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Cobb raises his head at the chime of the door. He must have dozed off. It had been a long few days, and much longer since he’d been able to sleep without keeping one ear trained for the rumbles of the krayt dragon. He doesn’t walk down the hall so much as he drifts, clipping his belt and holster back on as he goes, shaking off sleep. The sight that meets him when the door slides open jumpstarts him back to attention.
The Mandalorian stands outside, leaning casually against a wall. He’s cleaned his armor of krayt dragon gore and the moonlight shines off of the freshly polished beskar. The child is nowhere in sight, nor his pram. Just Mando, who regards him with the usual coolness that Cobb has grown used to after spending the last few days with him. He tilts his helmet to one side, as if waiting for him to take the hint. Cobb scans the dark street behind him and beckons him in.
No sooner is the door sliding closed than the Mandalorian is crowding him against the wall, one hand fisting in the front of his shirt and holding him firm. The other rests at the front of Cobb’s pants, sudden, but warm even through his glove.
“Are we flying in the same vector?” Mando asks, close enough for Cobb to see his own reflection in the man’s visor.
Cobb can’t help the massiff-grin that cuts across his face. So he hadn’t imagined how the Mandalorian’s hand had lingered in his at their farewell, how he’d felt the man’s eyes following him as he’d gone about the work of setting their trap for the beast.
“Where’s the kid?” Cobb manages to ask while he’s still able to think clearly.
“Asleep, back at the Crest. Where’s the bed?”
Cobb gestures down the hall with a tilt of his head. Mando’s hands release him and he walks briskly away, leaving Cobb at the wall, dumbfounded and hard as the stone at his back. He fixes his shirt and follows the man down the hall, the rush of his own heartbeat distractingly loud in his ears.
He finds the Mandalorian standing facing the bed, back to Cobb. He stops in the doorway and leans against it, speaks as laid-back as he can. “So how’s this gonna work, Mando?”
“The helmet stays on.” He turns his head, casting the words back in Cobb’s direction. “Everything else… is negotiable.”
Cobb tries not to let on how hot the implication gets him, to keep up the cool bravado. He closes the distance between them.
“Could’a figured that much myself. What I mean is…” Cobb presses his body to the other man’s back, hooking his chin over his shoulder. He rests his hands on Mando’s hips and slips a finger under his beltline. “How we gonna do this?”
Faint static crackles from the Mandalorian’s voxcoder as he takes a long breath in. He leans back against Cobb ever so slightly. “What did you have in mind?”
“I was thinkin… I been wantin’ to get my teeth around ya for days… an’ then…” Cobb presses his hardening cock against the small of Mando’s back and nuzzles against the receiver of his helmet, close as he can get to his ear. “I think I wanna fuck you. How’s that sound?”
The Mandalorian’s stance doesn’t waver, but the slightest catch of breath from his voxcoder shows his interest.
“I think that can be arranged.” He steps abruptly away from Cobb, stripping away his cape.
Cobb watches as Mando reaches back over his head and his jetpack unhitches with a click. He sets it at the foot of the bed, then goes to work on the armor, piece by piece. Arm guards, pauldrons, chestplate. All lined up neatly together, methodically, with reverence. He peels away the fabric concealing his neck- a bit too slowly for Cobb’s liking at the moment- and unhooks something at the front of his flight suit top that opens it up wide enough to lift it up and over his helmet. His build was slighter than his armor and strength in combat had suggested, but it was still more sturdy and muscle-bound than Cobb’s own lanky figure. His thighs seemed nearly double Cobb’s, and his shoulders rounded out with thick muscle, likely in part due to decades of carrying the constant and not insignificant weight of beskar. There’s a slight softness around his hips and belly which gives a bit under Cobb’s fingers. This, and the wisps of graying hair that Cobb can see curling out from beneath the helmet at the nape of his neck, cues him to add a few years to his initial guess at the Mandalorian’s age. His skin was bronzed, more likely from birth than from exposure to the suns of any system, Cobb reckons.
And a scar traces under each side of his chest, faded by time and stretched from years of physicality. They’re neat, purposeful- obviously surgical rather than marks of battle- but they’re not the perfect, precise work of a medical droid either. They suggest the services of someone more underground, who wouldn’t ask questions in exchange for enough credits.
The lower half of the flight suit he leaves on for now, and he backsteps slowly, reclining onto the bed with a deliberate, lothcat-like fluidity. The unblinking, unreadable stare of the Mandalorian’s visor makes heat coil low in Cobb’s belly.
“Waiting for something?” Mando asks.
Cobb snaps out of his lustful stupor and hurries at his belt, casting it aside along with his bandana. His shirt he takes more time with, holding what he assumes is eye contact as he slips it up and over his head. He decides to follow the other man’s cue and leave his pants on for now, though the obvious, hard line of his arousal can’t have escaped his attention.
Cobb lays down on his front between the Mandalorian’s outstretched legs, looking up at him as he slides a hand slowly up one thigh and starts to undo the fastenings of his pants. He slips his hand in, and stops, looking down.
Where Cobb had expected to find something like his own, there… isn’t. Instead, under a patch of neatly trimmed hair, there’s a smaller structure. It’s hooded and with a similar head, unmistakably hard, and nestled atop a set of reddened folds and glistening cunt.
“Problem?” Mando’s voice, still nonchalant but now with a discernible edge, breaks Cobb’s stare.
“Uh, not in the slightest.” And there isn’t, Cobb’s mouth practically waters and his cock jumps against his thigh. He shakes off his surprise easily, thirst renewed. “C’n I put my mouth on ya?”
Mando’s voice, flattened by the voxcoder, betrays nothing. “You can do what you like. Just keep in mind I can’t exactly return the favor.” He taps once at the rim of his helmet.
“Whaddaya usually do then?”
“People don’t tend to be disappointed by what I can do with my hands.”
Cobb’s pulse quickens at that. “So… would I be right in guessin’ ya never kissed anybody?”
Mando’s visor tips down in his direction. “Are you going to get to work down there or not?”
Cobb can’t help but flash a smile. “Well, since ya asked so nicely…” He hooks his fingers into the waistband of the other man’s pants. “Ya mind?”
Mando lifts his hips obligingly, allowing Cobb to tug the rest of his flight suit off, along with his boots. He tosses them to the side of the bed, eager.
Cobb lowers himself to hover over his new workspace, his narrow shoulders fitting nicely between those muscled thighs. His eyes rove over Mando’s half-hard dick and the folds below, and he decides to start by licking a stripe up his slit and along one side of his hooded cock. And again, more slowly. The thighs tense for a moment against his shoulders but the Mandalorian remains otherwise characteristically stoic. He’ll have to work for it, then.
That’s just fine, Cobb thinks. He’s no stranger to putting in a little work.
He ducks down and seals his mouth around his cock. He sucks gently at first, then less gently. The Mandalorian breathes in above him, and allows a barely audible sigh that sounds contented enough. Cobb can work with that.
He eases off the pressure, swirling his tongue over and around the head. Experimentally, he slips his tongue up under the hood, and he hears a sharp intake of breath above him. Sensitive. More carefully, then.
He tests the sands, swiveling around, then brushing back and forth, searching for the pattern that’ll put a crack in Mando’s shiny shell. Slow and steady. Cobb settles into an easy rhythm, rewarded with the even trickle of slick that’s started to dampen his short beard.
Mando leans back further, finally settling in. He rests one arm behind his head, the other over his thigh, just brushing Cobb’s shoulder. Wordlessly, Cobb reaches over and guides his hand to the back of his head. He feels him apply the slightest pressure, but doesn’t yet knit his fingers in his hair, pull it how he craves. Oh, well. He’ll get there.
Cobb licks a longer stroke, parting him at the seam, then working against the underside of his dick, slowly and with force. There he finds the throbbing of a vein and sucks at it, the heated, buzzing nerves lighting up at his attention. He worries over it with his tongue in short, firm lashes back and forth, alternating with varying levels of suction over the hooded cockhead. A gradual increase of speed gets Mando to raise his hips up into Cobb’s mouth, and he smiles into the silky folds.
Cobb looks up at the deceptively impassive face of Mando’s beskar helmet, which tilts down after a moment to meet his gaze. He flattens out his tongue and drags it from the man’s hole upward to his cock, dredging a mouthful of slick up with it. Mando’s dick rests full and hard against the center of his tongue, and Cobb holds his mouth open for Mando to see it as he swallows, drinking him. Cobb is a desert creature, after all. Thirsty as ever.
Cobb feels him pulse, throb with desire, and he knows he has him now. He seals his lips back around him, returning to his short, lapping strokes over the Mandalorian’s cock, and that finally earns him the sweet pull of fingers in his silvery hair. He presses harder, targeting the head, and he can hear the man choking back a moan as he borders on bullying the red peak.
“...ffff-Farrik…” The hand in his hair tightens its grip, almost beginning to pull him away. Cobb gives him another forceful suck before pulling off with a pop, deciding on showing Mando a little mercy. His jaw needed the break, anyway.
He unhooks his arms from around the man’s muscled thighs and brings one hand to Mando’s dick, which stands taller and redder under its sheath than when Cobb began. He makes his hand firm and flat against him, rolls it over him in slow, broad circles. He waits till Mando’s breathing evens out again before pinpointing the pressure with two fingers, stroking over him in a light, languid roll while Cobb lazily ruts his own hardness into the bed.
Cobb looks up from his work to see the man watching him, black glass fixed on hazel. He wonders what color Mando’s eyes might be, and pushes the thought away.
Before he can be accused of teasing, he slides his two fingers on either side of Mando’s cock, making him fuck between them.
“Hm!” Mando pulls sharply at Cobb’s hair and thrusts upward as his dick slips through the tight ‘v.’ His stomach tenses each time it forcefully springs out, and his thighs press powerfully against Cobb's shoulders. Cobb’s eyes flick up at him, watching how his neck tenses and how the skin reddens before disappearing underneath the rim of his helmet. Remembering the sensitivity of his anatomy, Cobb releases the man from the ‘v’ of his hand in favor of smoother strokes between his thumb and forefinger. The tendons of Mando’s neck relax but his thighs remain rigid against Cobb’s sides, and though he tries, he can’t hide the stutter in the rise and fall of his chest.
Cobb grins to himself as he looks down to see a new rush of slick glistening from the man’s cunt, meltwater from a glacier, visibly contracting with desire. He brings his other hand up to swipe his thumb over the rim of his entrance.
“This okay?” He emphasizes with the slightest press in.
The Mandalorian takes a breath in, but nods without hesitation. Cobb swipes his tongue over his middle finger and guides it slowly in. He doesn’t even make it to the second knuckle before the man interrupts him.
“Two.”
Another grin from Cobb, half to himself. “Alright, Mando. No need to take things slow. Hear ya loud and clear.” He fits his ring finger alongside the other. He can feel the pressure of the slight stretch it makes but they slide in easy enough.
He starts with a slow thrust in and out, and the sound of it makes Cobb aware of his own cock throbbing where it lays trapped between his bodyweight and the mattress. He curls his fingers slightly, applying upward pressure, searching for the telltale change of texture.
Mando’s head tilts back suddenly against the wall with a hitch of breath. There.
Cobb pumps his fingers into him, making sure to hit his target on each stroke. With his other hand, he works Mando’s cock with quick, firm strokes of his thumb, getting steadily faster. Mando’s legs fall open wide in a silent, perhaps unconscious encouragement, and Cobb can feel the walls clench down around him as he speeds up. The strength of the muscles eagerly bearing down is considerable, and it takes more effort to press up into Mando’s soft core with his tiring fingers, but Cobb does his best.
He brings his face back to the man’s now throbbing cock and engulfs it again in the soft heat of his mouth. That finally- finally- gets Mando to swipe both of his strong hands through Cobb’s hair, grasping at the back of his head and pulling him in. Cobb’s eyes fall closed as he loses himself to it, laving his tongue over the folds and sucking hard at his cock, the musky-sweet taste of liquid lust filling his mouth and soaking his beard. He introduces his tongue at the man’s entrance alongside his fingers, a rare indulgence of greed, drinking all he can get.
A firm tug of his hair pulls Cobb away from his work.
“Enough,” Mando orders, somehow managing to sound firm even through his breathlessness.
Cobb blinks himself back into focus, licking the slick from his lips and shaking a lock of silver hair from his eyes. “Sump’n wrong?”
Mando takes a breath, much more composed than Cobb thought should be possible. There’s something of a challenge in his voice when he speaks. “You said you wanted to fuck me. Or did you change your mind?”
“I certainly did not, don’t you worry about that. I just wanted a little taste a’ya first.” He withdraws his fingers from the man’s cunt and swipes the other hand across his mouth and over his chin, a futile effort at wiping away the slick collected there. “Slaying dragons is thirsty work, y’know.”
“I seem to recall that I was the one that killed it.” Mando tilts his head slightly to one side, tone as unreadable as the face of his helmet. Perhaps an attempt at returning Cobb’s playfulness.
“And to the victor go the spoils, darlin’.” Cobb sits up and settles on his knees between the other man’s legs. Not inconspicuously, he traces a hand over the hard line of his cock through his trousers, pulling the fabric tight so there can be no mistake about exactly how much he has to offer. “Tell me what you want, Mando.”
“I want you to stop playing around and put that inside me.”
“All business, ain’t ya?” Cobb shakes his head with a smile and leans over to the bedside console. “Just lemme grab a slip.”
“I have an implant. It’s safe,” Mando says, definitively.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d still like to use it.” Cobb raises the flat package. It’s a simple, plain slip, nothing fancy. He couldn’t stand the cloying taste of synthetic off-planet fruit flavoring, though in Mos Pelgo he couldn’t always be choosy.
Mando is silent for a moment, perhaps surprised. “Fine,” he concedes, taking it from Cobb.
He grasps Cobb firmly by the waistband of his pants and makes short work of the fastenings. After a moment he finds the opening of Cobb’s under-armor- a close-fitting, sweat-wicking fabric that keeps the sand out– and sets his cock free. He eyes it as it bobs, then takes the base in hand, appreciating the heft of it. For a thrilling, terrifying instant, Cobb thinks he’s about to lift up the helmet and take him into his mouth, but Mando lets him go. Instead, he tears open the package, and with one deft hand slides the slip on in a single, smooth motion, so quick Cobb almost doesn’t feel it. He raises the other hand toward Cobb’s face.
“Spit.”
A moment of surprised hesitation passes, but Cobb obeys. He feels heat creeping into his face and hopes it doesn’t show as he leans forward and spits squarely into the man’s palm. Cobb is surprised again when Mando grabs him suddenly by his short beard and gives a slow, light tug, wringing out a palmful of the slick collected there.
Then Mando’s hand is on him, firm and strong. There’s no shyness in his touch as he spreads their combined lust along Cobb’s length. Up, down, wrist twisting skillfully at the head. Cobb sighs sharply, bracing one hand against the wall to keep from crowding forward into the sweet sensation. He knew he was easy to please but damn. Mando works him over with the same precision and thoroughness as he did anything else, and Cobb knows that if he keeps it up much longer he’ll soon be past the point of no return.
Mercifully, Mando releases him. He shifts down the mattress until he’s lying under Cobb, one hand reaching down to spread himself open. Something in the way he does it makes a part of Cobb feel like he’s down range of the man’s rifle.
Cobb follows him. He slots his thighs up under Mando’s and props himself up on one hand, taking his cock in the other and guiding it to where Mando glistens for him. He presses the head to the man’s entrance and uses it to paint a stripe up the slit, rubbing it against Mando’s own hooded dick. Cobb figures he’d like to stay that way a while, rutting them together, then considers what the consequence might be if he denies Mando what he wants any longer. Another time.
He brings himself back to Mando’s entrance, and kriff, it’s good when he sinks in. His eyes flick up to the impassive face of the beskar helmet, which surely hides some exquisite expression that Cobb tries not to wish too hard that he could see. He presses forward slowly until he’s fully seated in that silky heat, watching as Mando’s head tilts back into the pillow.
The deep sigh Mando lets free sounds like relief when Cobb bottoms out, and he can feel muscle clench possessively around him. He pauses to let them both savor it, then withdraws- just barely- before sliding in again. And again, slow, pulling back just a little farther on each thrust, feeling Mando open up. His vision goes hazy, and he can’t stop his eyes from falling closed as he revels in the tight drag along his length. Before long he’s pulling almost all the way out, leaving just the head inside before driving back in to the hilt.
He feels a hand wrap around his arm and he opens his eyes. Mando lays under him, one hand gripping loosely at Cobb’s wrist and the other thrown over the pillow by his head. The tension has faded from the muscles in his neck, his chest. He looks… peaceful.
Cobb leans his face toward the Mandalorian’s helmet, close enough for his breath to fog up the polished beskar. He searches the dark void of the glass as if he might find the man’s eyes if he looked hard enough. “How ya doin’ in there?” He says with half-lidded eyes and an easy smile.
“Don’t be gentle.” Comes the breathy reply from the voxcoder.
Suns above, Mando… Cobb does his best to oblige with his next thrust, working his way up to a rougher rhythm. Cobb can feel the end of his dick battering against what feels like a wall, which seems to be the feeling Mando’s been aiming for, if the sound he makes is any indication.
“Oh, yes- There, harder-”
Cobb’s mostly able to ignore the twinge in his lower back as he drills deep with the crispest snap of his hips as he can manage. The grip around his wrist tightens, as does the one around his cock, drawing a sharp groan from Cobb. Mando’s body rocks forward with each plunge into his furthest depths, and Cobb can’t deny that the sight brings him a little satisfaction. He thinks back to the thinly veiled hostility Mando had afforded him when he’d realized Cobb wasn’t one of his people, an imposter in the stolen armor of a fallen brother.
Take it off, or I will. The Mandalorian had commanded.
Is that a threat or a promise? Cobb had almost said, before thinking better of it. Now, he wishes he had.
“C’n I touch you?” Cobb asks him now, breathless.
It seems it’s Mando’s turn for surprise. Maybe the question seems moot, given their current state. Perhaps others haven’t been as considerate as Cobb. In any case, “Yes,” is the man’s answer, and Cobb’s free hand goes exploring.
He traces over firm thighs, the taut cords of his arms, the powerful flexing of his stomach and the heave of his chest. All the while he keeps up his thrusts, spurred on by the squeeze of Mando's thighs around his hips. Even lying under Cobb, impaled on his cock, the promise of danger radiates from every muscle.
Cobb’s eyes fall shut again. With a bite of his lip, his wandering hand slips up the man’s shoulder, drifting up his neck and coming to rest on the cheek of his helmet.
Immediately Mando’s hand is around his neck, gripping firmly at his pulse point, and Cobb freezes. His growl comes through the voxcoder, deadly cool. “Don’t… touch the helmet.”
Cobb moves his hand down to the man’s chest, eyes wide and heart in his throat. Mando’s grasp at his jugular loosens, but remains.
Tension radiates from the expressionless beskar face. “I didn’t tell you to stop.”
Cobb’s heart thrills in his chest. He blinks, still frozen a moment before doing what he’s told, giving a tentative roll of his hips. He eases back into his meter, tethered by Mando’s stare. He can feel the Mandalorian’s eyes boring into his, and he can’t tear them away. Not until the man’s cunt constricts viciously around him and his eyes roll back into his head with a shuddering moan. His head drops forward, locks of silver hair falling across his face.
Mando’s hand slides up from Cobb’s neck to his jaw, taking a firm hold and tilting it back up to look at him. His thumb swipes through Cobb’s still slick-damp beard before tracing over Cobb’s lower lip. Almost instinctively, Cobb takes it into his mouth. He laves his tongue over it just as he had with the man’s cock, keeping up the rock of his hips into the clenching fever-heat of Mando’s center. He’s made his way back to Mando’s desired intensity and he’s rewarded with those muscled thighs stretching open wider.
Cobb brings a hand to the inside of the Mandalorian’s knee and lifts his leg to his chest, creating a new angle that lets him drive in deeper.
A hiss escapes from Mando’s audibly gritted teeth, but it’s quickly replaced with a deep-chested moan. “Oh, farrik-” He pulls his thumb from Cobb’s mouth and knits his fingers again in Cobb’s hair, the sweetest sting.
This position takes most of the odd-angled tension from Cobb’s back and he’s able to drill down more effectively. He takes advantage by burying himself inside with a new fervor and the Mandalorian’s steely composure finally begins to unravel. Every blow against that wall deep inside forces a punched-out gasp straight through the voxcoder and the hand in Cobb’s hair tugs harder- both sparking equal pleasure.
Cobb looks down between them to see Mando’s hand working in quick little circles just above where they’re connected. It's like a warm breeze crests over his shoulders, and Cobb is suddenly aware of how precariously he’s teetering on the edge.
“M’close,” Cobb breathes, voice strained.
Mando doesn’t skip a beat. “Inside,”
The floor drops out from underneath him. There's a moment of weightlessness, almost numbness, before everything comes crashing back and he’s spilling over. “Oh, s-”
Mando lurches back into the pillows as if in a ship entering light-speed, like g-force throwing him back into the pilot's seat. His body seizes, gripped with shocks that rock up his spine from where Cobb is still pumping into him in stuttered jolts.
“Nndon’tstop-” Mando bites out in a tight-throated gasp, and Cobb fucks him through it as steadily as he can. The walls of his cunt bear down hard around Cobb’s cock as if to wring him out for all he’s worth.
Pleasure bleeds from his belly outward, washing over him and clouding his head. He feels like he’s floating as he slows his movements. The clutch of muscles around him, the heat– everything is starting to err on the side of too much. Overstimulation rears with a sharp sting in the nerves over his cock-head.
“Oh kriff, I can’t- I gotta stop.” Cobb frees himself of Mando’s vice-grip and pulls the slip off to toss into the bedside trash. He collapses forward, mouth coming to rest against Mando’s voxcoder. He listens to the crackle of panting breaths as they even out, feels the rise and fall of his chest gradually slowing.
Mando’s body rumbles under him and it takes a moment for him to register the man’s laughing. It’s an odd noise, like a long dormant machine sparking suddenly to life. It’s disconcerting, and despite the pleasant sound Cobb wavers between caution and wary amusement.
“Dank farrik, I needed that,” Mando sighs, and Cobb’s raised guard abruptly falls with his own bright, tumbling laugh.
“Been a while, huh?” Cobb lifts his head away from Mando’s neck to look him in the eye- approximately anyway.
“You could say that.” Mando sits up to lean against the stone wall, one pillow behind his back. He rolls one shoulder repeatedly, working out a kink.
“They don’t tell ya about that part, do they?” Cobb shifts up the bed to sit next to the Mandalorian. “When ya have a kid.”
“I can’t say I ever thought I would. I’m still not sure how it happened.”
Cobb laughs again. “Well, usually that part’s pretty straightforward.”
Mando shakes his head, but in the way that Cobb knows he’s smiling.
“But uh… now that I’ve seen most of ya… I feel safe sayin’ that wasn’t the case here.”
Mando takes a breath. “I’ve been quested with returning him to his kind. Until then, he’s a foundling. My… ward.” His tone of voice gives Cobb the sense that this is far from the first time he’s recited this explanation.
“Sounds like a noble quest.” Cobb’s eyes wander over the reflections in the man’s helmet, what Cobb is beginning to think of as a beskar face. “I’m, uh… sorry,”
“For what?”
“The helmet. I wa’dn’t thinkin’. Didn't mean to make ya think I was try’n to take it off.”
Mando looks at him for a long moment. “I… believe you.”
Cobb nods, relieved. He smiles suddenly. “It’s funny.”
“What?” Mando asks again.
“Just… we’ve slept together, I’ve looked after your kid. We’ve shared meals, shared a kill, and a victory. You were willing to die to save the people I care about. And I don’t even know your name.”
“I could count on one hand the people who know my name.”
Cobb doesn’t know what to say to that. He’d gathered that Mando was a guarded person, but to keep something as fundamental, as foundational as a name so close to one’s chest… he wonders how that could feel anything but lonely. Mando seems to sense how Cobb worries this revelation in his mind like a dune-smoothed stone between his fingers.
“There are those that would seek to exterminate my Tribe. What remains of my people. Our names carry not just our identity, but our lineage. Our clans, who we call family. If they have one, they could have us all. Some of us would die before we’d give up our name.”
“Secret means safe.”
“Yes.”
Lonely indeed, Cobb thinks, but he can understand.
“Have you ever been a slave?”
Mando turns sharply to face Cobb, and seems to search his face for any indication of how to respond. “No.”
Cobb raises a hand to brush over the scar at his temple- a brand. “I was allowed to keep the name my mother gave me, but only at home. A master wouldn’t stoop to use it.”
“I’m… sorry.”
“It feels wrong to keep calling you Mando… even if I can’t know your name.”
The man sighs, thinking. “I understand the necessity. Most people, when they say it, it’s… unkind. They think that because I cover my face, I am ashamed. That I hide. They fear me, so they look down on me. They feel safer that way. But you… you don’t presume to look down on me. And I don’t think you fear me, at least not in the way that most people do. You can’t see my face, but you look me in the eye. And I… respect you for that.”
Cobb nods, and he can feel the intensity of the Mandalorian’s unblinking gaze even through the black glass of his visor. He has to drop his eyes to his lap before a flush creeps across his face and gives away how his heart bucks in his chest.
“You can call me burc'ya,” Mando says. Something about the sound feels old and sacred.
“What does it mean?”
“Friend.” There’s something tender, almost sad, in his voice. Almost like he’d prefer to use another word.
“Okay,” Cobb extends a hand toward Din ceremoniously. “Nice to meet you, burc’ya.”
Mando accepts it, almost hesitantly, but gives it a firm and earnest shake. Cobb pulls him in, leaning closer to Mando’s ear.
“I hope calling you friend doesn’t mean I can’t still suck your dick every now and again.”
Mando turns his helmet just the slightest bit in Cobb’s direction. “Only if you remember to ask nicely.”
Cobb barks a laugh at that and pulls Mando’s hand to his chest before releasing it. “Now when have I ever done otherwise?”