Work Text:
It all starts when Cobb, emboldened by one drink too many, catches Din’s hand and presses a kiss to his wrist where it’s bare between the glove and the sleeve. The hour is late – Boba Fett and Fennec Shand went off to bed a while ago and Cobb hasn’t heard a servant moving in the corridors of Fett’s palace for a good long while.
Din looks at him. Cobb is sure of it. There’s something in the tilt of Din’s helmet, but more than that, it’s almost as if Cobb can feel the weight of his gaze.
“Marshal,” he says, and does not pull his wrist away from where Cobb is still holding it loosely.
“I’d very much like to kiss you before I go back to Freetown,” Cobb says, before the bravery runs out. It’s luck and happenstance that they both are here in Fett’s palace at the same time – Cobb travels to Mos Espa every once in a while, Din is rarely even on the planet. The four of them had a pleasant enough evening, but reminiscing is not quite what Cobb wants. Not all that he wants. “I know you won’t take off your helmet. So, uh.”
“Just kiss?” Din asks, a shadow of a smile in his voice.
“Well, no,” Cobb admits. “Can you even –” He has no idea how this works for Mandalorians. Do they even? Maybe they’re all celibate like the Jedi were supposed to be. Din is looking at him, eerily silent, and Cobb triggers the switch in his cybernetics that should flush all the alcohol out of his system in the next five minutes or so. This was a terrible idea.
“I… can,” Din says, very quiet. “But you must not see my face. No one is supposed to, once we become Mandalorians.”
“The helmet stays on, got it,” Cobb says, desperately relieved.
Din hums. He raises his other hand, the one Cobb is not holding, and touches Cobb’s cheek. The leather of his glove is long worn soft; it smells distantly like leather conditioner and metal. Din’s thumb rests near the corner of Cobb’s mouth. Cobb’s eyes flutter closed, his breath catches. This is not a kiss, but it’s more erotic than most kisses Cobb has had in his life.
“Come to my room,” Din says, still very quiet.
They go to his room. There’s almost nothing of Din’s in it – the child is not with him on this trip to Tatooine and on his own Din travels very light – but like all guest rooms in Fett’s inherited palace it is absurdly, decadently sumptuous. The carpet alone could buy a house back in Freetown.
Din lets go of him, rummages in the worn bag that must be his, pulls out a scarf. “Cover your eyes.”
Cobb does. Din checks the blindfold with careful hands and turns off the lights. The darkness is absolute, but every other sense is amplified. Cobb can hear Din’s breathing three steps to his right, can smell the scarf – it’s recently washed, but something of Din’s scent lingers. His clothes feel too tight and too coarse on him.
Din steps closer and rests his hand on Cobb’s cheek again, on the exact same spot. He draws it back, and Cobb cannot help but lean into where the touch was, but there’s a soft sound of something being shucked and then Din’s gloveless hand is on his face again. Cobb exhales in a shudder.
“Can you see me?” he asks, suddenly realizing a Mandalorian’s helmet might have senses mere human eyes don’t.
“Yes,” Din admits, almost sheepish. “You’re…”
Cobb grins. Din’s thumb drifts over the corner of his mouth as he does. “Good,” Cobb says.
They undress. Cobb is clumsy with Din’s armor, even if all of it seems designed to come off while the helmet stays – presumably the Mandalorians keep it on in the infirmary, maybe in the bath for all Cobb knows – but Din guides his hands and undoes the more complicated clasps himself. He’s much more hesitant with Cobb’s own clothes, for all that they’re less complicated.
There are scars on the places the beskar armor doesn’t cover. None from the big battles Cobb has heard of, ironically – the medical droid patched Din up well enough on Nevarro and he went in Fett’s bacta tank after that latest dust-up on Tatooine – but little raised nicks and patches of different skin texture that a bounty hunter accumulates. Cobb draws his hands up Din’s arms and Din shivers. Din’s helmet rests against Cobb’s shoulder, cold and clumsy, but frankly Cobb does not mind when he has the rest of Din to admire.
“Wait,” Din says and steps back. The air against Cobb’s front feels colder than the beskar was, somehow. He waits, uncertain. Something clinks in the dark and then an errant bit of the flooring creaks where Din has stepped on it. He moves closer again and rests his hand on Cobb’s shoulder. “Okay,” he says. The sound of his voice is subtly different.
Cobb’s questing fingers do not meet steel, only Din’s hair. He snatches them back. This feels like touching – like Din’s beating heart, maybe. More intimate than nakedness, more delicate, more forbidden. “You… Din, you don’t have to take your helmet off for me,” he says.
“I know,” Din says. “You’re not seeing my face.”
Cobb wants to ask whether that bit of theology will fly with Din’s people. But then, that is Din’s business, not Cobb’s. He says instead: “Can I kiss you?”
“Please,” Din says.
It’s far from artful – Din is almost as desperate as Cobb himself, and less coordinated. Their teeth knock. Cobb wonders whether this is Din’s first kiss and decides not to ask. He hesitates, then combs his fingers through Din’s hair. It’s shorter than his own, almost bristly. Touching Din’s face would be too much, too close to breaking the taboo they’re still somehow following, but the back of Din’s head is less fraught.
Din’s hands follow the shape of his sides, rest lightly on his hips. “What do you want to do?” he asks, low and measured.
Cobb groans. He hasn’t gotten this far in his private fantasies. The mere idea of Din wanting him tends to get him off quickly enough. “I,” he says intelligently. “Pretty sure I would want anything. What do you like?”
Din’s hands tighten on Cobb’s hips. “I don’t actually know.”
Cobb’s breath catches. “Have you… done this before?”
There’s a little pause that sets off all the warning bells in Cobb’s head. Din is too remote, for all that he’s there in Cobb’s arms. “Yes,” he says. “But not…” and he trails off in a way that leaves a silence too vast and much too easy to fill.
Cobb feels cold. “Din,” he says. “What…”
“That last gang who tried to take over Tatooine,” Din says.
The one that put him in a bacta tank. Cobb hadn’t been there for the battle, because it was on the other side of the planet from Freetown and Fett had no time to send word before it was over. Din and that Mandalorian woman had gotten separated from everyone else and limped back to Mos Espa two bad days later. The med droid didn’t even allow anyone near the bacta tank, because apparently the droid did not count as alive when it came to seeing Din’s face and the patient’s wishes overrode the fretting of everyone else.
“They did not just try to kill you both,” Cobb says, horribly certain.
“They said they would not hurt both if one volunteered,” Din says, low and taut. “I was the elder. So I volunteered before Bo-Katan could. This is the way.”
Cobb takes a breath, intending to say – he does not know what, but Din is quicker.
“We killed them all by dawn.” If it weren’t for the discussion Din’s voice would be going straight to Cobb’s dick. He’s heard that tone only once before. It’s beautiful the way a desert wolf is beautiful: dangerous and self-assured. “It’s finished. But,” he swallows. Cobb can feel the jerk of his neck. “I don’t know how to answer your question. I don’t know what I like.”
Cobb exhales. “You weren’t going to tell me?”
Din turns his head away, for all that Cobb is blindfolded in the dark and could not meet his eyes if he tried. “I don’t want you to think I’m ruined somehow. That I cannot want to be here.”
“Do you?” Cobb asks. If he had known, he would have been slower in his clumsy seduction.
“You could not force me,” Din says, in that same desert-predator tone. “Yes. I want you.”
Cobb could ask whether Din is forcing himself, but then, he does know something of the way it must feel. The certainty of others that he cannot know himself because of something he never had control over. He has to trust that he can trust Din. “Okay,” he says. “What do you want to do?”
He does not imagine the way Din’s breath catches. This kiss is harder than the one before, longer and impossibly more heated. “Could you,” Din says, coming up for breath, and then, uncertain: “Could you take me?”
Cobb turns that around in his head. “Do you want me to fuck you, or do you want to fuck me?”
“The second,” Din breathes.
“Yes,” Cobb says. “Is there anything slippery around here? Oil or…”
“I have something,” Din says. Cobb can hear him hunting through his bag, much more efficient than Cobb himself ever would be in the dark. He presses a smallish bottle in Cobb’s hand, and there’s something of a smile in his voice when he says: “Tatooine’s weather does not suit my hands. Should be safe for this, too.”
Cobb raises it to his nose. The smell is a little like that of Din’s gloves. He takes a few deep breaths, and then says: “Would you put your helmet on again, just for a while? I want you to look at me.”
Cobb throws the coverlet off the bed – he saw it before Din turned off the lights and that thing is much too expensive to risk dripping oil on – but the sheets underneath are smooth and cool like deep-well water when he scrambles on the bed. Probably it’s unconscionably costly off-world cloth all the way down. He gives up on trying to protect the bed, gets on his knees, turns his head towards where he can hear Din breathing. The sound is subtly different. He must be wearing his helmet again.
The oil bottle is standard, at least. Cobb wets his fingers, reaches behind himself. Din’s breath is faster where he stands a few steps away, and it becomes a ragged inhale when Cobb slips one finger in.
He wants to fuck himself open fast, and to the deepest krayt cave on the planet with any resulting discomfort, but he cannot. Not like that. So he makes himself go slow and tries very hard not to imagine that those are Din’s fingers. He’d rather not come faster than an unexperienced adolescent.
The carpet muffles the sound of Din’s feet, but the sound of his breathing moves closer. The bed dips under his weight and his fingers trace a line from Cobb’s knee over his hip and flank and neck, resting on that same spot on his face. “You’re beautiful,” Din says, reverent. “Can I…”
“Yes,” Cobb says. Din’s left hand brushing his thigh is still electrifying and when Din’s oil-slicked hand meets his, one of Din’s fingers slowly and carefully joining two of Cobb’s own, it’s almost too much for Cobb’s. He shudders and topples forward, against Din’s shoulder. Din’s free hand curls around his back, solid and hot, his helmet rests against Cobb’s temple, immovable and cool. The contrast is doing something unspeakable to Cobb.
“Please,” he pants against Din’s neck, and draws away, turns around, sprawls on his stomach, raises his hips because even these sleek sheets are too much against his sensitive flesh. “Din, please.”
There are soft sounds behind him and then Din’s hand is on his hip, holding him steady. He pushes in, slow and almost cautious, exquisite self control belied by his breathing. When Din’s thighs meet the backs of Cobb’s Din exhales, long and shaky. Cobb presses his mouth against his own arm, because he does not want half the palace to know how much he’s enjoying it and at this rate they well might.
Din thrusts carefully, once, twice, and that’s it for Cobb.
When he comes to Din is still there, still inside him, unmoving. His hand is trembling on Cobb’s back. “Do you want me to stop?” he says. “Since you –”
No, Cobb thinks at once and experimentally grinds his hips against Din’s. Din twitches forward just a fraction and Cobb can feel Din’s body tensing as he keeps himself motionless again. Cobb’s own body feels on the knife-edge between too much and not enough yet.
“Do not stop for my sake,” Cobb says. “Please.”
Din exhales and takes hold of his hips. His grip is hard enough to keep Cobb precisely where he is, gentle enough that there will be no marks on his skin the next morning. Cobb tries to rock back and is met with a thrust that makes him swear, then muffle himself with his forearm. He gasps something that might be Din’s name and finally, finally Din loosens some of that beskar self control.
It’s better than Cobb ever dreamed, the contrast between the cool sheets and Din’s warm skin almost too good, Din’s steady rhythm and ever more ragged breathing almost too much. He would not trade it for anything. He tries to say something to that effect and is not certain whether anything coherent comes out, but Din’s hips stutter and he bows low over Cobb’s back, panting, moving quicker.
Cobb does not know whether the errant drops of wetness on his back are Din’s sweat or something else, but he has no time to wonder. Din’s breath catches and becomes a long ragged sigh. His naked forehead touches Cobb’s spine. The sheer shock of it makes Cobb cry out and palm himself.
Din’s hand joins his, Din’s breath still hot and wet and quick against his back, and Cobb comes again, his entire body raw and sensitive.
He does not know how long they stay there, breaths slowly evening out, sweat drying on their bodies, but eventually Din straightens his back and slides his fingertips over Cobb’s back. “Are you…” he says, again very quiet.
“Better than good,” Cobb says. He extricates himself from Din, sprawls on his back, sets his hand on Din’s thigh where Din is still kneeling. There’s a long thin scar crossing Din’s thigh, from inner knee to the outside middle of his leg. “Did you…”
It seems he cannot finish the questions any more than Din can.
“Yes,” Din says, hearing the unspoken rest of it. “It was good.” The bed moves as he lies down next to Cobb. He rests his hand on Cobb’s stomach, reconsiders, and sets it on Cobb’s face in that spot that still feels like a kiss.
Cobb turns towards Din, instinctive, for all that the blindfold is sturdy and still in place. He touches Din’s shoulder, then his neck. Then, hesitant, his ear and temple and the edge of his forehead near that spot that met Cobb’s back. He stops. Din’s breathing is even and calm.
“Go on,” Din says quietly. “If you want to.”
Cobb cannot. “They took your helmet off,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Didn’t they.”
“I let them take it off,” Din corrects, again in that low taut voice. “Because I volunteered and I didn’t think I could break my word and kill them all before someone tried to shoot Bo-Katan. I’m an apostate to my tribe either way.”
“An apostate!? You –”
“I was under duress?” Din says, sharp. “Yes. I was. And yet they did not take it off by force. There are no allowances for this. I let them bare my face, so I am an apostate.” Cobb can feel Din’s grimace, Din’s facial muscles rippling under Cobb’s fingertips the way dunes shiver when there’s an earthquake far away in the desert. “This is the way,” Din says, quiet and very exhausted. “But if you want to know what my face feels like you can. You’re not damning me any further. You’re not them. And I…”
Cobb waits.
Din trails his thumb over the corner of Cobb’s mouth. “And I would like it,” he says. “If you want to.”
Din has a straight hairline. His face is more square than Cobb’s own, his jaw rounder, beard sparser and last shaved off more recently. Thin mouth, the corners slanting downwards when he’s not smiling – but he must smile often under his helmet, given the lines around his eyes. Frown, too, enough to mark his forehead. His face is less lined than Cobb’s, but then Cobb has lived his entire life on Tatooine with a bare face and Din hasn’t. Din’s eyes are closed. His lashes tremble against Cobb’s passing fingers.
“You’re beautiful,” Cobb says, tracing the long line of Din’s nose and drawing away. He rests his hand on Din’s hip. Din exhales in a way that makes Cobb think he might be smiling. For a long while neither of them says anything and Cobb almost drifts asleep.
“Marshal,” Din says, startling Cobb awake. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
“About what they did to you?”
“Yes.”
Cobb thinks about the exhaustion on the other Mandalorian’s – on Bo-Katan’s face during those tense days when they knew Din was going to heal and yet could not go see for themselves. He had thought it had been simply the injuries, the almost dying and not being allowed near the bacta tank. Now he wonders how much Bo-Katan saw and heard.
But that is between Bo-Katan and Din.
“I don’t want people to know,” Din says, tense, when Cobb does not answer. “I should have told you, but I don’t want people to look at me and see only…”
“I know,” Cobb says. Something in his voice stops Din in his tracks.
“I have not been raped,” Cobb says, even though Din didn’t ask. Because Din didn’t ask. “But I know enough about doing things against my will. And the way people look at you, after. I would never tell anyone unless you asked me to. I swear.”
Din is quiet. His thumb traces the edge of Cobb’s lower lip.
“Thank you,” he finally says, a whisper in the dark.
“Thank you,” Cobb answers.