#I LOVE IT. I LOVE THIS PAIN THAT ITS GIFTING ME. THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU.

[bittercarrion]

I know I talk almost only about fetish and kink but...sometimes...a pretty boy kisses you and..and...oh my gd. It destroys every wall in one moment..

[dom-i-nic]

hey hey (: so for Prompts - i know i said i was gonna ask for angst, and i'll still do that later (((: but for now, could i maybe ask for something with jango and smol boba?

I know you did not ask for angst, but I provided :D. It’s like the last paragraph when I really got up in my feels about baby Boba.

Jaster was Jango’s mentor, his mand’alor, but even more importantly, Jaster was Jango’s buir. Now Jango’s going to be a father too. Jango looks down at the bundled child he holds. The ik’aad is tiny, a sparse few inches longer than his forearm and pinkish brown, face screwed up against the harsh light. Boba stirs and lets out a small whine. Ka’ra, Jango has never loved something more in his life. He just hopes he’ll do right by his son.

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Boba is maybe 2 years old. Jango has begun spending more time with his kid, playing tag and dress-up and peek-a-boo and other games that he can’t even understand. Sometimes Boba gets frustrated and tries to explain the game over and over again to Jango, speaking in mando’a so fast that Jango can barely hold to the thread of what he’s saying and a dopey smile on his face. Kark, Jango loves his kid. Boba’s going to be brilliant.

Jango hugs him and plants a kiss on Boba’s forehead. There’s a flavor of these times, memories of a gentle, golden childhood Jango had also had. Jango remembers all too well what changed, the trauma that ushered in his too-young, too-soon adulthood. Jaster had tried his best, but there is a certain shift in how you view the world when you are exposed at such a young age to its ugliness. Jango blinks hard and holds Boba a bit tighter to his chest, tears pricking his eyes and the taste of melancholy on his tongue. He’d been lonely for so long, trapped in his own fear and bitterness. He’d lost his family and his people. He’d lost his father. The same will never happen too Boba, he makes a promise of that.

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Boba is 6 years old and Jango is on the warpath. Skirata’s kids put Boba’s head in the fresher. Something in Jango snarls at that. He’s putting on his armor, quickly and angrily, snapping the buckles on, to go speak to Skirata. The anger in him isn’t quite satisfied with that; he doesn’t quite trust the man to do anything about it, but he’s a mando’ade, he’s not going to scare a kid. However much of a little shit they are.

“Buir,” Boba yelps. “No. Wait.” He grabs Jango’s wrist and digs his heels into the ground.

“Me’ven?”

“You don’t have to do anything. I’m okay.” 

Jango bears forward. Boba’s heels squeak on the polished floor. “Boba. Stop it.”

“Dad, they’re just angry.” Jango presses his lips together. He suspects he can imagine why the Nulls would be angry, but he doesn’t quite want to think about that. He’s not really ready to go there. Hut’uun. Maybe the mandokarla Jango did die on Galidraan, or wasted away somewhere in the heat and hunger pains of the slave ships.

The clean white door blurs suddenly.

“Buir.” Boba tugs at his arm. “Are you okay? Don’t cry. I’m fine, I promise. I don’t care about the Nulls. Ordo’s just a sheb. I have my own friends.”

Jango turns, kneels down and puts his hands on Boba’s shoulders. “Don’t worry Boba. I’m okay. I’m just a little sad now, that will get better.”

“Promise?”

A laugh bubbles up; Jango scrubs a hand over Boba’s curly hair. “Boba. You don’t have to take care of me. I’m the buir, remember? That’s my job.” Boba looks unconvinced. Jango continues, “I’m sorry if I worried you. I was just thinking and got overwhelmed.”

There’s a tiny little furrow between Boba’s eyebrows. He opens his mouth and then closes it again. Jango looks down at him for a few seconds and then reaches and picks him up, lifts him up and down a few times; Boba flails, his long strands of hair flopping around and screeches with laughter. What’s left of the cold fear in Jango’s stomach melts away and instead he laughs at Boba’s antics and then brings his ad close to his chest.

“I was just worried you’d get hurt, ad’ika.”

“I wasn’t.” Tilting his head, Boba regards him more calmly than he would have expected, still with a little smile on his face. “I knew I’d be safe. You’re my buir and you’re never going to let me get hurt. You told me.”

Shab, that had probably been a bad promise to make. Nobody can control the future, not even a fighter as good as Jango (he doesn’t try to be humble anymore, the world doesn’t have any time for humble (but then again the world doesn’t have any time for promises he can’t keep)). But Boba’s so happy and looking down at him, Jango can’t bring himself to spoil that smile. He leans over and presses his forehead against Boba’s in a mirshmure’cya, a Keldabe kiss. “Of course.”

And isn’t it a promise that he means to keep? Why would he ever let anyone hurt his kid? There’s still a little bit of discontent, worry at that rash promise but he lets it wash over him. He’ll tell Boba later, when he’s older.

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Boba’s almost 9 now. Jango still hasn’t told him about promises. If anything, he makes more promises. He promises Boba that he will always stay safe; he promises Boba that he won’t do stupid things, won’t take stupid jobs. And he makes more silent promises to Boba that Boba will never have to grow up without a buir.

It’s bad form, very bad form for him to do this. But a buir is allowed to get a little soft, he thinks.

On Boba’s lifeday, Jango bakes him a meiloorun fruit cake and gives him his first real blaster. It’s only a pull-out, but it can piece a Trandoshan’s thick hide. Boba’s eyes glitter and he pulls it out of its holster and examines it.

“Buir, thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!”

“Boba, wait, there are other gifts here too!”

The blaster goes off with a bang. He whirls around to see a clean hole burned straight through the window, fracture lines grasping outwards. As he stares, a gust of wind hits the window and then it just breaks apart, collapsing in a pile of transparisteel shards.

“Bob’ika!” Jango grabs his ad and turns him around frantically. But Boba seems unharmed, if a little shocked and splattered with rain. “Boba, what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know?” At the very least, Jango’s relieved to hear that Boba’s the same sort of cheeky, if a little shaken.

Jango settles back onto his heels and lets out a breath. He gathers his thoughts together. “Boba, did you shoot the window?”

“Yes, buir.”

“And Ka’ra tell, what force compelled you to shoot the window?” He teases gently, prodding Boba’s cheek.

“What’s compelled?”

“Why’d you shoot the window, ad’ika?”

Boba sucks one cheek in and then hisses out a breath. “I wanted to see how strong the blaster was, Dad.” Of course he did. Jango huffs out a laugh.

“And should you have done that?” He continues.

“Weeeeell, I really wanted to see how strong it was. You told me it was important to know the strengths of your weapons. So that you don’t mis- miscat- mis…- guess wrong.”

“Miscalculate, Bob’ika,” Jango corrects him, tapping him on the forehead. Boba repeats the word under his breath. “But,” Jango continues. “Do you remember what else we learned about blaster safety?”

Jango watches in amusement as his kid stubbornly tucks his chin into his chest. After a second or two, he says, in a mutinous voice, “Don’t fire the blaster unless you’re training or in danger. Showing off with it is dangerous.”

“I understand that you were excited, but. Well.” Jango surveils the shattered window over Boba’s shoulder. A mouse droid is already circling the mess, cursing fluently in Binary. “I’d say more, but I think we’ve learned our lesson here.”

“Yeah.” Boba presses his face into Jango’s chest. A beat of silence. Then, “You’re not going to take away the blaster, are you?”

“Well do you think you can handle it?”

“… yeah.”

“Jate. I don’t see why I would have too.” Boba pulls his head back to grin. Jango grins back and then scrubs Boba’s curls with a palm.

“Ey!” Boba yelps. Then a shiver racks his small frame.

“Let’s move to a different room, yeah?”

“Yep!”

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Boba’s 10. His father’s face is plastered all over the galaxy. But gone for Boba. Aurra told him that he should never trust a promise. She said with a malicious tilt of her lips that most promises are just nice lies. Boba desperately wishes he could prove her wrong.