#it's a novel

[itsjuststardust]

Heaven in Hiding - Chapter 18: Heaven in Hiding

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Chapter Summary: "I push up on my toes you call me sweet thing And breathing down your neck your body's screaming" - Halsey

Word Count: 15,989

Author's Note/Chapter Warnings: Um, I think if I say that this chapter is 🌶️NSFW🌶️ and tell you that it was partially written by a particular smut monster, that will cover the chapter warnings 😈

Chapter/Main title inspired by the song 🎵Heaven in Hiding🎵 by Halsey.

MINORS - DO NOT INTERACT - 18+ ONLY

Chapter 18: Heaven in Hiding

The next day passed in a hazy, sleepy blur. 

The three of them slept off and on for ninety-nine percent of it. The only way he could tell time was passing was that the sun was in a different position every time he opened his eyes. The light from the sun lit the hold in different patterns of light and shadows as it tracked through the sky until it disappeared, bringing the darkness of night with it. The few fleeting minutes they were awake were never at the same time. All Mando knew was one minute, he blinked his eyes open, and Alaina was sprawled on top of his chest, and in the next, he was on his side with his body cocooned around Alaina’s with the kid in some inconvenient position. 

The whole thing was awkward and uncomfortable, but it didn’t matter. He was never awake long enough to move either of them and too exhausted to try. Not to mention… he just didn’t want to.

This continued throughout the day, night, and into the next day until he was awoken by a certain excited toddler banging his helmet.

“Kid,” he groaned, blearily swatting the womp rat away from him. Unfortunately, when the kid was awake, the kid was awake, as demonstrated by his determination to wake him by immediately jumping back on his chest.

“Mmmmm,” Alaina hummed in her sleep as she moved to sprawl over his chest, effectively shoving the kid off him with a quiet oof. When he wrapped a loose arm around her waist to hold her to him, she burrowed her head into his chest and mumbled, “You’re warm.”

A slow, content smile crept across his face as his eyes began to drift close again. He would probably regret sleeping on the floor for so long, but at this very moment, with Alaina’s warm body lying on top of his, he found it difficult to want to be anywhere else.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

With a sigh, his eyes opened to find the kid’s head staring down at him. He must have been standing directly behind his helmet because from this position, the kid was upside down, and the only thing he could see was the kid’s enormous eyes and equally enormous ears looking down into his helmet. “Bah.”

“Okay, okay,” he groused, attempting to get up from the floor.

“It’s early,” Alaina mumbled sleepily, spreading her arms and legs over him to sink her weight into his chest to prevent him from getting up.

“We slept an entire cycle,” he countered, wrapping both arms around her petite frame to hold her against his chest while he sat up. He grimaced at how his back and joints protested after sleeping on the metal floor for over twenty-some-odd hours.

“It’s still early,” she argued, pulling a face at being disturbed but still refusing to open her eyes.

Mando couldn’t argue with that. The sun was beginning to peak over the horizon, bathing the landscape in a warm pink color as it continued to climb into the sky. 

He carried Alaina to her cot, tucked away in the corner, and deposited her there with minimal grumbling. Once on the cot, she immediately buried herself under the blankets and drifted back to sleep.

He watched over her with a tired smile before returning his attention to the kid. “Breakfast?” he asked, voice still thick with sleep. The kid smiled up at him with a large, toothy grin at the question. “Come on,” he said, motioning for the kid to follow.

Mando shuffled around the hold, tidying up the mess they had left from their last dinner while the kid followed him, babbling excitedly. He turned the electric kettle on to heat some water for instant caf and then searched their remaining supplies to scrounge up something to feed them all. Their supplies were slowly dwindling, and while he could hunt to an extent, they couldn’t stay here forever. They’d been here almost three weeks already, and aside from the last time he crashed here, this was the longest stretch of time he’d remained stationary with no job. However, to purchase supplies and rations, one needed credits, which meant he needed to find a job.

For the first time in Din Djarin’s memory, he found himself annoyed that there wasn’t more of an opportunity for downtime.

He sighed as he divided the rest of the yellow berries the kid and Alaina had picked the other day into a couple of bowls. He passed one down to the kid and dropped a protein bar in his lap. The kid squealed and immediately tore into the berries. Mando grabbed the other bowl and added a couple more protein bars before he fixed two cups of instant caf with the hot water and moved to sit next to Alaina’s cot.

He placed Alaina’s cup and the bowl of yellow berries on the floor near her head and leaned back against the wall. He sneaked bites of his protein bar under his helmet, alternating with sips of his caf under his helmet while he continued to consider their options.

The problem was there were plenty of options out there for work. All perfect, under-the-radar (ish) crews who preferred you not to be in the guild as most of their members had a puck out for them. Ranzar Malk still reached out from time to time with jobs, hoping to entice the Mandalorian back to his crew… and if he didn’t have the kid and Alaina with him, he would probably agree to come back. However, he did have others to consider now—others who shouldn’t be exposed to the likes of Malk. Not to mention, there was a high likelihood that Xi’an still ran with his crew, and the thought of Alaina meeting Xi’an was not something he wanted to happen. Ever.

“You think too loud,” Alaina grumbled as she roused herself from the pile of blankets. 

He tensed at her words as the events of the day before slammed back into his mind. His chest filled with air, making him feel like an overinflated balloon. That really happened? Some kind of sorcery linked the three and then were stuck in Alaina’s mind for hours while they tried to figure it out. It wasn’t possible, was it? To hear someone’s thoughts?

He couldn’t help the trepidation from rising. A bond, Alaina had called it. Was that permanent? Was he forever connected to them now? What if everything fell apart? What if he stuck his boot in his mouth again, and Alaina finally came to her senses and left him for good? Would he still be able to feel her from parsecs away? Even just the thought of that made him go cold.

Alaina sniffed and looked down to find the caf and food waiting on the floor for her. “Breakfast in bed,” she hummed appreciatively, giving him a sleepy smile as she grabbed the mug and the bowl of berries. Mando noted she, unsurprisingly, left the protein bar behind on the ground. She moved to sit back against the wall and clutched the warm cup to her chest for a moment before she took a sip of the brown liquid, scrunching her face at the taste, “I miss tea.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t hear my thoughts?” Mando asked, still nervous about whatever happened between the three of them. He was only just getting used to the idea of having them travel with him, but if they could hear his every thought—

“Stop panicking,” Alaina commented, tossing one of the yellow berries at his helmet. “We can’t hear your thoughts. It’s more like we can feel your feelings. I imagine it’s maybe not quite the same for you since you don’t have powers like us.” Mando hummed at her assessment and turned to take a sip of caf from his cup. Alaina tilted her head as she looked between him and the kid, “We should probably figure that out. Might come in handy. Though, I'll warn you, the only thing that has come out of my afternoon meditation sessions with Grogu when we practice raising and lowering our mental shields is learning that most of his feelings involve being hungry.”

He snorted, “Why am I not surprised?”

Alaina studied him while she popped another berry in her mouth, “So, were you panicking about our connection when I woke up, or did something else make you grumpy?”

Mando sighed, “You were right last night—well, whenever that was when you said we can’t stay here forever. We’ve got a week's worth of supplies and rations left, which could probably be stretched out with hunting, but…”

“But it’s time to go,” Alaina finished sadly, popping a berry into her mouth.

“I don’t have a set plan yet, so we won't leave immediately,” Mando told her, and she shrugged. “We’ll come back,” he promised, resting his hand on her thigh, which was still hiding under the blankets.

“Mando?” Alaina questioned and then looked down nervously into her cup of caf. “Not to add to your list of problems, but…” she tapered off with a sigh, and he gave her a reassuring squeeze of her thigh. “On our first night here, you asked if I wanted to go get my mom’s trunk?” she asked, looking hopefully at him.

“You want to go get it?” he guessed.

Alaina nodded, “Mando, if Grogu’s memory was real… Why would she have never told me any of that?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he answered, taking his hand off her leg to toss her protein bar at her.

“I can’t stop thinking about it. We were so close. I just can’t believe she kept a secret like that from me. I mean, she already showed me her powers. She’s the one who helped me learn mine… I get her not telling me when I was a kid, but she didn’t even say anything when she was on her deathbed.” Alaina stopped to take an angry bite of her protein bar, and Mando stayed quiet to let her work through her thoughts. “She worked in the shops; we lived in a tiny run-down apartment… we were just… ordinary.”

“Yes, just two ordinary women with their witchy powers,” he teased and smiled at Alaina’s eye roll. 

“I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t have told me. We talked about everything. I would have kept her secret. Besides, what would I have done with that information? I was a ballerina.”

“She was probably thinking that if you didn’t know anything, you were less likely to be captured, interrogated, and used against her,” he answered her, his voice severe but quiet.

Alaina’s forehead scrunched as she considered that.

“Do you want my opinion?” he asked with a slight tilt of his helmet. When Alaina nodded, he continued, “If I were to take a guess, I think your mom went into hiding.” Alaina stared blankly at him as she processed that and continued. “Take the facts that you do know: she told you never to reveal your powers to anyone. She could have returned to Naboo, but she didn’t. She picked a highly populated, out-of-the-way planet where she took a simple job that wouldn’t raise any suspicions; she wanted to blend in. We got dumped in at the end of Grogu’s memory, but it’s obvious that the Empire was going after the Jedis, and they were on the run. We know that they are virtually extinct now.” He looked at Alaina and her emerald doe-eyes staring back at him and shrugged. “If I was in your mother’s shoes, that’s what I would have done. But the offer still stands,” he nodded. “If you want to get your trunk, we can go get your trunk.”

Alaina gave a weak smile and nodded. “She used to keep paper diaries. I was one of the only kids who could write with pen and paper for the longest time because she made sure to teach me. She didn’t journal all the time, but a couple of her diaries were in that trunk. Maybe they will have some answers?”

“Maybe,” he answered softly. “But to get there, we need enough fuel and food to get us there. Which means we need credits. Which means I need to find a job.”

Alaina nodded, and he watched as she shoved her feelings down. She shuffled around on the bed to cross her legs to give him her full attention. “So, what are our options?” she asked, taking another sip of caf and grimacing again.

“I have a lead with a crew I used to work with,” he started hesitantly. 

“Why didn’t you just say that?!” Alaina scoffed, shoving his shoulder playfully. “You seemed so gloom and doom about it.”

He sighed and cocked his helmet at her, “Because they’re all criminals who I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them. Not to mention that the moment they put the pieces together about you and the kid, they wouldn’t hesitate to throw me out the airlock to take the massive reward on your heads.”

“Ah,” Alaina nodded, “hence the gloom and doom,” she said, grimacing into her cup of instant caf.

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to drink it,” Mando grumbled, taking the cup out of her hands to put it on the floor.

“But it’s warm,” she whined, snatching the cup back for another sip. “Bleh.” Mando rolled his eyes at her antics but allowed her to keep her mug. “So, what are you saying? Our options are going back to your old crew and risking you being shoved out of an airlock or starving to death on this moon?”

Mando heaved a sigh, “There’s maybe another possibility…” One that worried him for different reasons. On the one hand, he knew they would be perfectly safe and that Rhoam could be trusted not to turn on them. However, on the other hand… Rhoam was… well, Rhoam. The man was the biggest flirt in the galaxy, and even he could begrudgingly admit the man was attractive. The hoards of women who fawned over him seemed to agree. However, some of that could be because the man was a King. Not to mention, his Chief of Security made him… uncomfortable. “I have someone who owes me a favor. He rules a planet near the border into wild space—”

“I’m sorry. Did you say he rules a planet?” Alaina cut him off and raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

“Yes.”

Alaina’s mouth dropped open, “Like, he rules the planet like a King?”

“Not like a King. He is the King.”

“And he owes you a favor?” she asked skeptically, still unable to close her mouth.

“Yes,” he answered in a slow exhale, already knowing their answer.

Alaina blinked stoically at him before saying, “So, you’re struggling with picking between a group of thugs or working for a King? I can see why you're struggling so hard to decide between the two,” she deadpanned.

Mando cocked his head at her and snatched her mug out from her hands. “Hey!” she grumbled, but he ignored her as he picked up the rest of their dishes to take to the sink. The kid smiled brightly at him, and Mando chuckled at the yellow stains around his mouth, no doubt from shoving the berries in his mouth as quickly as possible. “Get dressed. We’re going to take advantage of the next couple of days to stretch our legs. You’ve had a couple of days off. We need to get back to training,” he ordered, grabbing the kid’s bowl and dumping everything in the sink to rinse off.

“Actually,” Alaina started and shared a look with the kid before continuing, “we had a suggestion for training today.”

Mando sighed restlessly as he sat in the cockpit in his chair. Now redressed in his flight suit, armor, and a couple of weapons, he tapped his fingers impatiently on the chair’s armrest, eying the timer in the corner of his HUD. He had the chair facing away from the viewport and at the door while he watched the numbers on the timer slowly tick down.

Hide and seek.

He scoffed at her suggestion when she made it and scoffed again, just thinking about it.

“You realize that I’m a bounty hunter, right? I play hide and seek for a living.”

Alaina glared at him and bounced Grogu on her hip. “Okay, but hear me out. The three of us are connected now. We've been given a gift—"

“What good is that going to do if we can’t read each other’s thoughts?”

“But you can still feel us!" she argued. "The only reason why Grogu and I have any kind of advantage is that we have powers already. You don’t. It makes you… quieter, muted, but you’re still there.”

“And a game of hide and seek will teach me how to feel you?”

"Do you have another idea?" Alaina shrugged. “You give us an hour head start before you come looking for us. After an hour, you can only use the senses you have, old and new. No fancy tricks from the helmet,” she said, tapping the beskar helm on his head. 

He simply stared at her, trying to figure out what the point was. He didn’t understand what Alaina or the kid felt; he just felt something… warm.

“Please?” Alaina pleaded, blinking up at him with those damned eyes. “Mando, you’re so worried about us getting hurt and traveling with you, but what if you could feel us like we can you? What if we can teach you? Think about what it would be like to feel if we’re happy or sad or injured?”

“Or if the womp rat is hungry,” he countered sarcastically.

“I’m being serious!” Alaina growled and swatted at his chest. “What if we’re in a scenario where we’re all separated, and the only way to find each other is by following the little string that connects us?”

Mando found it hard to argue with that logic. 

“What? Scared you’ll lose, Mandalorian?” Alaina challenged, smirking at him while she wagged her eyebrows, enticing him to take her dare.

“You’re on.”

Unfortunately, after fifty-seven minutes of thinking about it, he felt like an idiot for agreeing to this.

An hour headstart… There was no telling how far they could get in an hour. The woods were dense and a good hiding place, but they could hide just as easily in the lavender field. The only thing he could use was his eyes and… witchcraft. Mando let his helmet fall back against the chair at that thought. Now, he regretted agreeing to be the bloodhound, all in the name of Alaina’s research.

The timer inside his helmet finally went off, and Mando leaped out of his chair, jumping at the bit to get started. He bypassed the ladder altogether by dropping down into the hold and immediately stomped to the ramp to assess the situation.

Right off the bat, he noticed prints in the mud. The rain and storms had softened the ground enough for Alaina's boots to leave visible prints. He rolled his eyes. He respected Alaina’s idea, but this would be child’s play.

He followed the set of prints as they walked away from the Crest and headed toward the forest. At the forest’s edge, he paused and looked at the ground with a frown. 

A set of tracks went into the forest, but another set turned left and walked down the perimeter of the tree line. He turned left, following the bootprints that walked along the tree line until they turned left again, half a click away from the Crest. His hunt continued to take him in one giant loop around the Crest, and he discovered that in addition to the path that deviated into the woods, there was another one that went in the direction of the lake and another that continued through the lavender plains, heading toward the mountains in the far distance.

He smirked when the loop led him back to the clearing where the Crest was parked. She knew that he would go with his senses he knew first, and when she saw her boots left distinct tracks in the mud, she must have decided to change her plan.

“Clever girl,” he murmured, congratulating Alaina on her ingenuity. 

He looked at the timer running in his helmet and saw that almost twenty minutes had passed. Alaina had an hour head start, so the faux paths she made couldn’t go very far before she finally had to pick one to take. He immediately ruled out the one in the lavender plains that headed toward the mountain range. They’d never explored that far out, and even with the tall purple grass, there weren’t enough places to hide along the way. Besides, the range was far enough away that it would take the rest of the daylight hours to make it there. So that left the woods or the lake.

To him, the woods, with its numerous blackened trees, seemed like the obvious place to hide. The trees alone could provide plenty of shelter, and there were enough roots and vegetation that she could hide her bootprints… but this was Alaina he was tracking. Alaina didn’t like the dark and always refused to go hunting in the forest with him because it gave her “the creeps.” Of course, she could have headed into the forest to throw him… but when he looked between the forest and the emerald green lake, he couldn’t explain it, but something tugged him toward the water.

He started toward the lake and analyzed the slight glow of warmth that began to radiate in his chest. Was that what Alaina was describing? Was he just supposed to follow that feeling blindly? He looked back at the forest, and the small ball of warmth faded away completely.

Mando turned to stare at the lake, and the feeling changed slightly. The small ball of warmth returned, but there was something else there.

“We can’t hear your thoughts. It’s more like we can feel your feelings.”

Smugness. That’s what he was feeling—a slight undercurrent of smugness.

Alaina was somewhere where she could see him struggling over which direction to take, and wherever she was, she was apparently feeling quite proud of herself.

His lips curled at the challenge. “We’ll see how smug you are after I find you, Tranyc,” he murmured to himself, hoping she could feel him coming for her.

He stalked off toward the lake. He walked parallel to her tracks but only spared them half a thought. Alaina could fake her steps or cover her tracks, but she couldn’t cover her feelings. 

Mando concentrated on that little golden rope of warmth tugging in his chest, and he put aside everything he’d been taught about tracking to instead rely on a bit of sorcery to lead him to his targets. It felt as if the cord in his chest was now something tangible—something real and warm he could physically hold in his hands, even though that wasn’t the case. At all.

When he reached the lake, he stopped to analyze the shoreline and surrounding areas, trying to determine where she and the kid might be hiding. He could feel a tug of disapproval from the other end of their shared rope, and at first, he thought it was disapproval because he’d found their hiding spot already, but it tugged again as if telling him he was wrong. If she wasn’t disapproving of him finding them, then what—

Realization dawned on him. She could only see him looking for them and likely thought he was going against the rules and using the bonus features in his helmet to help track them down. “I’m not cheating, Tranyc,” he murmured.

When the feeling didn’t change, he grumbled in embarrassment, feeling like an idiot standing in the middle of the black-pebbled beach with his eyes closed. But if they were going to learn to use this little gift, he supposed they should figure out precisely what they could and could not do.

Mando grabbed onto the warm golden string and tugged back. The rope flashed hot in excitement; this time, he felt the kid’s excitement entwined with Alaina’s. 

His eyes snapped open, and his head snapped a distant spot on the shoreline to his right. If someone were to ask him how he knew they were there, he couldn’t tell them how he knew. He just knew. “Gotcha,” he growled. His confident grin grew when he felt Alaina and the kid try to shield their emotions. Grogu was evidently better at it than Alaina because the kid faded away entirely, but he could still feel a trace of Alaina. “Nice try, you two, but I’ve got you now,” he said as he took off down the shoreline.

He prowled the pebbled shore, looking around the rocks and bushes that lined it in search of his two companions.  The water from the lake washed away any evidence of her trail, so he was left to look for other signs (hand prints on rocks, broken vegetation, or another set of tracks) for where they were. When he reached the same rocky platform he jumped off with Alaina, he climbed up the black rock for a higher vantage point.

Mando reluctantly admitted that he was enjoying himself. His initial assessment of Alaina’s little training exercise was wrong. This was different. Exciting. And, if he was honest, it was a little bit of a turn-on. He could almost feel the same undercurrent of anticipation coming from Alaina. It was muted and subtle, but it was there. He practiced tugging on the cord that now bonded them together. He almost couldn't feel anything if he didn’t concentrate on it. He had to focus on it. It was strange. Bizarre even. He was his own self… but… he wasn’t alone. 

Not only was he learning how to harness his companions' magic, but he was also learning that Alaina was an adept hider. That was promising for their future training exercises because as much as Mando needed her to be able to defend herself, sometimes, it was better to learn how to hide.

He smirked when he felt Alaina’s shield slip, and he tugged at the cord but didn’t get an answer. 

“You did good using your bootprints to your advantage back there,” he paused to nod toward the ship. “That was smart. I like it when you show me how clever you are.” He felt a soft warmth through their connection. It reminded him of when Alaina blushed. Soft and delicate, but still there. He smirked when he realized his words embarrassed her. “You like feeling me be proud of you?” he asked to nothing but raised his voice loud enough that he hoped Alaina could hear his question from wherever she was.

The only response he got was that soft, warm feeling in his chest flare, alighting hotter. She was either embarrassed to admit anything or trying too hard to conceal herself, which meant she was nearby.

Mando focused on the landscape around him, looking for any clues. “I am, you know?” he yelled again, looking for even the slightest stalk of grass to shake. “Proud of you,” he continued, eyes landing on a dense bush beside a tree across from him. “Always proud of you, Tranyc,” he purred as he jumped down from his platform.

His chest flashed hot at his words, and he knew he was close. They had to be hiding here somewhere. From this vantage point, Alaina could have seen him back at the Crest and on the shoreline, and if he could feel her embarrassment, then he was close enough that she could hear him even when he didn’t yell.

Mando lunged for the dense shrub in front of him. “Got—” he cut himself off when he only found a bright purple lizard that scurried away when he moved the branches away. Damn, he’d be sure they were hiding—

The sound of a rock falling made him spin to look behind him, but he didn’t see anything out of place. 

He couldn’t see anything out of place, but he definitely felt the kid’s amusement. He smirked and hunched over to take a ridiculously huge step as he hunched over, stretching his hands out. “Alright, you womp rat,” he called out, hoping to get a giggle out of the kid.

His eyes flicked in every direction while he tried to feel where they were through their connection, but it was quiet.

His chest rumbled from his quiet growl of frustration. They were toying with him. They were taking advantage of the fact that he didn’t know how to work their newfound connection, that he couldn’t shield his emotions from them, and were toying with him. Oh, he was so going to get them back. 

The sound of the lake lapping against the shore in the distance was the only thing he could hear. He was sure they were here, but maybe they were watching him on the other side of the lake. Hell, for all he knew, they could be hiding in the forest, laughing as loud as they wanted because he couldn’t hear them. Mando shook his head and sighed. The wind blew, rustling the leaves in the tree behind him, and he moved to straighten up and start his search over—

Something heavy dropped from the tree and landed on his shoulders, sending him toppling forward. His gloved hands frantically patted at his neck at the feeling of something, or someone, rather, locking their legs around his neck. It was too late, though. Mando couldn’t keep from toppling face-first into the ground. In a last-minute twist, Mando watched Alaina through his helmet, lean forward, and tuck in before letting out a loud scream as she used their forward momentum to flip him over her. She kept her legs locked around his neck the entire time, following him through the summersault and refusing to let go even after their backs simultaneously crashed into the ground.

“Gotcha,” Alaina panted on the ground above him. She briefly tightened her legs around his neck one more time before releasing him and resting her feet on top of his shoulders.

Fuck, she got him, alright. 

Not to be outdone by a ballerina, Mando latched onto her ankles and rolled them both onto their stomachs. He tried to pull her back to him, but she kicked back sharply with her left foot, breaking free of his grasp. She tried to push off the ground, but when that wasn’t successful, she rolled over onto her back. He didn’t need to ask if she was okay. He could feel it. There was no doubt, fear, or flashbacks in her emerald eyes. There was just determination staring back at him.

It was fucking sexy.

She smirked at him and used her free leg to kick at his helmet, but he grabbed it quickly and used his hands to tug her under him. Mando used his larger frame to box her in with his elbows and knees before he leaned down to whisper, “What was that, Tranyc?” next to her ear.

He looked down at Alaina panting under him. She had to be getting stronger than he realized if she had been able to pull a move like that off with him in full armor. Mando couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate her. Her blonde hair was braided back, but pieces had come undone in the scuffle, giving her a manic, wild look. Her cheeks were flushed a shade of pink that matched her parted lips. His eyes couldn’t help but continue their inspection, taking a moment to appreciate the tight black top that hugged her curves and noted with an evil smirk that he could make out her pebbled nipples straining against the top, and then had to immediately bite down on his bottom lip to keep from groaning when he realized she wasn’t wearing her breastband under her shirt. Fuck. He could just slip his hands under and—

“My eyes are up here,” she teased, returning his attention to her smiling face. “Ready to admit you lost, Mandalorian?” she whispered, giving him a smoldering look.

“From my vantage point, I think I’m the winner,” he purred back, but his eyes pulled back down to her chest, still heaving as she tried to catch her breath, allowing him to admire her soft curves. He was so distracted he missed the sly smile stretch across her face, and his entire body shuddered when he felt her hands come to rest on his sides as her delicate fingers worked their way to the tender places on the sides of his chest that weren’t protected by armor.

“You forgot one very important thing,” she whispered under him. 

Mando gave her a lazy hum as an answer, enjoying the feeling of her hands stroking his sides. He’d long lost the fight to keep his attraction hidden, and having Alaina panting and heaving under him was the final nail in the coffin for him. He fully intended to ensure she knew he didn’t forget a thing. Especially when the last time they had been on the verge of something, it had ended so spectacularly.

Alaina’s fingers dug into his ribs, and the Mandalorian was once again brought out of his daydreams and back to reality when his body shuddered for an entirely different reason. He couldn’t hold the surprised bark of laughter that escaped him. She used his moment of shock to double down on her actions and then used her hands to roll them so that he was now on his back, and Alaina sat on his stomach, trapping his torso between her thighs. “You’re ticklish,” she told him, grinning as her fingers dug into his sensitive ribs.

Mando laughed and grabbed her wrists to pull her hands off his chest. “I can fight dirty, too, Tranyc,” he threatened. Alaina’s serious mask broke, and she began giggling and weakly keeping his hands away from her as he tried to return the favor. After a moment of playful struggling, he decided enough was enough and slowly rose from the ground. Alaina’s body slid down as she lost the fight with gravity until she landed on his lap with her center directly over his awaiting, eager bulge, straining through his trousers to find her warmth. He gripped her hips tightly in his hands, appreciating the way her pink blush now flushed down her neck and across her chest. “But my way of fighting dirty is a little different than yours, sweet thing,” he murmured, using his hands to grind her over where he desired her.

Alaina’s mouth fell open in a soft ‘O’ shape as she sucked in a quiet gasp of pleasure.

“Ready to admit defeat?” he murmured, moving his helmet to gently nuzzle her cheek, smiling when Alaina's arms wrapped around his neck to hold him—

“Patu!”

The adults blinked before they realized they’d forgotten one very important thing.

“We have a kid,” Alaina whispered as Mando’s helmet dropped to the top of her shoulder in defeat, and she gave him a friendly pat on his shoulder. 

Mando stiffened as a thought occurred to him… “Tell me that when you say that we can feel each other, the kid can’t…” he faded off, not even wanting to speak it.

Alaina let out a surprised snort and gripped him tightly as she laughed into his neck. “Um, honestly, I hadn’t thought about that, but um,” she paused to smile at the kid trying to scale his armor. “But his mental walls are stronger than mine, so I think we’re just gonna have to hope that he knows what to tune out?” she finished, sounding more like she was asking him a question instead of answering his.

Mando groaned and gently banged his helmet against her shoulder.

Alaina’s sweet giggling continued as she hugged his neck. “Look at the bright side. Most couples have to go through this long, arduous process of courting and getting to learn about each other and their bodies… and we… we get to skip all that and go straight to being the boring married couple with a kid.”

“Kriff,” he muttered, frustrated in more ways than one, and, taking a page from Alaina's book, collapsed dramatically to his back. The kid took advantage of his new prone position to bang excitedly on his helmet.

“Come on, little one,” Alaina chuckled, grabbing the kid before he could slap his helmet again and got up to head back to the Razor Crest.

With a deep, calming breath, Mando shoved down the urge to toss the tiny green cock block into the lake and climbed to his feet.

The kid looked back at him over Alaina’s shoulder and squealed excitedly. Mando looked the kid in the eyes before sending a very irritated message to the toddler down their new form of communication. The kid’s ears perked up at the wave of irritation directed toward him from the Mandalorian, and he tried to give him a sweet, innocent smile. Mando shook his head. The womp rat would have to nap at some point and the moment that happened…

Mando stopped walking to blink in disbelief as the kid was being carried away and jogged to catch up with them.

“What are you doing?” Mando scolded Alaina as he caught up to them. He plucked the kid from her arms and placed him on the ground. When the kid turned his excited squeal on one of the nearby, unsuspecting purple lizards and chased after it, Mando looked smugly down at Alaina. “He has energy he needs to burn off,” he defended.

Alaina smirked and shook her head at him, but her cheeks flushed at the implications. When she turned to follow after the kid, Mando reached out and shoved his fingers down the small space of her waistband where it didn’t quite touch her back and yanked her back into him. “And just so we’re clear, the second the womp rat closes his eyes, I will be asking you to demonstrate that flexibility you teased about on Sorgan, so I’d start stretching when we make it back to the Crest,” he said darkly, pushing his hips into her lower back so she could feel his rigid desperation.

She leaned back into him and looped her arms around his neck before saying, “You know, some stretches require a partner.”

He bit his bottom lip and closed his eyes to keep his moan to himself, and for the first time since taking the Creed, he wondered if, instead of dying in battle, it would be a former ballerina who did him in.

After damn near six hours, the kid was still going strong. 

They had spent three hours exploring around the lake, giving the kid ample room to run and explore. They stopped near the water several times so the kid could watch (and try to catch) small schools of neon pink and orange fish. At one of their fish observation stops, Mando turned to check on Alaina, only to find her with one foot propped up on top of a rock with her body leaning over her outstretched leg. The karking temptress had the nerve to smirk at him while she stretched. “What?” she asked, blinking at him innocently before she lost the battle, and he saw the teasing tip of her pink tongue peek out from between her teeth. Mando could only growl and direct the kid to keep moving, hoping they would wear him out sooner rather than later.

By the time they returned to the clearing where the Crest was, the kid still showed no signs of slowing down. They spent another couple of hours with him, taking turns with the womp rat to keep him engaged in something. Alaina started one of their magic lessons, stating that when the kid has to use his powers, it usually drains him… However, after an hour of watching the kid float and play with the damned silver ball from cock pit, Mando snatched the object out of the air and grabbed the kid. 

If physical and mental activity wouldn’t work, then he was going to bore the kid to death.

Mando walked the kid around the hull of the Crest, pointing out every possible unique fact that he could. From the wing flaps to stories about how he got each scorch mark and nick from various battles. It didn't matter how soft or monotone Mando spoke; the kid just soaked in the attention.

Eventually, Mando was so wound up that Alaina took pity on him. “Why don’t you go hunt or something?” she suggested with a friendly pat on his shoulder. “We can dry whatever we don’t eat to add to our stores once we leave. Help give us a little buffer with our rations, yeah?”

“Fine,” he gruffed and stomped back in the Crest to grab his hunting supplies, ignoring Alaina’s smile. “But he doesn’t stop moving, and don’t you dare let him close his eyes until I get back,” he ordered with a threatening point.

“Yes, sir,” Alaina all but purred, and Mando spun away from her to head into the forest before he combusted right there.

Half an hour into his hunt, his mind and body finally calmed down enough for him to pay attention to the task at hand.

Mando used the time tracking to mentally plan their next few days, letting the more mundane plans help calm him down. He'd need to send a message to Rhoam soon to call in his favor and hope that the man's Chief of Security wouldn't block his attempts at finding refuge. Then there were the travel logistics. He could already guess it would take both companions time to adjust to life on the Crest again. Going from weeks of having all the room they could want to being confined to the Crest would take some adjusting to. Leaving at night would at least shorten the two days of travel to Rhoam’s planet. Enjoy what was left of today and tonight. Let the kid burn some energy off during the daylight tomorrow while they start packing and securing their belongings for takeoff. 

As his mental checklist for takeoff continued, Mando found himself unable to stop smiling at his visions of what life would be like with Alaina and Grogu. It was then that Alaina’s words from earlier suddenly struck him. “Look at the bright side. Most couples have to go through this long, arduous process of courting and getting to learn about each other and their bodies… and we… we get to skip all that and go straight to being the boring married couple with a kid.”

Mando froze as her words played on a loop inside his mind, utterly unaware of the rabbit right in front of him. Is that how she saw them? As a family?

He’d had a family before. He’d had a clan before… He’d already secretly come around to the idea that the three of them were a strange little clan. Still, something about admitting that he and Alaina were in a relationship and Grogu was theirs absolutely terrified him.

They had feelings for one another. Obviously. 

And, yes, there was a kid involved… but… 

Married? Married was a word that he had removed from his personal vocabulary. That was permanent. That was… love. A word that he only associated with his parents. Their love for him—Their love for each other… Besides, it had only been a handful of months since he'd rescued them from Nevarro. That was too soon, right? Before they'd become stuck in Alaina's mind, before everything blew up in his face so spectacularly, Alaina had told him she wanted to be his partner. She'd also said she wanted to be his lover, but she'd said partner.

His mind reluctantly reminded him that the Mando'a word for partner, riduur, like several words in the language, had several meanings. Not only was riduur used for partner, but it was also more commonly associated with a spouse. Partners appealed to him more, only because he could somewhat detach himself. He could detach himself for the day when Alaina no longer wanted to live his nomadic lifestyle. He could detach himself for when Alaina realized she deserved more than him—

The cord in his chest warmed, and if he closed his eyes, Mando could almost imagine that Alaina was here with him in the woods, placing a comforting hand on his chest to chase away his spiraling thoughts.

Maker, he was easily five clicks away from the Crest, and Alaina felt him. That was impressive—a little alarming considering his previous thoughts, but nonetheless impressive.

Her attempt to calm him only worked momentarily because what was he doing? He was out of his depths. He had feelings, strong feelings, for her but love... 

His mind flashed with memories of their last few months together. Of their day together at the lake. Of dinners in front of the fire. Taking turns playing with the kid. He could still easily recall how dull and defeated her green eyes were when he found her in the Imp’s compound months ago, and compared to the full, sparkling emerald green gems they were now when she looked at him, it was almost difficult to believe that they had made it here.

Who was he kidding? Being a part of a clan before was one thing… but actually having one of his own? He didn’t know how to handle that. He couldn’t remember what it was like to love someone, so how was he supposed to be able to love Alaina or Grogu?

Maybe it was because he saw his parents for the first time in almost thirty years or because he was able to physically hug his mother, but it was like the floodgates had opened, and memories from his past came rising up like the tide.

Older memories began filtering through new ones. One of his parents smiling and laughing together at the dinner table, followed by a memory of Alaina sitting next to him in front of the fire and leaning into his shoulder as she laughed over a story he told her about tracking down an old quarry. There was another memory of his father shushing him to be quiet in their darkened home as his mother walked through the door after closing the bakery. When his mother turned the lights on, they jumped out from their hiding spots, surprising her… it was... her birthday, he thought. He could still remember the look in his mother’s eyes when she opened them after his father spun her around the room and stopped, dipping her backward and giving her a searing kiss. That memory was followed by Alaina’s emerald eyes sparkling as she laughed when they breached the lake’s green waters after Mando jumped in with her in his arms. There was one final memory of him crawling into bed between his parents after he’d been startled awake by a storm in the night, followed by a more recent memory. A memory of him and Alaina sleeping in the alcove on the Crest with Grogu nestled comfortably between them.

And then he remembered what had happened when they were bizarrely stuck inside Alaina's mind. He'd never forget those bottomless black pools that took over her eyes, but she had been trying to tell him something.

“The foundation is constructed by four pillars,” Alaina said. “The pillars are linked together, bound by the strongest substance in the galaxy. Because of that, this room remains standing,” she murmured.

Mando let go of Alaina, keeping Grogu in his free hand. Alaina’s black eyes stared into space, and the kid stared at him with a massive smile as if he knew the answer to his unasked question. With a sigh, he looked back to Alaina to find her black eyes fixed on his helmet, patiently waiting for him to ask his question. “What is that strong?”

Alaina’s hand came to rest in the center of his chest, and both she and the kid were looking back at him with black eyes and smiles.

“Love,” she whispered. Mando scrunched his face in confusion at her answer. “Love is the foundation.”

Mando’s eyes snapped open as a cold gust of wind blew through the trees, and he looked up to see dark clouds signaling another storm creeping over the treetops.

“Your family is beautiful,” his mother whispered in his ear. “Are you happy?”

He returned the hug, savoring the gift he’d been given. “Yes,” he whispered with a smile.

His stolen moment in time with his parents… It was meant to remind him that he remembered what it was like to see two people in love. It was to remind him that he knew what love was because he had witnessed true love firsthand as a child.

Mando turned and sprinted through the forest's trees, their black glittering trunks, as he headed back toward the Crest.

Their stories had been interlinked and woven from the beginning. With their bond, memories may have floated through, but what if it was meant to show him something else?

What if Alaina's subconscious tried to show him they were her foundation? Her mother, the kid, him... that they'd kept her from cracking and crumbling apart when she had every right not to be here. What if she was trying to show him that he didn't need to be scared because she had already accepted him as an integral part of who she was?

Oh, he was an idiot. Here he was, agonizing over him not being enough for her, not being able to love her, not knowing how to be a family when her black-eyed alter ego had proved him so spectacularly wrong. Her subconscious opened him up to show him that he was a part of her foundation. She showed him that she had accepted his past, their past, as a piece of herself and that the love of her mother, combined with Grogu's love and his love, somehow held her together.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and he was taken back to that night when she'd forced him out in the karking rain to force him to see the world how she did. She'd been right; it was beautiful but didn't compare to her beauty. It didn't compare to how the lightning highlighted the rain on her face, making her appear ethereal. 

"I'm not going anywhere," she told him, and he thought his heart would swell and burst right there in the middle of the storm.

“I want to be your partner. I want to be your friend… I want to be your lover,” she rasped, pulling his head down to capture his lips in another searing kiss. “I don’t want to be locked away in the closet whenever you leave the ship. If you want me to stay, we’re in this together.”

“Look at the bright side. Most couples have to go through this long, arduous process of courting and getting to learn about each other and their bodies… and we… we get to skip all that and go straight to being the boring married couple with a kid.”

If he was going to do this with her—with them—then he didn’t want to miss a thing. He didn’t want to skip over anything—not with Alaina or the kid. He’d already lost five years with Alaina over his poor communication skills and Alaina’s tendency to be rash in her decisions. He didn’t want to lose another second.

He shot out of the tree line and ignored the burning of his lungs as he looked frantically for his family in the silver grass clearing, but they weren’t to be found. He wasn’t worried. He could feel them. They were here somewhere—

“Hey,” Alaina greeted as she and Grogu rounded the Crest. She even had the kid on the ground, forcing him to walk—shuffle—next to her, each with a basket in hand. “We decided to go do some berry picking,” she explained, holding her basket to show him. “Is everything okay? We came back because you felt off. Did you get hurt?”

Mando shook his head as he crossed the clearing to greet them.

Alaina’s face scrunched in confusion as she studied him. “You struck out then? All the rabbits finally caught on to your hunting habits?” she asked, commenting on the lack of game he returned with. “Or did they form some kind of alliance, and it became the hunter being the hunted type situation?” came her weak joke as she tried to figure out what was wrong when he remained silent.

“Close your eyes,” he ordered, out of breath, as he approached her.

“Wait, what? Why?” she asked him, placing her basket on the ground. "What's wrong?"

“Alaina, close your eyes,” he ordered again, dropping his voice to a more intimidating octave. His hands came up to his neck, and he started to untuck his cloak from his breastplate. He came to a stop in front of her and cocked his helmet when she still didn’t close her eyes.

“Mando—”

“No,” he interrupted, shaking his helmet at her. “Alaina Corra, close your eyes. Please,” he added at the end.

Alaina’s emerald eyes studied him, and her uncertainty and concern grew when he finally freed his cloak and let it fall to the ground, covering the kid. Grogu squawked at suddenly being covered and struggled to free himself from under the wool cloak. She looked between the blanket-covered toddler and him and gave him one final skeptical look before she finally closed her eyes.

“I’m trusting you to keep them closed for me, Tranyc. Can you do that for me?” he murmured as he came toe to toe with her.

Alaina nodded, “But, Mando—”

“Use my name,” he interrupted her, lifting his helmet over his head.

Alaina stilled, and even without the added audio amplifiers inside his helmet, he could hear her quiet gasp of surprise. Mando watched her, greedily taking in how she looked in the daylight. Even with the sudden pop-up spring storm looming around them, the sun's last rays still managed to find her bright honey-blonde hair and make it shine.

“Djarin,” came her nervous whisper.

He crashed his lips into hers at the sound of his name leaving them. It had been so long since he had heard his name come from someone else, and never had he heard it as sweet as hers.

He’d never understood the appeal of kissing someone before, but after that night in the rain… he understood why people kissed. He poured every ounce of feelings he didn’t have words for into that kiss, hoping she understood everything he was trying to tell her. When he felt her loop her arms around his neck, he took the hand holding his helmet to wrap around her waist and buried the other in the back of her hair, holding her tightly to him. 

Alaina’s fingers wound in his overgrown curls at the base of his neck and tugged.

With her in position, he arched her back in a clumsy, awkward dip as he chased after her lips. Alaina released a surprise gasp against his lips but clenched her eyes tighter, and he rewarded her with another kiss. When he couldn’t take her any further without toppling them both over, he stopped and broke the kiss to murmur against her lips, “My name is Din Djarin.” He leaned back in for a gentle kiss and then pulled away again. “And we can be the boring married couple with a kid, but I’m not skipping over anything,” he whispered, biting her lip. “Not with you, Alaina Corra.”

With one last kiss, he got them upright, slowly placing his helmet back over his head as the rose.

Alaina stood there in a daze with her eyes closed. The kid was still by their feet, struggling to escape under his cloak.

“Din Djarin,” Alaina whispered with a whimsical smile plastered across her face.

“You can open your eyes, ya know,” he told her, bumping his beskar cover forehead against hers.

Alaina’s smile broadened as she bit down on her bottom lip and shook her head. “Din Djarin, kiss me,” she whispered, holding on to the top of his chestpiece.

Din Djarin’s smile overtook his face, and he tipped his helmet up to oblige the lady’s request. He could feel Alaina’s smile as large as his own against his lips.

The kid picked that moment to finally free himself and let out a series of disgruntled spitting noises, explaining in great detail how he felt about being left out of whatever the adults were doing. Alaina giggled at the sound, and with one last kiss, she let him go.

Thunder rumbled nearby as the clouds continued to gather, but Alaina stood there swaying slightly in the wind with her eyes closed in a daze.

When her emerald eyes finally opened to look at him, Din Djarin hoped that someday, he could look at them without the barrier between them. Without his helmet. He wanted to look at her eyes with his own.

“Come on, Tin Man,” Alaina whispered, with her smile still firmly plastered across her face. “Let’s go inside before you melt,” she smirked and nodded at the Crest. 

He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts and Alaina that he only now realized it was starting to rain. He watched her saunter back to the Crest with a shining smile still gracing her face and called after her, “Hey! You can use my name, you know?”

Alaina stopped at the foot of the ramp and turned back to give him a devilish smile that reignited a fire inside his chest before she said, “I intend to,” and turned back to enter the Crest. 

Dank farrik.

The kid chirped from his spot, still half buried under his cloak, and held his hands up to be picked up.

He bent over to grab the kid, his cloak in one arm and their full baskets of yellow berries in the other and shook his head at the kid. “Kid—Grogu,” he started, and the kid’s ears perked up excited by the use of his name. “My name is Din Djarin, and you have to cut me a break.”

The spring storm that forced them inside was much more intense than the last storm. The wind howled while rain and hail pelted against the ship's hull, all while the background noise of thunder rumbling sounded like it rarely stopped. He tried to leave the ramp open to let Alaina enjoy the storm for as long as possible, but when the wind started blowing the rain inside the hull, even Alaina told him to close up the ship.

“Bah!” Grogu yelled, waving his silver ball in the air.

The Mandalorian couldn’t remember the last time he admitted defeat, but sitting slumped on the floor of his own ship, back propped up against the wall, with the kid playing between the open ‘V’ of his legs, Din Djarin threw in the towel.

"I thought we decided you were going to cut me a break," he grumbled as he plucked the ball from the kid’s hands and tossed it down the hold. The kid giggled and squealed as if this wasn’t the hundredth time they’d done this and scrambled over his leg to go after the tiny beskar ball.

“You’re never getting that back,” Alaina teased.

His head swiveled to find Alaina exiting the fresher, scrunching the excess water from her hair with a towel. She’d changed out of her training clothes into his old tunic, and he quietly grumbled when he felt the kid crawl back over his leg to wave the ball in front of him again.

“You know,” she continued, and he could hear the smirk in her voice as she approached, “glaring at him won’t make him fall asleep any faster. We slept for over twenty hours. We’ll be lucky if he ever goes to sleep again.”

He exhaled an annoyed sigh and let his helmet fall back against the wall in defeat.

“Come on, little one,” Alaina cooed at the smiling toddler. “How about something to eat?” she asked, receiving an excited sputtering noise from the tiny goblin in response, and picked him up to hold him to her hip. “We’ll be up top, so you have the place to yourself for a bit,” she told him, her voice soft and sweet as she passed him, gracing him with an eyeful of her bare legs.

He watched her climb up the ladder to the cockpit, nodding and agreeing along to the kid’s excited babbles as if she understood every word he was saying. Probably why the kid liked her so much; she treated him like she would anyone else. Honestly, it was one of the reasons he liked her so much. It didn’t matter if you were a shrimping villager from a backwater skughole, a former Drop Trooper, a fifty-year-old green alien toddler, or covered head to toe in beskar. Alaina saw you for who you were.

Once he heard the cockpit door close, he forced himself to get off the floor and head to the fresher to clean up. He grabbed his sweats on the way in and began dismantling his armor piece by piece once he closed the fresher door to give him some privacy.

He stared at his reflection in the tiny mirror and frowned at how overgrown his hair and beard had gotten. Leaning closer to the mirror, his frown deepened when he noticed that more and more grays were starting to creep in. He shook his head as he splashed some water on his face and reached for his razor to tidy the scruff along his jaw. Since rescuing Alaina and the kid, he’d let his regular grooming habits fall by the wayside, and if his hair or beard grew any longer, it would become even more of an annoyance under his helmet than it already was.

Once the beard was gone and his mustache had been trimmed to a more respectable length, he took the scissors to cut his hair. He hated this the most. It always came out choppy and uneven when he did it. A not entirely unwanted image of Alaina trimming his hair for him flashed, and he had to push it away before he let him get too far ahead of himself. He stepped into the shower, turned the water on to rinse off the stray hairs and stubble, and stood under the warm spray, wondering why he had never bothered to replace the broken heating coil when it went out years ago.

His eyes opened at the feeling of the cord inside his chest glowing. When he concentrated on the feeling, he could tell that Alaina was feeling very smug about the fact that he was enjoying the warm shower. He rolled his eyes and grabbed the bar of soap to finish cleaning up. Even with the warm water, he was never one to shower long, and he was eager to join his companions to watch the rest of the storm from the cockpit.

Now, if a certain blonde, witchy, former ballerina decided to join him sometime…

He laughed when he felt their bond flush in embarrassment.

“Serves you right for spying, Tranyc,” he said to himself, returning to finish his shower.

He caught himself smiling like an idiot. Again. Only he doesn’t care. For the first time in months, maybe even years, things felt like they were how they were supposed to be. 

At least, he did think that until the lights went out.

He blinked in surprise in the pitch-black fresher, listening to the few functioning systems on the Crest as they systematically powered down one by one until even the shower slowed to a trickle before it eventually stopped altogether.

“Kriff,” he cursed, noting that his normal speaking voice echoed around the small room loudly without the background ambient noise of the Razor Crest.

Just one moment of happiness? Was that too much to ask for? Just one moment for them to enjoy themselves and be happy without some catastrophe happening.

He blindly patted his hand along the wall looking for the door and cursed when he stubbed his toe on the pile of beskar lying on the floor. “Come on,” he growled when the door wouldn’t even open from the lack of power.

The list of possibilities ran through his mind for the power loss as he worked to shimmy the door open. The storm was brutal, so a lightning strike was high up there, which would be extremely unfortunate, given that his repair tools were limited and the moon was uninhabited. Of course, there was always the possibility that some unknown threat had cut the power. Just because the moon was uninhibited didn’t mean he was the only person in the entire galaxy who’d ever been here. There was a chance that they weren’t alone.

That thought only renewed his determination to pry the door open and ensure Alaina and Grogu were okay. He couldn’t feel any panic coming from them, but this was all still so new, especially for him. The only thing working in his favor was that the ramp wasn’t operational with the power cut, so the only way in was for someone to carve through the hull.

When he finally pried the door open enough to enter the dark, powerless hold, he snatched his towel to wrap around his waist before going to investigate, hoping he wouldn’t regret leaving his armor on the fresher floor.

For as long as he’d lived in the Razor Crest, he would have thought that he could navigate blindfolded, but with all the doors shut and no light filtering in from up top, he moved slowly and cautiously, hoping that Alaina and the kid were okay and that this was something easily repaired—

He was surprised when he crashed into something—“Oof,” a familiar voice muttered in the dark—or someone. He scrambled to keep them upright, but every move he made seemed to comically tangle them worse until they tumbled to the floor in a heap, and he just barely managed to stick his arms out to brace himself and prevent his body from squishing Alaina’s.

“Ugh,” Alaina groaned from her spot under him. “Mando?”

“Alaina? What happened?”

“The womp rat,” she growled, and the irritation in her voice caught him off guard.

“The kid? How did the kid cut the power?”

“Ugh, I’m sorry,” she groaned. “I shouldn’t have left him alone. He was getting really crabby—like borderline tantrum levels. So, I thought I would be nice and get his stuffed frog because I was hoping that him getting crabby meant he was tired, and I thought if I got his frog, I could get him to finally go to sleep by the time you were out of the shower—"

“Alaina,” he interrupted her ramblings and brought his hands to rest on her cheeks. “Relax, Tranyc. Just tell me how the kid did it, and I can fix it.”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled.

“You don’t know?” He sighed when she didn’t answer and said, but he felt her head shake in his hand. “It’s pitch black. I can’t see you. Use your words.”

Alaina heaved an annoyed sigh. “I came down to the hold to get his frog,” she paused to pat the floor around them until she found what she was looking for and shoved the stuffed frog in his face to feel. “And we had the door shut to give you privacy, so when I made it back up to the cockpit, the lights just went out, and now I can’t open the door.”

He blinked as he processed her story and couldn’t stop the quiet chuff from escaping his lips.

“It’s not funny,” she grumbled, and he smiled at her tone because he could hear her pouting in the darkness.

His chuff slowly morphed into a full-blown belly laugh, and he only laughed harder when she slapped his chest.

“It’s not funny! I locked us out of the cockpit! The door won’t open or anything! We’re locked out, and this whole thing will probably traumatize Grogu for the rest of his life.”

Squeals of laughter floated down to them, and he rolled his eyes through his laughter at the kid’s antics. "You're right, he does sound traumatized," he teased, stroking her cheek with his thumb.

She slapped his chest weakly again, “You can’t see it, but I want you to know I’m rolling my eyes at you.” He hummed in acceptance and smiled when Alaina’s fingers ghosted over his chest. “You’re naked,” she whispered, and the innocence in that tiny declaration brought an entire day's worth of frustrations rushing back to him.

“I was in the shower,” he murmured, bringing his other hand to cup her face, enjoying the feeling of her soft skin under his fingers. “Was a little too concerned about you and the kid to worry about getting dressed.”

One of her hands left his chest to rest on his freshly shaved cheek. “But your helmet?”

“Can you see me?”

“No.”

“Then it’s okay. At least it doesn’t sound like the kid is in any kind of distress,” he joked, but Alaina didn’t laugh along with him. “Alaina, this isn’t your fault. The kid probably just yanked out some spark plugs. It's my fault for never replacing the cover when I broke it years ago. It’s nothing I can’t fix.”

Slowly, subtly, he felt her withdraw from their moment as her muscles began to tense under him, and he stroked her head. It was strange to feel something wrong before he heard or saw it. But the small, warm cord in his chest went cold right before a quiet sniffle came from under him, and he stroked her cheek, surprised to find an errant tear sliding down. “Alaina? What’s wrong?”

"I'm sorry, it's nothing," she murmured. She tried to brush the tears from her face, but he gripped her tighter.

"It's not nothing," he argued. "You can't lie to me. I can feel you now," he reminded her. Surely, she wasn’t so upset about something as easily fixable as this. 

He could feel her head shake before he heard another sniffle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was going to bother me,” she whispered, and he could hear her trying to hold her emotions back.

“Alaina—” and then it hit him. He had her in exactly the same position he’d found her and likely in the exact same spot that carcass had pinned her. “I’m sorry,” he apologized and scrambled to try and get off of her, but her hands gripped his wrists and refused to let him go.

“No, don’t—”

He shook his head in the dark, forgetting she couldn't see him. “Stop, you have a right to be upset. I wasn't thinking—”

“Wait! It just caught me off guard. Please. I didn’t… Mando—Din,” she breathed out, and he froze at how she spoke his name. Her hands came to rest on his chest before she whispered, “Din Djarin, make me forget him."

He sighed and brought his forehead to rest against hers. "Alaina—"

"Please," she pleaded, and he could feel her warm breath puff against his face. "I'm okay, I promise. I want you, Din. Make me forget him. Please,” she whispered from under him.

There was nothing in the galaxy that would make him happier.

His lips and body came crashing down around her. His hands held her face tightly while softly kissing her in the darkened hold. He smiled into the kiss when he felt her fingers thread into his hair and her body melt under him. Her legs came up to squeeze his torso, and she tried to deepen their kiss, trying to spur him to lose control, but he held firm. He went for slow and languid with this kiss, savoring every moment he could.

Because he could.

Because this wasn’t goodbye, this wasn’t the end.

This was their beginning.

And he wasn’t going to skip over anything.

He was going to take his time and remember to thank the womp rat for this little stolen moment with Alaina.

Her lips veered away, running up his jawline all the way to his ear.

“Stars, Alaina,” he groaned when her tongue came out to trace along his ear before beginning its descent down his neck.

He became lost in the feeling of her. He became lost in the feeling of them. Because with her walls down, he could feel her desire, which only amplified his own. When her lips made it down his neck to his pulse point, he almost jumped out of his skin when he felt her timid teeth come out to nip the flesh under them.

“Fuck,” he groaned and pulled away to go back for her lips before beginning his own descent down her chin to her neck. “I’m gonna do it right this time,” he murmured between kisses.

“What was wrong with the last time?” Alaina asked. He smiled at her nervous question and brought his head back up to nuzzle his nose into hers before he pressed his lips firmly against hers.

“Nothing, Tranyc,” he told her, smiling when he felt her smile again. “But I’m gonna do it right this time, Alaina. I’m gonna show you how your first time should have been.” He pressed his weight into her, and Alaina’s legs rubbed up and down his waist.

He tore his mouth away long enough to find the hem of her shirt in the dark and pulled it over her head in one, smooth motion. Din ran his hands down her silky skin and returned his lips to her collarbone, leaving a trail of kisses as he made his way down her body. When he reached her breasts, he paid equal amounts of attention to each one and smiled into her sternum when he felt Alaina try to hold his head to her. There would be more time for that later. But for now, he had other plans in mind.

As he made his way down her abdomen, his fingers found the hem of her underwear and slowly slid them down her legs. He sat on his knees and grabbed her left leg to begin pressing kisses from her knee to the inside of her thigh all the way up until Alaina squirmed. He placed that leg over his shoulder, repeating his actions until he was settled on his stomach on the floor with his head nestled between her legs.

“Mando?” Alaina panted and gasped when he bit the inner flesh of her thigh. “Wh-what are you doing?”

“Relax,” he soothed her, continuing his trail up her thigh until he reached her center. “And what did I tell you to call me?”

“Din,” she breathed his name out like she was saying a prayer, and he rewarded her by placing a tender kiss on her folds, forcing her to jump in surprise. Before she could say anything else, he flattened his tongue against her and slid through her. Alaina hissed and tensed when his tongue circled her clit. “Din,” she moaned this time, but he could still feel that her body was strained. She was nervous.

“Has no one ever done this for you before?” he questioned, lightly nipping at the sensitive skin before him.

“N-n-noo,” she stuttered and tried to close her legs, but his grip on her thighs tightened, preventing her from hiding herself from him.

“Relax, Mesh’la,” he purred, pulling her nub between his lips. He used his hands to massage her thighs while he sucked on her again. The faintest mewl came from her lips, and the sound almost broke him. “Let me take care of you.”

He could hear her suck in a deep breath as his tongue dipped back in for another taste. Din couldn’t stop his own moan at the taste and feel of his tongue sliding effortlessly through her slick. His fingers dug into the flesh of her thighs, and Alaina rocked her center into his face, forcing the delicate bundle of nerves hiding inside to knock against his nose.

“There you go, Tranyc,” he praised her, nuzzling his face inside her folds before he plunged his tongue as far inside of her as he could.

Alaina gasped, and her hips jolted into his face. “Mmm, Din,” she keened.

Din Djarin was in heaven. 

Having this remarkable woman quiver around him and say his name like that… should be illegal. Not to mention that she tasted like karking sunshine. But she still hadn’t fully relaxed for him yet. She was wound up and nervous, but he wanted her to relax and let him take care of her.

He withdrew his tongue from her channel and switched tactics. After a couple of unsuspecting laps through her center, spreading her sweet juices with his tongue, he latched onto her clit with his lips and sucked.

Greedily.

Alaina’s hand shot to his head and her fingers latched painfully to his hair, making him moan in pleasure. When she forcefully ground herself harder over his face, he rewarded her by sucking harder onto her nub. He attacked her as if his life depended on it. He sucked and lapped at her until the pitch-black hold was filled with a crescendo of Alaina’s breathless pants and moans.

“Din,” she mewled, tugging on his hair. “Din—I’m—” she gasped when he brought his teeth out and grazed her clit with them, and she came with an almost silent moan, but her thighs shook and quivered around his head, and her juices flooded over his tongue.

He drank her all in, lapping, licking, and sucking her through it until her orgasm dwindled to quiet pants, and her legs collapsed bonelessly over his shoulders as she melted into a puddle on the floor.

“That was—” she tried to start but couldn’t catch her breath. “That was—I hadn’t ever—”

“Did you like it, Tranyc?” he asked, already guessing the answer judging by the amount of her slick coating his mustache and chin.

“Yes,” she breathed, carding her fingers through his hair. His eyes closed at the contact, and he felt like he could purr like a loth cat from her gentle touch. “Would—I mean, I haven’t ever—well, that’s not—I mean—”

Din smiled at her nonsensical babbling to slide his tongue through her sensitive slit again, forcing her incoherent words to come to an abrupt stop and instead replaced them with a low groan.

“Would you like me to… um… return the favor?”

His brain short-circuited, and he rested his head in her lap at her nervous question. “Oh, Tranyc,” he purred. “As much as I want nothing more than to feel your sweet mouth on me like that—” he grunted as his body already responded to the image of Alaina on her knees, taking him with her mouth. “You would bring this moment to an end far too soon, and I have plans for you.”

“What kind of plans?” she asked. At the sultry sound of her voice, he smiled into her thigh.

He gripped her thighs and brought his mouth back to her center to distract her from his right hand moving from her leg to join his mouth between her legs. "You tell me, Tranyc," he purred as his middle finger ghosted a path through her slick middle.

Alaina's hips jolted, and her chest filled with air at his touch. "M-me?" she stuttered.

He hummed in agreement and felt her shudder from the vibrations of the low noise. "Don't tell me you haven't thought about this," he murmured, bringing his lips up to kiss her hipbone as his finger teased her opening. He slowly inched the digit in and had to bite back a groan when he felt her walls flutter around his fingertip. "I know you dreamed about it."

Her body stilled under him. "Y-y-you did?"

"Mmmmm," he hummed into her hip as he slid his finger in one smooth motion through her velvet walls to his knuckle. She gasped, and he could feel her chest start to take shallow breaths again. He eased his finger out of her heat until it completely left her, only for him to enter her warmth again just as slow and steady as he entered her the first time, and continued his slow, torturous pace until Alaina mewled and squirmed under him. "What were you dreaming about, mesh'la?" he whispered.

"S-s-org-gan," she stuttered breathlessly.

His eyes lit up at that new information, and he felt like a wolf smiling down on his unsuspecting prey. He increased his languid pace as a reward for this new crumble of information. "I've dreamed about you too. Do you want to know what I dreamed about?"

"Yes," she panted when he changed the angle of his slow massage.

He started peppering kisses up her abdomen until he reached her sternum and turned his head to lick her nipple. "I dreamed about our flying lessons," he said darkly, grabbing the stiff, pebbled flesh between his teeth. 

"Din," she moaned and brought one hand up to the back of his head and her other to rest between his shoulder blades. "You don't like our flying lessons," she said after another minute, sounding confused.

"You don't like our flying lessons," he reminded her, hooking his finger sheathed inside of her at the same time he moved his head to nip at the underside of her breast.

"Oh!" she yelped, her hips rocking into his hand, seeking more from him.

"You were being a brat," he continued the retelling of his dream, smiling into her chest while his lips across her chest and toward her neck.

"I'm no-not a brat," she stuttered, attempting to defend herself.

He shoved a second finger inside her to reprimand her for her sass. Alaina gasped, and her fingernails dug deliciously into his shoulder blades. "Oh, you can be a brat, Tranyc," he murmured, and she dug her nails harder into his back. "But I'll tell you a secret," he whispered, moving his lips to pull her bottom lip into his mouth while he continued to work his fingers inside of her. "I like it when you're being a brat to me. No one, and I mean no one, can get me as infuriated or as worked up as quickly as you can, mesh'la."

Alaina quietly giggled, and then that muted laughter turned into a gasp when his fingers started stretching her, preparing her for him. "Maker—Ohhhhhhhh!" she moaned loudly in his ear when he sharply thrust his fingers inside of her. "Diiiin."

"You were being a brat and wouldn't stop pushing my buttons, so I decided to teach you a lesson."

"I'm—not—a—brat," she eventually managed to get out between breaths.

"Mmmmm," he hummed into her lips before he kissed her. "That's what you said in my dream, too," he murmured right before he yanked his finger from her heat.

Din didn't give her a chance to protest. He grabbed her waist between his hands and tossed her over his shoulder before he climbed to his feet. He walked the three steps to the hull and felt around until he found the ladder leading up top. He gripped her hips in his hands and pulled her off his shoulder to line his eager, throbbing length up with her center. "Tell me again that you're not a brat," he ordered, dropping his voice an octave.

"I'm—not—" she began, but he wouldn't let her finish. His hips canted upward, notching the tip of his weeping cock inside her velvety soft walls. Alaina gasped at the feeling and clenched her walls impossibly tight around him, forcing his right hand to fly off her hip to grip the base of his cock to keep him from spilling right there. With only one hand holding on to her hips, Alaina started groaning and rocking her hips over him.

"Fuck," he moaned into her cheek. "You're just as tight as I remember."

Her body began to writhe between him and the ladder as she continued trying to take more of him in. She slid her hips up until he slipped from her warmth, forcing a hiss from both of them at the loss of contact. Blessedly, her hips sunk back down, finding the head of his cock and going slightly past it before she inched herself off of him again. She repeated this as soft sounds of her pleasure left her mouth as she continued to take him a little more each time, slowly allowing her body to adjust to his girth. "Din," she keened against his lips, and he could feel her face crumple in a mix of pain and pleasure.

Feeling slightly more in control of his body, and his hand left his cock to return to her hip again. He leaned into her head and found her lips with his, giving her a searing kiss that she returned just as passionately. "Say it again, Laina," he murmured between kisses. "Say my name."

"Din," she repeated against his lips.

"Fuck," he growled at the sweet way she spoke his name. His hips lost control and canted upward, allowing his rigid length further inside of her.

"Din!" she cried out, arching her back off the ladder into his chest.

"Again," he grunted.

"Din," she breathed out quietly, only to immediately scream it when he rammed his hips between her legs, spearing his cock the rest of the way inside of her.

His fingers dug into the flesh on her hips, holding her still over him while he ground himself so far inside of her that the head of his cock nudged her womb, and she cried out. "To think," he started and ran his lips along her bottom jaw, "you wanted just to skip over this part."

Alaina shook her head, and he bit down on her jaw, forcing her still. "No," she panted. "No skipping," she murmured, writhing against him. "Not with you, Din."

He pulled his hips back to slide his length out until he almost left her before sliding slowly back inside until she had sheathed his cock in her velvet walls to his hilt.

"Din," she repeated breathlessly. With her jaw still between his teeth, he grunted at the sound of his name. His hips were no longer his control. They saught her warmth. "Din," she whispered, and he slammed home. "Yes," she moaned.

"Again."

"Din."

He slammed back inside of her, pinning her hips to the ladder each time he thrust home. His forehead rested against hers, so he could feel it each time his name left her lips. Alaina repeated his name, sounding as if she had completely lost herself to the pleasure. Each time his name left her lips, he rewarded her by pumping his cock slowly in and out of her. Her hands left the ladder and took him by surprise when her nails came to dig into his shoulders at the base of his neck, and she used her new leverage to help move against his cock, meeting his thrust for slow thrust.

"Yes!" she cried out when he picked up the pace and started eagerly chasing after his cock with her hips.

"Fuck, that's it, Alaina," he growled through clenched teeth at the feeling of her slick walls bobbing eagerly over his cock. He rammed harder inside of her, and her nails dug harder into his skin. With another thrust, he felt her bare breasts jiggle against his bare chest from the force. "Tell me you want to be my partner," he pleaded, losing himself to the pleasure.

"Partners," Alaina agreed, slamming her cunt over him, forcing a shout of pleasure from both their lips.

"Tell me again you want to be partners. Tell me you want to be my partner."

"Your's Din. Your's."

He snapped at her words, and his hands left her hips to grab onto the ladder, pinning her tightly between his body and the durasteel ladder as he took her.

He bucked wildly inside of her, setting a pace that she couldn't keep up with. The slick from her juices drenched his cock, allowing his rapid tempo. His lips were against hers, but they weren't kissing. Instead, their combined breaths and grunts echoed around the quiet hull; the sound was made more obscene each time he pumped inside of her, allowing them to hear how much she was soaking him with her desire.

He felt the delicious burn low in his abdomen, signaling he was close, but there was something else there. With a shock, he realized that he could also feel Alaina's desire inside of him, and being able to feel her pleasure coiled tightly was a surreal feeling. It was her and him together, standing in the ocean, watching as the tide drew out from the shore, preparing for the next wave to come crashing into them.

"I can feel you," Alaina whispered against his lips. "I can feel you. Oh my—Din!"

Din slammed his lips over her as the wave swelled and crested. He growled into her mouth as he drank in her cries of pleasure. His thrusts became erratic as he moaned through the feeling of her velvet walls rippling over his swollen cock. The wave crashed into him when he felt her cunt squeeze him tightly in his grip as it flooded his cock with her juices. 

"Alaina!" he roared and then clamped his teeth over her pulse point as his hips stuttered and started desperately slamming into her, seeking his own pleasure. His cock swelled painfully, and he felt his balls draw up in anticipation as he started losing the battle.

Alaina's fingers wound into his hair, holding him to her neck as he moaned and ground deeply inside of her.

"Din," she whispered into his head.

Hearing her say his name in such a way was the final push he needed. Like a ship that lost a battle in space, his body silently imploded before his cock pulsed, and he exploded inside of her. His teeth clamped down into her flesh as he ground himself as deeply inside of her as he could while their bodies shattered. Alaina thrashed and wailed against him as her soft walls continued to flutter around his cock, milking him for everything he had, while Din roared into her skin.

His pleasure mixed with hers until he couldn't tell who was who. 

Slowly, the bright white aftershock faded away, and when Din came to, it was piece by piece. The sounds of their breathless pants filled his ears. He pressed a tender kiss to where he felt indentations left behind from his teeth. Part of him felt bad because he knew that would hurt once she came around, but the other prideful part of him relished in the fact that he'd marked her for everyone to see that she was his. Her body slumped against the ladder, and he had to bring his hands to grip her ass to keep her from sinking to the floor. Besides, he was still enjoying the feeling of being inside her heat and the feeling of his seed mixing with her juices as they slid out of her.

"That—" Alaina panted but struggled to complete her sentence. "That was—" Din smirked into her neck and brought his lips to hers, pressing a tired, sloppy kiss to them. "Is it supposed to feel like that every time?" He smiled into their kiss when her lips finally responded. "No one—No one told me it would feel like that."

His chest swelled with pride, and he smothered her lips with his before he finally pulled away. "This is just the beginning, Alaina," he whispered, pressing another kiss to her lips.

"Mmmm. I don't think my legs work anymore," she murmured bleerily into the kiss.

"I've got you, Tranyc." Din grunted and went to smother Alaina's pained gasp with his lips as he slid out of her and moved so he could hook her legs under one arm and her chest with his other while he cradled her limp body against him. "I've got you, Alaina," he whispered, brushing his lips against her forehead as he carried her to the other side of the hold to her cot.

When his leg found the low cot, he lowered her to the blankets and tried to stand back up, but her hands gripped his wrists. "I'll be right back," he promised, blindly brushing some of the hair that was plastered to her face. "I've got to see what kind of damage the kid did." Alaina dropped his wrists, and he smiled when he heard her breathing start to even out in the dark.

He felt like he was in a daze as he shuffled around the hold to return to the fresher. His hand blindly searched around the ground until he found his helmet and the sweatpants he'd brought in before his shower, leaving the rest where it was until the morning. With only a minor struggle, he managed to get his helmet and pants on before he found the ladder again, smiling when he realized he would be replaying that moment every time he needed to climb up or down it and headed through the hatch toward the cockpit. After a moment of fighting with the door, he eventually pried it open and was able to get inside to see what atrocities awaited him.

Din's gaze dropped to the floor, and he shook his head. There was Grogu, sleeping and oblivious, surrounded by at least ten spark plugs and his silver ball on the floor. Thankfully, the storm from earlier appeared to have passed, and the bright, glowing night illuminated the cockpit enough for him to fumble with the plugs to put them back in their places. With the final spark plug in place, Din flicked a switch, and the Razor Crest returned to life.

"Thanks, kid," he whispered to the sleeping child as he knelt to pick him up. With the kid tucked into his chest, he carried him back down to the hold and placed him in his hammock in the alcove. He turned around to search for the kid's stuffed frog and grabbed it from the floor to tuck in with him.

Once the kid was situated, Din turned to cross the hold, grabbing Alaina's discarded shirt and underwear as he went to open the ramp. Once the ambient light from the moon filled the hold, he shut the lights off and returned to the sleeping blonde. She had passed out on top of the blankets, leaving her exposed body for his viewing pleasure, now bathed in the soft light from outside.

"Maker," he whispered to no one as he went to join her on the cot.

As he made himself comfortable, laying next to her, he took one last lingering moment to soak her in before he turned her to pull her back against his chest as he covered them up with a blanket.

Din Djarin drifted to sleep with the single, sleepy realization that he'd lived his whole life without also knowing it was supposed to feel like that.

Of course, Din Djarin had lived his whole life without ever having a true partner.

Until now.

Author's Note #2: I hope the slow burn has been worth it 😈😜

For those of you in the US (and across the world) going into the holidays, please know that I am genuinely so thankful for every one of you. Alaina and her story would not have made it this far without your support.

With that said, for those of you going into Thanksgiving and the holiday season disheartened by certain recent events... Maybe you're in my shoes and have had to hodgepodge a Friends-giving together because you're not welcome to join your own families. Just know that I am saving a special seat for you, and you are not alone. Welcome to Clan Stardust. We're deranged, and occasionally, there is a smut monster that breaks out and wreaks havoc, but we're here. We are a safe space for all 💙

XOXO, 💫Stardust💫

Tag List: @racheldon @zenrobbins0021 @locked-ness @smoochispoof

Drop me a message or comment if you would like to be tagged when new chapters get published.

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Next chapter in series - Chapter 19: First Light

[theaftersundown]

the holy grail types of fanfic

[charbroiledchicken]

if it's good enough for you, then it deserves to be made. don't let anyone else decide if your story is worth it or not.

[jordanbolton]

“The Driver” by Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is out now! Order it here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky

[hayatheauthor]

10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing

New Part: 10 Lethal Injury Ideas

If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain, here are some ideas: 

1. Sprained Ankle

A common injury that can severely limit mobility. This is useful because your characters will have to experience a mild struggle and adapt their plans to their new lack of mobiliy. Perfect to add tension to a chase scene.

2. Rib Contusion

A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult, helping you sneak in those ragged wheezes during a fight scene. Could also be used for something sport-related! It's impactful enough to leave a lingering pain but not enough to hinder their overall movement.

3. Concussions

This common brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment heavily. It can also cause mild amnesia.

I enjoy using concussions when you need another character to subtly take over the fight/scene, it's an easy way to switch POVs. You could also use it if you need a 'cute' recovery moment with A and B.

4. Fractured Finger

A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills. This would be perfect for characters like artists, writers, etc. Or, a fighter who brushes it off as nothing till they try to throw a punch and are hit with pain.

5. Road Rash

Road rash is an abrasion caused by friction. Aka scraping skin. The raw, painful sting resulting from a fall can be a quick but effective way to add pain to your writing. Tip: it's great if you need a mild injury for a child.

6. Shoulder Dislocation

This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation. Good for torture scenes.

7. Deep Laceration

A deep laceration is a cut that requires stitches. As someone who got stitches as a kid, they really aren't that bad! A 2-3 inch wound (in length) provides just enough pain and blood to add that dramatic flair to your writing while not severely deterring your character.

This is also a great wound to look back on since it often scars. Note: the deeper and wider the cut the worse your character's condition. Don't give them a 5 inch deep gash and call that mild.

8. Burns

Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma. Like the previous injury, the lasting physical and emotional trauma of a burn is a great wound for characters to look back on.

If you want to explore writing burns, read here.

9. Pulled Muscle

This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, offering a window to force your character to lean on another. Note: I personally use muscle related injuries when I want to focus more on the pain and sprains to focus on a lack of mobility.

10. Tendonitis

Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted. When exploring tendonitis make sure you research well as this can easily turn into a more severe injury.

This is a quick, brief list of ideas to provide writers inspiration. Since it is a shorter blog, I have not covered the injuries in detail. This is inspiration, not a thorough guide. Happy writing! :)

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

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@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Glinda really had an entire musical number expounding on the theme of "success in life is not about being highly qualified or even competent, but manipulating people's superficial perception of you." and then she went into POLITICS. truly the #girlboss representation the world has earned

[barrbodiedberry]

Beach combing by Mia Incantalupo

[rlaehrwk21]

"i can fix him" ok well i will try to make him realize how loved and cherished he is outside of the narrative he created for himself

[newlevant]

Preview of Sam Long’s story, drawn by the amazing Cynthia Yuan Cheng! (@cynthiaycheng, cynthiaycheng.com)

Becoming Who We Are Kickstarter ends Dec 14! Preorder now to help us fund the book!

bit.ly/becomingkickstarter

[bunnie-tells-stories]

If you’re having writers block…READ!!!! CONSUME MEDIA

I feel like I don’t hear that given enough as advice for writers block..just read? Watch tv? Movies? Find inspiration in media.

Writers block is a lack of inspiration, so go collect more.

[itsjuststardust]

Heaven in Hiding - Chapter 16: The Cord That Binds

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Chapter Summary: And if someone overpowers one person, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.

Word Count: 14,337

Author's Note/Chapter Warnings: MINORS - DO NOT INTERACT - 18+ ONLY 🎵Chapter soundtrack(s)🎵 'So High School' - Taylor Swift; 'Maroon' - Taylor Swift; 'As It Was' - Hozier

Chapter 16: The Cord That Binds

Alaina couldn’t stop grinning.

The day had started… not so great.

Her sour mood started yesterday when she shattered her hand by punching Mando’s helmet. But then they learned that the kid could heal people, and then said kid passed out, and they spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening worried over him. Not to mention her persistent headache, only amplified by the stress of the day before. By the time dinner came around, Alaina just wanted to go to sleep and be done for the day. 

She tried to hide her tears from Mando, but she knew she hadn't been successful the second he began removing his armor. However, when Mando’s strong arms wrapped around her and held her tightly to his chest, Alaina thought he had single-handedly chased off her bad mood. Only her sour mood bled into the next day when she woke up this morning. She just kept staring at that spot on the floor where she had been pinned to the ground and was suddenly overcome with the need to scrub the entire hold, wiping Calican's memory clean from the Razor Crest. 

The cleaning had worked… to an extent. She maybe wouldn’t be able to wipe the slate clean, but she did find a radio. And oh, to be able to listen to music again. That little radio had already lifted her spirits so much…

And then Mando returned from hunting and…

Her eyes flicked to the Mandalorian polishing his armor across from her, and her smile grew.

Maker, she felt like a teenager enamored by her first crush all over again. It was all a bit silly, really. The whole day had been just that—silly. She didn’t know what had gotten into Mando, but she was thankful for his spurt of child-like insanity. Their afternoon spent swimming at the lake was just what she needed to snap out of her funk.

The afternoon had been perfect.

“What do you see when you have one of your visions?” 

Alaina blinked at Mando’s question and looked up from the pot she was stirring to fix him with a frown. “Why?”

Mando shrugged as he continued to polish his chestpiece. “Just curious,” he answered, trying to appear nonchalant about the question. “Just thought I could get to know you a little better. Thought you’d like having someone who understood what happens when you have one.”

She narrowed her eyes at the casual way he asked the random question… almost too casual. What was he up to? When Alaina didn’t answer his question, he looked up from polishing his armor, and she stared back at him with a single, high arching eyebrow, a sure sign that she didn’t believe him.

“What?” he asked with an innocent tilt of his helmet.

“Normally, people start with easier topics when they are trying to get to know someone. Things like, ‘What’s your favorite color?’ or ‘How old were you when you started dancing?’ or ‘I see you’re traveling with a Mandalorian; how long have you been friends with a bounty hunter?’” she snarked.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think we’ve gone about things the way normal people do,” he shot back, but she could hear the easy, teasing tone in his deep voice that put her at ease.

Alaina smirked back at him before returning to stirring the stew and saying, “You mean normal people don’t meet all their friends by being their bounty?”

He chuckled and shook his head as he returned to polishing his armor.

When they made it back to the Crest, Mando worked to push the heavy crates Alaina had managed to push out earlier while she gathered the other odds and ends back inside just as the skies opened up. She was still highly suspicious that Grogu used his powers to help her move the heavy containers. Otherwise, there was no way she was strong enough to get them out, especially once she watched Mando struggle to push them back up the ramp.

He left the ramp open at Alaina’s behest so they could watch the storm roll through as rain poured from the black clouds, blanketing the sky overhead. They took turns showering the lake off them and changing into dry clothes before they started working on dinner. Mando prepared the rabbit he had caught earlier. Alaina sorted through some of the dehydrated vegetables and spices the villagers on Sorgan gave them and began making a stew that smelled delicious, if she did say so herself.

It was all very domestic—an afternoon spent swimming at the lake, working on dinner together, and now the three of them were lounging on the hold floor in companionable silence. Grogu was near the ramp, watching the storm with rapt fascination. Alaina was barefoot, dressed only in his old tunic, and had a towel wrapped around her head, hiding her hair while she knelt in front of the electric warmer and pot, focusing on dinner. 

After Mando’s shower, she was surprised to see him decide to join his companions in their casual attire and redress in one of his older, threadbare black short-sleeved shirts and a pair of black sweats she’d never seen him wear before. 

Alaina couldn’t help the smile that blossomed across her face at the first glimpse of his bare arms and feet, free of their usual coverings. Her smile was even brighter when he tilted his helmet at her as he sat across from her, almost daring her to say something before he began to polish his armor.

“Black,” he said randomly, trading his chestpiece for a vambrace.

Alaina frowned, took the spoon out of the pot, and placed a lid over it before moving to sit on the floor. “Black?” she asked, resting her back against one of the crates.

He nodded, “If you would have asked me five years ago, I would have told you my favorite color was black.”

Alaina smiled at his answer. “Five years ago, huh? And what if I were to ask you now?” she asked as she unwrapped the towel from her head, allowing her damp hair to cascade around her.

Mando paused from rubbing his vambrace with a rag to fix Alaina with his helmet before answering with, “Green.”

A soft, pink blush blossomed across Alaina’s cheeks at his answer, and she ducked her head from view. With her face slightly hidden, she used the towel previously wrapped around her hair to scrunch the remaining moisture from her blonde locks.

“Let me guess,” Mando started, resting an arm over his knee. “Your favorite color is pink?” he teased.

Alaina stuck her tongue out at him and tossed her wet towel at him. “And what if it is?”

“Pink? Really?” he half grumbled, tossing her wet towel off to the side.

Alaina rolled her eyes and laughed. “Mando, I’m a ballerina who, until five years ago, didn’t even know what a Mandalorian was and, before that, was content to live my life as a basic girlie girl.”

“Basic… girlie girl?” he questioned slowly, attempting to decipher Alaina’s description of herself.

She snickered at his confused words. “You know, like when someone says, ‘Oh, there’s a girl,' and your mind automatically goes to dresses, flowers, and pink? Basic.”

Mando’s helmet remained fixed on her in silence as if he didn’t understand her words. Of course, with Mando’s lifestyle, she realized that he’d probably never had any interactions with your typical girlie girl for him to understand what she was talking about.

“Never mind,” Alaina shook her head and rolled her eyes at his silence. “And for your information, my favorite color is yellow,” she told him, smirking when he tilted his helmet again at the new information.

Lightning lit up the sky quickly, followed by a loud crash of thunder that made the three of them jump. 

Grogu let out a quiet eep at the booming thunder that echoed around the hold. The adults watched the toddler as he waddled from his spot near the ramp and came to sit between them. The Child’s eyes drooped as he fought to stay awake, but she could feel that he was hungry and knew he would drop off the moment his stomach was full. Alaina gave him a comforting smile as she soothed the child by gently stroking his head with her fingers before standing up to walk back to the alcove. She had to stand on her toes to search the kid’s hammock, but finding his stuffed frog didn’t take long.

“There you go,” she said, her voice sugary sweet as she passed the toy to the toddler. “I used to be scared of storms when I was little, too. But now they are one of my favorite things to watch.”

Grogu gave her a couple of slow, sleepy blinks before he clutched his stuffed frog tightly to his chest and let out a quiet coo while he focused on the pot cooking in front of him instead of the storm outside.

“Doesn’t seem very girlie girl to like storms,” Mando commented, setting aside his last piece of armor.

Alaina shrugged and moved to check on the stew. Once the lid was off the pot, she closed her eyes in contentment as the delicious smells wafted under her nose. She wasn’t the only one who thought it smelled good, too, judging by Grogu’s excited squeal that barely covered Mando’s growling stomach. With one last stir of their dinner, she ladled them each a helping of her rabbit stew before passing her companions their bowls.

“My mom had a thing for watching the weather. Rain, storms, snow, it didn’t matter. Just something that rubbed off on me, I guess. The rain and snow were soothing, but I was always partial to watching the lightning,” she told him, moving to retake her spot on the floor. “What about you?”

Mando cocked his helmet at the question, “What about me?”

“Do you ever just sit back and watch the weather?” she questioned, taking a bite of her stew.

“I prefer a clear sky,” he answered, stirring his bowl. “Any other kind of weather is a hindrance to the job.”

She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but whatever Alaina was about to say was cut off by the kid banging his spoon against the bowl. “No, Grogu,” she began, showing him how to hold the spoon in his small, three-fingered hand. “See, you use it to eat your stew.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mando turn away from them to lift his helmet and take a sip straight from his bowl. Her lips quirked when she heard a hum of appreciation from the ordinarily stoic Mandalorian. Maybe he’d understand why she hated his ration packs now. Alaina returned her attention to Grogu to help him with his spoon, but his focus was entirely on watching Mando eat his dinner. When she watched Grogu’s ears perk, she knew he was about to ignore her lecture about proper dining etiquette. Grogu dropped his spoon on the ground only a second later, grabbed his bowl between his hands, and took a sip from it, copying Mando.

“Grogu, manners,” Alaina tutted at the child and turned just in time to see Mando turn to take a sip straight from the bowl. “Really?” she grumbled, and he shrugged his shoulders. “You’re teaching him bad habits.”

“It’s kind of difficult to eat soup with the helmet on,” he countered, lifting the bowl up. “But if manners are that important to you, I can go up top to eat.”

Alaina pouted and looked between him and the kid before she heaved a sigh, dropped her spoon to the floor, and took a sip straight from her bowl. Grogu smiled brightly at Alaina’s change in attitude and lifted his own bowl back up for another sip.

“I’m guessing this isn’t how the dinner parties you keep mentioning usually go?” Mando asked, amusement lacing his question before turning away to take another deep drink from his bowl.

Alaina let out a snort at his question. “No, not exactly,” she confirmed. “My dinner parties usually had a few more people, and everyone there knew how to use their eating utensils,” she groused, taking a sip from her bowl. “I also normally wore pants to my own parties,” she added, looking down at her bare legs sticking out from under her shirt.

Mando chuckled at her, “What other kinds of things would you do?”

Alaina smiled when Grogu grunted and waved his already empty bowl at her. She then refilled the kid’s empty bowl with a second, smaller serving before passing it back to him.

“They were nothing elaborate,” she explained, taking a few bites before continuing. A warm smile made its way across her face at the fond memories of years past floating to the surface of her mind. “Just friends from my dance company and some of their significant others. We would eat, drink wine, and gossip about work or the new dancers. We’d usually get tipsy by the end and dance it off at the club afterward. One of my favorite parties was during a storm like this, and we all went out and danced in the rain instead of going out,” she told him, smiling brightly at the memory. “I started hosting the get-to-gathers after my mom died,” she explained, her smile faltering slightly at the mention of her mother. “My mom and…” she started again, and then her smile faded away completely. “Um, my mom and Penn were my only family. So, after she was gone, it was nice to gather up all of my friends once every couple of weeks or so and catch up. I guess it seems silly now, but it was nice,” she finished with a shrug.

Mando appeared to tense at the mention of Penn. “He was really your friend?” he asked, sounding as if he had difficulty believing she had ever been friends with the doctor. 

Alaina nodded, keeping her focus straight ahead, feeling embarrassed by her answer. 

“I’m sorry,” Mando murmured.

Alaina shrugged again. “It is what it is. Part of me hates that every good memory I have of my past is tainted with him… but… He was my best friend,” she finished with a sigh. “He hated that I made him come to my dinner parties. He always felt out of place but would still come just to see me. He knew that if he didn’t show up, I would do something embarrassing to him at work, so he suffered through my other friends. But that’s also just who he was.” She grew somber at the memories of her former friend and seemed to force a couple of bites of food down before she set her bowl aside, suddenly unable to stomach eating.

“He knew how much I hated being alone,” she continued, tucked her knees under her shirt, and wrapped her arms around her legs. “The last week my mom was in the hospital, we knew she was nearing the end, and he took a leave of absence from work just to be at the hospital with me. He was there when she passed. He took care of me. Penn let me live with him. He made sure I ate that I got out of his apartment; he made sure I didn’t quit dancing…” she scoffed and shook her head, and her face shifted from sorrow to rage. “He was my best friend. He knows everything about me. He came to my dinner parties, he came to my recitals, he was there for me when my mom died… He knows my biggest achievements, my hopes, my fears… And he used them against me. He knows I hate being alone, and that’s exactly what he did to me.”

Mando didn’t have an answer for her. She wasn’t expecting one. There was no changing the past. Penn was an integral part of it, and now he wasn’t. Now she had a Mandalorian and a strange green alien toddler… well, at least for now, she did. What Mando had planned for them once they left, she didn’t know and didn’t want to think about, especially after this afternoon. Even the thought of separating from either of them made that tiny invisible string she had felt in her chest pull taught, reminding her that Mando had healed it with his actions over the last few weeks.

“Oh dear,” Alaina tutted, looking away from Mando to try to hide her tears from him. “Looks like someone had too much fun today,” she commented and shuffled around to pick up Grogu, who had fallen asleep next to his bowl, using his stuffed frog as a pillow.

She gently rocked the sleeping toddler and carried him back to his hammock. She took her time tucking him and his frog under the blanket, not ready to face Mando one-on-one just yet. Alaina could feel his helmet fixed on her, burning holes through her. It took another minute to gather herself before she could turn back to Mando and give him a faux smile. He shifted his helmet slightly, apparently seeing right through her mask. Oh well, at least she managed to stop herself from crying.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said, and Alaina found herself thankful that he didn’t try to argue or make her feel better.

She shrugged, “Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I ever saw him again,” Alaina commented when she returned to the crate she had been sitting in front of. Instead of sitting down this time, she leaned to rest her shoulders against the crate and crossed her arms over her chest. “A part of me wants to hope there is someone good still inside of there—”

“That kind of thinking will get you killed,” Mando cut her off. Her chest instantly clenched at his frank words, and tears filled her eyes again. Mando sighed and shook his head, but she wasn’t sure which one of them he was more frustrated with. “Alaina, the man put a bounty on you,” he argued. “Penn Pershing is not the man you knew. He fabricated a story about the two of you being married—”

“Oh, he didn’t fabricate that,” Alaina interrupted, snarling a bit at the end when she said the words.

If she had thought Mando was tense after admitting that she had hoped Penn still had some good left in him, that was nothing compared to the silence that stretched through the hold at her admission. You would have thought that despite the hold doors being open, all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the hold, almost as if her words had set a bomb off.

“But—” Mando began before he silenced himself. Alaina watched him with a curious eye as he shifted uncomfortably while he tried to choose his words. “But… but you said that the two of you weren’t married?” he reminded her, and her face softened at the hurt she heard in his words. “You said you were just friends?”

Alaina blew out a huff of air and rolled her eyes. “So, five years ago, I didn’t think that I was married when I told you that,” she shrugged.

“You… you didn’t think you were married?” he asked with a skeptical tilt of his helmet.

She nodded, “Apparently, the Empire can marry you to someone without you realizing it. So, they filed all the paperwork to make it legit when Penn put the bounty on me to make the story believable.”

The dark words came out from under his helmet so quickly that Alaina had to wonder if he even realized he had said them, “I’ll kill him.”

Alaina snorted, “Why? Because he tortured me for five years, or because he’s technically my husband? Which means,” she paused to look at the alcove where Grogu was sleeping before looking back at him with a smirk, hoping to lighten the mood. “Which means you had s-e-x with a married woman,” she whispered. He chuckled at her mocking accusation and shook his head at her, making her smile again. “Homewrecker,” she teased, giving him a playful wink.

A bark of laughter escaped him, and he leaned back against the wall, looking a little more relaxed and content now that they were both laughing again.

Alaina smirked and turned to the crate he had pushed back inside to its rightful place when they returned to the Crest and started digging inside. Of course, what she was looking for had to be buried at the bottom of the container. After a few seconds of struggling, she gave in and hopped up to fold herself over the lip of the crate so she could reach the bottle she was aiming for. She had to stretch to grab it and tried not to let herself be too embarrassed when she felt her sleep shirt, Mando’s old tunic, slide up to probably expose some of her underwear and bottom to the Mandalorian seated on the floor on the opposite side of the hold. “Ah ha!” Alaina muttered triumphantly from the crate before she popped back up, fixing her shirt.

Mando jolted at the sound of her words, and she blushed when his helmet snapped upright. She could almost swear she saw a slight red rash creep down Mando’s neck as if he was embarrassed to be caught ogling her. Had he really been looking at her? Like that? Her breath caught in her chest, and she felt that same teenager crush feeling sneak back up. She held the glass bottle by its neck to show him what she had grabbed out of the crate, and the blue liquid sloshed around slightly.

“Spotchka?” he asked, sounding surprised.

Alaina eyed him from the other side of the hold, and her chest tugged again when she saw his strong, muscular arms, which she had dreamed about since Sorgan. Maybe she should embrace feeling like a teenager again… 

She nodded, “No good dinner party is complete without good food, alcohol, and even better company,” she smiled. “Besides,” Alaina began, walking to stand in front of him with the bottle of spotchka. “When you’ve had a couple of drinks, you say adorable stuff, like calling me sweet thing,” she teased him, giving him a taste of a flirty smile that had just a sliver of her pink tongue poking out.

He shook his head at her words, and her smile solidified when she saw Mando’s neck flush red in embarrassment. “Mandalorians aren’t adorable,” he grumbled. No doubt, if Alaina corrected him to inform him that he was adorable, handsome, kind, and every other feeling that filled her head when she looked at him, she would very likely spook him and end this endearing moment.

“I’m going to go watch the rest of the storm,” she told him, nodding to the open ramp. “Come sit with me?” she asked hopefully.

Mando nodded, making her beam back at him. She headed toward the open bay ramp and could hear him shuffling around close behind her. She sat off to the side so her legs could dangle over the edge, but he opted to sit behind just inside the ramp to avoid getting wet.

“Cheers,” she toasted, popping the lid off the spotchka. She lifted the bottle to solute Mando before taking a drink of the sweet alcohol. When she was done, she passed him the bottle, trying to appear relaxed when his bare fingers brushed her own, sending a shiver down her spine.

Mando turned his head to drink from the bottle, and Alaina directed her eyes outside to watch the rain. The rain hadn’t let up since it started, and she felt a small irk of irritation when she realized that she’d done all that work scrubbing the hold, only for them to likely track mud all over it tomorrow.

Her mind, always planning five steps ahead, wouldn’t let her sit back and enjoy the storm. It poked and prodded to know what Mando had in store for her. He had told her on Tatooine that he wanted to be done with her… and at the time, Alaina had thought it was best that they part ways… but now? After how Mando had cared for her since the assault—how the three of them had settled in together, almost making it feel like they were a word that started with an F that she never thought she would have again?

“What comes next?” Alaina asked, keeping her head facing out the hold.

“I don’t know, I’ve never watched a storm just for fun,” he answered her with a shrug.

Alaina turned to give him a quick smirk before the smile fell from her face. “No, I mean after we leave here,” she whispered. “I know we can’t stay here forever,” she added sadly.

“We can stay here for a little longer,” came his soft response as Mando passed the bottle back to her.

Alaina took the bottle and studied the electric blue liquid inside as she tried to come up with her next words. “We’ve already been here a couple of weeks. I’m sure you’re bored and ready to get back to work—”

“We can stay here a little longer,” he repeated, taking his bare hand to tuck some of her hair behind her shoulder, and Alaina blushed when she realized he had done it so he could fully see her face. “We have enough supplies to last us a little longer. Once we do leave, I’ll need to find work for credits, which means I’ll have to find jobs outside of the guild, but we don’t need to worry about that tonight.”

Unfortunately, they’d already opened the discussion, and Alaina couldn’t let it go. She needed to know what he was thinking. She needed to tell him that she wanted to stay. “And when you do look for work?” she asked, obviously nervous about whatever she was about to ask next. “Do you have a plan? For us?” she added at the end, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.

She held her breath while she waited for his answer. Her stomach was suddenly in knots as she waited for him to respond, and she was torn between wanting to hurl whatever she had eaten or downing the rest of the spotchka on her own.

“The truth is…” he began but tapered off, and Alaina wondered if he was just as nervous as she was. And if he was, what was he nervous for? “The truth is I don’t have one,” he admitted quietly.

Alaina felt her shoulders deflate at his admission, and she directed her eyes to the ground. “Oh,” she whispered, wishing she could hide her disappointment from her tone. 

Mando didn’t even have a plan? She found that unlikely to believe. What was more accurate was he probably had one but didn’t want to spoil their good day by telling her that they would eventually leave and would be dumping her on some planet for her to live out the rest of her life—without him. 

Mando’s sigh cut through the tense silence, “Alaina, it’s not—”

“No, it’s okay. I get it,” she tried to wave him off, still refusing to look at him.

“You do?” he questioned, cocking his helmet skeptically at her.

She nodded and finally turned to fix her sad eyes on his helmet. “Yeah,” she sighed, “I do. You’ve told me repeatedly that you don’t think we should come with you—”

“Alaina—”

“No, Mando, it’s okay. Really,” she told him with a forced smile. “I just got my hopes up—especially after this afternoon,” she admitted, trying to blink away the tears threatening to form in her eyes. “I know things between us haven’t been… and… I don’t know,” she shrugged and looked away from him to watch the storm. “A part of me was hoping that this whole trip wasn’t just you saying goodbye,” she finished, her words coming out as a harsh whisper.

She gulped down her disappointment as she watched the rain fall outside the ship and tried to let the distant rumble of thunder provide a comfort she wished she could seek from someone else.

Mando’s broad hand came to rest over her bare thigh, sending a shock of surprise through her when she felt his skin on hers. 

“I don’t have a plan because I don’t know what to do next,” he said, gently squeezing her thigh. “I’ve never traveled with others before. Alaina, my life is dangerous, and now that I’ll have to find work outside of the guild, that means finding work with less than reputable people. You and the kid don’t deserve that kind of life.”

Whatever flicker of hope Alaina was hanging onto was snuffed out by his words. “It’s okay,” she said, giving him a teary smile. She set the bottle of spotchka down, rested her hand over Mando’s on her thigh, and laced their fingers together. “We can just enjoy the time we have left—”

“You’re not listening to me,” he interrupted her, squeezing her smaller fingers tightly in his. “I don’t have a plan because every time I think about you and the kid coming with me, I see one or both of you getting hurt and… and you’ve both already been through so much, and you deserve to be happy.”

“People get hurt sometimes, Mando,” Alaina told him with a shrug, trying to soothe him by rubbing her thumb up and down his. “You can’t plan for every little detail. Life has a way of pulling the rug out from under you. Trust me,” she tried to joke, bumping her shoulder into his. “Trust me,” she repeated, turning to give him her full attention. “Trust me and Grogu to be there for you,” she whispered, unlocking her fingers from his to rest her hand on his chest over his heart. “Because a part of me thinks that you are scared to admit that by asking us to come with you, that would acknowledge that you have attachments to us, and I’m guessing that wasn’t necessarily condoned when you were in Mandalorian school?”

Alaina stared into his helmet, watching her green eyes reflect back at her while she waited for his answer. She could feel the muscles in his chest tense under her hand and swore she felt his heart pound against it. Suddenly, she felt guilty for never asking him what he wanted.

“Mando,” she whispered, “what do you want?”

“I—” he began but immediately fell silent and gripped her thigh tightly.

“Mando, do you want us to come with you?” she asked, rubbing circles over his chest with her hand. “Because if you don’t, then I will understand. Eventually,” she shrugged, trying to give him a teasing smile. “But if you really don’t want us to come with you, then we’ll—”

Mando’s hand left her thigh and gripped her wrist, stilling her hand over his chest. Alaina’s eyes went wide as she held her breath while she waited for his answer.

“I do,” he rasped, pushing her hand into his chest and covering it with his own.

Alaina’s smile returned in full force, and she nodded eagerly back at him. “Then we will just figure the rest out later,” she whispered, not trusting herself to speak more without bursting into tears of happiness to know that Mando wanted them—wanted her to be with him.

They stared at each other at the ramp threshold while the storm raged on outside, but Alaina couldn’t think of anywhere else she wanted to be. Cautiously, she leaned into his chest, and Mando intertwined their fingers again in one hand and used the other to wrap around her waist to pull her tightly against his chest while they went back to watching the storm.

Lightning flashed, and Alaina’s smile grew as she settled into Mando’s protective embrace. Mando tilted his helmet away at the bright flash, and once again, she found herself curious as to how the Mandalorian got to view the rest of the world.

“It’s kinda like that,” Alaina commented. 

She could feel his gaze fall back to her, no doubt confused by her words. Alaina smiled and squeezed his hand. He had admitted something to her. The least she could do was answer his earlier question.

“My visions,” she explained nervously. “When I get them, it’s like a bright flash, and I have to work it all out later,” Alaina waved her hand in front of her face, then snatched the bottle from behind them and took a deep drink before continuing. “Sometimes it’s a short burst of information that is easy to process, and sometimes… sometimes it’s a lot of information at once, and I start spouting nonsense. I think it’s because my brain wasn’t wired for it. The visions,” she clarified. “It’s like they unlocked the ability but didn’t program my brain to translate it, so I don’t understand them,” she finished, taking a couple of deep sips from the bottle.

The arm wrapped around her waist tightened. “What if it’s not nonsense?” he challenged. His voice was so quiet that she could feel his chest rumble over his words as he spoke, reminding her of the thunder rumbling around them.

His question alarmed her. They’d never discussed her premonitions or whatever you wanted to call them before, so she was surprised to hear him ask about them earlier. “I rarely understand them when they do have them, so why does it matter?” she asked him with a deep frown, turning her emerald eyes back to his helmet.

“Because I don’t think they’re nonsense,” he answered quickly. Alaina rolled her eyes, but he shook his helmet at her. “I’m serious,” he continued, letting go of her hand and unwinding his arm around her to turn her so he could give her his full attention. “On Nevarro, you had a short vision and told me I was ‘drowning in seas of green,’ and we went swimming in a green lake,” he stopped to point in the direction of the lake where they went swimming this afternoon.

“Mando,” Alaina sighed and shook her head. “We went for a swim. You didn’t drown,” she pointed out.

“But what if you just saw me underwater and assumed I was drowning?” he argued. 

“I’ve been down this path before, Mando. They have been trying to pick my nonsense apart for years and haven’t been successful.” Penn had almost driven himself insane trying to pick her prophetic ramblings apart, hoping to prove that his most recent experiment was successful. The last thing Alaina wanted was for Mando to go down that same road.

“Okay, but on Sorgan, in both of your visions, you saw someone coming, and someone did,” he continued, unwilling to let Alaina drop it just yet.

“Mando—”

“What’s Vermillion?” he asked quickly, catching her off guard by his question.

How did he know about Vermillion? 

Alaina schooled her features, but the subtle tick of his helmet indicated he saw the brief flash of recognition cross her face. She must have mentioned something about it during one of her fits, and Mando thought he was putting the pieces of something together that would never come to form anything.

“A color,” she answered, keeping her voice monotone and her face blank.

“Alaina—” 

“Go back to calling them fits,” she suggested with a pointed look. “That’s all they are. You’ll drive yourself mad trying to see things that aren’t there.”

His helmet stared her down, but she held firm in her answer. Besides, Vermillion was obsolete now. It was obsolete, and Alaina was here with Mando because he wanted her to be with him.

“Please drop it?” she begged, using her doe eyes to her advantage as she blinked pleadingly at him. “I promise it’s nothing, and I promise you that if you start taking my visions apart, you will eventually make yourself see things that aren’t really there, and it will cause you to go mad.”

A frustrated, static sigh escaped from Mando’s helmet, and he turned his head away from her in defeat. Alaina reached for his bicep and ran her fingers up and down the tanned skin there. Eventually, she felt the firm muscles under her hand unwind, and she leaned forward to kiss Mando quickly on the side of his helmet where his cheek would be.

Lightning flashed again, followed by the deep rumbling thunder. Alaina saw Mando tense again at the bright light, and she brought her right hand up to trace the left side of his helmet. “How much can you really see out of that thing?” she asked him as she studied his helmet.

Mando didn’t answer immediately, keeping his helmet fixed on her face. She waited for him to speak, hoping he would listen to her and take her words of warning seriously. After another minute of strained silence, Mando sighed and grabbed the bottle of spotchka from the other side of her. She smirked as he turned away to lift his helmet and take a long drink from the bottle without her seeing his face.

He brought the bottle down, allowing his helmet to fall back over his face, but he didn’t pass the bottle back. “There is a display inside. I can see just fine,” he said, finally answering her, and shifted to take another swig of the sweet alcohol.

Alaina relaxed when he dropped the subject and rewarded him with a warm smile. “But it’s just a regular display inside, right? Can you see colors like you can without it?” she asked with a curious tilt of her head.

He cocked his head at her question and set the bottle down next to him. Alaina got the impression he was studying her from behind his visor, trying to figure out what she was getting at. “I can see all the colors,” he answered with a shrug. “The lake is green, the tall grass is purple, the clearing is gray, and the trees are black,” he stated flatly. Alaina’s brows knitted together at his bland descriptions of the moon he’d taken them to. Apparently, he could tell that she was less than impressed by his answer, so he continued with a sigh, “Your hair is yellow, your eyes are green—”

“I didn’t ask if you knew your colors,” she interrupted him. “It’s just… this place is so full of beautiful color, even when it storms. I guess I was just curious how you saw it. I know that sometimes displays can distort the actual colors. I just didn’t want you missing out on anything.”

“I can see just fine,” he reassured her.

Alaina shrugged and turned away from him to watch the rain pour outside. 

Another bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the area and giving Alaina an idea.

She shot up and gave him a mischievous smirk. “When’s the last time you danced in the rain?” she asked, wagging her eyebrows at him.

“This morning,” he deadpanned.

Alaina’s smile spanned her face, and she offered him her hand. “Come on,” she whispered, motioning for him to get up.

“Alaina,” Mando sighed, “I’m not getting wet again.”

Alaina didn’t move and kept wiggling her fingers for him to take. “Come on, Mando,” she pleaded, jumping up and down on the balls of her feet. “Everyone should dance in the rain once in their life.”

Surprisingly, he slid his hand into hers, and with an exasperated sigh, Mando allowed her to tug him up. “How about I watch you dance in the rain?” he suggested, but she shook her head, smiling at him with her bright eyes. “Alaina—” he groaned, but Alaina wasn’t having it.

“Please?” she pleaded, batting her eyelashes at him. “I won’t make you dance, but you still have to come with me,” she countered, giving him a little pout.

“Where are we going? The kid—”

“Is asleep, and we’re just going to the edge of the lavender field,” she told him, nodding toward the grass. “I’ll remind you that you threw me into a lake today,” she snarked, crossing her arms over her chest.

Mando looked at the rain pouring outside the ship and then down at Alaina, who was sure to give him her largest, eager eyes, making her shoulders sag in defeat. “Do you want to change or put your boots on?” he asked, pointing to her nearby boots.

“No,” she whispered, breaking into a manic grin as she latched onto Mando's hand and started tugging him down the ramp into the rain. 

“Then can I put my boots on?” he whined, sounding off-put that she was dragging him out into the rain without them.

“No!” she yelled back, gripping his hand tighter as they stepped off the ramp and into the grass.

The moment Mando’s bare feet stepped into the grass, he let out a displeased grumble as he sank into the mud. Alaina scrunched her toes in the wet grass and mud, feeling like she was given the chance to reset her soul and body. Alaina looked up at the sky and smiled as the rain pelted her face. She’d spent so much time locked away that she forgot what the rain felt like.

“Come on!” she whispered excitedly, pulling him toward the tall lavender grass.

Mando continued to grumble quietly under his helmet, and Alaina couldn’t help but laugh at the tall, intimidating bounty hunter complaining about a bit of rain and mud. She refused to let him turn around and kept walking until they reached the lavender field. Once the tall grass surrounded them, Alaina finally came to a stop.

“Okay, we played in the rain. Can we go back inside now?” he asked, wiping his feet through the grass in an attempt to remove the mud from the bottom of his feet.

“Maker, just a second,” Alaina rolled her eyes. “You’d think a tough Mandalorian could handle a little rain,” she teased, poking him in the ribs. Mando flinched and batted her hand away from him after the jab, and Alaina filed that piece of information for use later on.

Mando sighed but relented and let her shuffle his body into position. She grabbed him by his arms and spun him so he could face the direction of the lake. His helmet looked at her with an annoyed tilt as he watched her move him around like a doll.

“Okay,” Alaina muttered, looking back at the lake with a satisfied nod. When she looked up at him, she placed her hand over the center of his chest before saying, “You brought us here, and I just want to make sure you get a chance to take a moment and appreciate the true beauty of this place before we leave.”

“I was fine enjoying it from inside the Crest. Where it was dry,” he argued.

Alaina just smiled and rubbed his chest with her thumb. And then she was gone. Quickly, before he could turn back around, she walked behind him to line her back up with his and rested the back of her head between his shoulder blades. Once in place, she wound her arms backwards, linking hers with his, and gripped his biceps. “Take your helmet off,” she instructed, reassuringly squeezing his arms.

Mando froze at her order, and she could only imagine the shock and questions racing through him.

“I won’t look,” she whispered, sneaking her hands under his sleeves to rub them up and down his arms in an attempt to comfort him. I promise I won’t look,” she said a little louder. “I’m going to stay right here so you can feel me and know where I am. I just want you to be able to really experience it.”

Mando remained stiff and unmoving behind her. She gave him another minute to process what she had asked and think it through. She knew that no one had seen him since he was a boy, and he had explained that he wasn’t supposed to remove his helmet with others around… but she wouldn’t see him, and Alaina wanted Mando to see with his own eyes, what she wouldn’t be able to describe to him.

“You have my word. I won’t look, Mando,” Alaina said again, squeezing his biceps.

He hesitated for another moment, and then slowly, Alaina felt his arms move as he lifted his hands to his helm and lifted the last piece of beskar he was wearing over his head.

The rain pelted against them, and the wind blew Alaina’s hair around wildly. Alaina held her breath while he looked around the moon. She had so many questions: Was this the first time he’d allowed himself to be exposed to the elements without a scrap of armor since he became a Mandalorian? What did he think about feeling the rain and the wind without his normal layers? Was he looking? Was he really looking at the beautiful slice of heaven he had brought them to?”

“Okay,” he called over his shoulder. “I took it off. I saw—”

Alaina rolled her eyes. “Wait,” she said, squeezing his arms again.

Silence stretched between them again, and Alaina hoped they didn’t miss out on the storm.

She could feel Mando’s chest inflate behind her, “Alaina—”

“Just wait,” Alaina called back, knocking the back of her head into his back.

“Alaina, it’s wet and cold,” Mando complained. “I’m putting my helmet back on. Besides, it’s too dark to see—”

Lightning cracked across the sky. Alaina smiled and relaxed into his back at hearing the Mandalorian stunned into silence.

Lightning spidered across the sky above them. She hoped that without his helmet, he could see each vein of electricity stretch over them and even make out how the white veins were outlined in purple and blue as they cracked overhead. The backdrop of the moon’s normal sky of silver, purple, and blue swirls of the galaxy peeked through breaks in the clouds, only adding to the experience. 

Her smile grew when she felt him jump when the thunder roared shortly after the lightning. The sound was so deep that she could feel it vibrate in her chest. Another crack of lightning spired above them, and she could feel the breath Mando had been holding slowly leaking from his chest. She hoped that he could see the green waters of the lake and the purple grass in the same vibrant colors she could.

Mando’s right hand reached back to grip her hip, and when he gave her a thankful squeeze, Alaina knew she had been right to force him to observe the beauty around them before it was too late. To think that he had almost missed this moment because he was too stubborn… she tisked at the thought.

“What do you think?” she asked, squeezing his biceps tightly.

His deep baritone voice dropped an octave when he answered her, sending a shiver down her spine. “You were right,” he murmured, squeezing her hip again.

She’s tempted to ask him to describe how he saw everything, but that could always wait until they were back inside where it was dry.

“Thank you for humoring me,” Alaina said over the rumble of thunder. “I won’t subject you to any more humiliation,” she finished and patted his arms before moving to let him go. His hand that was on her hip gripped her tightly, and she covered it with her own. “Don’t worry, I won’t look. My head is still forward. Just tap me on the shoulder when I can turn around.” With one last squeeze to his hand, Alaina let him go.

Everything was quiet behind her. With the exception of the background noise the rain and wind supplied, Alaina could not hear Mando make a sound. It was almost like he was frozen in place. Maybe he was reluctant to let this moment end.

Lightning cracked again, illuminating the two of them standing in the field surrounded by darkness, light, and color.

Alaina would be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t reluctant to let this special moment end. 

But Mando had already gone on with her wild idea longer than she thought he would. “Mando?” Alaina called back, keeping her head forward, not wanting to break her word. Instead of a response, Alaina heard a dull thud, followed by the sound of something ripping, and her face scrunched in confusion. “Mando? What’s going on back there?” she called back, concerned, but stayed still.

Suddenly, her vision was obscured by something, and she patted her face, becoming even more confused when she felt some kind of fabric covering her eyes and could feel Mando tying it behind her head. “Okay, Mando, what are you—” 

Mando stopped her from finishing her question by gripping her shoulders and spinning her around to face him. 

Alaina gasped and instinctively closed her eyes, even though she realized too late that was why Mando had essentially blindfolded her.

She could almost feel his eyes tracking over her, taking her in from the top of her head to her mud-covered feet. Alaina could feel her wet hair stuck to the sides of her face and rivulets of water streaking down her cheek. Her feet nervously shifted the longer Mando’s inspection went on. If she had known that this would be the first time Mando really got to see her, she would have changed into the purple dress that seemed to draw his attention more than anything else she wore. She especially wouldn’t have drug him out in what was essentially her pajamas into the middle of a storm, so she no doubt looked like a wet rat now.

“Mando?” she whispered, self-conscious by his lack of response.

Alaina jumped when she felt him cup her cheeks between his large hands. His thumbs began stroking her cheekbones as he held her in place.

Her heart was pounding under her ribs, and Alaina found it increasingly difficult to breathe. What did he see when he looked at her? Would she ever be able to see him? Would she ever be able to see his eyes with her own?

Mando’s hands pulled her just a fraction closer to him, and her eyes clenched even tighter when she felt his lips brush the top of the temple where her scar was—a permanent reminder of their first meeting five years ago.

What she expected to be a single kiss, a simple way for him to thank her when he couldn’t find the right words, continued with Mando leaving a trail of tiny kisses over her scar as his lips ended on her eyebrow.

This couldn’t be happening.

Alaina’s breathing came out in short, staccato spurts as she felt his lips continue to explore her face. She documented every detail, not wanting to forget a moment. The rain allowed his mouth to glide over the features of her face as he kissed her cheekbone before dragging his lips to her jaw. When his lips landed on her jaw, he opened his mouth and gently bit the edge of her jawline.

Maker, this couldn’t be happening.

Mando didn’t stop there. His lips followed her jawline until he reached her chin and gave her another gentle bite, eliciting a gasp of surprise from Alaina. She felt as if Mando had managed to light her body on fire in the middle of the pouring rain. The night chill and the wind were just gone as the fire consumed her, and she wondered if Mando could feel how warm he was making her. Surely, her body must be steaming from being ignited by Mando’s lips. 

Once her mouth was open, Mando latched onto her bottom lip and sucked it between his teeth.

Alaina jolted at the sensation and wondered if they had been struck by lightning. They must have been because she had never experienced a kiss like that before.

Mando groaned, and the sound snapped Alaina out of her initial shock. She stood on her tiptoes and looped her arms around his neck to tug him closer to her, responding with her own kiss. His hands fell from her face, and his arms wrapped around her waist to pull her small body closer to his. His lips attacked hers with a passion she couldn’t find the words to compare it to. 

It was simply Mando. He was forceful—his kisses were open and sloppy, and Mando wasn’t afraid to use his teeth. The way he kissed her was the way she imagined a drowning man gasping for air. His mustache rubbed into her upper lip, and she knew she would have a red rash once this was over. Alaina tried to slow his desperate kisses, but his arms only cinched around her waist tighter, and he growled into her mouth.

“Mando,” she whispered, trying to come up for air, but his lips found hers again and silenced her in another bruising kiss. She smiled into the kiss and unwound her arms from his neck to hold his face between her hands. She let her fingers drag through the scruff on his jaw and cheeks, noting it felt longer since her fingers had last caressed his face on Sorgan. “Mando—sl-slow down,” she murmured into his lips between his fervent kisses.

Mando pulled himself from her, but he was still close enough that she could feel the hot air from his pants puff against her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked, resting his forehead against hers. Without his helmet in the way, his nose knocked against hers, and Alaina smiled as she leaned into his head. “Do—Is it not good? For you?”

Alaina kicked herself when she realized this was very likely the man’s first kiss. How odd and backwards it must be to know precisely what it took in order to make her body sing all without ever kissing someone before?

She leaned forward and kissed the bridge of his nose. “Oh, it’s good,” she told him, smiling against his cheek. “Just slow down. Enjoy the moment,” she whispered, kissing his lips softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Mando met her lips at her words, and she could tell he was trying to show restraint. Alaina smiled into the kiss when she felt Mando smiling under her lips. This was something that Alaina was good at. The way someone kissed spoke volumes. This kiss was no exception. This kiss wiped away the memory of anyone she had kissed before. This kiss told her that the others she’d kissed before Mando were boys. There was no comparison to the man who was kissing her now.

He let her take the lead this time. Alaina took her time exploring his lips, and she could tell that Mando was a tightly coiled spring, ready to leap into action but forced to stay put. She nudged his nose with her, unable to stop smiling into his lips as she ran her tongue across his lips. A grunt of surprise left his lips, and when he opened his mouth, she made him jump when her tongue found his.

A deep moan reverberated in his chest as Mando slowly returned to the present. His hands came and entwined in her hair, angling her head in just the right position to demonstrate to her what a quick learner he was. Alaina melted under him as he responded to her slow-paced kiss with a languid one of his own. Mando took his time with her, learning her lips and how they moved with him before he mimicked her earlier actions and brushed his tongue across them, requesting permission to enter her mouth.

Alaina wished she had better words to describe what happened after that, but the only word she could come up with at the moment was devour. It felt as if Mando was devouring her as his tongue tangled with hers. She lost complete control of the kiss after that. Mando’s tongue scraped across the roof of her mouth as his lips continued to torment hers slowly.

A sound left her body that she’d never heard before—somewhere between a mewl and a moan, but whatever sound she made seemed to snap Mando out of whatever spell she had cast over him. His hands left her hair and started gripping and tugging at her waist before she felt his broad hands palm her ass before he lifted her off the ground. Alaina gasped in surprise, but Mando’s lips smothered her gasp down as her legs subconsciously wrapped around his waist.

Her hands gripped his shoulders, and she was surprised to find them bare. Alaina tried to pull away from the kiss, but Mando’s lips chased hers down, so she was left with using her hands to continue her explorations. Bare skin and taught muscles greeted her.

“Did you—” she tried to start, but Mando silenced her again. She laughed into the kiss and pushed Mando’s chest until he finally ripped his lips from hers. “Did you rip your shirt up just so you could blindfold me?”

“Yes,” he panted.

Alaina laughed and grabbed his head, pulling him back into a forceful kiss. She could feel Mando’s grin match her own as they fought for control of the kiss. She felt one of his arms wrap tightly around her waist to keep her close while the other seemed to vanish. Mando dipped back down, and Alaina frowned into the kiss when she felt his other arm leave and pat around. She was about to ask what he was doing when she felt the awol arm rejoin his other around her waist. She felt cold steel against her and realized he had bent over to pick up his helmet.

That was the solidifying moment for Alaina.

Mando removed his helmet.

To kiss her.

He removed his helmet.

For her.

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she was only vaguely aware that Mando was walking them back toward the Razor Crest. All she knew was that he wasn’t close enough. She held her hands over his cheeks, keeping him as close to her as possible.

Now that she had him, she was never letting go of him again.

Her fingers ran through the back of Mando’s head, scratching and tugging at his scalp, forcing a moan of pleasure from Mando’s mouth.

Alaina gasped when her back was suddenly shoved against something cold and solid. At her gasp, Mando’s lips left hers. She used her grip on his hair to pin his lips to her neck when Mando nipped at the sensitive skin just below her ear.

“Mando,” she panted, moaning when his lips latched onto her lobe, and Mando tugged the sensitive skin gently between his teeth.

Mandos warm breath puffed against the side of her face, and when she could hear his breathy pants in her ear, her insides lit on fire, awakening a familiar tingling sensation between her legs.

“Mando,” Alaina moaned when Mando’s lips traveled down her neck and bit into the flesh where her neck met her shoulder. Her hands clutched his head to her neck while his mouth and teeth continued to attack every millimeter of skin he could find. She gasped and subconsciously ground her center into Mando’s abdomen, looking for any friction she could when his teeth clamped down onto her neck again.

“Fuck. Alaina,” Mando managed to moan her name between kisses as his lips trailed back up her neck to her lips again. His fingers dug into her hips, pressing her tighter against him while his hips bucked instinctively below her, seeking friction of his own. “Fuck. I need you, Alaina,” he managed to get out between kisses.

Alaina mewled like a kitten from his words. Her body squirmed between him and what she assumed was the hull of the Razor Crest while her fingers latched onto the back of his head, forcing their lips together almost painfully.

His declaration slowly lifted the foggy veil of pleasure just enough that Alaina was able to pull her lips away from Mando’s. “What does this mean?” she whispered, silently wishing that she could take her blindfold off so she could study Mando’s expressions.

Mando growled, ignoring her question so he could return to attacking her lips with his.

She smiled into the kiss but used her fingers to grip his hair to tug his head away just enough so she could talk. “Mando—”

Mando growled, cutting her off with another kiss. “Would you just let me kiss you?” he asked. His lips moved against hers, and Alaina’s mouth instinctively opened when she felt his tongue swipe across her bottom lip.

Maker, he was really karking good at this. Alaina’s head was swimming in pleasure as their tongues tangled together. But she needed to know—she needed him to confirm that this was actually happening. She needed him to tell her this wasn’t goodbye, and he had meant it earlier when he admitted he wanted her to come with him.

“I will,” she whispered, pulling her mouth from his, ghosting her lips across his stubbled jawline until she found his neck. “I will,” she repeated, smiling when she felt a shiver run through Mando when her lips found his pulse. “I will, and you’re doing a great job, but I need to know what this means.”

“It means we’re kissing in the rain—” Alaina sunk her teeth into Mando’s pulse, effectively cutting him off. “Fuck!” Mando shouted. His hands pulled her hips further down his torso until her heat drug over Mando’s stiff, rigid length, straining for her under his trousers. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head in pleasure when his hips pinned hers against the hull, pulling equal moans of pleasure from their mouths.

“Mando, I’m serious,” she panted and weakly shoved at his chest to push him away so she could talk. “I will let you pick right back up where we left off, but I need to know what this means. For us. Because Grogu and I want to stay with you, but if you just made a pit stop here until you figured out some place to dump us, then… then I need you to tell me now before we go down this road again.”

Mando was terrifyingly silent as she waited for his answer. Alaina could only hear the rain pinging off the hull of the Crest for several long, agonizing minutes before she finally heard him murmur, “I want you to stay. I want you both to stay.”

“Do you mean that?” she demanded hopefully. “Really? Because if you do, I’m staying as your partner,” Alaina informed him, gripping either side of his head between her hands. She may be blindfolded, but she wanted to make sure that Mando was paying attention. “I want to be your partner. I want to be your friend… I want to be your lover,” she rasped, pulling his head down to capture his lips in another searing kiss. “I don’t want to be locked away in the closet whenever you leave the ship. If you want me to stay, we’re in this together.”

Mando pulled his lips from hers and pressed his forehead against hers. “Alaina, you and the kid…” he tried to begin and then cut himself off. “I’ve never had a partner before,” he admitted quietly.

Alaina smiled and pushed her forehead into his. “Me either,” she whispered, quickly kissing his lips.

“I’m going to mess this up,” he said, gripping her hips tightly between his hands.

Alaina softened at his worries and tried to soothe them away with a kiss. “I think we’ve both already messed up,” she said, smiling against his lips.

“Alaina—”

“Mando,” she said, placing her hand on his chest, and she felt his heart lurch under her hand. “Mando, I don’t know what I’m doing either. I’ve never had a serious relationship of any kind before.”

“Even when you were a basic girlie girl?” he teased.

Alaina’s smile broadened over his lips, and she nodded. “Even when I was a basic girlie girl,” she confirmed with a kiss. “Mando, you… I’m still trying to figure things out and figure out where I belong… but I know that I want you and Grogu by my side while I try and figure it out.”

Mando’s hands left her hips, and Alaina cinched hers tighter around his waist. His hands traveled up her body until they reached her head, and he gently cupped her jaw in his massive paws. “You mean it?” he murmured so quietly that Alaina almost couldn’t hear him. “You mean you want to be my partner?” he questioned, sounding more confident this time.

Alaina nodded her head in his hands.

“And what is your definition of a partner?”

She smiled at his nervous question. “A partner is whatever we want it to be,” she answered, turning her head to kiss Mando’s palm.

Mando’s thumb rubbed against the side of her face, and Alaina turned her head back to ‘look’ at him, once again wishing she could see his eyes with her own.

The words are on the tip of her tongue: I forgive you. She’d held onto them for the past couple of weeks, waiting for the perfect time to tell Mando that she had forgiven him for their past and was ready to move forward with him.

“Maker, you’re such a fucking sweet thing,” he growled right before his lips crashed into hers, preventing her from saying the words.

She smiled into the kiss, looping her arms back around his neck. There would be time for that later. Right now, Alaina just wanted to enjoy this moment.

“Alaina,” he moaned her name into her lips while his hips bucked between hers. Alaina ground herself into the hardness lurking under his trousers and gasped when her sensitive nub rubbed against him at just the right angle that it sent a shock through her. “Alaina,” he grunted, slipping his hands under her shirt to clutch her bare skin, and his hips continued to rock into her, firmly pinning against her while he rutted into her center. “Fuck, Alaina, partners,” he moaned in agreement. “I’m going to treat you so good,” he murmured into her lips.

This afternoon was perfect.

But this moment… this moment in time, kissing in the rain…

This was perfection.

“I’m going to treat you so good,” he repeated as his lips worshipped her. “I’m going to keep you safe.” One of his hands slid between her legs, and she gasped when she felt one of his fingers sneak past the hem of her underwear.

Maker, she never wanted this moment to end. Her head fell back against the ship, and her hands gripped his hair, holding his head against her neck while his tongue and teeth ravaged against the sensitive skin there. The finger that slipped into her underwear stroked between her folds, making her realize how wet she already was, and it wasn’t from the rain. When the roughed pad of his finger scraped over her tender nub, Alaina let out the loudest, most erotic moan she’d ever made before, making Mando smile into her neck.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he repeated, returning his lips to hers. “We’ll be partners, and you’ll be safe with me. They’ll never lay their hands on you ever again.”

All Alaina could do was nod at his lust-induced promises, but she believed him. His finger circled her sensitive flesh, forcing a strange combination of a shout and a moan from her. Her hips rocked into his finger, and her hands gripped his bare shoulders. When his finger slipped and slid across her opening, Alaina’s fingers dug into his shoulders as she cried out in pleasure. Her body pulsed, acting as if it remembered what it felt like to have Mando fill her, and it sang out to him, desperate for him to fill her once more.

“Mando,” Alaina panted, trying to catch her breath while her hips followed his finger, trying to encourage him to enter her.

“Laina,” Mando panted, sounding even more out of breath than she was. One of her hands slipped from its painful grip on his shoulder and dipped between their bodies. When her fingers skimmed his trouser’s waistband, the hulking Mandalorian shuddered. He moaned into her lips while his hips eagerly sought her touch. “They’ll never lay their fucking hands on you ever again,” he growled his promise into her lips. Alaina’s hand slipped a little further into his trousers, and her fingers brushed against the course curls lurking there, causing Mando’s growl to intensify. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Alaina smirked against his lips. She remembered from Sorgan that when Mando started rambling and repeating himself, it meant that he was short-circuiting from pleasure, and her fingers itched to find him to make him completely go offline.

“Even if I have to use your visions to do it.”

Alaina froze at his words. Every muscle in her body painfully tensed as she tried to process what he said. “What did you say?” she asked, opening her eyes, but she was still in the dark with them blindfolded.

“I’m going to use your visions to keep you safe,” he murmured against her lips before returning to kissing her, utterly unaware that Alaina was no longer responding. “You saw something happening to you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I’m going to keep you safe.”

Mando’s words doused her like a bucket of cold water. She pulled her hand out of his trousers and tried to push him away, but he pushed back, nipping her jaw with his teeth. “That’s why you wanted to know what I see when I have one?” she asked quietly, unable to keep the hurt from her voice.

“Yes,” he answered darkly, kissing her cheek.

Suddenly, Alaina felt cold and uncomfortable in the rain. She raised her hands to his bare chest and pushed him away, maneuvering her head away from his lips. “Let me go,” she ordered, proud that she had kept the waver out of her voice. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and cry, but she didn’t want to fall apart until she was out of his view.

Mando stilled at her request, “Alaina?”

“Let me go,” Alaina repeated forcefully, shoving at his chest again.

He responded instantly, releasing her from his embrace. Alaina struggled to find the ground without being able to see, but once her bare feet hit the mud, she brought a hand up to the ship's hull to help guide her back to the ramp.

“Alaina?” Mando’s confused voice called out behind her.

She didn’t stop to look back. She was angry—angry with Mando for his words and even angrier with herself for not seeing this happening. Between her anger and the blindfold, her attention wasn’t on where she was walking, and when her foot hit a rock, she stumbled. Strong arms wrapped around her, preventing her from slipping and falling into the mud, but his kindness only kindled her fury.

“Go away!” she growled, batting futilely at the muscular arm wrapped around her waist. “Let me go!”

“No,” he answered lowly, pulling her back against his chest. “Not until you talk to me.”

Alaina spun in his arms to glare at him from under the blindfold. She shoved at his chest, and when Mando didn’t even budge, she found herself wishing for her powers—her real powers—just so she could send him flying into the lake.

“You want me to talk? Fine,” she growled at him through clenched teeth. “I thought you were different!” she spat angrily. “I’ve spent the last five years being used for my powers. Penn and the Empire used me for my powers, and I… I thought you were different,” she finished, trying to keep herself from crying until she was back inside the Crest and could lock herself up in the cockpit to get away from Mando before she would allow herself to cry.

Alaina couldn’t see Mando with her blindfold, but she could hear and feel him. She could hear his lungs pull in a surprised breath and feel his arms let go of her as if she had burned him with her words. “Am I not enough just the way I am?” came her painful question, and Alaina felt her chest constrict.

The only response she could hear was the rain and the distant rumble of thunder. She shouldn’t be surprised by the Mandalorian’s lack of answer, but the silence still cut painfully. She gave Mando another moment to try and defend himself, but the longer the seconds stretched on, the more tears filled her eyes. The silence was all the answer she needed, and with a disappointed shake of her head, Alaina turned away from the Mandalorian to head back into the ship.

Alaina concentrated on her steps, careful not to slip and fall again, and eventually found the open ramp to take her back into the dry hold. Once she was a couple steps into the hold, she ripped her blindfold off and angrily threw it at the wall on her way to the ladder at the other end of the ship.

“Alaina!” Mando barked. He must have put his helmet back on because his voice cracked as the modulator tried to process his deep, booming voice. The shout startled Grogu awake, and Alaina could see him look between the adults with confused, sleepy eyes.

“I’m going up top so you can change,” Alaina informed him as she continued marching to the ladder.

“Alaina!” Mando growled again, but she continued to ignore him. She tried to pick up her pace when she heard his bare feet pound against the metal floor, but as soon as her hand grabbed the ladder, Mando’s large bare hand grabbed onto her wrist, tugging her hand off the ladder, and spun her to face him. “Would you just give me a second to explain myself?” he asked, his helmet doing little to hide his angry growl.

Alaina snatched her hand out of his grip and snarled back at him. “Please,” she invited him. “Please explain to me why you think it’s okay to use me,” she added, crossing her arms over her chest. “And don’t tell me it’s to keep me safe,” she preemptively countered, forcing the Mandalorian to deflate slightly.

“You know, before all of this—before the Empire, I could do things. I could move things with my mind. That’s not nothing, is it?” she asked but continued before Mando could answer. “And then Penn got his hands on me, and he broke me. He decided I wasn’t good enough with just that power, which is more than the rest of the galaxy can say!” she continued her irate, resentful dressing down of the half-clothed man in front of her. “I was special, and he broke me. Now I can’t move things with my mind, and I can’t understand the visions he’s forced on me, which both you and Penn seem to think are premonitions, so at least the two of you have something in common.”

“Alaina—”

“No!” she screamed, pushing him away. “I used to be whole, and now I’m broken,” she cried. Her next words came tumbling from her mouth before she could stop them, “I should have been able to stop him!”

“Who?” Mando asked, sounding confused.

Every drop of fiery anger she had evaporated at that question, and she turned her head away in embarrassment, and her eyes inadvertently landed on the spot on the floor where Calican had pinned her. From the corner of her eye, she watched Mando’s helmet turn to join her gaze, and when she saw his hands clench to make angry fists, she knew he understood everything she wasn’t saying.

“I should have been able to stop him,” Alaina repeated sadly. Her chest tugged and clenched painfully until she felt that spark of anger reignite. “I should have been able to stop him!” she repeated, rounding back on Mando. “I should’ve been able to protect myself!” she screamed. “But the Empire took that away from me!” she bit out bitterly and stomped past Mando to head back to the ramp.

Alaina pressed her hand into her chest when it suddenly lurched. Briefly, she thought she was having a heart attack, but when the feeling happened again, it reminded her more of that stupid invisible string, pulling her back to Mando.

“Alaina, I’m sorry,” he whispered his apology, loosely looping his fingers around her wrist.

She hissed in pain and spun back to glare at him. “Let—Me— Go !” she spat, yanking her wrist from his hand.

Alaina blinked when something green grabbed her attention, and she looked down to find Grogu coming to stand between them.

“Alaina, I’m sorry,” Mando apologized again.

“Penn Pershing took my powers away—” she tried to continue, but a choked sob cut her off. “And—And I can’t even blame you anymore because it’s my fault!” Alaina cracked then, slumping into his arms as she cried. Mando held her, stroking the curls of her honey-blonde hair, letting her get it out. Even when her tears seemed to slow, he clung to her.

That feeling inside her chest continued to claw its way out. She sobbed, wishing that the string attempting to find Mando would disappear, which would make this so much easier. Mando misinterpreted her cry for still being angry with Penn and wound his fingers into the hair at the back of her head to his heart. Since Mando was still naked from the waist up, she could hear his heartbeat against his chest. The sound was almost hypnotic as the organ continued to beat, like his body’s internal metronome provided a calm, reassuring balm to her own broken one.

“I should have been able to toss that mudscuffer halfway across Tatooine!” she murmured sadly into his wet chest.

“I know,” he murmured calmly while stroking her hair.

“And it’s all my fault,” she continued quietly, her words breaking the recently sealed dam of emotions, and she began crying into his chest again.

“Alaina, it’s never been your fault—”

“Yes, it is!” she argued, pushing herself away from him.

Thankfully, Mando let go of Alaina this time. However, whatever relief she felt at that disappeared when his hands grabbed her face, forcing her to look up at his helmet.

“Listen to me,” he ordered, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. “None of this—not for one moment—has been your fault.” She opened her mouth, but Mando’s hands squeezed her cheeks tighter, preventing her from arguing with him. “Alaina, listen to me. Pershing and the Empire—they are the ones who did this to you. They are the ones who took your powers away. They are the ones who tortured you,” he finished with so much conviction that Alaina believed him. Almost.

“They still broke me,” Alaina whispered, and Mando’s thumbs rubbed her tears away. “If I would have listened to you, I could have avoided all of this.”

“You don’t know that.”

Alaina scoffed, “Well, I do know that I didn’t listen to you, and I lost my powers and now ramble like a lunatic when I have a fit, so I kind of think that makes it my fault,” she argued, continuing before Mando could say anything. “Penn always thought I was fragile, even before his mad scientist phase…” she tapered off, shaking her head. “When the testing began, it just made him worse. He would do all of these terrible things to me and then look at me like he expected me to shatter. And for some reason,” she stopped to give him a curious look, “you don’t,” she finished flatly, wondering what the Mandalorian ever saw in someone broken like her.

Mando kept her face between his hands while he studied her silently. Alaina was startled when his helmet leaned down so he could press his metal forehead into hers. “You’re beskar,” he finally said, finally letting go of her face.

Alaina blinked, staring back at her green eyes reflecting back at her from his helmet. She rolled her eyes at his analogy. “Cold? Hard?” she asked flatly.

He sighed and shook his head. “In its purest form, beskar is one of the strongest metals in the galaxy,” he tried again. “It’s only when you start trying to dilute it by adding other, weaker metals that it loses its integrity. That pile of osik,” he spat, “didn’t realize what he had. He took you, thought he could forge you into something new by adding things to make you stronger, but couldn’t see that it was just making you weaker.” He stopped to let her go and stood up to his full height.

Alaina watched her emerald eyes as they reflected in his helmet. She couldn’t decide whether to laugh, cry, or run screaming from the ship. Grogu banged his clawed hand against her leg, distracting her before she could decide what she wanted to do, and Mando knelt to pick the kid up off the ground so he could pass him to her. The kid cooed excitedly now that he was on the same level as the adults. She couldn’t help the small smile from breaking through at Grogu’s happy smile.

“I wouldn’t use you. Not like that,” Mando rasped. “That’s not how you treat your partner,” he finished quietly, stepping closer to her.

Her face crumbled at his words. Grogu placed a gentle hand on her right cheek as if to agree with Mando, and Alaina shattered.

Mando’s left hand came to rest over Grogu’s on her right cheek. “I’m not using you, Alaina,” he murmured, resting his other hand over her heart. 

Alaina opened her eyes to look up at him, hope blossoming in her chest. The tiny spark of hope warmed her, almost making it feel as if it were defrosting her heart. When she reached out to copy Mando and place her hand on his chest, over the Mandalorian’s heart, she was only vaguely aware that their hearts were beating in sync. 

“Alaina, I’m not using you,” he repeated more confidently. “I’m restoring you, and when I’m done, you’re going to be even stronger than you were before.”

Her hand left his chest and came to join Grogu’s and his on her cheek. When her hand landed on top of Mando’s, she closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into their palms, taking a moment to revel in the three of them being connected.

Never had anyone, since her mother, even entertained the idea that Alaina Corra was strong. But Mando did. Maker had she made a mess of this. Now was the time to tell Mando he was forgiven. Now was the time to ask for forgiveness for everything she had said to him, past and present, and hope that they could move on—

Her chest clenched painfully, forcing a surprised gasp. 

Something was lurking inside of her. Something was twisting and winding its way around her heart and lungs, cinching so tightly it prevented her from breathing. Her gasp turned panicked as she tried to inhale, but her lungs only burned in protest.

“What are you doing?” Mando rasped, and her eyes flew open at his question.

She watched helplessly as Mando twisted in pain, and his hand that had been resting over her heart clutched at his own chest as he appeared also to be struggling to breathe.

Alaina’s eyes flicked around the ship, looking for what could be the cause when they landed on Grogu, whose eyes were closed in concentration, reminding her of how he looked when he healed her hand yesterday. She tried to question Grogu about what he was doing or, at the very least, yell at him to stop, but her words only came out in an undecipherable wheeze.

“Alaina—” Mando gasped in pain, and she could only press her hand harder over Mando’s to provide a tiny amount of support.

Lightning flashed, and she suddenly found herself able to breathe again. She tightened her grip over Mando’s and Grogu’s on her cheek while she tried to compose herself. However, whatever was inside her wasn’t done with her—with any of them yet.

It shifted inside. It slithered and searched, almost like it was reaching out for something. When it seemed to lock into place, the three of them froze as they took a simultaneous breath together.

Her mind and heart were full.

That’s when she realized that string was the wrong word.

She felt her string wind and braid with two others, and she could feel that the other strings belonged to Mando and Grogu.

With a final shift, cords of yellow, green, and silver locked into place, only confirming her suspicion that her use of the word string was wholly inadequate.

String… cord… tether… they were all wrong.

It was a bond.

An unbreakable bond connecting the three of them together.

The three of them took another synchronous breath, and Mando’s fingers dug into her cheek, but he still didn’t dare to break their connection.

Alaina wanted to tell him not to be scared—because she could feel Mando in her very soul and knew he was scared by what was happening to them.

Only, she never got the chance to reassure the Mandalorian.

In their next breath, lightning flashed, illuminating the hold in a bright, blinding light. The light disappeared just as quickly as it came, with the roar of thunder chasing on the lightning’s heels.

The thunder roared, the sound dragging on as it clung to the hold, blanketing the three occupants of the Razor Crest as they lay unconscious on the metal floor. Together.

Author's Note #2: Did I write an almost 14.5k chapter that used 3.5k of those words just so I could describe their first kiss? You bet your ass I did. Have I been patiently waiting since chapter 7 to *finally* confirm that Mando and Alaina possibly have a force bond? Also, yes. Did I leave the chapter on a bit of a cliffhanger? I feel like y'all should just be used to those by now 😅

Also—THANK YOU for all y'alls comments and kudos after that last chapter. Who knew that the rag-tag group of degenerates—I mean friends—following along with this story would love a heaping dose of fluff? 😜 But in all seriousness, I'm ecstatic to know that y'all are enjoying the moon interlude chapters as much as I am.

💙💙💙

Tag List: @racheldon @zenrobbins0021 @locked-ness

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Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Next chapter in series - Chapter 17: The End of the Road

[theaftersundown]

*writes two paragraphs after months of literally nothing and it took three hours*

[charbroiledchicken]

"you're the writer, you control how the story goes" no not really. i wrote the first sentence and then my characters said "WE WILL TAKE IT FROM HERE" and promptly swerved into an electrical fence.

[hayatheauthor]

100 Dialogue Tags You Can Use Instead of “Said”

For the writers struggling to rid themselves of the classic ‘said’. Some are repeated in different categories since they fit multiple ones (but those are counted once so it adds up to 100 new words). 

1. Neutral Tags 

Straightforward and unobtrusive dialogue tags: 

Added, Replied, Stated, Remarked, Responded, Observed, Acknowledged, Commented, Noted, Voiced, Expressed, Shared, Answered, Mentioned, Declared.

2. Questioning Tags 

Curious, interrogative dialogue tags:

Asked, Queried, Wondered, Probed, Inquired, Requested, Pondered, Demanded, Challenged, Interjected, Investigated, Countered, Snapped, Pleaded, Insisted.

3. Emotive Tags 

Emotional dialogue tags:

Exclaimed, Shouted, Sobbed, Whispered, Cried, Hissed, Gasped, Laughed, Screamed, Stammered, Wailed, Murmured, Snarled, Choked, Barked.

4. Descriptive Tags 

Insightful, tonal dialogue tags: 

Muttered, Mumbled, Yelled, Uttered, Roared, Bellowed, Drawled, Spoke, Shrieked, Boomed, Snapped, Groaned, Rasped, Purred, Croaked.

5. Action-Oriented Tags 

Movement-based dialogue tags: 

Announced, Admitted, Interrupted, Joked, Suggested, Offered, Explained, Repeated, Advised, Warned, Agreed, Confirmed, Ordered, Reassured, Stated.

6. Conflict Tags 

Argumentative, defiant dialogue tags:

Argued, Snapped, Retorted, Rebuked, Disputed, Objected, Contested, Barked, Protested, Countered, Growled, Scoffed, Sneered, Challenged, Huffed.

7. Agreement Tags 

Understanding, compliant dialogue tags: 

Agreed, Assented, Nodded, Confirmed, Replied, Conceded, Acknowledged, Accepted, Affirmed, Yielded, Supported, Echoed, Consented, Promised, Concurred.

8. Disagreement Tags 

Resistant, defiant dialogue tags: 

Denied, Disagreed, Refused, Argued, Contradicted, Insisted, Protested, Objected, Rejected, Declined, Countered, Challenged, Snubbed, Dismissed, Rebuked.

9. Confused Tags 

Hesitant, uncertain dialogue tags:

Stammered, Hesitated, Fumbled, Babbled, Mumbled, Faltered, Stumbled, Wondered, Pondered, Stuttered, Blurted, Doubted, Confessed, Vacillated.

10. Surprise Tags

Shock-inducing dialogue tags:

Gasped, Stunned, Exclaimed, Blurted, Wondered, Staggered, Marvelled, Breathed, Recoiled, Jumped, Yelped, Shrieked, Stammered.

Note: everyone is entitled to their own opinion. No I am NOT telling people to abandon said and use these. Yes I understand that said is often good enough, but sometimes you WANT to draw attention to how the character is speaking. If you think adding an action/movement to your dialogue is 'good enough' hate to break it to you but that ruins immersion much more than a casual 'mumbled'. And for the last time: this is just a resource list, CALM DOWN. Hope that covers all the annoyingly redundant replies :)

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

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