thundering terror slams through you and halts your previously inevitable orgasm in its fucking tracks.  A runaway train about to launch off its tracks suddenly slamming directly into a megaton force-field of cold, hard fight or flight instincts.

A staggering fleet of First Order ships silently plunging out of hyperspace on all sides—your powered-down x-wing stationed right in the middle of the drop location.

***

Stay tuned for part two coming soon!!

[morganas-pendragons]

Halo Series: My Thoughts

Disclaimer: You are allowed to disagree with me. You are allowed to hate this show, you are allowed to love it. Everyone watching is entitled to their own opinions.

Also, if you want to have a civil conversation about it, I'm all ears! But any kind of backlash directed at me for enjoying it will earn you a block.

Let me preface this ridiculously detailed post by saying that I have been an avid fan of this universe since I was six years old. Halo 3 shaped alot of my childhood. It is by far one of my favorite pieces of media I have ever consumed until Infinite and Reach came out. Those three games are near and dear to my heart. I come back to them frequently.

Despite the stark differences in universe and disregard for Halo lore in the newly released Halo Series on Paramount+, I genuinely enjoyed this first episode for alot of reasons. Spoilers below the cut. It has been a while since I've played guardians (for a reason, i despise that game) and halo 4, so feel free to correct me if I get some things wrong!

Let me get the easy stuff out of the way. The Pelicans, Warthogs, Phantoms, Spartan Armor? A plus. I yelled whenever I saw all of these come onto the screen. Opening credits? ART. Music? ETHEREAL. All of it.

Some people have been critical of the CGI for the elites, but I genuinely believe it's good. The color schemes were beautiful. I was initially a little confused about the Insurrectionist plot, but I have yet to be able to read the novels. If anyone knows more about that plotline please feel free to tell me about it. I am genuinely curious!

Let me also say that the look for the Prophet of Mercy SLAPPED.

Also... both of the Keyes? I love them. I think they're perfect fits. Not to mention I have been waiting for years for someone who would go toe to toe with Halsey and the Admiral is right up that alley.

And am I the only one who wants to see The Arbiter come into this at some point? Because I would love to see him in the show.

As someone who has been consuming these games for years, I was intrigued about the turn this was going to go. This game and its characters are etched into my heart and my childhood. Cortana's arc and dialogue from Halo 3 is something I have been able to quote since I was a teenager. They are a part of me. As are Noble Team, which is still my favorite part about Halo in general.

Alot of us are angry they've (spoiler!!!!) done the one thing the games never did and had John remove his helmet. Look, I get it. I really do. It adds to the enigma of Sierra 117 and who really lies beneath that helmet. But if anything, I think I enjoyed that moment for a reason I mentioned to @embarrassedauthornerd when she and I were playing through Infinite at the same time.

One of the key things I wanted to see in the Halo videogames was John (in particular, but all of the characters we witnessed) being able to step away from his role as the frontlines of humanity's defense - and all the pressure that comes with maintaining that - to be something we really don't see unless you've watched The Fall of Reach. Human. We don't get to see John be human. Not until Halo Infinite.

I've said it once and I'll say it again. Cortana taught John how to embrace that side of himself. And when she was gone, he had to learn how to do it on his own. Please watch the clip between The Pilot and The Master Chief from Infinite if you don't know what I'm talking about. The one where John learns the truth about who The Pilot really is is one of the defining moments for his character utilizing this skill someone taught him and being able to embrace that part of himself in order to help somebody else.

Two more moments in particular I can think of are the moments where he encounters the dead Spartans in Infinite, and the one between 117 and Lasky in Halo 4.

"Soldiers aren't machines, they're just people."

Call it what you want, but I believe this is primarily what they're going for in the Halo Series.

As for the defiance and John repeatedly touching that object that gives him glimpses of a past he doesn't remember....

It took a while for him to get there, sure, but we see glimpses of this defiance in Halo 4. I don't remember verbatim what is said by the higher ranking Command in question.. but I do remember that he is ordered to hand over soon to be Rampant!Cortana and just downright refuses to.

John's defiance comes over time. It's not as obvious when we first meet him in the games, but it is there. Halo 4 and 5 are the prime examples for it. John's defiance is the entire reason why Osiris Team spends literally the entirety of Guardians going after him and the rest of Blue. He was given an order and it was in regards to Cortana, he refuses it.

Arguably my favorite part of the entire first episode was Halsey. She is exactly what I was expecting. After I learned more about the Spartan 2's and the augmentation program through some of the novelizations and the movies, I came to loathe the character even more. I hate her in every single game she's in. She's manipulative, cold, conniving, and absolutely uses John to get what she wants/needs. He is solely a weapon of her making. A tool. I have yet and probably will never believe she truly cared about her Spartans.

TV!Halsey may be young, sure, but I look at her and see exactly the same person who I hate in the games. Someone who took free will and freedom away from the Spartans. Who used them to get what she wanted, to be a tool. To take away the very thing that made them humans.

All in all, I loved the first episode. I understand why people won't watch it and I understand why people are skeptical given that there are things in the show that are different from the games and the general lore for the Halo universe. You are absolutely entitled to your opinions on the matter.

The only thing I want to say just to finish this off is to look at it like this. I told @embarrassedauthornerd this when it aired on Wednesday. This is not our John. This is not our Master Chief. They've already shown that this is a different universe with a different story and team, but they've intermixed some of the beloved characters we've come to know to create an overall plot. This 117 and the games 117 are two different people. It’s easier to watch when you think of it that way.

Also, because I’m playing halo 3 as I write this, here’s your fun fact for the day. The map Tsavo Highway? Tsavo is a Swahili word. It means murder. The map literally translates to Murder Highway. 😂

[flightlessangelwings]

Can’t Deny You

Din Djarin x afab!reader (smut with no pronoun use, no y/n)

Word count: 3.7k

Warnings: smut (18+ ONLY), oral (m receiving), unprotected sex, sex with feelings, blindfolds, slight cockwarming, mechanic!reader, the child being adorable, soft!Din

Thank you to @ollypopp​ and @we-can-be-himbos​ for beta reading for me!

~

The hull of the razor crest was quiet save for the soft clatter of the damaged blaster that you were repairing. The Mandalorian and the child were seated up in the cockpit together while you tended to your duties on the ship. A chance meeting months ago brought the two of you together, and the armored bounty hunter allowed you to travel with him to put your skills as a mechanic to use. Not long after, the little green child entered your lives and everything seemed to change overnight. A pair of unlikely companions became an unconventional family, even if neither you nor Mando ever spoke the sentiment out loud.

It also didn’t help calm your growing feelings for the Mandalorian to see him with the child. To watch someone who could easily kill anyone and anything handle the small creature with such care and tenderness was a sight that you wouldn’t trade for all the credits in the galaxy. He was always kind to you, of course, but to see him with the baby set something ablaze within you. You swallowed hard as you buried your emotions and focused on repairing the blaster in your hands until it was better than new.

Mando would be happy with this, you thought with a grin on your face as you thought about the man who unknowingly had your heart.

Satisfied, you set it on the weapon rack and cleaned off your hands before you made your way up to the cockpit. Your heart pounded harder in your chest with every step you took, and it wasn’t just because of how you felt about the Mandalorian.

The two of you had hardly spoken to each other in the past week after you and the child were almost taken by bounty hunters. You were a decent fighter, but you were no match for four big men, and they knew that. Somehow, they separated you from Mando and had you cornered in a dark alley, the child tightly in your arms. You were ready to protect him with everything, but fear still ran through your veins. Luckily for you, the Mandalorian got to you just in time.

The near brush with death was something you could live with, it was part of life with the Mandalorian. However, what happened on the ship afterwards was something that was on your mind ever since. And the Mandalorian seemed to not want to acknowledge what happened.

Quietly, you opened the door to the cockpit and you nearly teared up at the sight that greeted you. Mando sat in his pilot’s chair and the child lay curled up in his lap, sound asleep. He either didn’t hear you come in at first, or he didn’t bother to move as he stayed still to not disturb the sleeping baby. One hand stayed on the controls while the other cradled the child, and you noticed the way his thumb rubbed comforting circles on his side.

You stayed still in the doorway for several moments and just took in the sight before you. You wanted to commit every little detail to memory to look back on whenever you were in need of warmth or a reason to smile. A soft smile lit up your face and you felt your heart skip a beat. But, you decided you lingered long enough and you cleared your throat to get Mando’s attention, “Comfortable there?”

He turned his head slightly and you heard a short, soft laugh from through the modulator of his helmet, “The kid fell asleep,” he replied, not knowing what else to say. He couldn’t hold eye contact with you for long, or else the emotions he tried so hard to keep down would come bubbling to the surface again. Though you couldn’t see his face, he fought to keep his expression neutral around you; Mando knew his body language would give himself away regardless.

“I’ll take him down and get him settled,” you offered.

With a nod, he handed the child over to you and watched as you cradled him so carefully. His breath hitched in his throat as his gloved hands made contact with your bare ones for a brief moment, but luckily you didn’t hear it. Mando watched with tender affection as you turned and disappeared back into the shadows of the ship and he let out a deep sigh when he was alone.

Mando knew he couldn’t keep you at arms length forever, but he also had no idea what to actually say to you. The day from a week ago constantly played over and over in his mind, and although he was afraid for yours and the child’s lives, the events that happened on the ship afterwards were what dwelled in his mind.

It had started when you took the child to his bunk to rest after Mando saved you both from the bounty hunters. Though you seemed shaken, neither of you were hurt and for that he was very grateful. He didn’t know what he would do if anything happened to either of you. But as he watched you set the child down and tuck him in, Mando couldn’t keep the rush of emotions in check anymore. As soon as you closed the door to the bunk where the child slept soundly, his hands were on you. 

Mando knew from the look in your eyes that your thoughts matched his and before you realized it, he had you pinned to the hull of the crest. It was as if the balloon finally burst and all the tension between the two of you bubbled over and spilled over the surface. It was heated and heavy and desperate and everything you both needed. Neither of you had the time to fully remove your clothes, both too lost in your emotions and the heat of the moment to even care. You just needed to feel each other as you both came together.

Since then however, the Mandalorian barely spoke more than a few words to you. Perhaps he didn’t know how to face and deal with his feelings towards you. Perhaps you had the same difficulty too. 

But you couldn’t take it anymore. You thought about that night again as you tucked the child securely in the bunk and closed the door. As you turned back around, you resolved that once you got back up to the cockpit you would confront Mando about what happened. If it was a one time thing, you could deal with it and just keep your true feelings to yourself. It would just break you if Mando shut you out entirely.

This time when you reentered the cockpit, the Mandalorian turned around to face you. The two of you stood in a tense silence for several minutes before you finally let out a deep breath and broke it, “Din listen,” you used his real name, which you reserved for private and important moments and he sat up straighter at that, “I know you’ve been on edge since…” you shrugged your shoulder as you nodded to your side. Even as you confronted him, you couldn’t bring yourself to say the words out loud. The melancholy in your face was tangible as you continued, “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it and if it was a one time thing then so be it but I just…”

Din cut you off with your name, “Don’t,” he sighed as he already knew where you were going with the thought, “Don’t blame yourself. I’m...” his gaze dropped down to the ground, “I do care about you,” Din finally admitted.

Your eyes went wide as you gasped softly, “Din,” your voice was just above a whisper as you took a step closer to him. He stayed still as you reached out and tentatively caressed his arms just below the pauldrons on his shoulders. You felt him tense for a moment before he relaxed into your touch. As he welcomed your gentle embrace, your eyes stayed fixed on the visor of his helmet, “I care about you too. So much.”

With that, you carefully pushed him back so that his legs bumped the pilot’s chair. Most times, Din liked to be in control of the situation, but with you he felt comfortable enough to give that up and let you lead. Your hands slid up his arms and once they reached his shoulders, you gently guided him down to sit. Din looked up at you and saw the fire in your eyes, and the same feelings from that night a week ago flooded back. 

“Is this ok?” you asked in a hushed tone as you knelt down in front of him and placed your hands on his thighs.

“Yes,” he answered right away in just as soft a voice as he watched your hands slowly move up his inner thighs over his pants. Din’s breath caught in the back of his throat and his hands tightened into fists as he felt himself harden at just the thought of what you had planned.

And you definitely noticed the twitch in Din’s pants as your gaze drifted to between his legs. You carefully unzipped and freed his length and involuntarily licked your lips when it sprang free. As much as you wanted to kiss and lick his cock, you wanted to make sure this was what he wanted still and you glanced up at him with a pleading look in your eyes. Din tilted his helmet down to meet your eyes and he cupped the side of your face as he nodded once. Neither of you needed words to know what the other thought, and you communicated so well without a single word needed.

With Din’s permission, you closed your eyes and leaned your head into his touch for a moment before you bent forward and placed a feather-light kiss to the tip of his cock. A shiver ran up his spine at just the simple touch and he couldn’t help the low moan that escaped his lips. Where the first time you were together it was rushed and heated, this time it was slow and sensual, and neither of you complained about it at all. You wanted to take your time with Din, and you knew that he needed the relief from all the tension that had built up within him over the past week.

You started by licking a long, slow stripe up his length before you wrapped your lips around the tip of his cock. You knew from before that he was well endowed, but to have his cock in your mouth was a sensation that you were not prepared for. It was as if you felt pleasure yourself from the pleasure you gave him.

Din’s low groans filled the cockpit as you bobbed your head up and down his length, and every time you moved you took just a little bit more of him in your mouth. When you pulled back so that just the tip was in your mouth, you swirled your tongue around the head a few times before you engulfed him completely again. Every time, the action pulled a moan from deep in his chest, and Din couldn’t help but move one hand to grip at your scalp as you worked him.

To be in your mouth was a pleasure unlike anything else Din had ever experienced in his life. From under the helmet, his eyes rolled back into his head as he gave in to the moment and surrendered himself completely to you. He whispered your name in pure bliss as he felt a warmth spread throughout his body the longer you sucked at his cock. Din knew that he wouldn’t last much longer if you kept going, but there was something else he wanted too before he came.

The Mandalorian used his grip on your scalp to hold you taut, and made you stop in your movements. Your eyes went wide with surprise as you pulled away from his length with a loud pop. Din froze for a moment at the sight of you on your knees in front of him with drool on the corners of your mouth from how eager you were to take him into your mouth. 

“Din?” your voice was hoarse from having his cock down your throat, “Is everything ok?”

“Ride me,” his words were blunt and the tone was soft, but just commanding enough to make your thighs clench.

You let out a soft gasp, but a smile soon graced your face as you nodded and shuffled to your feet. Suddenly overcome with embarrassment, your eyes darted down to the floor as you shimmied your pants down. You could feel his gaze on you, and your skin burned as you felt so vulnerable in front of him. When this happened the first time, you barely saw any part of each other. But this time you both took in as much of each other as you could. 

A thunk on the floor made you look up, and you realized that Din took off the chestplate of his armor so that you would be more comfortable against him. He held his arm out to you in a silent invitation, one that you eagerly accepted. 

Din held onto your hips as he guided you down onto his lap. Immediately, you felt his erection against your pussy and you whimpered at the sensation. You felt his fingers tighten against you as you rocked slightly against his cock, and you heard the soft groan through the modulator of his helmet. You shivered and moaned as his length rubbed against your wet folds. As much as you wanted to close your eyes, you fought to keep them open. You locked your eyes onto the visor of his helmet where you could feel his gaze on you, even if you couldn’t see it.

He said your name like it was a prayer and it ignited the fire within you. You shifted yourself so that you lifted your hips off his Din’s lap and you reached down and pushed your underwear aside. Din took the opportunity and glanced down at your pussy and he nearly choked on air when he saw how wet you were.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered. Din couldn’t tear his eyes away from your pussy as he watched you line his cock up with your entrance. And he didn’t just mean your pussy when he said that, Din found every inch of you beautiful, and he wanted to take his time this time and savor every bit of you that he could.

Any words that you had in response were strangled when you started to lower yourself into his cock. Both of you let out low growls and murmurs of praise as Din’s cock slowly disappeared inside you. His head fell back against the chair as he exhaled heavily, but his grip never faltered.

“Fuck,” Din groaned.

Once you were fully seated on his lap, you rolled forward and collapsed against Din’s chest. The way he slowly stretched you out burned so good, and you never felt fuller. Without the armor, you felt the softness of his chest and you even felt his heartbeat against your head. You closed your eyes and smiled as Din wrapped his arms around you and just held you tight for several long moments.

You started slow and lifted your hips up just enough to hover over Din’s lap before you lowered yourself again. Both of you let out louder moans, and you soon picked up your pace. At first, you stayed against his chest and savored the way his heart pounded for you, but soon you lifted yourself up to meet his helmeted gaze once again. You looked at Din with half lidded eyes as you bounced on his cock.

Din savored the sight before him, but he found that he felt greedy for wanting more. He wanted to see more of you while he was buried deep inside you. After you pushed yourself upright, he moved his arms down to your hips once more and tugged at the hem of your shirt. 

Tentatively, Din lifted your shirt up just a few inches and paused to make sure you were ok with it. Even while he stayed buried inside you, he still asked for your permission before he removed your shirt entirely. You smirked and gave him a single nod as you leaned back and allowed him to remove it completely. 

In just your bra and your panties that were pushed aside, you never felt more exposed, and yet you felt safe and secure in the Mandalorian’s embrace. You stilled yourself as he ran his hands across your bare skin, as if he wanted to memorize every inch of your body. A whimper escaped your lips whenever he found a more sensitive spot and you arched your back when his hands cupped your breasts.

As Din kneaded your mounds, you rocked your hips again and watched with lustful eyes when you heard a low growl from deep within him. As you moved, you felt his hips meet yours and together you created this new dance of pleasure. You ran your hands across his chest again and you flattened your palm over his heart; you couldn’t get enough of how wonderful his heartbeat felt under your touch.

You were lost in the feeling of Din’s cock inside you, and it felt even more wonderful now that you took it slow with him. But, there was something else that you wanted still. Your brows furrowed as a look of sorrow flashed in your eyes.

“What is it?” of course Din noticed the brief look.

You sighed, but you couldn’t lie to him, “I want to kiss you. More than anything else, I want to kiss you, Din,” you couldn’t help the vulnerability in your voice as you confessed to him. You did not want him to break his creed for you; you would never ask that of him. But yet you wanted to feel his lips on yours and taste him more than anything in the galaxy.

Din couldn’t deny you, especially when he was buried in your warm cunt. He wouldn’t dream of denying your request, and if he was honest with himself, he wanted it just as badly. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” you replied without hesitation as you gently grabbed onto his shirt.

The Mandalorian leaned down to his side and tore off a long strip of his cape. The whine you let out at the shift made his cock twitch inside you. He would have liked to use something nicer and cleaner for you, because that’s what you deserved, but this would do for now. Besides, he didn’t want to lose his connection to you just yet.

You waited in silence as Din brought the strip of fabric up to your face. As he brought it closer, you closed your eyes and allowed him to fasten the makeshift blindfold around your head. Your breath caught in your throat as your sight was taken from you, but you didn’t have any fear. This was the one person you trusted more than anything, and you would lose any of your senses for him in a heartbeat.

As you clung to his shirt, you felt him shift as he reached up and slowly removed his helmet. Din lifted it halfway and paused as he waited for a reaction from you. When you were still, he took it the rest of the way off and set it on the control panel with a soft thud. That got a reaction from you, and you gasped but remained still.

Din reached for you again, and you sighed when you noticed that his hands were bare as well. The feeling of his skin against yours was an intimacy that was unlike any other, even with his cock buried in your pussy. You knew how much it meant to him to be this bare in front of you, even with the blindfold.

Slowly, he pulled your face to his and placed a soft kiss to your lips. Din lingered like that for a moment and just savored the softness of your lips on his before he deepened the kiss. You moaned into his mouth as your lips parted for his tongue and he wrapped his arms around you once more.

This time it was Din who started the rhythm of pumping into you. You met his hips with your own and between the way your bodies rocked together and your tongues danced with each other’s, both of your climaxes were not far away. He sped up his thrusts when he felt you start to clench around him. As he kept one arm securely around your waist to keep you in place, his other hand snaked between your bodies to rub at your clit.

You broke away for air and your moans echoed within the cockpit as Din worked your body like he had been with you a hundred times before. His thrusts became more feverish like they were the first time you were together and you could tell that he was close. With your forehead pressed against his, you came with a loud scream, and you heard him moan your name as his own climax was right behind yours.

Din kept up his pace until you were both completely spent and with an exasperated sigh, you collapsed forward into his chest. You heard the low rumble of his laughter as you nuzzled against him. Din held you tightly against his body, as if he was afraid you would disappear if he let you go. Perhaps the memory of how he almost did lose you was too fresh in his mind. But you weren’t going anywhere. You had him and the child to look after. The ones you cared about more than life itself. Your family. 

“You alright?” he broke the comfortable silence as he rubbed your back in a soothing manner.

You chuckled against his chest, “I’m more than alright.”

It was quiet again as you both stayed connected. “Next time,” Din started hesitantly, “I want to taste you.”

A big smile lit up your face, “I’d like that, Din.” Who were you to deny him anything? 

~

Notes: So this idea randomly popped into my head and wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it. And as I wrote it, more and more feelings got poured into it lol. I love writing soft!Din so much too. I hope you all enjoyed this! Taglists are open as always, so let me know if you’d like to be added!

[calzona-ga]

In her unauthorized book, Lynette Rice explores the stories behind some of the ABC drama's biggest moments, including — in this exclusive excerpt — the factors that led to McDreamy's shocking death.

In How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy, author Lynette Rice recounts the ABC medical drama’s eventful 16-year history, revealing new details behind some of the show’s biggest departures. Included in the unauthorized, 320-page oral history (St. Martin’s Press, Sept. 21, $29.99) is a chapter that offers new insight into leading man Patrick Dempsey’s shocking exit in season 11 of the Shonda Rhimes-created drama. In the chapter, Rice speaks with Dempsey’s co-stars and exec producers who were present during filming of his final days on Grey’s Anatomy, and reveals claims of “HR issues” that contributed to the death of his alter-ego, Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd.

“There were HR issues. It wasn’t sexual in any way. He sort of was terrorizing the set. Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him,” recalls exec producer James D. Parriott, who was brought back to the series to oversee Dempsey’s exit.

In more than 80 interviews with current and former cast- and crewmembers, Rice, an editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, also explores the show’s early days, recounts the thinking behind some of its more polarizing storylines and offers exclusive details about the show’s behind-the-scenes culture.

“After 17 seasons, fans still can’t get enough of Grey’s Anatomy,” Rice tells THR. But what went down behind the scenes was just as dramatic as what viewers saw every Thursday. I’m excited for fans to read what I learned about those early days, along with what it was like to work for Shonda Rhimes, and why the drama was so freakin’ headline-prone.”

Below, The Hollywood Reporter shares an excerpt — the full eighth chapter — from How to Save a Life, and tune in Friday to TV’s Top 5 for an interview with Rice about her book and the other big reveals she uncovered in her reporting for it.

(Reps for ABC, ABC Signature, Shondaland, and Dempsey declined comment on the reveals in Rice’s book.)

“He’s Very Dreamy, but He’s Not the Sun,” Or, How Grey’s Anatomy Loved — Then Learned to Live Without — Patrick Dempsey Ellen Pompeo may have played the titular role, but for many fans over many years, Patrick Dempsey was the real draw to Grey’s Anatomy. Some of it had to do with his celebrity: Dempsey was the most famous member of the original cast at the time of the pilot and brought with him quite a cult following from his 1987 movie Can’t Buy Me Love. But a lot of it was due to the way Rhimes wrote her McDreamy and how Dempsey depicted him. James D. Parriott I would say, “The guy would never say that,” and Shonda would say, “He’s McDreamy. He’s the perfect man. He would say that.” I’d say, “Okay. It’s your show.” Eric Buchman Shonda had a very clear idea of how important it was to keep Derek as this almost idealized love interest, not just for Meredith but for the audience. Naturally, the writers—especially writers who had been working on one-hour dramas for a while—were like, “Well, maybe have McDreamy make a big mistake in surgery and kill somebody. Or he develops an addiction of some kind. What is his deep, dark secret?” Shonda was very insistent: that’s not the character we do that with. Even when you find out he’s married, that was done in a very sympathetic way that kept him being a hero. He was wronged by his spouse and in spite of it all he was still gonna give his marriage a second chance. Stacy McKee Shonda was protective of McDreamy, but it was really with an eye toward being protective of Meredith. I don’t think the two were separate from one another. I don’t think she wanted to put something out there that maybe on the surface might seem a little frivolous. At its core, there was something really substantial that she wanted to say. She wanted to be very specific about the type of relationship values that she put out there. Tony Phelan I was in editing with Shonda once, and it was the scene where Meredith and Derek had broken up. He comes over and she’s like, “I can’t remember the last time we kissed.” And he says, “I remember. You were wearing this and you smelled of this …”

Joan Rater “Your shampoo smelled like flowers, you had that sweater on …” He described their last kiss. Tony Phelan Typically in editing you start on Derek, then you cut to Meredith for a reaction, and then you’ll go back to him. I noticed that we weren’t ever cutting back to Meredith. I asked why. Shonda said, “Because the woman in Iowa who’s watching this show wants to believe that Patrick is talking to her, and if you cut back to Meredith, it pushes them out of it.” In those special moments, we would just lock into Derek and let him do his thing. Joan Rater And he was a master at it. Patrick Dempsey He’s the ideal man, and that’s what Shonda constructed. There’s a projection [of him] onto me when you come in contact with fans, certainly with the younger and older fans. There is a certain amount of expectation. There is a responsibility to it. It made me grow, too. There were good qualities [of his] that you work on to obtain. Off camera, Dempsey was equally as charismatic to his fellow actors, crew members, and anyone who would come to visit the set. Lauren Stamile I was going in to meet him, and I remember I had this little cardigan sweater on and I took it off before I got into the room. Dempsey is one of those people—it’s almost like there’s a light shining around his body, and you feel like you’re the only person in the room. I got so hot and I remember saying, “Gosh, I would take off my sweater if I had one on because I’m so hot, but I took it off.” I was just babbling. He said, “You look nice,” and I said, “You look nicer.” I felt so awkward and he was so gracious and lovely. I was having a nervous breakdown. It’s like this “it” factor. I was like, God, whatever he has, I wish I had. I think it was very obvious how nervous I was, and he went out of his way to make sure he introduced me to everybody and made sure I felt comfortable, which he certainly didn’t have to do. But he did. Joan Rater He knew I had a giant crush on him, and he loved it. And when we’d go to table reads—I was an actress at one point in my life—they would always give me Meredith if Ellen wasn’t there. And I’d be getting my chicken tenders at craft services before the table read and he’d come up behind me and say, “Are you reading Meredith?” in my ear, like, so sexy. I’d be like, Oh my God. I mean, I could barely … I could not look at him. Tina Majorino I worked with Patrick a ton. I love him so much. We had a really great time working together. I think he’s such a great actor and he really made me laugh a lot. I feel like we had a good dynamic in scenes together, and it was always fun to play opposite him. Yes, he’s that charismatic in real life. Yes, his hair is that awesome. Yes, he is dreamy up close.

Chandra Wilson Patrick Dempsey will forever be known as Grey’s Anatomy’s McDreamy. Derek Shepherd is a permanent part of television history.

Norman Leavitt He is a big, personable guy.

Jeannine Renshaw We all love Patrick. Patrick is a sweetheart. If I saw him on the street, I’d give him a hug. I love the guy.

Mark Wilding I’ve always had a soft spot for Patrick. He really does try to do the right thing. Brooke Smith, who played Dr. Erica Hahn, remembers how Dempsey defended her when the decision was made to fire her from the show in 2008. Brooke Smith I remember calling him and saying, “Oh my God, they said they can’t write for me anymore, so I guess I’m leaving.” And he was like, “What are you talking about? You’re the only one they’re writing for.” Which at that time, it kind of did feel that way. But I guess someone didn’t like that. They gave me a statement [to release, about her departure] and I never said it. Patrick said that he actually took it out of his jacket on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and read the statement. He won’t let me forget it. He was like, “I defended you, see?” And it was true.

By season eleven, however, fans saw a disturbing break in MerDer’s once unbreakable bond. Six episodes had gone by without a peep from Derek, who was supposedly in Washington, D.C., where he had apparently made out with a research fellow. Fans began threatening to bolt if their hero didn’t return soon to Seattle. “I have never missed one episode,” wrote a fan on Dempsey’s Facebook page. “But I swear if [Rhimes] kills you off I’m done.” But there was a critical reason for Derek’s strange absence: behind the scenes, there was talk of Dempsey’s diva-like fits and tension between him and Pompeo. To help manage the explosive situation, executive producer James D. Parriott was brought back in to serve as a veritable Dempsey whisperer.

Patrick Dempsey [That] was the first year that I haven’t been in every episode. I [was] in every episode since the pilot— close to 250 episodes. That [was a] huge run. James D. Parriott Shonda needed an OG to come in as sort of a showrunner for fourteen episodes. There were HR issues. It wasn’t sexual in any way. He sort of was terrorizing the set. Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him. He had this hold on the set where he knew he could stop production and scare people. The network and studio came down and we had sessions with them. I think he was just done with the show. He didn’t like the inconvenience of coming in every day and working. He and Shonda were at each other’s throats.

Jeannine Renshaw There were times where Ellen was frustrated with Patrick and she would get angry that he wasn’t working as much. She was very big on having things be fair. She just didn’t like that Patrick would complain that “I’m here too late” or “I’ve been here too long” when she had twice as many scenes in the episode as he did. When I brought it up to Patrick, I would say, “Look around you. These people have been here since six thirty a.m.” He would go, “Oh, yeah.” He would get it. It’s just that actors tend to see things from their own perspective. He’s like a kid. He’s so high energy and would go, “What’s happening next?” He literally goes out of his skin, sitting and waiting. He wants to be out driving his race car or doing something fun. He’s the kid in class who wants to go to recess.

Patrick Dempsey It’s ten months, fifteen hours a day. You never know your schedule, so your kid asks you, “What are you doing on Monday?” And you go, “I don’t know,” because I don’t know my schedule. Doing that for eleven years is challenging. But you have to be grateful, because you’re well compensated, so you can’t really complain because you don’t really have a right. You don’t have control over your schedule. So, you have to just be flexible.

Longtime Crew Member Poor Patrick. I’m not defending his schtick. I like him, but he was the Lone Ranger. All of these actresses were getting all this power. All the rogue actresses would go running to Shonda and say, “Hey, Patrick’s doing this. Patrick’s late for work. He’s a nightmare.” He was just shut out in the cold. His behavior wasn’t the greatest, but he had nowhere to go. He was so miserable. He had no one to talk to. When Sandra left, I remember him telling me, “I should’ve left then, but I stayed on because they showed me all this money. They just were dumping money on me.”

Patrick Dempsey It [was] hard to say no to that kind of money. How do you say no to that? It’s remarkable to be a working actor, and then on top of that to be on a show that’s visible. And then on top of that to be on a phenomenal show that’s known around the world, and play a character who is beloved around the world. It’s very heady. It [was] a lot to process, and not wanting to let that go, because you never know whether you will work again and have success again.

Jeannine Renshaw A lot of the complaining … I think Shonda finally witnessed it herself, and that was the final straw. Shonda had to say to the network, “If he doesn’t go, I go.” Nobody wanted him to leave, because he was the show. Him and Ellen. Patrick is a sweetheart. It messes you up, this business.

James D. Parriott I vaguely recall something like that, but I can’t be sure. It would have happened right toward the end, because I know they were negotiating and negotiating, trying to figure out what to do. We had three different scenarios that we actually had to break because we didn’t know until I think about three days before he came back to set which one we were going to go with. We didn’t know if he was going to be able to negotiate his way out of it. We had a whole story line where we were going to keep him in Washington, D.C., so we could separate him from the rest of the show. He would not have to work with Ellen again. Then we had the one where he comes back, doesn’t die, and we figure out what Derek’s relationship with Meredith would be. Then there was the one we did. It was kind of crazy. We didn’t know if he was going to be able to negotiate his way out of it. It was ultimately decided that just bringing him back was going to be too hard on the other actors. The studio just said it was going to be more trouble than it was worth and decided to move on.

Stacy McKee I don’t think there was any way to exit him without him dying. He and Meredith were such an incredibly bonded couple at that point. It would be completely out of character if he left his kids. There was no exit that would honor that character other than if he were to die. Patrick Dempsey I don’t remember the date [I got the news]. It was not in the fall. Maybe February or March. It was just a natural progression. And the way everything was unfolding in a very organic way, it was like, “Okay! This is obviously the right time.” Things happened very quickly. We were like, “Oh, this is where it’s going to go.”

So that was that: McDreamy would die in episode twenty-one of season eleven, even though Dempsey was in year one of his recently signed two-year contract extension. Rhimes wrote a script that was befitting of her lead’s heroic persona: she began “How to Save a Life” by having Derek witness a car crash and helping the injured. Once it appeared everyone was out of harm’s way, Derek continues on his road trip but is suddenly broadsided by a truck.

Rob Hardy (Director) The paramedics leave. He’s there by himself. He’s having a moment. The nice music is playing, and all of a sudden, bang. It comes out of nowhere, which, you know, is how accidents happen. So as opposed to watching it as a viewer, we saw the accident happen through Derek’s perspective. Derek ends up at Dillard Medical Center, a hospital far from Grey Sloan and the talented doctors who work there. His eyes are open, but his brain is severely damaged. No one hears his plea for a CT scan; he can’t speak. To help keep the episode a secret, the scenes were shot in an abandoned hospital in Hawthorne, California, about twenty-two miles from the show’s home studio in Los Feliz.

Mimi Melgaard It was really hard on all of us because it was so secretive and we had so many different locations. We shot at this closed-down hospital that was absolutely creepy haunted. All the scenes there were so sad anyway, and in this yucky-feeling haunted hospital? It was really weird. His whole last episode was really tough. Patrick Dempsey It was like any other day. It was just another workday. There was still too much going on. You’re in the midst of it—you’re not really processing it. Rob Hardy Here’s a guy who’s immobile. Now you’re inside of his head. We were trying to make that feel scary from the perspective of a person who’s used to being in control, from a person who usually has the power of life and death in his own hands. But now he doesn’t have the ability to speak on his own behalf.

Samantha Sloyan When I went to audition, I didn’t recognize any of these doctors’ names. I assumed they were just dummy sides so people wouldn’t ruin the story line or anything like that. All we knew is that we were dealing with a man who’s been in a car accident. I had no idea that it was going to be Derek. I just figured I was going to be a guest doctor and that whoever this person was who was injured, was going to be just a character on the show. Once it became clear what we were working on, I was like, Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe this is the episode I’m on.

Mike McColl (Dr. Paul Castello) I signed an NDA before they would release the script to me. I was reading it in my house, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I didn’t tell anyone, including my agents. I just said, “This is a really great booking. It’s a great role on Grey’s.” And they didn’t know anything until it aired.

Savannah Paige Rae (Winnie) The first scene I shot was actually the sentimental scene when I’m saying, “It’s a beautiful day to save lives, right?” I’m in the hospital room with Derek and talking to him. Even though I never watched the show, I recognized the value of the episode I was in and just really took it to heart. It was so special that I got to be a part of it.

Rob Hardy [Patrick] had a lot of emotions during the whole shoot, which evolved. I think when we first started, he was very calm and cool … the same Patrick that I remembered when I worked on the show a year or so before. With each passing day, he was a lot more emotional. A lot more was on his mind, and that would show itself in different ways. The finality of the episode and for his character was setting in. You’ve become a global icon on this show and then in five, four, three, two, a day … it’s over.

James D. Parriott Patrick was very cooperative and good.

Mike McColl When I met Patrick, he’s lying on a stretcher and we’re rushing him into the ER. I just introduced myself, shook his hand, and was like, “Man, I cannot tell you what an honor it is to be the guy to take you down.” He loved it. He could not have been nicer to me and was funny through the whole shoot. He was on the table in front of me there when I cut his chest open and all that stuff. He gave me a hug at the end. It was a real privilege to be a part of TV history in that way.

Samantha Sloyan I remember him being incredibly kind. They had his neck in a brace, and he’s strapped down to the board, so there wasn’t a ton of chatting. I remember him being really kind, but it was clearly intense for him.

Stacy McKee It was such a beautiful piece of storytelling. I knew this event was going to be a really sad, horrible event for Meredith, but I also knew it was going to be the beginning of such an incredible chapter for Meredith.

Dempsey completed his final hours of shooting on a rainy night. There was no goodbye party, no goodbye cake. Maybe that’s because some cast members were left out of the loop. James Pickens, Jr., told ABC News that the cast “didn’t know a whole lot. It was kind of on the fly. So whatever information we got, we pretty much got it kind of right before it happened.”

Caterina Scorsone (Dr. Amelia Shepherd) I didn’t get to say goodbye to Patrick when he left. I do think that helped, because I’ve been using the character of Derek in my internal landscape since Private Practice. Derek was the stability in Amelia’s life. He became a father figure after they watched robbers shoot their father. When he was suddenly gone from the show, we didn’t have that closure, so I got to play it out. She’s about to use drugs again before Owen confronts her in a way that she finally talks about her feelings about losing Derek. She doesn’t end up using.

James D. Parriott The day he left, that was my last day. There was a certain sadness to it, but I think he was relieved. I mean, I think it took a toll on him, too.

Rob Hardy I didn’t see other actors showing up and saying, “Hey, it’s the last day! Wanted to come and wish you well.” I didn’t get that. It was more the Patrick show. We were in the Patrick world, and then Ellen came, and there was definitely a lot of emotion that both of them had individually … not necessarily together. It was more so her being there on the day that he died. He had his own way of being with that, and the same thing with her. It was like two people who grew up together and … here we are. They had their own way of reflecting.

Patrick Dempsey I very quietly left. It was beautiful. It was raining, which was really touching. I got in my Panamera, got in rush-hour traffic, and two hours later I was home. Big news like this doesn’t stay quiet for long. Both Michael Ausiello—who left EW in 2010 to launch the news site TVLine—and Lesley Goldberg of The Hollywood Reporter learned two weeks prior to Dempsey’s final episode that he would be leaving the show. No reporter worth their salt wants to sit on a scoop—least of all one as huge as this—but Ausiello and Goldberg didn’t want to spoil the outcome for fans, so they agreed to hold the story until after the episode aired. I eventually found out, too, but in the nuttiest way imaginable: I was standing on the set of CSI: Cyber, watching Patricia Arquette talk about some droll techno-criminal. Unfortunately, the publicist also cc’d Dempsey’s manager and ABC publicist while trying to give me a major story, so I couldn’t immediately report the scoop. But I did use the information to successfully negotiate the one and only exit interview with Dempsey. Two weeks before his final episode, I met him and his publicist at Feed Body & Soul in Venice, California, for a story that would hit newsstands on April 24. He seemed a little shell-shocked and at one point choked up, but at the time he said nothing about how his on-set behavior may have contributed to his ouster. My editor, Henry Goldblatt, wanted to put him on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, but he couldn’t guarantee to ABC that no one would see it before the episode aired. Good thing we didn’t: some subscribers got the issue on the morning of Dempsey’s final episode— and one actually tweeted the story. Our PR department tried to get the tweets removed, but the cat was out of the bag: some fans found out early that McDreamy was about to be McHistory. Outlets like Variety reported how the story got out early, while our PR department released this statement: “We are surprised that an EW subscriber may have received their issue a day earlier than planned. We always try our best to bring readers exclusive news first. We would like to apologize to fans of the show that learned the news ahead of time.” Dempsey’s final episode was watched by 8.83 million viewers—the show’s largest audience since the premiere that season. Variety even pontificated whether the ratings boost was due to my exclusive with Dempsey.

Lesley Goldberg (The Hollywood Reporter) I’m used to working with networks to hold news as part of their efforts to guard against plot spoilers. But the way Patrick Dempsey’s exit was handled involved a layer of paranoia and secrecy that has been unlike anything I’ve seen in my reporting career. News that he was leaving, and his character being killed off, would have been a major story considering how big the show is domestically and internationally. However, it also would have meant spoiling the episode and, more important, damaging key relationships I’ve worked hard to build. At some point, publishing the news of Dempsey’s exit before the episode aired became an ethical question of what was more important—a big story and its subsequent traffic, which would have come no matter what, or the relationships and trust that it took years to craft. Ultimately, I still published early because EW subscribers received the issue with Lynette’s Dempsey interview before the episode aired.

Mike McColl The morning after Derek’s last episode aired, my daughter sent me a link that was on YouTube or Facebook or something. I actually pulled it up to look at it, and it was a Grey’s Anatomy showbiz cheat sheet. It asked the question “Who is the attending doctor who killed Derek ‘McDreamy’ Shepherd?” It included a photo that I posted from the set. I had on a bloody rubber glove and was in my scrubs and mask. I never obviously would have posted this before it aired. I posted it well after the episode aired, and I [captioned it] “McDeadly.” This writer said something like, “Kill McDeadly.” Maybe that’s why the producer didn’t choose a big-name actor to be the one who killed our beloved McDreamy! I want to be ultrasensitive to these hard-core fans because it means so much to them, and I certainly didn’t mean in that case to make light of it. It’s just, I’m an actor, and I recognize it for what it is. Is everybody clear on the fact that this is just pretend and Patrick knew he was going to be leaving the show? It was just like, “God. He’s okay. He really is okay.”

Peter Horton Derek was going to be there forever with Meredith because you went through a whole journey with them. That was incredibly fulfilling. So even if he’s not there, he’s there. I don’t think any of us really worried about that going away because by then you were so invested in it. The show can last as it has for years.

Patrick Dempsey Lots of people [miss him]. “It’s good to see you alive” is the comment I get. I’m like, “Yes, I’m very much alive in reruns.” People were really invested in that relationship. I knew it would be heavy. Very happy to have moved on with a different chapter in my life.

Samantha Sloyan The montage just killed me, when Meredith says, “It’s okay, you can go.” God, I’m getting choked up just thinking about it. The chemistry they have as a pair and the way they were able to build that and sustain it! So many of these relationships are, like, “Will they, won’t they,” and then it wears thin. They sustained it for the duration of their relationship on the show, and it’s just, I think, a testament to what those two created. It was just unbelievable.

Pompeo addressed Dempsey’s departure with a tweet that focused solely on his character, not on how she spent eleven years working side by side with him: “There are so many people out there who have suffered tremendous loss and tragedy. Husbands and wives of soldiers, victims of senseless violence, and parents who have lost children. People who get up every day and do what feels like is the impossible. So it is for these people and in the spirit of resilance [sic] I am honored and excited to tell the story of how Meredith goes on in the face of what feels like the impossible.” Meanwhile, fans futilely created a Change.org petition to reinstate McDempsey, while other, more desperate ones simply tweeted “We Hate You” to Rhimes.

Shonda Rhimes Derek Shepherd is and will always be an incredibly important character—for Meredith, for me, and for the fans. I absolutely never imagined saying goodbye to our McDreamy. Patrick Dempsey’s performance shaped Derek in a way that I know we both hope became a meaningful example— happy, sad, romantic, painful, and always true—of what young women should demand from modern love. His loss will be felt by all.

Talk about the mother (father?) of all postscripts: In November of 2020 Dempsey reprised his role as McDreamy in the season opener—but only in Meredith’s dreams. Stricken with COVID-19, an unconscious Meredith “imagined” reuniting with her husband on the beach. After talking exclusively to Deadline and saying how it was “really a very healing process, and really rewarding,” Dempsey would return for more beach-based episodes that would ultimately stand out as the best moments of season seventeen. “It was a second chance thing,” one ABC executive told me at the time. “Shonda likes a comeback. Also, they wanted him in their last season.”

[pascalpanic]

Tiny Dancer (Frankie “Catfish” Morales x f!Reader)

Summary: Reader and Frankie are best friends, and both think that their feelings are unrequited… with the help of a little throwback music, that might change. Reader uses she/her pronouns.

Warnings: alcohol use

Word Count: 1.79k

A/N: This is my first published fic! I hope you like it, whoever’s reading this!! Thanks to my beta readers and people who helped me format, @lovetoreader​ @mandoalorian​ and @no-droids-on-sunday​, as well as a couple friends not on tumblr!

gif credit to @amahlfarouk​!

The fire crackles and casts a warm glow across Frankie’s face, highlighting the valleys and ridges of the lines in his skin, the shadow accentuating his pronounced nose. He really is beautiful, you sigh and think to yourself as you look at him. You’ve been friends with Frankie for a long time now, since high school, and the feelings you first had for him upon your introduction never quite faded. He looks completely relaxed, the bonfire, the music, and your presence putting him at ease. 

You tear your eyes from his face as you see him shifting, not wanting him to notice that you were most definitely staring. He picks up his phone and presses a button, shuffling the oldies playlist he chose and allowing John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads to play through his Bluetooth speaker sitting on the table between the two of you. You give a laugh. “Good memories with this one,” you say with an easy smile on your face and look over at him, nudging his leg with your boot-covered foot. 

Frankie definitely agrees as he smiles back at you, his nose scrunching and his dimple showing. “Oh god. You almost got us kicked out of that bar for how loud you screamed this,” he chuckles and nudges your leg back, his strength moving your leg significantly farther than you nudged his. 

The two of you stop your brief chatter and start singing along. Frankie is loud and off-key, his baritone perfectly complimenting your equally out-of-tune voice. Both of you mumble through the first verse, not entirely sure of the words to this part. As it comes to the chorus, however, it’s a completely different story. The two of you start bellowing the words, laughing and grinning at each other. 

-

That night at your local bar was the closest Frankie ever got to kissing you. 

You had both had only enough alcohol to be lightly tipsy, meaning one-and-a-half drinks for you and three for Frankie. The bar had a machine that allowed you to pick the music, and Frankie eagerly used his quarters on song after song that you requested. Your face, flushed from alcohol, was closer to his than normal. He bit down on his lip and looked down as your faces got closer through the laughter, and as he looked up he swore he saw it in your eyes, exactly what he was feeling. 

The song ended and another came on, and an entirely different spark entered your eyes. “Oh my God!” You giggled. “I love this song! This is, like, the best,” you raved as the guitar kicked in. 

“The only song of the night you didn’t request is the best?” He teases you, the moment gone as you lean back to start singing along. “Really, you like John Denver?” He asks over the loud music and chatter. 

Nodding enthusiastically, your grin made him grin back. “Of course, Francisco. I’m a woman of culture,” you tease right back happily and push his shoulder. You knock back the rest of your second drink and slide off your barstool. “Come on, we’re dancing,” you practically shout and drag him off of his and to the small clearing for dancing

Frankie begrudgingly follows. He’s not much of a dancer, but he’d do anything for you. That much was obvious, he thought. As you reach the floor, you start belting the lyrics at the top of your lungs, audible even over the hum of the bar. 

-

As the chorus ends, you two both try to mumble the verse again, neither of you knowing the words. “Good memories,” he says again, a wistful smile on his face as he sits back in his chair a little further. 

“The best. You’re a good dance partner,” you smile along with him. “Even if that song wasn’t really us dancing. It was more standing close to each other while I burst your eardrums with my opera-worthy voice,” you sarcastically grin and elbow him lightly in the forearm. He makes a fake whimper of pain and pouts. “Catfish,” you laugh and shake your head at him softly, “the military veteran, special ops pilot extraordinaire, wounded by my elbow.”

“Just because I was in the military doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain anymore, hermosa,” he frowns at you and elbows you back. You make a similar noise and he grins. “See? Doesn’t feel great, does it?”

The two of you continue on with your playful banter, the way it’s always been for the two of you. You bicker and shove lightly, both of you separately thinking the same thing: that the main reason you love to push and shove isn’t because you see them like a sibling, but because you want any excuse you can to touch them. 

Your bickering continues as the song changes, and a break in the action causes a lull that allows you to notice the new song that came on. Grinning, you grab his phone and turn up the volume before setting it back on the small table between the two of you. “Oh my god, I love Elton John,” you coo as you hear his familiar voice singing Tiny Dancer. 

“I’m well aware,” he shoots back and shakes his head. “Add that song to the list of reasons my eardrums are broken. You know, people would think it’s because of the helicopters that I have hearing damage. What would they think if I told them it was because your tiny ass body has the strongest vocal chords to exist?” He groans, raising an eyebrow at you that rests just below the brim of his classic baseball cap. 

“Tiny?” You say, jokingly aggressive. You don’t consider yourself short; in fact, you’re above average. But with Frankie Morales, you practically look like an elf. He towers over you, and it drives you insane. 

“Just like the song,” he nods then gasps. “You are tiny dancer,” he says with a pleased smile spreading across his cheeks and showing that goddamn dimple. 

Smacking his arm, you shake his head. “Don’t even go there. First of all, we both know I only dance when I’m drunk or you make me,” you laugh. “The only-”

Frankie cuts you off by standing and taking your hand, pulling you to your feet as well. “You’re tiny and now you’re dancing,” he says, smiling down at you as he wraps his free arm around his waist, the other hand still clutching yours. 

“You’re cheesy as hell, Morales, you know that?” You ask and look up at him, the baseball cap shading his chocolate brown eyes. 

Frankie shrugs, starting to sway the two of you along, carefully avoiding the fire but staying close enough that the two of you are warm. “I may have been told that before,” he says and gives you a warm smile. 

Your heart thumps increasingly harder in your chest, which is now pressed to Frankie’s as he pulls you closer and gently sets his chin on your shoulder. You’re sure he can feel it, which makes you panic slightly, which makes your heart race even faster. You rest your head against his shoulder, the position coming naturally. You’ve slow danced before, of course, as the two of you always find yourself on the dance floor, but it’s only been a few times. Rare. Dancing usually consists of you and Frankie, not touching, flailing like complete idiots. Neither of you were known for your coordination when it comes to dancing, and it has always shown. But this is nice. Completely different. 

Humming the lyrics, his throat buzzes and you can feel it where your head rests against the side of his neck. He stops humming and starts singing softly, the smile in his voice evident. 

“Hold me closer tiny dancer… count the headlights on the highway…”

Giggling softly, you break away as Frankie pulls back, making you do a spin. You squeal as you lose your balance and stumble for a moment. Once again, coordination is not your strong suit. Both of you laugh as Frankie protectively pulls you back to his chest, stopping you before you can fall. “Careful,” he chides lovingly. 

“It’s a little late to be careful now, Frankie,” you shoot back sarcastically. “I already tripped.”

You look up at him, taken aback by the tenderness in his eyes. He always looks happy to be around you, but his eyes are painfully soft as he smiles down at you. 

The look makes you inhale sharply. He can’t feel that way about you, can he? You would’ve known sooner, surely, and you’ve been friends for a long time. You’ve always been able to read him like a book, what is this new expression? Or… is it new? You ask yourself all of these questions, biting your lip softly and looking down. 

He tears his gaze away and increases the distance between you, not nearly as close, terrified that he just gave too much away. He clears his throat and takes his hat off, running a hand through his hair before replacing it. He turns away and heads for his chair. “Sorry,” he says bashfully, looking at you. “I-,”

Something emboldens you. You’re not sure what, but it’s probably the fact that you suddenly put the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle together: he likes you too. You grab his wrist and stop him. “Please don’t be sorry,” you tell him and move closer to him, your heaving chests close once again. You reach up and take off his hat, running a hair through his curls, a peace offering. An offering, maybe, for something more.

“Can I kiss you, hermosa?” Frankie asks, voice barely a rasp of a whisper as he pulls you closer with an arm around your waist. 

You nod slightly and Frankie slowly moves in, his other hand moving to your cheek as he allows your lips to meet, soft and perfect. You sigh lightly and bring your free hand to his cheek as well, the other holding his ballcap and dangling at your side. You kiss him back contently, allowing the slow and gentle moment to rest. 

He eventually is the first to break away, his heart in his eyes and your faces close together. “I…” he wants to say something but can’t find the right words. 

“Me too,” you whisper back with a chuckle, brushing his curls from his face. “Me too, Frankie,” you say and blissfully kiss him again, the swell of the music perfectly matching the rhythm of your kiss. 

He breaks away after a few moments, smiling softly at you again. “I told you, you’re her, you’re tiny dancer,” he teases softly. “My tiny dancer?” He asks shyly, taking the hand from the side of his face and lacing your fingers together. 

“Yours,” you breathe in agreement and close the gap between you to kiss him once again. 

[falcor-thee-luck-dragon]

Love Cuts Deep

Chapter 5- It’s All Good, Mostly

Bucky Barnes x (f)reader Series Rewrite (Civil War, Infinity War/Endgame, TFATWS)

Summary : After dealing with the Winter Soldier and getting your shit rocked. You, Sam, and Steve with an unconscious Bucky, are deciding on what to do next.

Warning: angst, fluffy moments shoved in here

Masterlist

After making a hasty escape to an abandoned dying old warehouse in Berlin, you helped Steve pin Bucky’s metal arm to a steel compressor in hopes that once he woke up, he’d be your Bucky again.

Who knows how deep Hydra’s talons are pierced into him?

Listening to the dull roaring of a search helicopter in the near distance, you lean against the wide garage doorframe separating the room Bucky’s in from the rest of the cavernous steel warehouse. A deep frown staining your features as you study his sleeping form that’s slumped over a wooden box while his body leans against the steel contraption.

The man who joined your little chaotic trio stands on guard a couple feet behind you as Steve keeps watch over by the buildings entrance that’s decently close to the rest of you. So far you’ve all been here for about forty minutes by now, keeping to yourself as you protectively watch over Bucky while he dries from his dip in the river with Steve and that broken helicopter.

“You’re Y/N, right?” Inquirers Sam from behind you; blinking tiredly, you slowly turn around while keeping your back leaned against the wall of the large doorframe.

Arms folded and appearing less then enthusiastic, you nod in acknowledgment, “That’s me.”

Revealing a friendly smile, he looks at the ground before meeting your stoic gaze, “Been a rough couple of days, huh.” Muses Sam in an attempt at lightening up the mood.

“Been a rough couple of decades.” You bluntly retort back before closing your eyes and leaning your weary head against the wall.

Sam mouths a silent “oh, right” before folding his arms together and clearing his throat, apparently he’s not done, “So, uh...I’m not trying to be weird or anything, but uh....last time I saw you. You were laying on the ground dead, blood trailing out from your head....unless my eyes are playing with me.” Explains Sam before letting out a nervous chuckle, “Or you’re actually a ghost.”

Opening your eyes, you shift your gaze over to Sam, “I was, yes.....well, technically I wasn’t actually dead, my heartbeat just slows dramatically while my body heals together again. ” He stops smiling as you shrug, “Regeneration. I can heal quickly.”

Mouth forming a surprised O, he nods, “Damn. Aren’t you just full of surprises.” Jokes Sam as you crack the tiniest of amused smiles.

“Keeps me moving.”

For a few moments you get uninterrupted peace before he decides to start up another conversation, much to your already agitated state. Though this time his voice is more serious as he takes a step closer to your side, “He must mean an awful lot to you if you’re willing to follow him this far.”

Returning your somber gaze back onto Bucky, you sigh, “I knew him when I worked for Hydra, he was my partner for many missions over the decades.” Sam’s dark eyes flash over to you in curiosity as you continue, “After the fall of Hydra, I searched for him for a little while. Clearly my efforts were not in vain. And now, after all this time.....I can admit freely that I love him.”

Sam’s brows raise in surprise at this spout of news, he had no idea you and Bucky were anything like that, “Huh.....well uh, sorry all this happened to you two.”

You shrug while throwing him a friendly half smile, eyes softening as you look at Bucky, “As long as he’s alive and I keep my freedom. I don’t care what happens. I’m done with the people of this world, we’re both done with them.”

“The worlds not done with you two just yet.” Adds Sam with a concerned fatherly tone.

You sigh, “So it would seem.”

A moment later Bucky stirs, his head bobs slowly upward as he takes in a deep breath, blue eyes opening before turning left to look at the steel contraption holding his arm in place; Sam yells for Steve as you walk closer to Bucky.

Quickly, Steve and Sam arrive right after you, your brows furrow in anxious concern as Bucky keeps tiredly slumped over while seated on the smallish wooden crate. His eyes find yours as he looks to the ground again before muttering a raspy, “Y/N.” Causing a spark of hope to ignite inside your heart.

Steve stands to your left, suspiciously eyeing up his old friend, “Which Bucky are we talking to?”

Bucky blinks in thought for a short moment before an adorable smile tugs at the corners of his plush lips, “You’re moms name was Sarah.” He pauses for another small second as a larger smile reveals itself freely now, “You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.”

Listening to your lover genuinely chuckle at a fond memory from so long ago fills your soul with happiness. Steve shares a relieved glance with you, gaze quickly returning back to Bucky, “Can’t read that in a museum.” You quip with a smile.

“Just like that, we’re supposed to be cool?” Doubts Sam, still a bit unconvinced and full of cautious reluctance from the wild beat down him, you, and Steve endured to get Bucky here safely and in one piece.

Pursing his lips together, Bucky’s shadowed eyes search for yours, “What did I do?” He hesitantly mutters, greatly dreading that answer.

“Enough.” Quickly answers Steve.

Bucky shuts his eyes tight before lowering his head in shame, “Oh, God, I knew this would happen.” Mumbles your lover as his head comes back up to meet the three of you, “Everything Hydra put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say the goddamn words.”

Biting your lip anxiously, you dread what he might ask you soon enough, then just as expected he does just that; eyes finding yours, Bucky’s face reveals a deep frown, “Y/N. How did we get out.”

Suddenly you feel rather small as the three men turn curious yet wary glances in your direction; Sam knows and Steve have an assumption, but Bucky doesn’t know the gory details. Shifting uncomfortably, you train your eyes on the floor, “Not important.”

Looking like he’s about to protest for an answer, Steve suddenly speaks up to break the tension, “Who was he?” Referring to the man who caused all of this.

“I don’t know.”

“People are dead. The bombing, the setup....the doctor did all that just to get 10 minutes with you. I need you to do better than “I don’t know”. Presses Steve as Bucky’s face shifts into concentrated thought.

“He wanted to know about Siberia. Where I was kept. He wanted to know exactly where.” Explains Bucky as his eyes flash over to yours, it wasn’t just him they kept locked away under the ice.

Steve’s brows furrow in puzzlement, “Why would he need to know that?”

Hugging your sides, you hum, giving Steve a dreadful knowing look, “Because he’s not the only Winter Soldier.”

——

Leaning on the white, paint chipped wall to Bucky’s right, he sits on the wooden box with his hands laced together. Steve against the wall in front of him, arms crossed and a hard expression adorning his dirt smudged features, “Who were they?”

“They’re most elite death squad. More kills second to only one in all of Hydra’s history.” Admits Bucky with an unenthusiastic sigh, “And that was before the serum.”

“Who was the first?” Asks Steve.

“Me.” You begrudgingly mutter as the three boys look over to you, all expressing various shades of interest, pity, fear, and amazement. Yeah you’re not proud about it either.

Noticing the building awkwardness, and how your eyes stare daggers at the dirty floor, Sam joins the conversation, “They all turn out like you?” Eyes set on Bucky.

Sighing, Bucky looks at nothing particularly interesting to his left, “Worse.”

“The doctor, could he control them?” Wonders Steve.

Eyes shifting back down to the floor, Bucky mutters, “Enough.”

“Said he wanted to see an empire fall.” Says Steve, reciting the doctors words as he tries to think up why.

“With these guys he could do it.” You add after a brief moment, “They speak thirty languages, can hide in plain sight....infiltrated, assassinate, destabilize. They could take a whole country down in one night, you’d never see them coming.”

Bucky nods in silent agreement as Steve weighs the options while Sam wanders over to his side, “This would have been a lot easier a week ago.” He whispers, though you can still hear them anyway.

“If we call Tony...” Quietly suggests Steve.

“No he won’t believe us.”

“Even if he did...”

“Who knows if the Accords would let him help.” Finishes Sam.

The two men stand silently for a moment, thinking hard about the right course of action as their brows furrow thoughtfully before Steve whispers a half defeated, “We’re on our own.”

Sam then gives him a positive look, “Maybe not.” As Steve sends him a doubtful glance while Sam simply smirks with a knowing tilt of his head, “I know a guy.”

——

Standing in an old run down junk yard on the far outskirts of Berlin, your back pressed against an old milk truck as Steve and Sam search for a useable car that can hold two super soldiers, an ex military pilot, and a grumpy sixty two year old assassin.

Bucky wanders away from their bickering and slowly walks over to you as your gaze stays firmly trained onto the gravelly earth below. Soon enough his dark shoes are blocking your staring contest with the ground, “Y/N please talk to me.” Pleads Bucky as you gingerly raise your gaze to meet his soft one, “Tell me what’s wrong. Please? I know that look, something happened while I was him didn’t it?”

Biting your lower lip anxiously, you breath a heavy sigh before weakly shrugging, “I don’t wanna talk about it. You’re not exactly gonna like it.”

Understanding the warning and how noticeably uncomfortable you are, Bucky frowns, though he reaches his hands to gently touch your tense shoulders anyway, “It doesn’t matter. We tell each other everything, promise?”

Staring into his soft gaze with the tiniest bit of hope, you reluctantly nod as he trails his hands down your arms to gently grasp your shaking fingers with his, huh, you didn’t even notice you were shaking. You swallow thickly before giving his hands a reassuring squeeze, “When the doctor got into your head....no matter how much I screamed and begged him to stop, or you to snap out of it. Nothing worked. You broke out of the glass cage and then I broke out of mine, then uh..” You pause a moment, swallowing nervously before whispering, “...the doctor ordered you to kill me.”

Bucky’s eyes immediately sadden as you share a weak smile before continuing on, “I couldn’t kill you. Even though I had the chance to....I couldn’t. But the Winter Soldier wouldn’t stop unless I did. So I let him think you killed me.” You watch as his lip quivers, heart thudding rapidly in his chest as he looks down at the earth in shame and regret. So much hate for what he had done even if he doesn’t remember anything.

Witnessing him deal with this heavy news breaks your heart in two, ripping your hands from his, he’s instantly caught in a huge bear hug from you. Quickly his strong arms wrap protectively around your waist as he pulls you into his chest, “I’m so sorry Y/N. I’m so so sorry.” Mumbles Bucky against your shoulder as he buries his face in your neck.

“It was the only way. You would have done the same if you were in my shoes. No hard feelings okay Buck, I love you and that’s all that matters.”

Suddenly he pulls away from your neck to gaze lovingly into your dreary yet beautiful eyes, raspy voice above a whisper, “You love me?” He asks in astonishment, a small smile tugging at the corners of his kissable pink lips.

Breaking out into a beaming grin, you slowly nod, “Of course I do. Guess I should have told you before all this shit happened.....didn’t find the time.”

Chuckling, Bucky presses his forehead flush with yours, “Y/N, I love you so fucking much.” Reveals your lover before swiftly pulling you in for a heated embrace.

His lips move masterfully against your own in the bright mid sun of the day, bringing a sense of great joy and warmth bursting into your chest as he kisses you with the love of a thousand beautiful moons in the starry night sky. But all too soon are you interrupted by the sudden whistle from Sam as he steals away this brief affectionate moment.

Breaking from the kiss, you and Bucky turn to face the irritating man as he smiles a bright satisfied grin, “Come on you two love birds, we found a keeper out back!” Before beckoning you both over with an enthusiastically dramatic wave of his hands.

Holding tightly onto Bucky, you practically growl, “I’m gonna break his arm.”

Quickly turning to face you he hums, “We’re wanted criminals remember, no breaking anyone. Got it.” Snickers Bucky cheekily as you lightly peck his cheek.

“What’s another thing added to the list?” You muse before letting him go and walking towards wherever Steve and Sam are, Bucky following close behind.

——

Seated to Bucky’s immediate left, shoulders smooshed against each other, you make a face as Steve and the blonde woman Sharon, get out of their respective vehicles. Eyes flickering over to Sam, who’s conveniently seated in the passenger seat, you frown in annoyance, “You’d think we could have gotten a bigger car.”

“It’s all they had.” Replies Sam with the ghost of a humored smile as he watches the two blondes stand beside one another while Sharon pops open the trunk to reveal his suit and Steve’s shield.

“I could have just stolen a bigger car.” You mutter to yourself as Bucky stifles a laugh.

More long moments go by, causing you to shift uncomfortably as you hopelessly try to find a suitable position in the cramped ugly old blue buggy. Noticing your discomfort and his own for that matter, Bucky stares at the back of Sam’s head, “Can you move your seat up?”

“No.” Deadpans Sam while you throw him a glare through the side mirror. Huffing in irritation, you shuffle closer to the left door as Bucky shifts a bit for some more leg room; Sam no doubt absolutely loving this.

Rolling your eyes, the three of you continue watching Steve and Sharon talk about whatever happens to be important at the moment, soon they stop and give each other an unsure look before Steve randomly pulls her in for a smooch. Your brows immediately raise in surprise while Sam and Bucky give him proud brotherly smiles when he looks back at the buggy. Face falling in slight embarrassment for being caught.

Soon after he drives the three of you to some airport parking garage, the ride goes decently smooth with the exception of being practically squashed between the car door and Bucky’s beefy ass. Rolling past a white van, Steve parks the little buggy about two parking spaces away before everyone files out.

You watch as he walks over to greet a man as a brunette woman accompanies his left side; your eyes travel cautiously between the two as you seat yourself on the edge of the buggy’s roof while Bucky leans his elbows against the top near your one hand placed there for support.

Soon the first man opens up the sliding van door to reveal a dark haired guy who immediately flinches and awakens with a start. He squints at the intrusion of sunlight before slowly making his way out of the vans door, “What time zone is this?” He questions, obviously dealing with some sort of jet lag.

The first guy nods towards Steve, “Come on. Come on.” Pushing him towards the one and only....

“Captain America!” Softly exclaims the man in excitement, eyes bright with bewilderment as he quickly shakes hands with Steve who mutters, “Mr. Lang.” In acknowledgment.

“It’s an honor.” Says this Lang guy while he continues to excessively shake his hand, “I’m shaking your hand to long. Wow! This is awesome!” Mr. Lang pulls away before pointing at Steve while he turns to the first man and the brunette, “Captain America. Hey, I know you, too. You’re great!” The woman hands him a bright pursed lip grin as Mr. Lang turns back to Steve.

“Jeez. Ah, look, I wanna say, I don’t know a lot of super people, so....thinks for thanking of me.” He quickly mutters with those exact words, a second later his eyes shift over to Sam, “Hey, man!”

Sam nods, “What’s up, Tic Tac?”

“Uh, good to see you. Look, what happened last time when I...”

“It was a great audition, but it’ll never happen again.” Muses Sam as you look over your shoulder to send Bucky a curious look that is well returned.

“They tell you what we’re up against?” Interjects Steve, bringing the central objective back on the table.

Mr. Lang’s brows furrow in thought as he mutters, “Something about some psycho-assassins?” Yeah, that’s one way to put it.

“We’re outside the law on this one. So if you come with us, you’re a wanted man.” Warns Steve.

Mr. Lang shrugs, “Yeah, well, what else is new?”

“We should get moving.” Urges Bucky as you nod.

The first man speaks up again, “We got a chopper lined up.”

Suddenly warning sirens sound out loudly throughout the airport as a German voice advises everyone to leave the premises immediately; understanding exactly what’s being said you gain everyone’s attention, “They’re evacuating the airport.”

Their faces show deep concern, as they turns to face one another, “Stark.”

“Stark?” Questions Sam.

Steve reluctantly nods before addressing the rest of the team, “Suit up.”

-

Tagged: @diegos-butt​   @minigranger​  @bibliophilewednesday​ @holyhumorliteraturelight @lilacs-lavender @a-girl-who-loves-disney @starkssnarks @vikingqueen28 @bizarrebibitch @atomicpersonacheesecake @jmstz @staygoldsquatchling02 @marvelbros-oneshots @shawnartmendes @mischiefmanaged71 @jckie94

[nickjunesource]

Full article below.

Max Minghella is sitting in his backyard in the LA sunshine, his t-shirt an homage to the French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, his adopted shepherd mix, Rhye, excited by the approach of a package courier.

“You okay, sweetheart?” he asks — the dog, not me — tenderly.

Minghella, who at 35 has dozens of screen credits to his name, is best known as The Handmaid’s Tale’s cunning chauffeur Nick Blaine, a character who it’s difficult to imagine saying sweetheart. In airless Gilead, of course, a cautious hand graze with Elisabeth Moss’ June can pass for a big romantic gesture. In a Season 1 episode featuring child separation and hospital infant abduction, Nick’s major contribution is to trade stolen glances with a sex slave while “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” pumps discordantly along. I ask Minghella about playing the series’ closest approximation to a dreamy male lead against the show’s dark narrative of female subjugation.

“I know this is not the answer you want to hear,” Minghella says with none of Nick’s hesitation. “But I like that stuff, right? In the pilot, I think Nick only had a handful of lines. It wasn't clear that this is what the character would turn into. And it's quite fortunate for me personally, because I'm not a massively sort of intellectual person in my real life. I love Fifty Shades of Grey. That's like my Star Wars. It suits me to play a character like him.”

Minghella surmises that this enduring romanticism is an outcome of nurture. His father, the late British director Anthony Minghella, made grand romantic dramas like Cold Mountain and The English Patient. And there was the young, cinema-mad Max sitting on the living room sofa, absorbing everything. “It’s taken me a long time to understand this,” he says of his prolonged childhood exposure to love stories. “My dad made The English Patient when I was 10. So it was two years of watching the dailies to that movie and then watching 50 cuts of it. And then [The Talented Mr.] Ripley he made when I was 13, and it was the same thing.” These were an adolescent Max Minghella’s alternative to reruns. “I think they did shape my perspective on the world in a lot of ways, specifically The English Patient. That was a complicated love story, and I wonder sometimes how much it's affected my psychology.”

Some sons rebel; others resemble. Minghella’s co-star O-T Fagbenle, who plays June’s other lover from before the time of Gilead, got his first job acting in Anthony Minghella’s romantic crime film Breaking and Entering. “Anthony is one the kindest, most beautiful men that I've ever had the privilege of working with before,” Fagbenle says. “And Max has his gorgeous, sensitive, open-minded soul.”

Though Minghella spent his childhood on the set of The Talented Mr. Ripley, playing an uncredited Confederate soldier role in Cold Mountain, and tooling around with a Super-8 camera Matt Damon gave him, he insists his upbringing was normal. He grew up in South Hill Park overlooking Hampstead Heath in London with his father and mother, the choreographer Carolyn Choa. (Minghella also has a half-sister, Hannah Minghella, who is now a film executive.) Yes, technically, it was London, but that’s not how it seemed. “I feel like I grew up in a very small town. Every school I went to was in Hampstead. I was born in Hampstead,” Minghella says of the small map dot of his life before university. “When I went to New York, I felt I was going to the big city.”

Despite his illustrious surname, movie-watching was far from restricted to the classics. “Beverly Hills Cop is definitely the movie I remember having an unhealthy obsession with. I think I saw it when I was 5 for the first time, and I'd watch it just two or three times a day for years. I'm just obsessed with it.”

Plenty of actors can trace their love of movies back to a love of stories, but for Minghella the relationship seems to flow in reverse. When he left for Columbia University, Minghella opted to study history for its connection, through storytelling, to film. It was during the summers between his years of college that he started taking acting more seriously. Before his graduation, he’d already appeared in Syriana, starring Damon and George Clooney. Soon, he’d make a splash as Divya Narendra in The Social Network in 2010 and be cast in Clooney’s Ides of March. As all young actors eventually must, Minghella moved to Los Angeles.

It’s been over a decade since he last lived on the Heath, but, perhaps unusually for a person who’s chosen his profession, Minghella is adamantly not a “shapeshifter,” in his words. Home for Christmas this year, he started sifting through old journals stored at his mother’s house, “just like scraps of writing from when I was extremely young up through my teenage years,” before coming to America. “It was hilarious to me,” Minghella says of staring at his childhood reflection. “My review of a movie at 7 years old is pretty much what my review of a movie at 35 will be. My taste hasn't changed much. And when I sort of love something, I do tend to continue to love it.”

Which brings us back to his enduring love of romance, born of his bloodline, which is all over Minghella’s own 2018 directorial debut. Teen Spirit is a hazily lit film about a teenage girl from the Isle of Wight — the remote British island where Max’s father Anthony was born — who enters a local X-Factor-style singing competition. (It stars Minghella’s rumored girlfriend of several years, Elle Fanning.) The story is small, but its crescendos are epic.

Minghella calls the movie — an ode to the power of the pop anthem — “embarrassingly Max.” Max loves a good music-driven movie trailer — he’s watched the one for Top Gun: Maverick “many” times. And Max loves the rhythmic beats of sports movies like Friday Night Lights. Max loves movies with excesses of female energy, like Spring Breakers. He likens Teen Spirit to an experiment, his answer to the question, “Can I take all these things that I love and find a structure that can hold them?” The result is a touching “hodgepodge” of Minghella’s fascinations, inspired by the songs from another thing he loves: Robyn’s 2010 album Body Talk (itself a dance-pop meditation on love).

Minghella hasn’t directed any films since, but he sees now how making movies fits his personality — organized, impatient — more organically than starring in them does. Directing also helped him to appreciate that acting is “much harder than I was giving it credit for,” which, in turn, has made him like it more. Besides The Handmaid’s Tale currently airing on Hulu, Minghella appears in Spiral, the ninth installment in the Saw horror franchise and, from where I’m sitting, at least, a departure.

“I do like horror movies, but the thing that was really kind of magical is that I was feeling so nostalgic, right? We talked about Beverly Hills Cop earlier. I was just missing a certain kind of movie,” Minghella explains of his new role as Chris Rock’s detective partner. He was yearning for simple story-telling, like in the buddy cop movies of his youth, especially 48 Hours. It almost goes without saying that a buddy cop movie is another kind of love story. “And then I read the script and it was very much in that vein.” He clarifies: “I mean, it's also extremely Saw. It's very much a horror movie.”

His renewed excitement for acting translated onto The Handmaid’s Tale set, too. Veteran Hollywood producer Warren Littlefield describes casting Minghella in the role of Nick as an effortless choice: “Sometimes you agonize over things. [Casting Minghella] was instantly clear to me, and everyone agreed.” Now in its fourth season, the tone of the Hulu hit is graver than ever. Gilead is more desperate to maintain its rule, and so more audacious in its violence. Perhaps it’s fitting that the show’s romantic gestures finally match that scale.

In one particularly soaring moment, Elisabeth Moss’ June and Minghella’s Nick meet at the center of a bridge and crush into a long kiss. It’s been two seasons since they held their newborn daughter together, and it’s hard to see how this isn’t their last goodbye. Littlefield, like Minghella, is here for the romance among the rubble. “It's spectacular when they come together. In the middle of all of the trauma is this epic love story,” he says. “Max is just magnificent in the role.”

For Minghella, the satisfaction is more personal. He works with good people, he likes his scenes, and he thinks Nick is a complex character. Minghella read The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time in college in 2005. Like all the things Minghella has ever liked, he still likes it. He’s as proud of this most recent season as he is the show’s first. And he watched Nick and June race recklessly back to each other across the expanse of the screen exactly how you might expect. “I watched it like a fan girl.”

[911lonestarscreentime]

Owen Strand Screen Time Meta Post

Welcome to the first in a series of posts analyzing the screen time of characters post season 2 of 911 Lone Star. I thought this idea would be more interesting, and efficient, than trying to put all of my thoughts for every character, and the entire season into one post. 

First up is Owen because he’s the highest billed character and because when I put out a poll, he was the only character no one wanted to see first. So let’s dive in! 

Read my analysis below the cut:

Season 1

I’ll be honest, when I started calculating the screen time I had no idea how much of an impact Owen’s time would have on the fandom. I really don’t recall there being that much discourse over it until I posted the results... and it didn’t really bother me before I saw the numbers? But after I did that first episode I was like oh..... yeah that’s a problem. 

At least that pilot episode was the most screen time he’s gotten, though I’m willing to bet that will change with season 3′s “Owen Begins.” I mean in a way, the pilot episode was his begins episode (or could even be considered “Begins Again” like what they did with Bobby on 911) since it was about him packing up and starting a new life as captain of the 126. Essentially, the pilot episode served to set up that this would be Owen’s show. 

The other episode where he took up a larger chunk of the screen time was 1x06 (”Friends Like These”) which makes sense because it was exploring his friendship with Billy... little did we know how important that would be later.

Most of his screen time in season 1 was concentrated around 8-10 minutes. Obviously that is the most screen time given to a character on the show, which makes sense since the show and the character was written for him and he hold the executive producer title. 

The least amount of screen time he got was around 7.5 minutes in 1x03 (”Texas Proud”) and 1x08 (”Monster Inside”). I do find that especially interesting since those are still episodes where he played an important role in the plot, compared to other characters whose least amount of screen time meant they were lucky if they spoke one line. It’s also worth noting in 1x03, Owen still had the most screen time (though Michelle was a close second) and in 1x08, Michelle did beat him by a few minutes.

Season 2

We really went into season 2 with higher hopes, though it wasn’t much better (I would argue there was some improvement... but I’ll talk about that more later). 

It says a lot that Owen’s top 3 episodes are 2x10, 2x11, and 2x12. Though he didn’t beat his previous record of over 20 minutes, he got nearly 15 minutes in 2x11 (”Slow Burn”)... which if you didn’t already know, is also the episode that was written by his son, John Owen Lowe, and directed by his brother, Chad Lowe. He also got around 12 minutes in the two episodes that buffer that one, 2x10 (“A Little Help From My Friends”) and 2x12 (”The Big Heat”). This three episode arc accounts for about 32% of his screen time this season.

Before that major arc in 2B, in the first half of season 2 his big episodes fell around 10 minutes each; 10:45 in 2x07 (”Displaced”), 10:00 in 2x03 (”Hold the Line”, the crossover), and 9:45 in 2x01 (”Back in the Saddle”)*

A big difference for this season compared to season 1 was that there were episodes where he did not get as much screen time. Whereas his least screen time was 7:30 last season, this season there were four episodes that were lower than that; 7:15 in 2x06 (“Everyone and Their Brother”), 6:00 in 2x13 (”One Day”), 5:30 in 2x02 (”2100°”), and of course, a mere 1:00 in 2x09 (“Saving Grace”). That is really the only episode where Owen has completely stepped aside, playing a very minor role in the overall plot. In 2x02, 2x06, and 2x13, Owen came in second behind Tommy (in x02 and x13) and Paul (in x06). And in 2x09, he came in fourth (the only time thus far he was not in the top 3) behind Judd, Grace, and Tommy.

(*I’ve mentioned the new method I’ve been using to calculate screen time on a few occasions now and I’ve only revisited 2x01 so far (almost done 2x02 tho) anyway, I’m using the data I collected using the old method for these posts but in an effort to be totally upfront about how the new method is going, Owen’s screen time for 2x01 is actually about 30 seconds higher than I originally calculated, coming it at 10:15 instead of 9:45. Not much of a difference, and idk how much the rest of the new method results will impact this meta post, but I wanted to be clear about it).

Total Screen Time

As the infographic above states, his total screen time for the two seasons comes in at nearly 3 hours and 45 minutes. Divided in half, thats around 112 minutes per season, which does fall in line with the totals for each season (103.25 minutes for season 1, 120.5 minutes for season 2). However, there was only 10 episodes in season 1, compared to the 14 we saw in season 2. With that in mind, you can begin to see how season 2 was actually a smidge better than season 1 when it came to how much screen time was given to Owen. But the real indicator is the averages, which is discussed next.

Average Screen Time

As you can see in the infographic, Owen’s average screen time in season 1 was around 10:15 and dropped to 8:30 in season 2. The series screen time (which is the total divided by 24, not those two totals divided by 2) comes in at about 9:15. 

Obviously, even 8.5 minutes is still a huge amount of screen time. But compared to over 10 minutes in season 1, his average screen time is seeing a clear downward trend. I would take this as a win. It’s a small change, but it’s an indication that we are heading towards a day where Owen doesn’t eat up the majority of the screen time each episode.

Outliers

The idea of outlier episodes wasn’t even something I considered until a few weeks ago. This would be an episode where the screen time total was either much higher, or much lower than what is normally seen for that character.

According to my calculations, in season 1 the pilot episode at 20:45 is an outlier for Owen. In season 2, 2x09 (”Saving Grace”) is also an outlier at 1:00. And looking at the data set for all the episodes in series, both numbers (20:45 and 1:00) are outliers. (Outliers change based on the data set, so we need to look at each data set (season 1, season 2, and series) individually and not assume that an outlier for one season would also be an outlier for the series). 

What happens when you remove the outliers?

That brings us to the above question. Is Owen’s 20+ minutes in the first episode the reason why his time is so high in season 1? Is his 1 minute in 2x09 bringing down his time in season 2? And what about the series?

I’m not sure if it’s worth examining how the totals are affected since that’s pretty self-explanatory. Obviously all the totals will go down if you take out the outlier episodes. But where it makes a difference as far as we’re concerned is the averages. 

Obviously the average number is how much you should expect to see that character during an episode. But if 20 minutes is much higher than normal, and 1 minute is much lower than normal, then what happens when you take out those numbers? Well, something actually fairly interesting happens, that almost contradicts what I said before about the progress...

When you remove the pilot episode from the data set for season 1, the average comes to around 9:15. When you remove 2x09 from the data set for season 2, the average comes to around 9:15. When you remove both episodes from the series data set the average comes to (you guessed it) 9:15. 

9:15 is more indicative of what to expect for Owen’s screen time in an average episode, and since it hasn’t changed that says a lot about the progress we’ve seen for screen time distribution.

Now as for what to do with this? Honestly, I have no idea. I mean the fact is that while these episodes are outliers, they did still happen. There is an episode where Owen only had about a minute of screen time; just like there’s an episode where he got over 20 minutes. Outliers are weird because I don’t want to not acknowledge them, and I think it’s important to look at when studying the screen time as a whole. But as for the reported numbers, we can stick with what is laid out in the infographic.

Closing Thoughts

It’s hard to say whether this season saw less Owen, or about the same. Of course when taking all episodes into account, it is less. But when you remove the outlier one minute episode, it’s really not that much better. But then again, the fact that we did get an episode where he was only on screen for a minute is a very good sign, so taking it out of the data set doesn’t exactly make sense.

I guess the biggest takeaway still is that Owen still has a lot. He always will. Even if he did have less this season, it’s still much more than the characters who come in second and third had. I like to think it will get better, and maybe it will, but personally I’ve accepted that Owen will always have the most, and he will have much more than other characters, but it shouldn’t be as much as it is. Hopefully his screen time will continue to trend down and allow for more time to explore the other characters on the show.

[himbodjarin]

LUNAR; CH12

18+ EXPLICIT Content: Unprotective sex, vaginal sex, oral sex (female receiving), cum eating, DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE UNDER 18. MANDO'A TRANSLATIONS AT THE END Chapter Word Count: 14,704 aah im sorry no im not Pairing: Din Djarin/F!Reader - no y/n

The Mandalorian is a driven warrior — traversing the galaxy in search of the ancient Jedi — but everyone has their weaknesses, and he’s no different. The Bounty Hunter possessed three in fact. One he’s discovered—The Child. The remaining two, though, he wasn’t aware of their existence. At least, not until he meets a valorous Sharpshooter underneath a moonless night sky; then he’s plummeting down a dark mission of self-discovery, questioning his morals and his Creed while the moon taunts him, the phases of the satellite corresponding to his personal revelations. However, the Girl has a dark past that may come to inflict hardships on the Mandalorian and the Child; it's up to the Bounty Hunter to decide her fate. Read on AO3 / Series Masterlist

CHAPTER TWELVE: LET ME SHOW YOU

“So about that break…”

One simple sentence is all it took for the two of them to silently agree to their departure of Tatooine and to seek refuge somewhere quiet, secluded and undisturbed by baleful bolts of shimmering reds. It escorts them to the moss-green planet bedecked by marshland and chirpy fauna—its atmosphere crisp and welcoming to that of Tatooine’s sand-choking airspace.

“So you’ve been here before?”

“Yes. There’s a village nearby. They took me in for some time.”

“So you’re thinking they’ll let us crash there for a while?”

There’s a click on the vambrace and the Razor Crest’s hatch closes behind the trio. “If all goes well. Are you sure you have everything? It’s a bit of a walk.”

A tap on a blaster holstered to her thigh, a finger trailing across a wrinkly green forehead, the faint touch on a steel pauldron. “Blaster, kid, Mandalorian. Check, check, and check.”

The Mandalorian chuckles and takes the lead through the woods, heading towards the unnamed village of Sorgan—its inhabitants surely awaiting his emergence the moment the Crest snapped through the atmosphere and swooped low among their needle-point rooftops. It’s selfish, he knows this, returning to the haven he once envisioned himself hunkering down at—having the opportunity of a joyful life, a family, a love—with a different woman matching his stride is destined for failure; for tension. It’s wishful thinking to pretend it’ll produce anything but, to pretend this could be normal.

Sorgan hadn’t changed one bit, except for the lack of invasive Klatoonations, thanks to yours truly. It’s still so green, so wet, so clean and fresh. Its air could regenerate the deflated lungs in his chest from decades-worth of smoke, dust, and discipline, its waters purify his blood, its pacifying ambience replace the void he reserved for quiet nights in space, its company fill

the vacancy between his arms—that last one wasn’t entirely Sorgan’s doing and he gazes at his companion treading alongside him, feet generously lifting over an undisturbed one-eyed aqua frog in her path.

He sighs and places the flat of his leather against the back of her shoulder. “I trust them, they’re good people, but my name can’t be spoken here.”

She twists her neck to look at him and dips her head in a nod. “I know that, Mando.”

Mando. A name that once sounded like shiny credits falling from the clouds now so bleak and rusted. It’s mere corroding steel in comparison to her moaning his name in such a broken voice it heats his abdomen and increases his blood flow. The Girl is like a spice, a strong dose of alluring desires that he’s incapable of acting upon—the inquisitive little alien in his care interfering with his white-knuckled primal impulses.

Idling in hyperspace, confined and carnal, with a toddler and the woman who made his knees weak, heart leap, fingers itch, was dangerous. There he was thinking the atmosphere back on Tatooine was tense; how wrong he was. If that was tense, this had been downright torturous. He could cut the tension with his vibroknife; reduce it to tiny physical pieces he could chew on and grind his enamel down to the gums.

Sorgan is their opportunity to explore their unspoken relationship further—to disassemble the barricade of panels in place and analyse the circuitry underneath. Mando downplays the increased pumping of his organ to himself, masquerading his excitement with faulty breathwork.

“I can take him,” Mando gently tugs on the rucksack strap situated across her shoulder, the child cooing at her hip. “Those slashes haven’t healed.”

“They’ve healed enough.”

He insists, “They reopened, you’re going to strain them with the weight. Let me carry him.”

The Girl grumbles under her breath and picks up her pace, tenacious to prove she’s more than capable to carry the toddler despite the ache the satchel strap is producing; burrowing its residency in the pads of her shoulders. The Mandalorian remains at his tempo, allowing her the distance she incessantly pursues. “Atin,” he breathes.

Their shared moment back in the abandoned cantina seemingly sectors away—so out of reach and untouched it almost never occurred.

All though there had been times, dead in the middle of hyperspace when the kid was napping in his hammock, where the Girl would join him in the cockpit to share a few soft spoken words and purposeful touches he couldn’t begin to dissect. The sensations of her hands running along his shoulders still so crystal in his mind, her knuckles brushing against his cowl as he’d tip the helmet back against the headrest simply to get a little glimpse of her. She knew what she was doing when she’d administer feathery kisses against the surface of his visor—sheer seduction on her part—and it took all of his fizzling restraint not to bend her over the controls and fuck her until her thighs are burning, calves trembling, her skin star-kissed.

Believe him, he’d imagined it. On many occasions in fact. He’s pictured taking her anywhere and everywhere—against the walls, on the floor, in his bunk—but nothing, nothing, was more appealing than the thought of having her in his lap in the pilot’s seat, her back smooshing the buttons of the navigational controls until the Crest whined in agony.

Needless to say, the circumstances didn’t allow the rise for many opportunities; the kid often waking the moment his glove makes contact with her. Mando had to settle for small glances here-and-there, the occasional stroke of her arm as she passed.

But he needs more—needs her.

The Girl is an additive through and through—functioning as a pricey flask of spotchka sedating his muscles and justification and in exchange stimulating his appetite for her; flesh, muscle, tissue, whatever his nails could dig themselves into he wanted.

Mando’s teeth grit together and his eyes scan her back ahead of him, nursing the heavy eyelids on the curve below. The cockpit had been too electric, the recycled air too thick with his desperation; the projection of the Girl naked—because he knew what that looked like now—never far from his mind. But he hadn’t seen her bare from behind; a view he can only imagine - for now.

A throaty grunt slips past his lips as he stumbles on a grounded root in his trance. She doesn’t notice, thankfully, but the Child’s peering eyes stare straight past the visor as though he could sense the disgrace radiating off his guardian, his eyes squinting. He tenses his shoulders in embarrassment and joins the Girl as she slows to a halt on the village’s border outskirts.

“This it?” she asks, shifting the satchel to the opposite hip between herself and Mando, shielding the kid from potential threats.

“It is,” he confirms.

Their heads twist in unison, observing the environment laid out before them; high-spirited and brimming with energy. In the distance children run through riskless fields playing a game of tag, adults conversing and labouring the krill ponds, the croaking of frogs echoing around their feet. Subdued and isolated from all the destruction—preserved from everything they are down to their cores.

The Girl hums and fiddles with the strap slung across her chest. “I don’t want to intrude. They look…”

“Happy.”

She’s concerned for the villager’s safety, as is he—jeopardy seemingly overhanging them like an aura; tethered and indestructible. Returning without a notice felt deplorable to the Mandalorian’s morals as though he was trespassing on their sanctuary and sabotaging their chance at true tranquillity.

Shuffling beside him reminds him why he’s here, why he chose Sorgan rather than any other planet in the Outer Rim with a half-decent field. Mando wags a gloved digit ahead of the Child and anticipates his claws to latch onto the leather, tug and whine until he’s content in his beskar, but not even a grunt of acknowledgement slips through his lips.

Mando huffs a deep exhale and returns his hand to his belt, hooking his thumb in the centre and taking the lead. “Let’s go,” he directs.

The Girl adheres to his side, elbows brushing with each swing of their arm, their footwork synchronised as they cross a narrow mound of land between two krill ponds—the vibrant blue critters easily perceptible with his visor’s enhanced vision. She shrinks her shoulders inwards as the path withers to his wingspan—too binary to admit defeat against Sorgan’s elements and saunter behind—her feet sliding against the bank, but Mando’s reflexes are sharp and he snakes a hand around her waist before she tumbles off the edge.

She straightens herself out, checks on the baby, and exudes an embarrassed smile. “Thank you.”

Mando grins and shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly. “Couldn’t let the kid fall in.”

“Oh, that’s how it is, is it?” Her eyebrow cocks and eyes squint. “What about me, huh?”

“Wouldn’t want him stirring up a disturbance, would we? We need to make a good impression,” he teases. “Besides, you’re a big girl, you’d be fine.”

“Sleemo,” she insults lightheartedly, placing a firm palm against his pauldron and shoves—not so lightheartedly. Mando’s smile falters as his boots lose their traction in the slippery, squelching mud. Descent incoming, he reaches out for the Girl’s arm but stops himself at the reminder of the baby attached to her hip; her own personal lifeboat.

If he wasn’t so cautious for the Child’s current state he’d clasp her wrist and force her to take the brunt of her actions, instead, he accepts his fate and collapses into the krill pond—the water soars higher than the village’s roofings with the added weight of beskar, the sloshing reverberating and drawing the inhabitants attention their way.

Mando finds his footing in the waist-deep waters, hands on his hips as droplets streak down his armour, the over-absorbed fabric of his flight suit clinging to his muscles. There’s dark brown coagulated mud muting his shiny beskar, plastering the warring steel with Sorgan’s serene elements.

“Think you’re so funny, don’t you?” he questions, head tilting.

She bellows just as loud as the initial crash, her gasped amusement echoing among the hushed quiet; the villagers watching from afar. “You’re a big boy, you’ll be fine,” she mocks. “Funny. I don’t hear much commentary coming from you now.”

“I could’ve drowned.”

She jabs an eyebrow upwards and gestures to the water level. “That’d be very embarrassing.”

He grumbles with feigned anger, splashing her lower-half with a mischievous thrust of his hand.

“Oi, watch the kid!”

The Child’s ears perk down at his guardian submerged in the filthy waters, a soft tight-lipped grin donning his face in replacement of the frown he’d been suiting prior—Mando’s muscles lax, his stoic demeanour withering away.

This was good. Right. Both the kid and the Girl deserve to reside in a haven like this, somewhere they don’t need to look over their shoulders—somewhere blasters can retire from holsters.

Miniscule cobalt crustaceans summon up the courage to investigate the intrusive limbs in their occupancy, grasping against the fabric of his flight suit and scrambling underneath the rim of his beskar cuisses. Mando attempts to shake off the meddlesome critters but they’re persistent in driving him away; the Girl steps forwards to aid him out of the waters—after she’d finished laughing so hard tears were brewing in the corners of her eyes—but stammers in her footing as a shadow casts over him from beside her.

She instinctively reaches for her blaster’s hilt and shields the Child, but a delicate hand outstretches for Mando below and she carefully drops her hand, clenches it beside her in doubt. Mando inclines his helmet to follow the hand, travelling up the grey fabric of their tunic and settling on the familiar kind hearted brown eyes welcoming him to the village without needing to speak the words.

He nods as thanks and slips his leather into her hand, hoisting himself to the ground with a boot in the bank for stability. Mando humorously nudges the Girl enough for her to panic and seize his elbow for safety—his vocoders unable to catch the light chuckle in his throat but she feels the tremors in his limb and playfully slaps his bicep.

“It’s good to see you again,” Omera says, a bright smile as she eyes him up and down. “I see you’ve made yourself a friend.”

“Yes.” Mando glances at the Girl beside him, tucked into his side plenty that she looked tiny. “I hope we’re not intruding, we-”

She interrupts him, shaking her head and gesturing behind her to the gathering inhabitants. “The community will forever be grateful for your endeavours. Stay as long as you like—we’ve established additional lodges since you were here. Take your pick.”

“That’s very thoughtful. Thank you.” Mando follows after Omera, irrigating the grass in his wake, and the Girl stealths behind him so she’s unseen from the watching eyes; his beskar performing as her protection. She engrosses herself with the ball of abrupt energy fighting against the confines of his satchel, his claws eagerly tearing at the fabric to rid himself.

The villagers have queued themselves along the banks of the krill ponds, distanced enough for their visitors to pass through without bumping shoulders but close to exchange friendly greetings—welcome back’s and thank you’s—their proximity allowing them the opportunity to examine the Mandalorian’s new partner on the heels of his boots, her eyes cast down in an attempt to stave off unwanted attention though it does very little.

Omera stops short of the newly-installed structures, three identical huts to match with the theme of the others strewn throughout their lands and Mando, not being one to concern himself with impractical decisions, chooses the first one his eyes lay on; his hand vaguely gesturing to the open door of the middle hut.

Omera nods her head and orders a flock of children to prepare their quarters. “We can organise your friend next door.” She flicks her attention past his shoulder and he follows, acknowledging how stiff the Girl looked as though she could be blown over with a docile breeze; her eyes silently pleading to him through his visor.

It’s unusual looking at her this way, as though he’s violating her with just his eyes. She’s typically so snarky and talkative, but her lips are bonded together and her eyes bounce from his visor to the speculative crowd; nervous and uncomfortable.

She assures, “You’ll only be a few metres away from each other.”

Mando has no intentions of letting her occupy a separate hut, not after he’s been so distanced from her all this time. “That’s okay. We don’t want to take up more space than necessary.” The Girl relaxes somewhat, shoulders flaccid, and her hands return to fight against the Child’s tantrum.

He notes how the villagers share some questioning glances towards each other, their prying prompting an unsettling weight on his shoulders—Omera shares a hasty gander between the two of her visitors as if assembling a deconstructed blaster from scratch, gears turning in her head.

It’s too much attention for him—too much visibility for a Mandalorian clad in ancient shiny Beskar steel.

His shoulders tense, his fingers flex into fists; they know, they have to know.

His throat bobs underneath his cowl, mouth dry and cheeks warm, though he’s learnt to conceal it through his mannerisms—the constant tension between him and the Girl training him over time—he remains stoic, statuelike, displaying no visible signs of confirmation to their silent queries.

It’s none of their business; nobody’s other than him and the Girl’s.

“If that’s what you wish,” Omera breaks the silence. “I’ll leave you to situate yourselves.”

Mando inhales sharply and nods his head, walking past her to their new residency. The cluster of children straighten upon his arrival, organising themselves in a single file to allow their guest to investigate their work. It’s a small cabin, less spacious than the barn he occupied last time but more secluded—the windows sturdy and the door possessing a lock—with a bed fit for three in the far-end of the walls; it’s been too long since he’s slept on a mattress, too long since he’s been allowed the privilege of stretching his limbs rather than compact them.

Alongside a comfortable mattress comes the Girl’s warmth as they’ll indeed be sharing a bed. Mando will make certain of that.

There’s hushed whispers behind him, helm capturing some of their words—baby, ask, play—and he redirects his vision to the rucksack resting among the Girl’s hip, the children bursting with excitement at the sight of their playmate. He’s just as psyched as they are, his little claws outstretching for Winta in the middle of the group.

“It’s okay.” Mando nods his head towards the children. “He can play.”

The Girl nods and transfers the kid to the floorboards carefully, stepping out of the stampede of children excitedly taking themselves outside.

Tarrying presences now gone, the Girl joins him in the examination of their cabin. “Good thing the Crest isn’t far,” she jokes.

“It’s not that bad.” Mando twists his body to follow her, pauldrons clashing into her harshly. “I suppose it could be a little bigger.”

“Or you could be a little smaller, tin-man.”

He cocks his head to the side, visor leering. “You’re looking for trouble today.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes,” he grumbles in his throat, sweeping his vambraces around her to hug her arms against her sides. “You are.”

She struggles against his grip, well aware of her impending justice, but he’s too sturdy—too determined to seek revenge. “Don’t,” she warns.

Mando simply smiles, a large toothy grin that makes his eyes crinkle.

What little gap remained between them abruptly narrows as Mando compresses his build into her, squeezing out the krill water from his flight suit and into her garments. Beskar wipes itself clean on her shirt, caking the textile with heavy mounds of sludge.

��Mando!” she gasps and rolls her shoulders back in false hope it’ll aid her escape. “I don’t have a change of clothes!”

He chuckles, deep and throaty that makes his shoulders bounce. “Neither do I, but you didn’t think of that when you pushed me in,” he growls, the vocoder filtering the sound as a crackle that reverberates in the structure and through her bones; she shudders, her shoulders and chest twitching against him—his blood pumps hot.

“I was doing you a favour. When was the last time you hit the ‘fresher?”

“Need I remind you I have you trapped, mesh’la?” Mando presses the curvature of his helmet against her cheek and rubs the excess droplets onto any surface area he can manage, her cheeks, forehead, jaw, staining the pretty skin she’d been blessed with.

She tries to disguise her laughter with anger, but it comes out through her voice—light and airy; Mando hums at the delightful sound, like a lullaby to his ears. “Okay, okay. You win!”

Unwilling to wrench his grip from around her, he continues pressing himself against her and inches forwards until her back is flat against a pillar—his vambraces slipping around sandwich her between two sturdy foundations, one of splintered log and the other a living, breathing tower of a man coated head to toe in steel.

He’s breathing hard, filters whistling with each exhale.

“Mando--” she purrs, teeth nibbling at the soft insides of her lips.

Eyes bore into the cushiony flesh, his tongue swiping across his own in the thought of them against him. Soft and warm—he knew that much when they were around him—but that’s as far as his understanding reached; were they gentle and sweet or rough and hungry?

Would they be addicting, like every other part of her, or simply satisfying; something to pluck as a treat here-and-there?

He grunts and squeezes his vambraces against the wood, his chest following suit against her. “We’re alone,” he murmurs, head tilting to the side as if to silently voice his thoughts.

She’s not as convinced, searching the cabin for eyes infused into the walls, the floors.

“Mesh’la, it’s safe.”

Her head twists to the entrance, a rush of heat tagging her cheeks in soft hues of pinks. She quietly squeaks, “The doors open.”

“Nobody is looking.”

He’s pushing boundaries he put in place decades ago; parading around a relationship—or whatever this is—like some big achievement, which, to be frank, was pretty extraordinary for the Mandalorian. Flings and casual partners—sure—they weren’t feats but this...He’s never encountered someone so remarkable, so special, so necessary; she’s squirmed herself into his life and now she won’t ever be able to leave without causing a disturbance in his lifestyle. He needs her.

She composes herself at his odd comment and brashly collects a batch of his cowl between her teeth to tug him closer—arms still inoperable against her—and uses the newfound angle to assault his neck with a tauntingly hot breath.

“Clean yourself up first,” she tempts. “You’re grimy.”

“To be fair,” he grumbles, “I don’t recall you having a chance at the refresher in a while.”

She pulls away, eyes squinting at him. “Tread on your words very carefully here, Mando.”

He chuckles and loosens his grip moderately. “I mean—you could join me.”

Mando’s growing confident—too confident, it’s the first signs he’s setting himself up for disappointment—and he slides his hands from the pillar to the curves of her hips, his leathers slipping underneath the oversized shirt to explore the bare flesh; her torso being the only place he hadn’t been given the pleasure of researching—all the chalky scar tissue, the slopes of her abdomen, the contours of her chest.

Pair that with the suds of soap cloaking her skin, her hair, it’s every man’s dream to be the one to apply it to a woman, to feel and pull on slippery skin in such a personal way—to scrub her spic-and-span only to ruin her until she needs another.

“Join you,” she repeats mulling for a moment but she shakes her head with rejection. “That’s too conspicuous.”

She doesn’t voice her concerns regarding his helmet—how in the hell do you clean yourself with me there?—and he himself is uncertain, he just knows he wants to be the one to wash the grime off her. He’ll fix himself up after he’s tended to her, if need be.

“Everybody already has their suspicions.”

She sighs. “Guess I wasn’t very discreet earlier, huh?”

“No,” he confirms, his digits stroking leisurely lines to-and-fro. “you weren’t. What happened? I’ve never seen you look so uncomfortable.”

“I...don’t do well with crowds.” She casts her eyes between their feet, examining the size difference of their boots. Mando removes himself from her to allow her to breathe, to continue without feeling pressured. “That face mask I wore… It was a layer of me. It helped me deal with spying eyes. When Tika destroyed it, I dunno, I guess a piece of myself died with it. It-it doesn’t make sense.”

You’re talking to the expert of masks, he thinks.

“I understand.” he says. “It mustn’t be easy having to deal with the lack of something so integral.”

Mando has yet to experience that fear—that overwhelming sensation of uneasiness; people’s eyes so effortlessly studying him without the disguise of his armour to protect him—it’s something he’s appreciative of everyday.

She sighs, hot and heavy and laced with exhaustion. “Well, life continues either way and I can’t exactly hide away here forever.” She initiates a stare-down with the ajar door, scanning the wilderness that reached her vision; a couple of women standing among the pond waters scooping for krill, a pair of children on the banks assisting with their catch. “I’m not one for fishing but I guess I should help out a little, as thanks.”

He grunts as a reply, lacking the confidence to trust his voice—stay here, stay with me—and lamely takes a few steps back, assigning his amban rifle to a nearby flat surface, some storage units, and sinks to a rustic chair.

She considers him, eyes bouncing from his helmet to his lap where his cloak is pulled between his hands. Mando rings out the sopped material, murky water seeking refuge in the crevices of floorboards.

“You’re making a mess.”

“I need to dry,” he retorts.

“Take it off,” she says.

Mando’s shoulders stiffen, his back straightens. “I can’t.”

“I won’t look.” The Girl turns on the heels of her feet and shuts the door ahead of her, casting the room into darkness except for the timid rays of sunlight shining through the narrow gaps of the window—not enough for somebody outside to see, but plenty for him to undress himself without a hassle. “Just put in my hand when you’re done. I’ll find somewhere sunny to hang it up - shouldn’t take too long to dry in this heat.”

There’s no movement on either of their sides, their hut as though it was in suspended animation or the Crest on one it’s many malfunctions just idling in the vastness. She shifts on her feet restlessly in wait for the sodden garments to weigh her hand down.

“What, so I just sit here until it’s dry?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Unless you want to walk around the village naked with a helmet on, yeah.”

Mando grumbles under his breath. It’s not really a choice. It’s not as though he can just remain drenched all day until the air inevitably dries him off. Still, it’s not easy to remove himself from his armour somewhere other than the Crest; it provided security, a reassurance that nobody will see him so exposed.

Both boots are dismissed from their positions and come to lay rest beside the chair while he works on the beskar platings riddling his body—the steel branded to protect him now nothing more than a nuisance as it resists against his efforts and continues to cling to the suit against his wishes. They’re slippery and contain no traction on behalf of the clumpy muck, his leathers sliding out from underneath each time. It’s like a suction seal against his chest, inconceivable of success, but he’s just as stubborn and lures the rim underneath a stitch of his glove and plucks the guard off harshly.

One down, too many more to go.

The other platings put up just as much of a fight as the first but, with a few tugs, they withdraw from his body and reside on the ground alongside his boots. He’s practically naked without his beskar—the air light and crisp as he breathes without the weight—practically naked in front of the Girl. It’s the most he’s been so revealing and, even though she’s not looking at him, his cheeks grow warm, his stomach pulled taut.

He dabbles in intolerable concepts—thoughts he shouldn’t act on for the sake of his Honour, his Creed—the overwhelming suggestion of standing behind her and letting her feel his bare heat radiate off in potent waves; like a strong glass of spotchka, irresistible but ultimately an unhealthy decision.

There’s a deep shudder that runs through the base of his neck down to his coccyx, goosebumps brandishing him and refrigerating him far greater than the krill waters could. Underneath his helmet, he casts his eyes low to devour the curves and slopes of the Girl’s body, his teeth grinding against each other until there’s an ache in his temples.

His Beskar is gone, solely a clump of shiny steel that serves as a warning of what he could be throwing away—everything he’s risked his life for, everything he’s spent decades consuming, altering his physical attributes to suit that of a stoic, emotionless pillar of flesh and bone fortified with not just his armour but his code. His faith.

The Girl precariously shifts between either foot and cocks her hip out, sighing dramatically that pulls his thoughts back into the present.

“Patience,” he instructs.

The air is thick, hot, or maybe it was just him—his filters rendering inoperable when confronted with the foreign bashfulness; it’s not often he encounters such a outlandish emotion, so unknown and disorienting, and it’s quite possibly the worst fucking issue he’s faced with. There’s no shooting or piloting his way out of it and his brain only works in a handful of matters at a time—none of which included addressing the electricity in his chest, the bubbling in his stomach, the clenched muscles throughout his anatomy.

The Mandalorian—if he could still be considered a Mandalorian without his armour, his essence—stands, prompting a squelch from the pool of water he formed underneath, and reaches around his neck to unclasp the heap of his cloak; it’s nothing new, she’s seen him without it before. The shirt is a different story. That’s new. That’s untouched boundaries. His build is infrequently subjected to the perched star in the clouds let alone another lifeform.

Fingers dip underneath the hem of his shirt and bundles the material, his second knuckles sweeping against his abdomen that leaves his jaw tight. That famished growling in his chest is utterly pathetic—his own touches manage to provoke such a humiliating reaction, he could only fathom what the Girl would do to him with those soft hands of hers, her gentleness as she nurses the bruises with her thumbs.

Mando hoists the shirt over his head and slips free from the sleeves and drops it to the floor with a displeasing schlup and neglects the choking in his throat, the rise of his heart rate. Are your eyes closed, he seeks answers to voiceless questions, or are you staring at wood, counting the twigs? Why aren’t you looking at me? There’s another sigh that fills the quiet, whether it’s from her or himself is uncertain; his heart is pleading for a moment’s break.

It doesn’t come.

Next is his trousers—something she had seen before, but under different circumstances, totally contrasting. Perhaps it was all that Tatooine heat that got to them or the severity of the events catching up—Mando nearly dying, nearly stranding her and the kid—that caused them to collide with desperation, their hands working at whatever little article of clothing they could eliminate from the equation to feel each others warmth; the indication they were both alive, safe.

Mando takes pity on her restlessness and forces his reflections to the dark recesses of his mind for later, stripping out of the trousers adhered to his thighs, his calves, noting how the temperate air licks his legs dry. It’s too exposing, too public for his comfort, and he swiftly bundles the cot’s blanket around his shoulders to conceal himself from eyes that weren’t even aimed at him. She wouldn’t go undermining the trust they’ve built, but it’s his Honour, his code—at least that’s what he tells himself.

The Mandalorian tells himself he’s weary because that’s how he was brought up, he was trained to be cautious. To prohibit connections that’d tie him down and crush what little valour remained within him.

He ignores the pestering inkling at the back of his brain telling him that’s not why he’s so high-strung.

There’s scars tainting his flesh, painting the tan skin in slithers of off-whites, bruises on his knees and shins, thick callus paddings on his fingertips. He can’t help but imagine what the Girl might say if she saw him so bruised, so broken. Would she still want to touch him, or is it the shiny beskar that allures her—a mere status symbol.

Securing the blanket around his frame, Mando shimmys a hand out between the folds and grabs the pile of drenched cloth, striding across the room in three steps and gingerly placing it in the Girl’s outstretched palm.

“Is that all?” she asks, her fingers tightening around the stack of black. “I won’t be able to come back for more.”

Mando swallows, his throat bobbing against the air rather than his cowl; it’s such a bizarre situation, being so bare before the woman he struggles to contain himself around, his thoughts jumbled in his head—turn around, please don’t turn around—and he finds the strength to back away from her. “That’s all.”

She won’t—turn, that is—it’s too overbearing, too unlike her. No matter how easy it could be for her to witness him so vulnerable, so human-like, she won’t fiddle with the bindings of their mutual loyalties. Won’t stick her hand in the wet duracrete because she knows it’ll leave a permanent mark, a stamp of her backstabbery.

“All right.” She inches backwards so she can open the door ahead of her. “You out of sight?”

“Yes.”

She nods, her fingers wrapping around the handle and twisting but it stays firmly against the frame. “Get some rest. I know you didn’t sleep on the way here. I’ll get these tended to and then you can hit the ‘fresher.” She opens the door and takes a step outside. “Don’t forget to lock it.”

He watches her leave, observes how the sun swallows her in a breathtaking glow, watches the room be cast into darkness once more—isolating him from the outside; if it’s not beskar or the Crest, there’s always something between him and the natural beauty of the planets he frequents.

The sonic detectors pick up her departing footsteps, light and reluctant, until her boots make contact with the grass, dulling their resonance until he’s left with the laughter of children and hushed gossip concerning himself. He sighs, clicks the lock into place and precariously removes his helmet—cold, dirty with mud and silence leering through him. It’s insides are comforting, a shelter he’s incomplete without, but it’s exterior is the polar opposite; sinister, an insignia for his kind to instill fear into their enemies—the Girl never displaying that trepidation he’s so accustomed to.

Mando is endowed with the sight of the Girl’s beauty, how her eyes crinkle when she smiles or how she chews on her lower lip when in thought, her hands never static for more than a minute at a time, there’s not a detail in his sight he hasn’t engraved into the forefront of his mind.

She’s not as fortunate as him, stranded in the cold surrounded by steel rather than warm skin, unable to pursue the comfort of another without the constant reminder that he can never provide her with anything more than a slab of metal servicing as her shield. And yet, despite those factors, she remains beside him—voluntarily puts herself between him and danger—looking past the visor, all the walls he put in place, and into his eyes.

The helmet expires atop of the chair he’d been seated on, positioned away from him as he sinks his weight onto the mattress—bouncy and cottony, feeding his aching muscles with some much needed attention. For the first time ever, the bed is too large, too empty—she should be here.

Mando’s head stoops against the bundle of organised pillows, cushioning the healing wound underneath the thick of his curls. Curls her fingers nursed. He groans, deep that resonates through his chest, and distorts his head towards the door in wait for her return, his eyelids heavy as they fall shut.

Sleep doesn’t come to him easily in territories he’s been deprived of conquering; the nooks and crannies of each aisle between the huts unaccounted for, the instability of wooden walls establishing minimal security. It’s not optimal in contrast to his Crest but it works enough to achieve a couple hours of sleep. When he wakes, the orange tint leaking through the cabin has evolved into a blend of soft pinks and purples that blush against his tan skin as he paces the room, the blanket wrapped around his build dragging along the flooring with each lengthy stride.

He’d discovered a small refresher deposit in the shack and decided to clean himself up best he could—despite his hormones advocating against the idea, begging for him to wait it out until the Girl returns and he can share the space with her—which now leaves him stranded with his thoughts. A dangerous game he’s not prepared to dabble in presently. Fortuitously enough, he doesn’t need to—a steady knock on the hut’s door pulls him from his thoughts.

“I’ve brought your clothes,” Omera says from the outside, Mando quietly hums to himself and slips his helmet on before speaking.

“Thank you,” the vocoder crackles to life.

“I’ll leave it at the door for you to recollect.”

Mando enables his thermal vision, outlining her body through the door as she bends down to place the garments at the foot of the entrance and turns away for him to steal them. He does so, swiftly and with such minimal sound she doesn’t hear the door open or close behind her.

She’s unmoving, her hands clasped behind her back in patience for him to dress himself.

Assuming she wishes to commune about their sudden arrival, Mando doesn’t leave her waiting long—the flight suit smelling of soap and hugging his muscles with a pleasant residual warmth from the sunshine, his beskar, boots, gloves, and cloak following suit; electing to disregard his bandolier and holsters.

He’s not as hesitant to make noise now that he’s back to donning his layers and widely swings the door open indicating his decency. Omera turns to face him, her eyes casting over his clean clothes and offering a smile. “I was wondering if you’d like to take a walk before nightfall,” she asks, gesturing to the stairs below. “It would be nice to catch up with you. It’s been a while.”

“Where’s-”

“She’s out in the ponds with our finest catchers and your boy is with Winta and the other children.”

Mando doesn’t object against her proposal. Perhaps it’ll do him some good to get some fresh air, to clear his thoughts of the Girl, the wavering uneasiness of his Creed.

They leisurely stroll beside each other following the gravel paths of the village, the sinking sun ricocheting off the front of his helmet as they draw nearer.

“The ponds, huh?” Mando thinks aloud.

She chuckles. “Quite talented at fishing at that. She’s made a name for herself. We can swing by on our way, if you’d like.”

He faintly nods, his helmet inclining to the path as he walks. “Has the village encountered any issues recently?”

“You mean the raiders? They’ve kept their distance and the villagers know how to fight if that changes.”

“And what of you?” Mando asks. “How have you been? Winta?”

“Better, because of you, thank you,” she says, her feet coming to a halt among a cluster of krill ponds. They’re all empty, the inhabitants packing up for the remainder of the night, though his eyes land on the Girl in the distance. She’s switched her tarnished trousers and shirt for a village dress, hitched up to her mid-thigh as she dries the limbs coated in krill water.

The Mandalorian’s stomach contracts, his throat narrowing as he rakes in the image—the fluidity of the material in the wind, her skin lambent from the sunrays, the unclothed legs tormenting his self control. She hasn’t detected his prying, too concentrated on communing with a flock of women thanking her for the assistance.

It’s almost...domestic; Mando can imagine them settling down in a place like this, rough hands that manipulate blasters and spacecraft dedicating themselves to lenient chores like a regular townsman. Gummy blood that sticks to his leathers washing away in a tranquil stream. Their nights spent witnessing the stars emerge from the vastness of the sky above.

The weight on his vambrace suffocates his daydreaming with grungy splotches of soil and he reluctantly returns his attention to Omera, who’s studying his inattentive stance.

“The offer still stands.”

“Offer?” he asks.

“To settle down here with your boy.” The bothersome weight snakes along his beskar and to the thick of his flight suit, her fingers working their way into the strained bicep. She lowers her voice to a dainty murmur, “There must be a reason for your return.”

The weight on his arm is unnatural, forced—so unlike the unfiltered gentleness of the Girl’s—he refrains from shrugging her off, not wanting to appear ungrateful for her hospitality, but it’s like venom seeping into his veins and numbing him from the inside.

Their little game of tooka-and-womp-rat from the last time he was here starting to catch up with him; this is what he was afraid of. She’s a kind woman, she’s great with kids and can handle her own, but she’s not the Girl. She’s not who he wants to see right now.

“You like it here, don’t you?”

“It’s-it’s not an option. We can’t stay still for long.”

“It’s safe here.” Fingers dig in, feet inch closer, eyes dusky.

Mando finally pulls away, unsettled, and shakes his head. “The Child is still being hunted by the Guild. We may only last a few days here before needing to move on. They need a break, is all.” He shies from mentioning he requires a break as much as them; the Girl’s initial idea stimulating the selfish desires that influenced his return. “We’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

Omera’s eyes stall downwards, her hands clasping together ahead of her. “I understand,” she says. “Since you’re on a break, how about I take in your boy for the night? It’ll allow you some rest and I’m not sure if I can separate Winta from him.”

“I don’t think-”

“We’re only a few huts down from you,” she reassures.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Omera, she’s demonstrated her loyalties before, but they’ve spent so much time apart since Tatooine. What happens if the kid latches onto someone and Mando can’t stomach meddling with their bonding? What happens if he no longer wishes to journey with him? The Mandalorian is responsible for him—he can’t just abandon him, but who’s he to insert himself in places he doesn’t belong?

Then again, devoting time to other children his age—well, about as close they’ll reach to his age—could be beneficial; it’s one of the reasons why he had chosen Sorgan.

Mando exhales and seats his hands on his hips. “Okay, but if he’s too much to handle let me know.”

“Of course,” she whispers, clasping a hand on his tricep as she passes him, the burden slinking down his elbow until he’s too far from her reach and it falls away. He cranes his head to look behind as she strides back towards the village, his eyebrows crinkling as he studies her.

“You two are real chummy,” the Girl says from ahead of him, brushing her shoulder against his pauldron as she continues towards their shared hut. He releases a grunt as he’s pushed out of her way, the confusion inscribed into his brows only multiplying—what the fuck is happening?

“Hey.” Mando stalks her, towering and threatening that induces the locals to pitiful onlookers, silently wishing the Girl her best as she enters the hut with him not far behind, the door slapping closed. “What’s gotten into you?”

The Girl scoffs and shakes her head with disbelief, her hands working at the fastenings of her dress to loosen it from around her thighs, framing her legs in wrinkled tapestry. “Me? You’re the one changing around all your little rules you put in place. Should’ve seen the two of you out there. What happened to privacy?”

His legs don’t operate with his wishes, the boots cemented in a debating stance with his arms crossed against his chest. “What are you talking about?” the vocoders buzz.

Baring her teeth like a tooka, she hisses, “She likes you.”

She likes you—he mulls it over, sifting through the dust for the underlying meaning—do you like her?

Mando’s muscles sag and his feet bound across the room to near her, needing her warmth; needing her. He can’t believe she’s skeptical of their connection. He can’t believe she’s doubting how he feels. It burns him. Leaves a searing scar where his heart belongs.

He wants to reach out for her, feel her pliable tissue underneath his gloves, but there’s a meek hesitance; a miniscule drops-worth of concern he’ll incur further stings that eat at his flesh.

“I--”

“Turn around.”

He tilts his head. “Why?”

“Need to get out of this stupid dress.”

Does she not realise what it’s doing to him?

How his fingers are clenched into fists against his sides. How his breathing is heavier. How his shoulders are hunched and his head is preoccupied with images of that blasted skirt hitched up to her thighs with him between them. Does she not see that?

“Keep it on.”

It’s almost an order. Almost.

“It’s hers,” she spits.

Oh. That makes sense.

“I get it, all right. I don’t...have you, Mando. I’m not allowed to-to be jealous when another woman touches you, but—” She unzips the top unconcerned of his peeping, furious and desperate to rid herself of the confining garment. “I won’t wear her clothes. I won’t dress up as another one of your flings. That’s - that’s…”

Mando’s features soften, his fists unclenching, shoulders slacking, and—wait. Back up. Is she that clueless?

He carries his feet towards her, heavy and laden with purpose.

“You’re wrong.”

“What?”

“You’re wrong, mesh’la,” he repeats. Another step.

She’s no longer concerned with the dress, the fabric that once felt like acid against her skin now nothing more than the means of coverage. The Mandalorian isn’t radiating any expressions that she’s learnt to pick up on—he’s completely unreadable.

“About what?”

“I don’t have you,” he recites. “That’s what you said.”

The Girl’s quiet, too quiet, as she stares him down. There’s a falter in her movements as she recedes from her own nerves reflecting off beskar. Finally, ever so slowly, she breathes out another, “What?”

His modulator thrums, his boots clink, his flight suit rustles. Their radius is shortened, Mando’s beskar brushing against the material of her dress as he closes her in like he did before. His leathers stroke against her cheek, bulky and unsatisfying; preventing him from the intimacy he seeks. It’s not fair. He can’t remain like this—so quarantined from her, so fucking removed.

There’s no thinking, no self-interrogating, as his hands fumble against the beskar plate strapped to his chest in haste—concerned that if he slows down even a second he’ll lose the confidence building up inside him—his fingers curl underneath the boundary and tears the steel off his build, clanking to the flooring beside them. The impact causes her to jump, her eyes widen as she inspects the vacant space of his torso.

“Your Creed,” she whispers.

Seizing her hand in his, he compresses it against his pectoral and breathes in deep—lungs inflating against the appendage, his heart stammering at the unacquainted sensations of her nails digging into the flesh underneath. Inconsistent palpitating of his organ travels from the surface of his chest, through her fingertips and to her core, tightening and coiling as her own beating soars to unhealthy speeds.

It’s an adrenaline rush in itself, her fingers so temperate and alive abutting his dense suit—he conceptualises them slithering underneath to nurse the ache of his organ.

He’s not afraid of being burned. He told her that back on Tatooine and he fucking meant it.

Mando is durable; he can take a few burns if need be.

“You make me do foolish things, mesh’la.” The beskar slides across the room with a kick of his boot and he takes another step closer, her back forced against the walls of their dinky cabin. A gloved forefinger hooks the thread perched among her neck and lifts, the steel pendant revealing itself from beneath the top of her dress and he rubs a comforting stroke on the face of the skull. “This is the only part of me I never removed.”

Her face is hot, her lungs heavy. She’s listening, though she makes no effort in concealing how her fingers insistently grasp at his shirt to develop an understanding of the unfamiliar territory.There’s a gentle squeeze across the back of her hand and she tears her eyes away to glance at the visor, tilted and lenient. “This-” He absentmindedly fidgets with the necklace. “-means more to me than my beskar. It was a...beacon of light, hope. It was my compass when I lost myself in my commissions—reminded me of why I chose this life, why I chose to isolate myself—I’m not sure if I need it anymore.” He hopes he’s exhibiting the connotation inside his head as successfully as he believes—I don’t need it when I have you and you have me.

“Mando…” she exhales.

He chews on the gums of his cheeks, his lips, until they’re sore and tender.

“Not -- not good with words,” he confesses, his thumb massaging circles into her cheekbones. “Let me show you.”

Her head angles to the side in consideration. “Show me?”

It’s not an exact approval of his request but it’s enough for him to act—enough for him to demonstrate his devotion to the Girl—and he sinks his hands behind her thighs and hoists them around his waist, pressing his chest into her for stability against the wall. Her hands find their place on his pauldrons, quizzing eyes searching his visor for assurance. Baffling, how she’s so precarious for his Honour’s sake despite him being the initiator; his toes absorb his weight as he lifts himself to insert the face of his helmet into the crook of her neck, his modulator eliciting a grunt as his arousal awakens and rubs against the bottom of her thighs.

“Tell me to stop and I will.”

She doesn’t—Thank the Force, as Peli would say—and he transitions them to the cot, her legs tightening around him with each step he takes. He deposits her onto the mattress on her back with his body hunched over hers, though his feet refuse to tear from the floor, either hand on the cushions beside her head.

“Take it off.”

She doesn’t need a stupid dress for him to look at her that way.

The Girl whirs melodically like a comforting warble from his Crest welcoming him home and she carefully slips her limbs from his shoulders down his chest and out from their sleeves, the dress supported by nothing but gravity and her fingers bundle the skirt, impishly stripping the garment inch by slow inch.

Mando rids himself of his gloves, hell-bent on pursuing the pillowy flesh and engraving his fingerprints. Her stripping wavers at her abdomen and he takes the opportunity to slip the rough pads of his hands along the tops of her thighs to beneath the cloth, fingers blindly studying the miniscule scars puncturing the smooth skin. They find the most recent one, still tender but glossed over with rough tissue, and he circles it like a tooka with its prey.

She’s otherworldly, all soft curves and smooth skin in contrast to the dead of steel.

The weight on his chest, or lack of, evokes shameful thoughts.

“Come here,” he whispers, catching her hands and placing them on either of his pauldrons, her fingertips hooking underneath the rim. “Drag it down and then up.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, pretty girl.”

The nickname pulls a shudder out of her bones and her fingers tighten around the steel, heeding his instructions until the layers unclasp from their fastenings—protection he’s bonded with now nothing more than inanimate alloy in her hands. It’s a physical weight off his shoulders but it reaches so much deeper than that, as though he could finally breathe for the first time in years even with the blockade of a helmet.

He repositions her hands to his vambraces. “Curl your finger underneath-” She follows, either forefinger arching beneath the rim and finding a small shrouded dial, the plates slackening around his wrists and she carefully peels either off. “That’s it.”

That ugly trepidation from before isn’t even a consideration—his eyes glowing and fingers stiff as she shucks him from his beskar piece by piece, her own garb partially removed and covering the last portion of her body he’s yet to see bare. He won’t undress her further, not until they’re equal and she’s more comfortable.

Mando slips free of his boots, nudging them to the side, and ascends to the surface of the cot to sit on his knees between her legs. Their hands shift to his tassets resting among his hips and he aids in her attempt to dislodge them from their joints, tossing them to join the growing pile of steel below the bed. She stops with her hands sprawled across his cuisses, the last of his armour; the last physical manifestations of his essence.

“Is this what you want, Mando?” she asks, the tips of her fingers caressing small strokes into his thighs above the steel.

“Say my name,” he pleads. “No one will hear.”

She repeats, “Is this what you want, Din?”

Dank Farrik. He’s no longer The Mandalorian, Mando, but instead reclaiming a long lost name and wearing it with pride, ingraining the sound of it slipping through her lips into his bones. Din. A name he’ll only ever hear come from her. His name.

And the Girl was no longer just the Girl—she’s His Girl; all his and he’ll brand her body to prove it, label her skin with his crescent nails if he has to. They deliberately dig into the meat of her thighs, skin raking underneath his fingernails, and he nods his head in response to her question - this is all he wants. To be suspended in time right here and now; triumphing buried insecurities with her unwavering support.

Her fingers progress independently, hitching underneath the borders and tugging the final two pieces of pesky beskar from his body, sans helmet of course, and languidly drops them to the flooring with a clank.

She stifles her breathing, reducing it to a slow wisp that flees her mouth and circles around them dragging them against each other. “You-you can touch me, mesh’la.” He expresses his covet for her touch by depressing his hips into hers, rocking once and twice rhythmically until she wads a fistful of flight suit to draw him in—her breath fogging the visor as she analyses his build with her hands; trailing along the front of his chest and around his sides, the featherweight touches tickling the body parts scarcely disturbed.

“Smell so good,” she moans and tucks her face into his cowl. “Much better than before.”

Din chortles. “Should’ve joined me.”

“Next time.”

He’ll take her up on that.

There’s a hand on either hip and he observes from the clouds as she aligns their pelvises together, her heat bucking against the emerging bulge.

“Show me,” she alludes to his previous proposal, eyes swallowed with inky lust.

Din fucking growls—the modulator contributing very little to the deep crackle—and his hands return to soft flesh, shoving the galling dress up, up, up and over.

“S’pretty.”

The garment is discarded across the hut, finding its home somewhere among the clutter of beskar trailings. She’s faultless, something he already had an impression on but seeing her so bare, so unguarded and trusting beneath him, is record-breaking.

Trauma lesions encompass her skin, little choppy lines of faded tones splotched across her abdomen, her chest, shoulders, waist—mimicking his own—and he returns to the healing wound on her abdomen to brush a tender stroke along the surface; an injury he was there to witness, the blade tucked into her flesh still so fresh in his mind.

“Din.”

The vermillion slipping through his gloves as she faded out of consciousness. Those dreadful cries of pain each time he touched her. The unyielding environment of Tatooine attacking his muscles and composure as she bled out in the arms of a stranger.

A prodding at his back plucks him from reliving the memory, crumbling it into miniscule debris fragments upon the revelation that she’s here with him, breathing and safe and alive. She’s poking at the wound he garnered all those days ago, when she took the first step to progressing this little thing they have going—all of their intimate milestones triggered by one or the other inflicting a wound of sorts; Din seemingly the culprit in both instances.

But not this time.

This time is different. Spurred on by passion and a necessary need to show each other themselves defenceless.

“Sorry,” he whispers and compensates for lost time with a gentle grind of his bulge into her sex, her feet digging into the matress behind him and holding him stationary against her.

She raises to her elbows, seizing a clump of his cowl in one hand to stabilise herself and uses the newfound leverage to rut against his lap. “Shit, Din,” she moans.

It’s so fucking lewd; she’s just using him to get herself off and fuck if he doesn’t like it—the pressure around his neck with each tug, the warmth against his lap, how light and freeing each movement is compared to last time.

“Supposed-” He’s cut off with a tumbling grunt, fleeing out of his throat and into the silent cabin as she quickens her pace; stroking the underside of his length raw. “I’m-I’m supposed to...fuck.”

“Taking-” she breathes, “-too long. Fucking--taking off your beskar, what’re you thinking? I need you, Din.”

She’s forced back onto her back beneath him with a hand flat against her abdomen, his figure looming over her exuding lust and desire and pure dusky thoughts he’d be ashamed of admitting. “Wasn’t done,” he declares, a hand grasping at the hem of his shirt to eradicate the article from the equation. Din needs to feel his skin against hers, more than just roughened hands, he wants her nails in the muscles lining his back, her teeth retreating to the skin above his collarbone, lips and tongue labouring at his neck.

The weight around his neck and shoulders commands him to cease his stripping—fuck. Why’s he got so many fucking layers for? Din rips the cloak from around his neck, bundling it into a tattered ball and tossing it across the room impatiently.

His hands return to his shirt’s hem, elevating the fabric until a sliver of his abdomen is assaulted by frigid air. The downwards dragging is unexpected, quaint, and he stops to heed her interruption, “Only if you want to, Din. Don’t - don’t force yourself for me.”

“Sweet girl,” he muses and removes his hands so she’s left clutching the fabric alone. “Take it off for me.”

It’s too intimate, too liberating; so much more than just sex and a means to receive relief from each other’s bodies. This is something they’ve both been denied for far too long—the meek touches of another to lull each other, reassure themselves events that have yet to unfold will be okay so long as they’re together.

She discards the shirt beside them and runs her nails along his spine gingerly, recording the bumps of bone buried underneath the flesh and muscles. His front is in her face, on direct display for her eyes to collect the slithers of off-whites; her lips brushing his pectorals.

“Been through so much,” she whispers against his skin, her breath prompting a layer of goosebumps in its radius. “Too much.”

“As have you, mesh’la.” His fingers trail a slash across her shoulder.

The time she contributes to identifying each scar, memorising the feeling and positions, is staggering—as though she’d be content with just studying his body for the next week alone—those impressions of her only wanting him for his armour and protection, not for what else he can bring to the table, are lit in unforgiving flames.

She’s not in it for the reputation he withholds, but simply for him.

There’s a tightness in his chest, an ache, something new and terrifying—a word to an emotion he’s not acquainted with circling his mind, bouncing along his tongue in jest towards his confusion and uncertainty.

He doesn’t entertain the thought; the thought that maybe, possibly Din is having his initial encounter with something bigger and more dangerous than any commission he’s dealt with before. It’s not possible. He’s not that fortunate. He can’t process those emotions—he’s not built for that.

Din needs a distraction, pronto, otherwise his head will be so clouded with the thought that—

She banks a wet stripe across the front of his throat, the groan oscillating through his flesh and onto her tongue and she rewards him with a benign kiss—his throat bobs and he ruts against her pelvis unquestionably eager.

Yeah, that’ll do.

Din’s hands surrender behind her back and blindly unclasp the hooks of her undergarment and yanks the blasted barrier off, his hands working the soft mounts before his eyes gain a chance to rake in their appearance.

“So soft,” he murmurs, palming the tissue vigorously. “How’re you so soft?”

The Girl opens her mouth to utter something snarky—he’s beginning to sense her incoming sass—and he devilishly clips a nipple between two fingers to disrupt her train of thought, her fingernails raking against his shoulder blades in an attempt to stifle the rising noises in her throat. It’s hypnotic, like watching electricity react against metal, her back arching as he flicks a thumb over the hardening peak sparking her nails to bare down into the meat of his slackened deltoids.

A hand trails down to his abdomen, digits soaking through the hairs of his happy trail but she doesn’t stop in her endeavours and sinks lower, past his bulge and buries her hand underneath her undergarments so that he can only see the outline of her hand working away at her crotch.

Din exhales, one of his hands fleeing from her breasts to remove the garment so he can watch her. She plunges three fingers inside of herself, stiffly pumping her hand in and out—preparing herself for him; it’s so fucking vulgar.

“Gods,” he groans. His final piece of clothing retires to his ankles, too overzealous to put in that extra effort to be completely free, and instructs her hand to his cock, using the slick on her fingers to lubricate himself. “Flip over for me, pretty girl. Let me take care of you.”

She enthusiastically obliges and squirms underneath his weight to lay on her stomach, he uses the pillows to prop her ass up to avoid her overstraining herself and reserves a moment to consider the view—far greater than his mind would conjure up. There’s additional scar tissue across her back, lengthy slashes and the remnants of blaster bolts, but those only highlight her features; the dip between her shoulder blades, the arch of her lower back joining the curves of her ass perfectly.

“Beautiful.” He adjusts himself between her folds, rubbing the tip to amass more of her slick, and eases inside her gradually; his hands never leaving her waist, eyes refusing to tear from the scenic sight.

“Shit--”

“So beautiful.”

“--Din, please-”

Din hums and thrusts inside her, pulling moans and gasps from her lips like music to his ears. “Beautiful...mesh’la.” It doesn’t require further explanation, the connotation straightforward with two simple words.

She asks, nonetheless, words muffled with bedspread and moaning, “That’s what you’ve been calling me all this time?”

“Do you like it?”

“Do I like it—you’re… you -- Maker. Shut up and fuck me.”

Fucking her, that he can do. Shutting up, on the other hand, was a little more difficult. It’s worthy of a comedic performance, how contrasting Din is in bed to in his armour; usually so stoic, a Mandalorian-of-few-words, now so whiny and talkative underneath the Girl’s charm.

Even if he wanted to stop murmuring dulcet words—and he really fucking doesn’t want to; the pent-up statements flowing from his throat so smoothly compared to earlier, like a tender creek current—he can’t stop.

Din applies his weight onto her back, uses his knees to continue his thrusts, and dips his helmet to mutter filth into her ear, “Gar jatnese be te jatnese-” He grunts, a hand squirming it’s way underneath her body to snatch a breast - just to have his hands against parts of her reserved for him. “Gar ani ni, vaabir gar suvarir?”

Of course she doesn’t understand—-Mando’a isn’t a well-known language, with few aruetii capable of articulating the speech. It’s no surprise when she doesn’t respond to his comments but the quiver reaching her shoulders and toes is a clear indication she’s savouring the sound of his voice manipulating a foreign language—whispering endearments only he can understand.

He’s touching her everywhere, running along her sides and across her shoulders, fingers dipping to draw lines across her cheeks and forehead where sweat is beginning to accumulate. Din’s inquisitive, it goes against his nature—habitually so cautious and attentive—and he sweeps two fingers across the cushioning of her lips, tapping against the flesh until she parts and immerses the digits within the pocket of her mouth.

There’s no sense of direction, no suggestion for what she should do cause he’s fucking splintered like a log; he’s had her fingers in his mouth before but he’s never felt the warmth of her saliva without a leather barrier. The helmet tucks into the crevice of her neck and shoulder as she bobs her head on the fingers, performing identically to how she had at Tatooine on his cock—sultry and slow, simply exploring the body he’s honoured her with sharing.

It’s an overload of sensations. Being rooted so deeply within her it’d be best to pitch his residence to refrain from laborious movement, their lungs synchronised against each other, his bareness, his withering Honour, so apparent and she’s focused on serving him with anything he desires; fingers in her mouth, weight crushing her, a hand grabbing at her chest, she doesn’t care so long as he’s satisfied and touching her.

Din can’t handle it. He’s a fucking Mandalorian. A warrior. He’s killed thousands of lifeforms in his lifetime. He’s survived wars. None of those even came close to shattering him like she does—a pretty girl is the cause of his skeptical questioning of his Code. A pretty girl is the sole motivation for his fingers to dip underneath the beskar rim, floundering for the feel of a fastener -- click!

There’s a hiss that interrupts her pace, the gears in her head turning, and she pulls away from his fingers to stare off into oblivion. Her body’s tense, the cushiony flesh abruptly hard and taut underneath him. “What’s the matter, Cyar’ika?” he mulls, stopping his movements to console the change of attitude.

“Din—you can’t.”

She doesn’t need to explain herself. Doesn’t need to clarify she understands that sound, having heard it twice before now. She understands the reality of the situation he’s pushing themselves into; quite possibly more than Din himself.

She inhales and inclines her head, sealing off any possibility of catching a glimpse of something unforgivable. She murmurs, “You’ve shown me, I get it -- I understand. The pendant, the beskar, the flight suit... It’s too much—I can’t reciprocate. You can’t give all of this to me, Din.”

The beskar is slack, mobile, as he shifts so he’s directly behind her. “Oh, Cyar’ika, you’ve given me plenty.” he hums, the vocoder continuing to operate. It modulates his vocals into staticy droid-like sounds; it provokes a rise in his chest, a tightness in his abdomen, and he rips the steel from his face—as though he’s submerged in krill water, drowning and in dire need of the Girl—and his mouth latches onto the back of her shoulder in one foul swoop. There’s no time to consider it, his actions overcoming his rationality and faith to his Creed.

It’s all teeth and tongue. Biting and tugging, licking and lapping.

The Girl springs at the sensation, the contact so heavenly she’s uncertain whether it’s real.

“Din, you...fuck, shouldn’t-shouldn’t…” She struggles for a deep inhale with the weight on her back, her face swallowed by blankets for his Honour’s sake.

The enamel works out the knots in her muscles, his warm tongue lulling the skin to relaxation after he’s finished abusing it. It’s fucking surreal. Dreamlike. Who knew something so small could elicit such a primal feeling inside of him. She’s even softer in his mouth than his hands—how is she so fucking soft—all warm and salty from sweat that attacks his tastebuds, leaves him thirsty for more.

He marvels whether the beating in her chest is as fast as his, whether he’s spurring on some deepened arousal like she’s doing to him; his cock hardens like that of his beskar, tight and sturdy to the point of ache and he’s compelled to grind his pelvis against her ass to relieve some of the pressure.

“Pretty girl,” he coos, voice rounded and deep and alive; goosebumps rise to the surface of her skin, which he nurses with delicate pecks. “Should take a look at yourself.”

She bites back, “Should listen to yourself.”

It encourages him, welcomes the husky tone from the depths of his throat as he nears her ear and deliberately exudes a hot sigh to assault the cartlidge, “Kaab jate, Cyar’ika? Is that what you like? My voice?” He pokes his tongue at the base of the side of her neck and slides upwards to the bottom of her ear. “Or—ner uram—my mouth?”

It’s not a question needed to answer; she makes it apparent that yes, his mouth, his voice, his vulnerability, his sacrifice, is what she likes—she likes him.

“Ke-ep talking like that and I’m gonna-”

“We’re not done,” he rumbles. “I wanna-wanna taste.”

“Ta-st-e…” she stumbles. He can’t see her face from this angle but he imagines a tint of pink across her cheeks, her teeth chomping away at the bottom lip.

Din buzzes against her ear in confirmation. “Want you in my mouth. Is that okay?”

“Oh fuck. Yes. Where - how do you want me?”

So fucking eager—he swallows the opportunity to assuage her appetite for his tongue by flattening the organ against her spine unloading a thick stripe of saliva in substitute for the sweat that nestles its way down his throat. “Not yet, sweet thing, let me take care of you first.”

Din lacks experience utilising his mouth to get someone off, isolating yourself in a layer of steel tends to do that to a man, and he’d be unable to reveal himself from his beskar again if he humiliates himself like that—he’ll just exploit what he can and swoop in to lap up the remnants between her thighs.

It’s greedy wanting to experience the flavour not for her pleasure but his own. That aftertaste that’s so highly spoken about so unidentifiable on his taste buds; he can’t continue living not knowing what that’s like.

But first; he’ll make her scream his name and come on his cock until she’s leaking down her thighs.

His helmet idles beside them, lopsided visor leering at him from it’s position—he scowls at the heinous thought jostling around his mind and repositions it ahead of the Girl, the steel weighing down the blankets. He verifies it’s perspective and slithers a hand around her throat to pry her face from the depths of the blankets and mattress.

She’s rigid as she finds herself in the reflection of the visor, sweaty and flushed and practically drooling with thirst for his thrusts. “Fucking——look at yourself,” Din moans.

“Shit, your face-”

“S’okay,” he slurs, “can’t see me from your position.”

The Girl relaxes somewhat, her shoulders still taut but her neck melting into his hand and moulding her flesh around his digits as he continues to incline her head—look how gorgeous you are—and his teeth latches onto the skin of her throat, twisting and pulling to leave a mark for later.

His hair is thick and unkempt, subsequently flat and jungly from the helmet, and his wild curls wash against the bays of her jaw; strands peering into her field of view even though her eyes are almost at the back of her head. She obliges with her eyelids requests, respecting his Creed, and seals themselves together to submerge her vision with black—it’s all sensory, all touches and gentle kisses against her neck to counterbalance the unforgiving thrusts he’s gifting.

Din labels her with his teeth indentations, breaking the blood vessels in splotches across her throat, painting crescents into her shoulders with his nails. He mouths her name but the word refuses to vocalise, latching onto the tonsils and taking residence there; in his mouth, where it belongs.

“Din--”

His response is nothing short of filth; muffled moaning pressed against the back of her ear as his hand captures the swelling nub of her clit to draw eager circles.

“--Din, fuck. Din, Din, Din...”

“That’s it,” Din croons, his lips curling at the over abundance of his name spewing from her gullet. “Let go.”

There’s a quaint delay, her body working overtime to comprehend all the sensations without overloading her brain, then she’s writhing and twitching underneath him; his hand and thrusts never-ending as he pulls every single quake out of her involuntarily. Her walls tighten around his cock, that unmistakable warmth engulfing his length to attract his own undoing like a magnet—he could keep going for hours if not for that fucking warmth.

“Din! Di-”

“Shh,” he advises, setting his palm against her mouth to blunt the ecstasy cascading from her vocals like a waterfall—a downside to being so close-quartered to others; he wants to hear those whines, the unstoppable call of his name at her peak, but he’ll settle for rewarding muffles.

Din works her down from her orgasm, pecking soft kisses against her healing slashes and softening the fingers against her clit until she’s no longer twitching underneath his weight. She lays there for a moment, simply memorising the tingling between her thighs and how his pelvis compresses against her ass with every delicate thrust.

Energy recovering, rather quickly, she meets with his lunges, sloppy and trembling on her knees but he appreciates the effort—not that he needs it. She doesn’t need to do anything special to aid his high; Din could just come if she asked him to.

He’s reaching deep, the tip of his cock nudging against her cervix, and they stagger in unison. “Fuck. Vaii, Cyar’ika. Where-where do you want-”

“In,” she mewls between his fingers. “Don’t stop.”

“In.” Din fights his conscious for a breath, his windpipes narrow and clogged. “Dank Farrik. You’re sure?”

“Definitely.”

In, it is.

Din’s cock anchors in her warmth, his pelvis rocking back-and-forth lightly, and he savours how her walls contract with each flick of her sensitive nub—edging on his orgasm by the inch starting from the tip and sliding down to the base like vine tendrils wrapping around him and encouraging him to just fucking let go.

He heeds his own advice and relaxes, allowing the overwhelming pulsations to pump strings of softening whites inside of her, her name falling out his mouth in broken moans. Their warmths mix together within her walls and stick to his length with vengeance as he numbly extracts himself until only the tip is concealed. Cock still semi-hard, Din irresistibly thrusts into her one final time—pathetic ego reaching new heights when she mutters a final bleat.

Din runs rough fingers up the backs of her thighs and to her shoulders, palming the flesh tenderly until she’s nothing but a pool of lax muscles beneath him. His mouth delivers delicate kisses across the back of her neck to provide a break for her to regain her breathing.

“Can you continue?”

She nods her head, a simple response he holds close to his heart as he carefully readjusts himself behind her.

She’s poetic from this view, a body crafted with wise hands the greatest bards would struggle to write about, but there’s nothing that comes within range of outstanding like her face does.

He needs to see her.

“Think you can hold your eyes shut while I go down on you?” Din groans in desperation while she mulls the question over. “Please, Cyar’ika, I need a taste.”

It’s a big ask and if she can’t ultimately gather up that courage to comply he won’t pressure her, no matter how much his mouth salivates from the thought of finally consuming a piece of her.

It’s the greatest test of trust; she’d easily be able to slip open those pretty eyes and pulverise his Creed to molecules—he wouldn’t trust himself if he was in her position.

It should terrify him; should render him into a solid beam of sturdy beskar.

It doesn’t. Din’s paralleled to that of the Girl, soft and warm, not an inch of him cold and solid.

His Mandalorian helmet contains a blackout setting and, if it comes to it, he can slip it over her head so he can sate his cravings without the paranoia in either of their heads—no.That picturesque face of hers shouldn’t ever be covered up again; that stupid face mask stole too many moments from his vision.

There’s enough concealment behind beskar to provide for both of them. Too much concealment.

The Girl gasps, “Okay. Okay.”

The stretched lips across his face is disgraceful; finding pleasure in something so filthy. Din couldn’t give a fuck. Who wouldn’t be smiling in his position?

They silently reorganise themselves with her on her back, eyes firmly shut, and Din planted between her thighs, quite possibly his favourite place in all of the galaxy.

Din doesn’t rush things; he’s not that kind of man. He works her up with ribbing kisses across her sternum and tooka-licks on either nipple simply to hear her breathing hitch and her hands fist the blankets underneath them. She white-knuckles the fabric when his teeth collect the sensitive skin and brutally sucks his markings into her, red and blemished that’ll welt nicely by morning—the only form of bruisings her body should be subjected to.

The hand assaulting the blankets transfers into the thick lock atop of his head with his guide, the digits snaking through the curls for leverage and tugging as he makes sloppy open-mouthed kisses around the pendant resting between her breasts.

“Cyar’ika.” The newly-adopted nickname floats through the air and into her core. “What’d I do to deserve all this?”

There’s no sarcastic comeback this time, not even an attempt, though he knows what she would say—destroyed my rifle—and he makes route lower and lower and fucking lower.

She’s straining to keep her hand in the mess of hair, his head lowered between her thighs where she can feel his breathing against her heat.

There’s a trail of translucent along the insides of her thighs and he follows the streak with his lips, digits digging into the meat while he collects it onto the cushiony brims. His tongue doesn’t delve out for a taste—not yet—until he’s made a path directly to her sex to place a final kiss against the peak of her clit triggering a miniscule buck that nudges against his nose.

“Tell me to stop,” Din pleads; fucking pleads because he knows if she doesn’t he won’t be able to stop himself.

His scalp burns as she stiffens her grip. “Please.”

There’s an experimental lick at first, nothing short of the tip of his tongue running through her folds, but once he’s obtained a taste of her there’s no end in sight—the finish line sprinting so far away from him he doesn’t even want to make an attempt to reach a conclusion. He’s happy to sit there and lap up everything until she’s dried out.

The Girl was spot-on. They’re a combination of sweet and salty—sweet on the account of her, salty because of him—and its so fucking addictive. His tongue flattens against her to collect as much slick onto the muscle and retracts, swallows, and repeats.

The bump of his nose stimulates her oversensitive clit for a second round, his fingers deviously slipping inside her canals to accumulate what his tongue can’t reach, his eyes spying on her face for every reaction he plucks.

Din can’t prevent the famished growl that slips out of him when his fingers plop into his mouth, shiny whites blending with his salvia to slide down his throat and lay rest in his stomach.

“Sweet girl, you really are sweet.”

For someone so inexperienced, Din sure knows what he’s doing. His tongue is in hyperdrive, working at her clit and suctioning every last drop of her out from within.

“O-o-h,” she moans and writhes on the mattress. “Gods, Din... Right there. Sh-it.”

The mewling words of encouragement boost his ego, as though he’d been replaced with his younger self; overly-enthusiastic and mindless, but possessing far more maturity—nurturing quirks that go against his amour propre youth.

Din heeds her commands, unrelenting licks jerking against her clit while his fingers get to work pumping in and out of her.

He’s not trying to make her come again, he didn’t think he had it in him, but fuck she’s right on the edge—he can feel it. Maybe it’s the over-sensitive nub collapsing into her core prompting her to tremble and twitch, or maybe he’s not giving himself enough credit; regardless, he’s working overtime to quench her needs.

When her thighs pinch the sides of his head, he really loses the plot—a heavy grunt expelling from his throat as he angles his head to the side and quickens his pace, poking and prodding at the spot she likes best.

“Din, Din-fuck.”

Thrumming journeys through his mouth and onto her clit, stimulating it just that extra mile to cross the finishing line. Her thighs stabilise his head in place while she violently bucks into his mouth, her second orgasm much stronger than her first.

There’s a surge of slick coating his fingers and he sinks to hoard it in his mouth, tongue-fucking her up till she’s a whimpering mess beneath him. It’s all her—his saltiness long gone—and he revels in the warmth; focusing on it slipping down his throat and sheeting his taste buds with a sweet syrup that immediately destroys the memory of those pitiful pancakes.

“So fucking delicious, Cyar’ika. You deserve a taste. You want some?”

Her head nods faintly, the exhaustion catching up to her; thighs trembling and fingertips taut in his curls.

Din accumulates a mass of her slick on his fingers and reroutes himself for her mouth, but stops himself. It’s glistening at him, taunting and just begging to slip into his mouth—he fulfills it’s wishes and plunges his digits inside for his tongue to lap up the remnants before hastily ramming his lips against hers.

It’s too authentic, too nerve wracking, as though he’s being initiated into the Creed for a second time; all butterflies in his stomach and outpaced blood flow through his veins. His hands quiver as they find her face, cupping her jaw as he deepens the kiss with a flick of his tongue across her gums.

The Girl’s eyes nearly slip open from the initial shock but she’s mastered her self-control, slinking into the mattress and pulling him with her.

It’s not like the kisses you’d see in holoplays, where it’s all soft and delicate but rather hungry and needy, a lot of teeth clashing against each other as they attempt to find themselves.

They exchange flavours, Din offering up her slick on his tongue in return for her saliva; tasteless in itself but it’s hers—his favourite flavour.

It’s all over him. In his mouth, on his chin, his fingers, his cock. It’s where it belongs.

Breathing is essential to life: they’re reminded as they reluctantly pull from each other's seals. Din’s not done just yet, then again, he’ll never truly be quenched of her. There’s just not enough of her. His lips disturb every speck of visible skin on her face, pecking her chin and across her cheeks all the way up to her eyes and back around the opposite side.

He’s much more gentle now, having gorged himself on her lips and taste, and is mindful of the scratchiness of the scruff along his jaw as he runs the pillows down her throat to come to rest in the cavern between her shoulder and neck.

She’s so bouncy, so padded, Din could rest his head on the bare tissue and sleep for centuries; recuperate for all the decades of blood and sweat he’s put his body through, replenish the colour underneath his eyes, permit his muscles and bones to be reborn.

His eyelashes brush against his cheekbones as he rests his eyes and evens out his breathing.

“Din,” she breathes, hands sketching idle lines across his back. “Hate to ruin the mood but your helm-”

“Don’t worry about it. Just rest,” he mumbles against her flesh, a hand blindly reaching out for the blanket to cover themselves; he doesn’t plan on moving from this position. She’ll have to pry him off herself. The beskar pendant is wedged between their chests, the skull's tusks digging into his muscles but it’s somehow fitting, comforting.

She is worried, though. There’s a crinkle between her eyebrows that he heals with the padding of his thumb. “What if I wake up-”

“I’ll be awake before you.”

“But--”

“I promise.” It’s not a pledge Din should initiate. She’s too comforting and he might never wake if he remains in her arms. His stubble pricks against her collarbone as he finds an abode among her chest, the beat of her heart against his eardrum.

“Please, Cyar’ika, don’t make me put it back on.”

How can she oppose that?

“Oh——okay.”

This is bliss.

This is his Manda, his paradise.

Her, not the location, though Sorgan will always sit somewhere special within his heart.

His Girl is all he needs.

If Din didn’t have a mission, a green mischievous baby, to tend to he would spend the rest of his days nestled into her body, pampering precious skin made of the elements themselves with sentimental kisses and delightful touches.

If she was to ask him to retire his blasters to their weapons unit, he would do it in an instant.

“Din?” He placidly drones in feedback. “Thank you.”

“Hmm? For what?”

A hand lazes on his head, tufts of ungroomed curls separating through the gaps of her fingers considerably slow as to not lug a knot. “Believing in me. I don’t ask much about Mandalorian culture ‘cause I figured you get asked a lot; I only know of that from Legends, but I can see it’s a part of you. Trusting me with your Creed...after everything I’ve done… Thank you.”

She’s still beating herself up about previous events. He could just wedge open her eyelids so she can look into his eyes; maybe then she’ll realise he’s already forgiven her. Instead, Din exhales a low-toned sigh and pecks what skin his lips can reach from his position.

“We agreed to a cin vhetin, remember?”

“Yes, but-”

“Sweet girl,” he shushes her. “In Mandalorian culture we use that term in initiation; it’s to clear all previous debts. Everything that occurred before is erased. Only what will happen in the future will be considered.”

Their cabin falls silent as she mulls the significance over. Din can hear a fire crackling somewhere nearby, children laughing, and adults toasting each other to another successful day; lively and euphoric-sounding but he’s content laying atop of his euphoria, to feel each expansion of her lungs, each tardy investigative stroke on his bare form.

“Does that mean I’m not getting your rifle?” she jests.

Din laughs, a full-on throaty bellow that resonates through her. It’s so humanlike it shocks him, leaves him wiping at the corners of his eyes from the onslaught of tears he’s producing.

The Girl’s hand runs from his head to the back of his neck, her thumb and forefinger massaging out the taut stone into flexible cloth. She quietly murmurs, “Wasn’t that funny.”

Laughing gradually subsiding, he basks in the comfortable silence between them. The Girl was never overbearing, even before all the tension arised, never stepped her foot out of line purely out of respect for his wishes and now she’s breached obstacles that’d make him hang his head in shame in the presence of his elders.

“Didn’t you propose a challenge or have you already forgotten?”

She smirks with cocky confidence. “Gambling with your weapons, huh? That’s so unlike you.”

“As I said; foolish, foolish things, Cyar’ika.”

___________________

"atin" - stubborn "sleemo" - slimeball "mesh'la" - beautiful "gar jatnese be te jatnese" - you're the best of the best "gar ani ni, vaabir gar suvarir?" - you complete me, do you understand? "auretii" - outsider "cyar'ika" - sweetheart/darling "kaab jate?" - sound good? "ner uram" - my mouth "vaii" - where

A/N: Sorry this one took longer than the others, it lowkey beat my ass up. In other news, I am currently planning my next series that'll be a Mandalorian!Reader if any of you are interested in that. If you wish to be added to either the LUNAR taglist or the upcoming series tags, please send an ask or a message!

tags: @ohhersheybars, @greatcircle79, @northernpunk, @tanzthompson, @djarrex