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Cobb’s good at telling stories. He’s always had to be, really (you tell yourself something good and free enough, it might as well be true) but there’s something in a well-spun tale that roots nicely in his stomach anyway— warmth with a comfort that’s more uncommon than you’d think on sun-baked place like Tatooine.
Monster stories, he favors, and the heroes that defeat them. It’s comforting to think the great multitude of beasts crawling their way ‘round his head will meet their match in a blaster-wielding warrior, someday. Certainly delights the town kiddos these days if no one else.
His real stories, well. They’re meaner, for the most part, the proof of them in his raised scar tissue and knots of tired, corded muscle. He likes to play the hero when he can, but really Cobb’s just a fella with a duty to his townsfolk and a younger man’s chip on his shoulder. No such thing as heroes in this world. Not outside of make-believe.
That is, until the dragon-slayer.
It’s true what he tells the shiny bastard; he ain’t never seen a real Mandalorian. It’s a hell of an introduction. Cobb doubts they all come with a little green anklebiter— not that he’s complaining, kid’s cute as a button— and he’s even better at what he does than in the stories. Hell, he can’t help but like the guy. He’s rough around the edges.
He approaches him in the aftermath of the dragon thing, and it feels like an opportunity.
“You need a couch to sleep on, partner, you know where to holler.”
There’s a brief, silent moment he really thinks Mando’s going to accept— not every day you ask someone to take your kid, were things to go south. He freezes, and maybe that means he’s thinking about it. But the child coos up at him, and whatever was in that silence falls to the wayside and gets lost in the sand.
Cobb watches his speeder kick up dust behind it until it’s no more than a speck on the horizon. Feels a little naked, without the armor. Notices the difference in the air that comes from something so big as a Krayt dragon dropped in the sand. Things big as that don’t come and go just every day. It aches in the roots of his teeth.
Shook up a lot of things, that Mando. The ground’s steadier now, no shifting in the sand to warn of that kriffin’ monstrous sandworm slicing through it like a hot knife taken to bantha butter. Still, Cobb feels rattled. Absence is not a condition he’s fond of.
But he keeps trudging through the sand. It’s a day-by-day sort of living that Cobb does, tries to hold each one close like it’ll wriggle out of his grip if he forgets to. No sense, he learned a long time ago, in trying to slip back into days gone. Nothing gets away faster.
So there’s a point where he lets that ache join the other ones, just lives with the knowledge that there’s much bigger things out there than Marshal Cobb Vanth. Barely notices, and if he does, there’s always more spotchka at the cantina. It’s not as if he isn’t busy. There’s a building-size ribcage to haul, spice runners are getting bolder every day, and without the armor, Cobb’s got to use his old head to the best of his ability.
It’s sometime ‘round noon on an especially windy day that he gets that bone-humming feeling, long enough after The Dragon that Cobb’s stopped keeping track– something’s going to show up on the edge of the sky. Usually it’s the runners hauling cargo more precious than they are, but it rings a touch different this time. Maybe Cobb shouldn’t be surprised when the ship lands, or when he can tell who the pilot is before he makes himself known. His heart drums a beat in his chest that’s a little quick for his liking.
“As I live and breathe,” he whispers to himself as the familiar curve of well-polished armor starts clambering out of the ship’s cockpit.
“Thought you mighta gotten sick of the sand by now, partner,” he says by way of greeting when Mando jumps easily into Cobb’s desert. Good-looking piece of metal, that one. Cobb squints.
“Maker, is that a Naboo star-fighter?”
The visor of the Mando’s helmet meets his gaze, silent, and he nods. It’s what Cobb expects by now, the silence. Something in the slope of his stance is forlorn, his feet so heavy in the sand it’s nearly a surprise he doesn’t collapse right there. Cobb knows tired when he sees it, bone-deep like this, helmet or no. Kriff, he’s really back.
“Vanth,” Mando finally answers. “How have you been keeping?”
Hardly know what to do with myself these days.
“Carefully,” he says instead, “Since you rode away with the armor. Rightfully, of course,” he adds with a hasty smile, then lifts his gaze to nod at the ship. “Where are you stowin’ the little one?”
Mando’s gaze falls to the sand by his feet. There’s nothing good in a look like that, and Cobb holds his breath.
“I returned him to his own kind.”
Cobb breathes out and shakes his head. He had a good deal of fondness for the kid, and he knows Mando had even more, the way he held him.
“Damn shame, that,” he admits, willing his hand to stay where it rests on his hip instead of moving to hold Mando’s shoulder. There’s a devastation in him, though he’s making an attempt to tuck it away like a small thing– Cobb would not say it’s working all too well.
“It’s the right way,” Mando shrugs. Cobb’s never been out there in the stars, let alone all by himself, but he imagines the vastness of it all has a way of taking it out of you. There’s certainly enough of it in the desert to drive a lesser man to distraction.
“Flying solo treatin’ you alright?” he wonders. The Mandalorian ducks his head.
“It’s the way I’m used to flying,” he says, and leaves it at that. It doesn’t strike Cobb as a good thing, but it’s probably not a thread he ought to tug on. Wouldn’t want to scare him off again, after all.
“Well,” he drawls, “drinks are on me, if you’re interested, and you can let me in on what brings you to our corner of the galaxy.”
Cobb turns on his heel, gesturing for Mando to follow. He can hear the crunch of his boots in the sand, but he looks over his shoulder anyways to give him a quick smile. Funny, that he feels the need to reassure the Mandalorian– considering what he’s known for, that is. But it can’t hurt. Cobb has figured by now it doesn’t really matter how tough someone seems on the outside, town legend or no.
The Mandalorian just follows.
Taanti gives Mando raised eyebrows and a cordial nod when he sees him. Cobb settles into a seat at his favorite table, and to his surprise, Mando follows suit across from him. It’s the regular for Cobb, and nothing for his armored companion, which counts about the same.
“So, ah– you here for business, Mando? Pleasure? Or you just get lost?” Cobb wonders, throwing his feet up on the empty chair next to him and hoping he’s a vision in leisure. Really, it’s settling into his nerves that Mando’s back. He’s been trying not to wish it for what seems like an awful long while.
Mando’s voice is level through the modulator, but his eyes track the ceiling of the cantina, taking in the bones strung up around the walls. Bones he felled, though Cobb knows he doesn’t have to remind him what he means to this town.
“Finished a job. I was– passing by.”
“And you just couldn’t resist seein’ your favorite Marshal?” Cobb chuckles. The Mandalorian just looks at him– his equivalent, Cobb is certain, to rolling his eyes.
“Hey, partner, we might be fresh out of dragons, but there’s no shame in wantin’ for some company.”
He says it jokingly, like it’s not something he fails to remind himself of on the regular– like his own company hasn’t been dwindling into scraps of conversations, Freetown meetings, the occasional firefight with a stranger. Want is something, in Cobb’s self-engineered line of work, that has a penchant recently for sticking around. For what, he’s not sure. Some excitement, maybe, or something to fill the empty hours that doesn’t burn going down his throat.
Mando leans slightly into the back of his chair. It’s a little odd to see him like this, nothing to do with his hands– no child or spear to hold, just sitting with arms crossed over his chest. It strikes Cobb as a man somewhat lost.
“Maybe I like the weather,” he finally replies.
Cobb throws his head back with a laugh.
“Now, anyone who says they like the weather on Tatooine’s lying or delusional, partner,” he tells him, although he wouldn’t trade the sand for anything else himself. No, Cobb’s content with the day’s twin suns and the night’s sky of stars, always the same color, shaped nothing like the raised scar leaning on his right shoulderblade. Tatooine’s filled with relics, Cobb among them, but it suits him just fine.
Mando shrugs, tension holding his shoulders close to the edge of his helmet.
“Only teasin’,” Cobb concedes. “Lotta folks think Tatooine’s a heartless place, climate and all. I’ve never myself agreed with that.”
Mando’s helmet stills, as if he’s looking closely at the sheriff.
“Plenty of heart, if you look,” he says.
Cobb lifts his glass, pauses in surprise at how gently Mando speaks. He finishes the spotchka, closes his eyes to enjoy the burn of it– how it’s just on the side of too much, forcing him to think about something other than the man beneath the Mandalorian armor across from him. He hadn't seemed nearly this directionless, last time— or this earnest, for that matter.
“You thirsty, Mando?” Cobb asks at last.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Sure you will,” he agrees, “but you could come to my place for a drink, if you’d like to be any better. Unless you’re really here for business?”
The Mandalorian just huffs out a breath— for what, Cobb can’t be sure. Amusement, maybe.
“I’ll close my eyes, promise.”
Cobb leans back in his chair, holds his breath while he waits for the Mando to decline. He’ll say there’s another job, leave to another place where they’ll make a legend out of him. Mando looks down at his hands, all that weight in his shoulders once again making itself known, but when he looks up it’s to meet Cobb’s gaze head-on.
“Well, as long as you promise,” he says, something lurking in his modified voice that could almost be mistaken for humor. Cobb’s stomach jumps.
“Cross my heart,” he grins.
x
Cobb’s house isn’t the fanciest one out there, as he’s well aware, but it’s home and he’d be hard pressed finding room in his heart to ask for another one. It’s always taken him in after a night spent too late at the cantina– or the next morning, at times when sleeping in his own empty place feels like a recipe for hurting he doesn’t want to cook up.
Mando stands on the porch after Cobb’s gone in and kicked his boots off, like he’s waiting for Cobb to change his mind.
“Doorway don’t bite, Mando,” he chuckles, leaning against the kitchen opening.
“Right,” the Mandalorian says, shaking his head and warily descending inside. He looks at where Cobb tossed his boots and slowly pushes his own off. He’s awkward, standing there in his socks, like somebody’s house is a scarier prospect than a Krayt dragon. Stanced like he’d be ready to draw a weapon, should the opportunity arise.
“Coulda left the boots on, pal,” Cobb chuckles, “I’m not so strict once you get to know me.”
“As smug, though?” Mando asks with that slight hint of laughter, so soft it would’ve been easy to miss. Cobb’s glad he didn’t, he thinks, glad that Mando’s standing at the opening to his cluttered home in his socks. It’s not something he would’ve bet credits on happening– not when a Mandalorian first strolled into town in that shiny armor of his and not when he denied Cobb’s offer to sleep on his couch, armor streaked with dirt and the insides of a Krayt dragon.
He’d be hard-pressed to admit to him how sorely he took the news (with near half a bottle of spotchka), but those bootprints have long since been washed over with new sand. Such is the nature of Tatooine. Not much loyalty in the landscape.
Cobb nudges the bounty hunter with his arm and gestures for him to sit. Mando stiffens up at the touch, staring at him through the impenetrable visor of his helmet.
“You can sit down, Mando,” he clarifies, stepping back slightly to allow him space and turning to his liquor cabinet.
“Thank you.”
He says it all quiet-like again, as if he’s trying to give Cobb a chance not to hear him. The sheriff just nods, back still turned, but he can’t help but smile a little.
“You got a poison of choice, Mando?” He asks, pulling out a few of his best bottles.
“It’s Din.”
“Sorry, partner, I ain’t never heard of a drink called–”
Mando shakes his head.
“My name,” he says, “is Din Djarin.”
Cobb sets the bottles down carefully, mouth opening to say something that hasn’t formed yet. Mando– Din stills, the way Cobb figures he does when he’s nervous. Like an untamed loth-cat, this one.
“Well,” he finally grins, heart thumping something wild, “Real pleasure to meet you, Mr. Djarin. I’m Cobb Vanth, Marshal of Freetown.”
Din leans his head to the side.
“Well, Marshal,” he starts, then pauses. Cobb raises an eyebrow.
“I believe someone promised me a drink,” he says. It’s nearly soft, and delivered like an admission into Cobb’s lap. He’s not sure what he can do with it but smile, so he does, something rising in his chest like a damn star-fighter. Warm.
“And what is it you’re drinking, Din Djarin?” Cobb asks, taking a bit more time to pronounce his name than he needs. It’s a hard thing to help, that. He sure does like the way it feels to say.
Din looks at him, unreadable as ever, but Cobb’ll be damned if there’s not something different in his voice when he tells him to make it a surprise. Kinder, maybe, a voice with no business in it. Cobb lets it hang in the air as he busies himself with the drinks, edging up onto his toes to get the nice glasses from his top shelf. If Din notices, he doesn’t say anything, just watches him in silence as he’s so often content to do.
“Hope Corellian whiskey’s alright for you, being such a seasoned traveler an’ all. Harder to get out here than you might expect,” Cobb finds himself rambling as he delivers Din a glass with a bit more of a flourish than is strictly necessary.
“I don’t drink much,” Din mumbles.
“Suppose that bucket on your head gets in the way, huh?” Cobb laughs, sliding into the seat across the table from the Mandalorian. The suns have been on the setting path since the two men trudged their way here from the cantina, and the last of their dying light seems determined to catch on Din’s smooth-polished armor. Floats in the whiskey, too, colored like that expensive honey Cobb sometimes sees fit to import when the heat’s at its peak of the year.
Din ducks his head, hands still in his lap, and Cobb’s laugh softens to a smile.
“Didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Din,” he says softly. “Whiskey’s not for everyone, I won’t take it personal if you keep away.”
“No, I— I’d like to drink it,” Din admits, moving his hand to fiddle with the glass. The whiskey sloshes gently back and forth.
“It’s real tolerable once you get used to it,” Cobb chuckles. Din angles his head, observing him as he takes another sip.
“Sounds like someone I worked with once.”
“Careful, Mando, that was awfully close to a joke,” he ribs him, and Din huffs out what might be a laugh or a scoff.
“Was it?” he asks, swirling his glass around and staring as if he’s going to find something he’s been sorely missing in the whirlpool’s center. He’s quieter than before.
It occurs to Cobb that he doesn’t know his age, but all the weariness settling on him tonight makes him seem much older than the man racing towards death on a speeder beside him, resolute and without a hint of fear. It shouldn’t strike Cobb as a surprise, this side of him– he knows what loss can do. He just hadn’t figured his next encounter with Mando– with Din– would be like this.
Cobb shakes his head, clearing it, and chuckles, “I’m afraid I’m found to be a touch less tolerable than whiskey.”
Din lifts the bottom of his helmet up, just barely, enough so that he can tip a bit of it into his mouth. Cobb looks to the window, but a hint of jawline reaches his periphery regardless. Of course he knows there’s someone under the armor, warm-blooded and all, but hell if the reminder doesn’t do something funny to his stomach.
“It’s good,” Din hums after a moment, gloved hands tapping gently on the glass again. “Warm.”
“Suppose it is, yeah,” Cobb agrees. There’s a soft silence as both men drink, the vague shine on Din’s helmet shifting as he lifts it over his lips again.
“What really brings you all the way out to Freetown?” Cobb wonders, pouring another couple of fingers into his now-emptied glass. He nods towards Din’s, and the Mandalorian pushes it towards him.
“I told you, I was passing by Tatooine.”
“You pass by lots of places,” Cobb shrugs, “you land on every one?”
Din stiffens slightly, seemingly unsure of what to say.
“Sorry, partner, didn’t mean any offense by it. Just curious, is all,” Cobb soothes, pouring Din a bit more whiskey and sliding it back his way– a peace offering, maybe. Their fingers brush for just a fraction of a second.
“It’s alright,” Din murmurs, hackles lowering. “I think– I’m not sure why.” He doesn’t say it’s not like me, but the thought is there— he sure doesn’t seem like the pointless wandering type, at least to Cobb.
“Missing the kid?” he suggests.
Din looks straight at him, and damn it if he can’t make that expressionless beskar look surprised.
“You give up the little one,” Cobb continues, “and everything’s different.”
“It’s the same as it was before him,” Din mutters. Sounds to Cobb like he’s trying to convince himself, but he doesn’t say that, just angles his head slightly to look at him.
“Is it?”
Din doesn’t answer, takes another sip instead. Cobb can’t blame him.
“It’s a damned thing, Din, missing’ someone,” he says, “but you know the kid better than I do. Seems to me you did what you thought was right, letting him go.”
Din lets his arms rest on the table, vambraces settling heavy on the wood. Cobb resists the soft, terrible urge that bubbles up to reach out and lay a comforting hand on his wrist.
“The child,” he tells Cobb after a moment. “His name is Grogu.”
It had hardly occurred to Cobb that he didn’t know the kid’s name before– that Din might not have known his name. He didn’t know Din’s, he reminds himself, until tonight.
“Grogu,” he rolls over his tongue. “Suits the little guy.”
Din nods, but his gaze is cast far away out the window— further than Cobb’s ever been, he’s somehow sure.
“The right thing,” he murmurs.
“It’s a son of a bitch, isn’t it?”
Din looks back across the table to Cobb, and not for the first time, he wishes he knew what the Mandalorian was thinking. The light’s all but disappeared from the angles of his helmet.
“Say,” Cobb starts slowly, “you ever seen a Tatooine nighttime?”
Din stares at him.
“Now I know you’ve been overnight on Tatooine, partner, I was there. I mean appreciated one. Taken the time to map the stars and all that, if you’re one to get sappy with it.”
Cobb is one to get sappy with it, truthfully. It’s the same nighttime every night, sure, but the stars never make him any less breathless for it.
“It gets real dark, this time of year,” he adds, and the realization seems to dawn on Din.
“That could be nice,” he finally answers, gloved fingers tapping a silent rhythm into his whiskey glass. It’s steady and patient, less like the nervous fiddling he’d been doing before.
Cobb slides out of his seat, glass in hand, and nudges his door open with his hip. It’s a chilly night, but there’s alcohol enough in Cobb’s stomach by now that it only half registers.
“You comin’, Din? Be a bit ‘til it’s fully dark, but that’s just enough time for me to fix up a fire,” he calls into the house. It’s a few minutes before there’s a response, but Din appears in the doorway just as Cobb’s about to call for him again. The light spilling out from the kitchen hides his finer details as he steps out into the sand, boots back on. It’s an imposing silhouette– or would have been, a few moons ago. Odd thing, how quick something like that can turn to comfort.
Cobb grins at him and turns back to the firepit, watching the first tongues of heat lap over the logs like they’re real hungry things. Cobb thanks Mos Eisley every day, lecherous as it can be– he’d been well into adulthood by the time he’d seen his first real wood campfire.
He tells Din as much as he pokes at it, watching the flames shift and sway.
“Probably a fool’s thought to you, though, huh?” He laughs, resting on his knees to bask in the warmth. Din watches, a palpable caution in the way he leans towards Cobb by a few excruciating degrees.
“I don’t think so,” he says quietly— or maybe he’s just a quiet man, at this rate.
“No?” Cobb asks, not turning his gaze from the fire.
“No. I think it’s— sweet.”
Cobb looks at him then, the way streaks of warm light dance across the planes of his helmet. Raises an eyebrow.
“Sweet,” Din repeats, surer. “Reminds you how special it is.”
Cobb considers for a moment, well aware Din’s doing quite the same to him. The sort of consideration he’s used to isn’t nearly so bearable, though.
“Yeah,” he smiles, “suppose it is real special.”
The stars are all out by now, and Cobb cranes his head back slightly to admire them— hundreds of twinkling beads stretched far as his untrained eye can see. He wonders, briefly, if there’s something more to see through the scanners built into Din’s helmet.
“Tatooine nighttime,” Din repeats. He doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t need to, really. It’s a hell of a view. There’s a reason people made a near-uninhabitable planet like this one home– Cobb likes to pretend it’s because of this.
They sit for a long time in silence, Cobb sipping his whiskey now and then. Din just cradles his in his hands. There’s something in the tense curve of his limbs that tells Cobb he’s holding himself still, the way someone does who wants nothing more than to move. Maybe he’s itching to get going, hop in his ship and take it to another, colder planet. Lots of places, warmth is a commodity. Maybe there’s too much of it here for Din’s liking.
Cobb watches out of the corner of his eye as Din moves a hand to the back of his neck, slowly feeling along the base of his helmet. It’s a hard thing not to wonder if it gets tiring, wearing it all the time, but he can understand a creed. A promise.
“Alright, there, partner?” Cobb calls gently after the silence gets a little longer and darker than he’s partial to. It can be hard not to get a little star-sick under a sky so big, start thinking too hard about things.
“I broke it,” Din mutters. Even through the helmet’s voice modifier, Cobb can hear the hoarseness in it.
“Broke what?”
Din lifts his head to the sky, takes a long breath.
“My creed.”
He says it simply, all the weight in his shoulders collecting in those two words. It hits Cobb like a gut punch, how hurt he sounds. That he’s letting Cobb hear it.
“Was it for a good reason?” He asks, tentative, eyes trained close on the fragile Mandalorian next to him.
“It was. I– it was for the child.”
“Oh,” Cobb breathes. No better reason than that. “Din–” he falters. There’s too many things to say– you can’t undo what’s done, mainly, but he doesn’t need to tell the man what he already knows.
Hard thing, not to live in the past. Cobb used to promise himself he’d up and leave Tatooine one day and never even glance over his shoulder. It’s not how things ended up, of course, and it’s sometimes impossible not to wonder what might have happened if he had. But then again, there would’ve been no Freetown. No Marshal. No Din Djarin. That counts more than Cobb would expect it to.
“The worst part,” Din murmurs to the fire, “is that I don’t think I regret doing it.”
Cobb regards him carefully, how much he’s telling. Gaging, really, how far he can push this rusty speeder before it shuts down.
“That’s the worst part?” He hazards. Din looks at him, helmet impenetrable as ever.
“I’ve had this for so long. This creed. I don’t—“ He stops, lowering his head to stare at his gloves. Cobb can feel the weight of what he was going to say hanging in the air, drifting up like woodsmoke.
With all the caution he’d use to approach a skittish bantha, Cobb reaches his hand out. It finds purchase on the rough canvas of Din’s sleeve, and like something close to a miracle, the Mandalorian doesn’t spook. Doesn’t even make to pull his arm away, either— just goes still as Cobb’s ever seen him. His arm is warm to the touch.
“You’re a brave man, Din, and a mighty good warrior to boot,” Cobb says, fierce. “What I said when we met, though, about pegging you wrong? I think I do. I think I just keep underestimating how many layers you really got.”
Cobb feels Din’s arm tense under his touch before he pulls away entirely. His eyes catch on the slight trembling of his hands. It’s not from the cold, not with the fire and those gloves on, though it is beginning to bite. Sobers you up, night-chill like this.
Din doesn’t say anything, just stares at Cobb. Honest truth, it’s longer than anyone’s ever taken to look at him.
“What’s on your mind, partner?” He prompts, and Din’s spotlight gaze snaps away from his face and back towards the fire, crackling down to the last of its embers.
“You’re kind,” Din answers, clearing his throat.
“Now I’m glad you think so, Din, but I’m not so sure most folks would agree with you.”
“You’ve been kind to me.”
It sounds novel, coming from him. Like goodness isn’t something Din’s used to, or something he expects from Cobb– even after following him through the sand-soaked streets to his dusty mound of a house.
“Well, that’s just the way, isn’t it?” Cobb shrugs, trying hard to ignore the hitch in his own breath. Din chuckles drily at that.
“That’s a good way, Vanth,” he says.
They fall into another silence. It seems to be Din’s default state. Cobb supposes that’s how these things go– a man surrounded by desert will get real comfy with sand. A man who lives by the ocean, if you can imagine such a thing, learns to swim. A lone bounty hunter with strict Mandalorian creed– well. Makes sense, is all. Sometimes Cobb wishes he could sit with silence the way he does, patient-like, but he may be a touch too used to restlessness.
“Want me to put another log on?” Cobb asks after the light from the embers and the vague slivers of moon grows so dim all he can see is the vague shape of his own hands and a few metallic glints from Din’s armor.
“No, thank you,” Din replies, and it’s getting cold enough that he wonders why until he remembers why he proposed they go out in the first place.
“Look, partner, you don’t have to–”
“Cobb.”
It’s the first time he’s said his name, Cobb realizes. It stops him in his tracks, so he takes a leaf out of Din’s book. Goes silent. Without the sound of his own voice between them, the only noise that reaches Cobb’s ears is sand shifting in the wind. He hears the gentle ringing of metal moving through the air, Din’s soft breathing.
Cobb might understand the silence, suddenly. Not much talking to be done when there’s no breath left in your lungs.
“Hello,” Din says awkwardly. He sounds so real, so human that Cobb has to resist the urge to reach out and touch him.
“Hey, partner,” he breathes. It comes out a little shivery, but in all fairness, the nighttime is starting to set in beneath his skin. It’s not a tall order, reaching his bones– not these days. The wind and sand erode more than just buildings. He was happy to give Din his armor, of course he was, but there’s a reason he misses it. Cobb wonders if that’s how Din feels with the helmet off– exposed, sun-bleached, jumpy.
“Suppose you’ve had a long time to come up with ways around the helmet,” he says, conversational, maybe as an excuse to hear Din’s voice with no modulator around it again.
“Don’t typically feel the need,” Din responds carefully.
Cobb chuckles before the implication sets in. Feels the need to– what? Open himself up? Stars above, it’s a confession he’s not sure what to do with. He’s real fond of Din, sure, but– but it’s the second time they’ve met. It’s not as if he’s going to stay on Tatooine.
Din sticking around. It hadn’t even occurred to him. He hadn’t let it occur to him.
“You usually have something to say,” Din notes, angled somewhat like a question.
“That I do,” Cobb laughs drily. “That I do.”
“So say it,” he urges, and Cobb realizes there’s hardly any way of gauging how much space there is between them, now.
“Well, I’m not sure I know how,” he admits. He’s not used to this– not knowing what to say. Then again, Cobb supposes, he’s not used to much of what Din Djarin lights up in him. He ignores the shiver that chases itself in waves down his skin; the cold is worth it, prolonging this– whatever this is– just a moment longer.
Din must notice, or else he’s feeling the cold too, because before Cobb can try to start over he tells him he’s going to put another log on the coals.
“Alright,” he says when he realizes Din can’t see him nodding. He tries to keep the words in his mind– the way Din sounds when he’s bare-voiced and gentle, before he puts the helmet back on in preparation for the light. An oasis in all this sun-scorched desert.
Only, that isn’t how it happens.
Flames begin licking their way up the sides of the log Din sets down, and in the barest hint of light, Cobb sees for the first time.
There’s a brief vision of brown hair, curled soft around an ear. Cobb draws in a breath, and before he can take in any more, his eyes are closed– squeezed tight like a kid afraid of the dark. His heart picks up a running pace.
“It’s okay,” Din murmurs, and another log lands on the fire.
“I don’t know, partner,” Cobb says to the backs of his eyelids, “because if I got the story straight, you ain’t taken that helmet off for just about anybody, your child maybe. And I don’t–”
I don’t want you to be here with me just because you have nowhere else to go.
“Be a shame if you didn’t mean it, is all,” he finishes instead. There’s the sound of one more log being placed, then the weight of Din settling next to him. Slowly, he puts a hand on Cobb’s shoulder. It’s feather-light, as if unsure of where it’s resting. It’s a good place, Cobb wants to tell him. It’s a good place to stay.
“What if I did mean it?”
Cobb purses his lips. They’re chapped. It sure sounds like he does, but maybe that’s the drink talking. Maybe Din always sounds that split-open without the helmet on. There’s a heartbeat, distantly. Probably Cobb’s own.
“You figure out why you really came out this far,” he asks, “besides all the sunshine?” And there it is again. It feels like the night holds its breath waiting for an answer, or maybe it’s just Cobb. Sometimes he swears he can’t tell the difference.
Din sighs.
“I could go anywhere I wanted, once the child– once there was no job,” he admits, and Cobb pictures him in his ship’s tiny cockpit, searching for home. “This was the only place.”
“The only place?” He wonders, leaning towards Din without meaning to.
“Only place there was any reason to go.”
What’s the reason, Cobb wants to ask, but he might not need to.
He takes a deep breath, then another, like he’s the one putting something on the line. Maybe they both are. Can’t go backwards, after all.
Cobb opens his eyes.
It’s a gentler face than he was expecting, all told. Din’s got sad eyes, the kind that swallow everything up in their soft darkness. And a mustache, for kriff’s sake. His mouth twitches up at the end in a fledgling smile, hesitant and hopeful.
“Din,” Cobb breathes, and that’s it. That’s all he can say. And hell, maybe he’s weak. Maybe he’s nothing but a sappy old fool, but Din smiling is worth every star he’s spent his life trying to count.
“That bad?” Din asks softly, tilting his head a bit. It occurs to Cobb after a moment that he’s studying his eyes, the only part of him he hasn’t gotten a good look at yet.
“Sorry you had to find out this way,” Cobb says, straight-faced, and Din laughs, and all at once he becomes aware of his hands– lingering in his lap, awkward. Not touching Din. Not grabbing the edges of his flightsuit and pulling him close as two people can get, clutching him like that before he disappears and becomes another one of Cobb’s bleak stories.
“Din,” he whispers, “can I take your hand?”
Din stills immediately, eyes meeting Cobb’s where they wait. His expression is surprised– Cobb can tell from the way he looks that he doesn’t practice keeping his face even behind the helmet– but he takes a breath and nods.
Din’s hand is warm, and a bit softer than Cobb would expect from a fighter so adept. Maybe everyone’s gotta have a little softness somewhere in ‘em, even with a shell so hard as beskar. Maybe he and Din are the same– both thought they got rid of that part a long time ago, only to be caught unawares on a cold night in a town that’s getting used to being its own.
It’s a long time they sit like that, Cobb lightly tracing the shape of Din’s fingers, letting the fire dull back into a few tired embers. Cobb, for one, has a hard time keeping his eyes on it. Holding his breath as he steals a look at a flyaway lock of hair, he tries not to think about what might come with the sunsrise. It doesn’t matter really, not now, not when whatever comes next for Din Djarin is preceded by Cobb’s cluttered kitchen. Cobb’s special occasion whiskey and bony, sun-spotted hands.
He’s always been good at ruining good things, what with his tendency to hold them so tight they break. He squeezes Din’s hand once, hard, then lets it go to wipe the sweat off on his pants.
“Want to go inside?” Din asks, looking at Cobb like he’s a relic, or a piece of precious cargo, not something wrung out by so much time. Something he’s afraid to grab a hold of.
It’s late, and both of them are tired, so Cobb takes a bit of Din’s sleeve between his fingers and leads him in. They leave the fire to curl up on itself and fall asleep, and Cobb wishes like hell he could keep from doing the same, but he can feel the need to rest in his eyes and hands and the heavy landing of his footfalls.
“There’s a couch,” he says when the door’s slid shut against the noise the nighttime makes. “I’ll take it, you need your rest.”
Din looks like he’s about to protest, but Cobb holds up a hand.
“I can sleep anywhere,” and he knows Din can too, but he needs him to take the bed. Cobb couldn’t sleep in it, not when he’d know there was someone warm-blooded a door and hallway away who wasn’t.
Din’s big dark eyes look right at Cobb– no, right through him, and it’s somehow more penetrating than that damn helmet visor ever was. Cobb thinks of the cantina, the first time he saw the Mandalorian, and tries to reconcile the images in his head.
“Okay,” Din says.
“Wake me if you need anything, alright, partner?”
“Okay.”
“And there’s sleepin’ clothes in the dresser. Rifle around if you like,” he adds, and does a commendable job not thinking of Din in one of his own soft shirts, his worn out blankets. It’s hard to tell exactly how red Din goes in the dark, but Cobb bares him a wolfish grin all the same.
“Goodnight. Goodnight, Cobb,” he says.
Din lifts anchor, turns to walk towards the bedroom, and Cobb doesn’t bother pretending he’s not watching his heavy shoulders tilt back and forth like the rocking of an off-balance speeder as he goes.
Cobb himself is elbow-deep in sleep now, and he wades to the couch through the exhaustion and sand and various small things he’s left laying on the floor. He abandons his kerchief and pulls the threadbare blanket over himself– once it was blue, he thinks, but it’s gone grey long since. He’s been in the sun for a long time too; he can’t blame it for losing its color. There’s a slight rustling in the bedroom, different from the familiar sound wind makes dragging its fingers through sand.
“Goodnight, Din Djarin,” he whispers into the dark of the living room– for himself, mostly. Holding onto it.
x
The Marshal wakes to the smell of cheap caf and a crick winding its way up his spine. What light spills in the room is bright and insistent, and he blinks a few times to let it in slow. Caf pot’s not on a timer, which can only mean he isn’t alone this morning. His heart skitters awake with the rest of him.
“Morning,” he groans, stretching his arms above him as if it’ll do anything for the stiffness. It isn’t likely to, he knows. Sometimes he wakes up sore down to the marrow and there’s nothing to be done. It’s not an unreasonable cost for living like he does, not really.
Din appears around the corner, silent as a shade. He’s armorless, and in nothing but his faded flight suit the warrior in his movement becomes even clearer. Everything he does is measured, controlled, and Cobb is reminded he’d lose a fight between them with little contest.
But they’re not fighting– Din is handing Cobb a mug of steaming caf, a small smile written in the creases of his face.
“You sleep late,” he says.
“‘Coulda woke me up,” Cobb huffs, accepting the caf with grateful hands and rising gracelessly from the couch.
He follows Din into the kitchen, where he slides into the seat Cobb assumes he’s been occupying for a while. His armor’s been laid carefully on the surface of the wood, in the process of being polished. It’s a reverent thing when Din picks up a pauldron and begins removing layers of clinging sand.
He looks taken-apart like this, almost— deconstructed pieces of the Mandalorian’s whole spread out across Cobb’s kitchen table. They make a crescent of shining beskar in the double sunlight, Din the center of the solar system. It wouldn’t be so bad, Cobb thinks, to be torn down and reconstructed by him.
“Need any help with that?” He asks casually, taking a sip of the black hole in his mug. Din must like it strong when he can get his hands on it.
Din hesitates, brow furrowing, but after a moment he nods and hands the other pauldron to Cobb. There’s a symbol etched onto the edge— a skull, Cobb’s pretty sure, but not one he recognizes.
He knows how to care for the armor, though the set Din took with him was already beat to bones by the time he put it on. It doesn’t keep it from feeling different— intimate, even, the way his cloth shines up the surface of Din’s life easy as anything.
“You’re good at that,” Din observes, moving deftly on to his cuirass.
“Reckon I’d make a good Mandalorian?” Cobb chuckles, taking another swig of burning caf.
“I don’t think I’m an authority on that,” Din says wryly, glancing at his helmet. Cobb kicks his foot gently under the table.
“I’m stuck here anyway,” he grins, redoubling his efforts on the pauldron. Din lowers his cloth and looks at him for a moment, the circular motion of his arms. Cobb’s bound to be a hell of a mess, this time in the morning. He can’t bring himself to mind.
“You ever think of leaving?”
Cobb stops. There’s oceans out there, he knows. Planets where it rains every day, holomovie type of planets where it’s green as a Rodian with his eyes on your credits every day of year.
“Nah,” he says. “Without Freetown, I’m just another man with sand in his boots. Besides, I’m not needed anywhere else in the galaxy, am I?”
Din meets his gaze and tilts his head, sort of a noncommittal gesture.
“Happens easier than you think,” he shrugs.
“Being needed?”
Din nods, and Cobb thinks there might be a child-shaped opening somewhere in him that hasn’t quite closed over. He wonders vaguely what wounds Din sees when he looks at him.
The helmet is saved for last— though not as an afterthought, Cobb knows. Din picks it up gently and stares at it for a moment, and Cobb wonders if he’s studying his reflection in the visor.
“Say, I’m gonna get changed, I need to be in town today. Maybe run the ‘fresher,” he says, clearing his throat. Din nods absentmindedly, light flicking across his cheek as he turns the helmet to the side and begins to wipe away any corruptions on the surface.
There are creases across Cobb’s blanket, still tucked in like Din was hesitant to find a place to rest between the covers. Cobb crosses to the nightstand where he’d left his gloves, and despite better judgment he lifts one up to his own hand. It’s close to the same size, well-worn to the point of mocking the shape of Din’s fingers.
Cobb sets it down and floats to the refresher, wondering as he washes if Din’s ever had an honest shower, water and all. He tries to take his time in the sonic, to don fresh clothes when he’s done– like Din, sitting with his armor. It’s hard for Cobb to remember that time can be a commodity of its own until he runs out of it.
Cobb’s sure something’s changed when he wanders back into the kitchen– when it changed, he’s not sure. Something in the hallway’s slope carrying him upwards towards Din is different than the usual trudge he does alone, maybe. Or maybe things got a little shook up again the second the Mandalorian parked his shiny new ship on the border of town. The way of things passes through Cobb sometimes, tells him to expect something coming. Living in the same place your whole life will do that, Cobb suspects– could be why he’s afraid to leave Tatooine, when all’s said and done.
“Your gloves,” Cobb says as he approaches the table, dropping them next to Din’s helmet. It’s the only piece of armor he hasn’t re-adorned, making his shoulders look an awful lot less worn down. Cobb remembers feeling smaller without the armor, too. Carved out.
“You headed somewhere so soon?” He asks, hoping it sounds lighter than it feels. Din reaches for the gloves from where he leans against the wall, pulling them on carefully.
“I’m not sure,” he admits. Cobb hesitates before stepping closer to him, reaching for a hand. The Mandalorian gives him one, seemingly before he can think about it, and Cobb keeps his fingers loosely circled around his wrist. Din’s eyes don’t leave that spot, almost like they’re trying to pin him in place. It’s working, Cobb notes hazily, and, Din’s a little shorter than I am.
“Do you want to stay in Freetown?”
He lets it tumble out, spilling from his mouth like sand, like whiskey from the lip of a bottle. Din doesn’t stop looking at their hands, but it’s purposeful now. He’s trying to avoid Cobb’s eyes.
“It’s easy to miss people,” he says, an admission instead of an answer.
Cobb feels a creature in his stomach he thought might’ve died by now twitch and roll over as he lets a finger slide between the fabric of Din’s suit and glove, feeling the warm skin underneath. His breath hitches and Cobb feels his finger skip over a pulse, quick and uneven.
“You afraid you’re gonna miss me, that it? If you stay too long?”
Cobb’s not sure why he’s doing this, exactly, if not to prove one more time before Din leaves that he can exist outside his sand-filled shoes, his sun-bleached hair and brittle bones. For a second he’s a splash of reddening beneath the skin of Din’s face, the quickening of his heart-rate.
Din’s jaw tightens, a wildness in his eyes that doesn’t come from anger. Anger would be focused, in a Mandalorian. Decisive. Cobb breathes in and out twice before Din nods, and he leans down towards him. They might be closer than they’ve ever been.
“I think it’s too late,” Cobb whispers with a grin.
Din’s not one to back down from a fight, Cobb knows well, and it’s with raised eyebrows that he watches him take a deep breath and meet his gaze head-on.
“What do you want?” He asks. It’s not an accusation, just a question, and Cobb knows in an instant he’d tell him anything he wanted to know. Even this.
Din might disappear after that. Maker knows there could be a part of him that’ll always be a bounty hunter, driven to chasing things in the night. Maybe he’ll stick around, keep looking at Cobb with that expression he can’t place, the one that makes his stomach twist. It’s only natural. Din’s been in all those stars, after all. Maybe he’s got a little piece of them in there somewhere.
“Din, I’d like you to stay one more night,” Cobb sums up the breath to say, and the sun makes Din’s hair look golden in places and he takes a shaky breath when he smiles. He doesn’t look used to it. Cobb’s not used to it either, but there’s time for everything.
“Okay,” Din says. “One more night.”