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"How cold can it be?"
Cobb lifted his chin to allow Din to wrap a thick, woven scarf around his neck. He was already wearing two flight suits and a heavy coat, and from the look of the pile of fabric still on the floor, Din was nowhere near finished yet, even though Cobb was sweating like a shaved bantha underneath all the layers.
"Tatooine at noon is hotter than Devaronian's backside," Cobb continued, feeling the rough weave of the scarf scratched against his stubble. "But the nights can get pretty cold."
Din let out an amused huff as he tucked the scarf under the collar of Cobb's coat. "It's colder."
When Din leaned down to pick up yet another piece of clothing, Cobb rapped his knuckles lightly against his bare backplate. Din had swapped out his usual flightsuit for a different one, but other than that, he was just wearing his normal armor.
"If it's so cold, how come you don't need to be swaddled up like a Tusken infant?"
Din straightened, holding two pairs of thick gloves. He contemplated them as he responded. "Because my armor has a thermoregulator that always keeps my body temperature at optimal levels."
He seemed to make a decision and tossed one pair of gloves back on the floor.
Cobb held out his hand dutifully to allow Din to slip the chosen gloves on him.
"My armor didn't have anything like that," he said, still vividly remembering the sweltering furnace inside his helmet if he had to wear it longer than a few hours.
"That's because your armor was an antique piece of junk,'' Din said, and then went still, his visor swiveling up to meet Cobb's eyes. "Don't tell Fett I said that."
When a few hours later Cobb found himself lying flat on his back in a snow drift, his breath punched out of him by hit from a pulse weapon, he had to grudgingly admit that he was thankful for all the layers of clothing Din had insisted he wear. Powdery snow drifted down around him as he stared up, waiting for his lungs to start working again, vaguely aware of the retreating footsteps of the smuggler who'd ambushed them.
A shadow fell over him. His hand twitched instinctively toward his blaster before he recognised Din's familiar silhouette.
"You okay?" Din asked.
"Yeah." Cobb sat up with a wince. There was a throbbing pain on his side where he'd been punched by one of the smugglers, and his whole body felt sore from the kick of the pulse weapon, but he didn't think anything was broken. "Got winded when he knocked me down, but nothing worse than a few bruises. You?"
"Same." Din didn't elaborate, just held out his hand.
Cobb clasped it, letting Din pull him upright.
"They shouldn't have gotten too far," Cobb said, eyeing the line of footprints leading toward a nearby canyon. “We can still catch them before they reach the spaceport.”
“Dank farrik…”
"What's wrong?"
Din let out a frustrated sigh. "The pulse must have messed with my HUD. Can't get the heat vision back online."
Cobb shrugged. "We'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way then. Lucky for us they left pretty clear tracks."
Din was still focused on his vambrace, jabbing at buttons and muttering under his breath. Cobb may not have recognized the language, but he knew swearing when he heard it. With another exasperated sigh, Din lowered his arm and turned back to Cobb.
"No. We're going back to the ship."
"Why?"
"Without my HUD, we're practically blind, and we can't risk them getting a jump on us again. We got off lucky this time, but if something happens to me, you're stuck here alone."
Cobb bristled. "I can take care of myself."
Din tilted his head, hands settling on his hips. "You know how to get back to the ship without a nav?"
Cobb opened his mouth, ready to argue, and then closed it. He'd trusted Din to lead the way and hadn't paid too much attention to the route that they'd taken. The scenery around him was nothing but featureless white. It was like being thrown in the middle of the desert, except worse because he could at least read the desert.
The snow was falling faster now, already blurring the faint tracks they’d left behind. Without those, he wouldn’t have even been able to tell which direction they’d come from.
"No," he admitted reluctantly.
"So we go back, regroup, and I get my HUD fixed before I go after them again." He turned away, fists clenching. "I never should have brought you along in the first place."
"Hey! Starting to get a mite offended here, partner."
Din’s posture softened. "I didn't mean-" he cut himself off with a shake of his head, although it could have been just a shiver. "Let's just get back to the ship. We can talk there."
Cobb could barely keep up as Din forged ahead across the snowy plain, but he couldn’t blame Din for wanting to hurry. The fight had left Cobb sweaty and - despite the moisture-wicking undersuit Din had lent him, and the layers upon layers that he was wearing on top of it - he was starting to feel the cold seeping into his bones.
They’d been walking for nearly an hour when Din finally stopped. He looked around, and for a moment, Cobb wondered if he'd lost the direction, but then he began to adjust the cowl around his neck. Just feeling the cold, then, Cobb realised.
Cobb took the opportunity to adjust his own rebreather mask, nudging it into a better position. The planet's atmosphere was low on oxygen, and though Cobb had resisted the rebreather at first, he was now grateful for the extra protection the mask offered against the biting wind.
They were pretty close to the ship already; Cobb could recognize some of the jagged rock formations near where they'd landed. The sight gave him a sense of relief, and despite the worsening cold now that they were standing still, he felt they could afford a moment to catch their breath.
The sound of something heavy hitting the snow pulled him out of his thoughts. He turned to see Din’s cuirass on the ground, on top of his cape, which was already lying on the snow. Before Cobb could fully process what was happening, Din lifted his hands, the movement oddly slow and unsteady, and removed his helmet.
The face beneath was human. Younger than Cobb, though not by much, judging by the hints of grey on his temples and at the corner of his jaw. But before Cobb could take in anything more than that, his attention was drawn to the paleness of Din's face and the blue tint of his lips.
"Dank farrik..." Cobb muttered. "The pulse didn't just knock off the HUD, did it?"
The truth hit him all at once: Din's rebreather and thermoregulator must have also been damaged, leaving him defenseless against both the cold and the thin atmosphere. When Din’s shaking hands reached for the fastenings on his flightsuit, Cobb surged forward, stopping him.
Nights on Tatooine might not get as cold as the planet they were on, but they were cold enough. Cobb had heard stories of people who, half-frozen, started stripping off their clothes, their minds tricked into feeling overheated in the creeping chill.
"You should have told me," he whispered, his voice gentle as he took Din’s hands in his own to warm them. The sight of Din’s dazed, confused expression melted away any anger he had left.
Cobb shrugged off his topcoat and wrapped it around Din's shoulders, then pressed his own rebreather mask against Din’s face. After a few breaths, awareness flickered back into Din’s eyes.
When he was sure that Din wouldn't start removing his clothes again, Cobb knelt down to pick up the fallen cuirass and helmet, and then draped Din’s own cape securely back over his shoulders.
They slowly made their way back to the ship, sharing the rebreather mask between them after every few breaths. Whenever it was Din's turn to wear the mask, Cobb felt his face going numb from the biting wind, worse than any sandstorm he’d ever endured on Tatooine. He could only imagine what it must feel like to Din, who was unaccustomed to having his face exposed to the elements at all.
When they reached the ship, Cobb silently thanked whichever Mandalorian god had made Din into the worrying mother-bantha that he was. The sleeping quarters were stocked up with heat packs and thermal blankets, all neatly organized and ready for use. He helped Din out of his armor and flight suit, bundled him in a blanket, and pressed a warm mug of electrolyte drink into his hands.
Cobb stripped off his own clothes, damp from both the sweat and the melting snow, while keeping an eye on Din, who was sipping his drink with a dazed expression. When Din finished, Cobb guided him to lie down on the bunk. Din was still shivering, so Cobb climbed in beside him, wrapping an arm around him to share warmth.
He must have drifted off, because the next thing he knew, he woke up alone in the bunk. Panic flared as he sat up, worried about what Din might do in his confused state, until he spotted him on the opposite bunk, his helmet cradled in his lap.
"You feeling better? All warmed up?" Cobb asked. He himself felt like a different man, the bone-deep chill from the night before replaced with comfortable warmth.
Din looked up briefly, then back down at his helmet. “Yes. Thank you.”
"I'm sorry about..." Cobb gestured towards the helmet, unable to find the right words to describe the sacrilege that he had probably committed just by looking at Din's face. "You were confused and started taking off your armor. I couldn't stop you in time."
Din shrugged. "It's okay. I shouldn't have been wearing it anyway."
Cobb crossed the room and sat beside him on the bunk, their shoulders brushing. "What do you mean?"
"I took it off on Morak. I should never have even put it back on after that."
Din had told him about what had happened and how he'd sacrificed his creed to save his child, but he'd never gone into specifics of what revealing his face actually meant to him.
As much as he loved Din, he didn't pretend to understand or accept the rules Din lived by. Cobb had been a slave once; he knew what it meant to give up parts of yourself to serve a master, and he'd rather die than do it again.
"That one of your Mando rules? Not being allowed to put it back on once you've taken it off?"
Din just nodded.
"Then why are you wearing it?"
It came out sharper than he'd meant. A part of him was irrationally angry, both at Din's people for forcing their ridiculous rules on Din, and at Din himself for refusing to question those rules. They'd grown close in these past months that they'd worked and lived together, but this was the first time Cobb had seen Din's face. It felt unfair to Cobb that they were denied this simple human connection because of people who'd rather have Din die than remove his helmet.
Din sighed. "Because I'm a coward."
Cobb barked a laugh before he could stop himself. That at least got a reaction from Din, who glared at him.
Cobb raised his hands in supplication. "Pardon me for laughing, but I beg to differ. I've watched you jump into the maw of a raging krayt dragon. That's not the action of a coward."
Din let out another weary breath. "I almost got you killed today."
"Maybe you hit your head worse than I thought, partner, because I distinctly remember it being me who rescued you from freezing your ass off, not the other way around."
“You keep saying that,” Din murmured.
“What?”
“‘Partner."
Cobb was momentarily lost, feeling like he’d missed something. "I'm genuinely starting to wonder if you ain't quite back yet because what you're saying right now isn't making a lick of sense."
Din looked away, fingers fidgeting with the edge of his helmet. "I'm not very good at this. Words. Talking about... things." He took a deep breath before continuing. "What I mean is, I want that. To be your partner. To always have you in my life, and the thought of losing you..."
He shivered, like he was back outside in the cold. "I shouldn't have asked you to come with me here, but I wanted it. Wanted to be with you, even if I knew it put you in danger. I want it like I wanted Grogu to stay with me. I knoew I'm being selfish, but I can't help wanting it."
Din’s gaze flickered toward Cobb, but then he looked away almost as quickly, as though he were afraid of what he might see in Cobb’s face.
Cobb knelt in front of Din, taking the hands holding the helmet into his. Din's hands were warm again, coarse and dry, and for a moment Cobb was distracted by the realization that for the first time since they met, there was no beskar between them.
"Grogu chose you, you do realize that?" Cobb said softly. "That's why he's back in Mos Eisley with Peli Motto and not on some off-grid swamp planet training with that Jedi. He wanted to be with you just as much as you wanted to be with him. "
He released Din’s hands and cupped his face instead.
"And as for me, did it ever occur to you that maybe that's why I call you that, because I also want you to be my partner? That I was overjoyed when you asked me to join you, because I want to be with you too."
Din looked up, and for the first time, Cobb could properly see his eyes. And what beautiful eyes they were.
He held that gaze, searching for permission, then leaned in and pressed their lips together. The kiss was brief and clumsy, but when they pulled apart, Din was smiling, and Cobb knew he’d cross every frozen wasteland in the galaxy just to see that smile again.