Double the Bet
Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde.
We are one when we are together, we are one when we are apart, we share all, we will raise warriors.
Din whispers those words in the fading twilight, crumbling on his knees before you when he asks you to be his wife. You think the beskar might fall from his body, revealing this soft, dear man beneath whom you love beyond measure or token. In between hushed kisses and pressing your brows together, he teaches you how to say your first sentence in Mando’a, and he laughs tearfully when you tap the words back to him in Dadita. He tries to put the ring upon your finger, his hands free of their leather gloves and trembling, nearly dropping it in his shy excitement. And he kisses each finger, both wrists and palms, and then you, and it is like the fresh air has given him new life, the way he won’t let you go, the way he breathes you in and holds you close.
You want to tell him you that you don’t need vows sworn for him to have your loyalty, your honesty and your love, for he’s had all that and more far longer than even you realize. But for a man of so few words, he seems to relish in giving you this. Promises and oaths, the true blood of Mandalorians, define his honor, and now you are taken into that fold, another sacred branch upon his heart.
Once you have returned to the barn, finding your little green infant chasing a frog at Cara’s boots, the two of you dump the cape open and let the picked blooms shower over the baby who shrieks in unmatched joy. He spends the next few hours running through the barn, picking petals and sneezing and giggling from the pollen. It’s only when you start to clean up the mess that you notice the ring upon your finger is not made of gold or silver, nor of beskar. It’s white with shadows of gold and grey, and only once your little boy is tucked into his borrowed cradle do you ask Din where he found such a thing.
“Not found. Made-by Kuiil,” he says quietly, unlacing his boots and looking up at you from his seat on the bed. It is with surprising swiftness he removes his helmet as soon as you both pin the door’s partition down once your little clan is alone, and your heart flutters when you can see his bare face so close and open. His eyes are dark, like the sheen of obsidian, and his smile is a quirk of a thing that makes you feel a little dizzy. You move to sit beside him and begin removing his bandolier. “I asked and offered to pay, but he wouldn’t accept,” he glances toward you as you glance down at your hand. “Ivory.”
“What?” You blink, looking up at him.
“From the Mudhorn,” Din says, and it takes you several long moments of silence to realize what he means. You glance back at your hand before looking at him again, but he stands and removes his armor with care, his cloak hanging across the nearby chair to dry after being laid on in the grass. His shirt slips upward a little in the back when he removes his belt, and you bite your lip. “He traded with the Jawas for it, after they scavenged the animal.”
“That is quite a favor to ask,” you say softly, touched that someone so dear to both of you would go to such trouble, but Din turns to look at you.
“It is not tradition to give rings between warriors,” he explains, his sock clad feet silent as he steps closer to the bed and crouches in front of you. You want to ask why he feels he can undress here, now, but you are a little distracted by his soft, dark curls and how nice he smells. His warm hands cup the tops of both of your knees like a silent invitation for you to return his touch. You happily lift your fingers to his jaw, tracing his cheeks, sinking your hands into his curls. His eyes close, you think, and he leans into your hands, mumbling, “Can make the gloves uncomfortable.”
“It will never leave my finger,” you swear, smiling and bumping your nose to his. The crinkles on either side of his eyes leave you happier than you can ever remember feeling, and it takes little effort for the both of you to crawl into bed. A hay stuffed mattress has never felt so good when you have Din’s warm chest to lay your cheek on, and you drift to sleep with his fingers in your hair, listening to the deep beating of his heart.
When you open your eyes, you don’t recognize where you are. Your boots are sinking into mud in the middle of an open clearing, the sky so cloudless that the sun hurts your eyes. The air smells of rock and petrichor, dry like the desert during a rainy season, and for a blistering moment, your stomach cramps, afraid you are back on your home planet, in the wilderness.
But then, you hear it. You feel it.
A huge, terrible gust of wind blows the hair from your back over both shoulders, and you drop your head forward, bringing both hands to cover the scream building in your throat. Your muscles lock up, your entire body trembling. Something thumps against the ground hard enough to shake the earth, big enough to rattle your teeth. And it’s getting closer.
You remember your father whispering to close your eyes before he is gunned down by troopers, before the worst thing to ever happen to you happened. Blaster residue mingles with the copper of his blood in the air as he died staring at you hiding beneath his bed. On instinct, you jerk your hands upward towards your eyes, but your breath catches when you see your own hands, blurring in and out of focus.
There is a great, rumbling growl that feels like it now stands at your back, and you ball your fingers into fists. We are not people who don’t do something just because we’re afraid. Are we?
As you turn, your vision sharpens and blurs sporadically, but you don’t need your eyesight to see the hulking mudhorn standing close enough to touch. Its breathing is labored, heaving and sputtering, and all your fears flee when you realize the beast is hurt, is suffering from the huge bloody wound near its neck. Reaching out, your hand gently touches the famed horn, sliding up and down in a soothing motion. Mud caking its woolly fur sloughs off as you pet above its nostrils, and its eyes grow heavy. When it falls, collapsing onto its side, you see the knife wound closer, the tear through the flesh that bleeds freely, and tears begin to pool at your lashes.
Remembering the tale told to you, the decision to sit beside the ugly animal is easy to make, and you continue stroking her dirty fur, watching as her eyes fall closed. Another mother protecting her baby, you think, watching her horn sink until her entire body gives its final shuddering breath.
When you wake up, you’re alone.
The barn is full of sunlight, though, with every curtain pulled back to let fresh air in. Sitting up takes all the strength you have, your body sore from Cara’s training, and you blink away the bleary melancholy of your dream. Your eyes drop to the cloudy outline of your wedding band on your finger, and the joy of swearing yourself to the man you love now hemmed with a peculiar loss.
In the chair nearest you is a fully packed bag, and across from that, you can just make out the outline of the empty cradle.
Beyond the chair, through the open threshold, you make out the familiar blurry outline of the Mandalorian. It only takes you a moment to find your boots, and you drift quietly around, combing your hair with your fingers and doing your best to wake up. You leave your walking aid behind, using your hands to guide you outside.
Fully clothed and armed, Din turns to look up at you as you join him, leaning on his pauldron for balance as you lower yourself to sit next to him on the front steps. Your little one is just as sleep addled as you, laying in his father’s arms and clutching at one of his gloved fingers. The morning is still early, just barely turning from purple to blue in the sky, and you press your knees against Din’s, resting your cheek on his shoulder.
“I packed everything up. We need to move on before the trail goes cold.”
“I know.”
Din is quiet for a while, and you both listen to the sounds of frogs and insects, of birds and villagers alike as the world around you wakes up. He turns his helmet towards you, and you can feel the careful weight of the beskar helm pressing against your crown. “Will you miss it here?” he whispers, his vocoder humming with the low timbre of his voice.
You can hear the sounds of Winta and Omera laughing and talking from inside their cottage not so far away, of the sloshing water in the krill ponds, of the woodland animals and insects calling out in their early morning song. The quiet snores of your little boy in your husband’s arms is the most precious, though.
“Not as much as I miss the covert.”
The helmet’s weight disappears, and you look up into the dark smoke of his visor, hoping you are holding those lovely dark eyes behind the glass. It feels charged, his gaze, direct and meaningful even if you can’t see it. You felt it this way only once before, when he held you in the fathier barn after days of pain and uncertainty.
From down the little dirt path leading to the barn, you hear Cara call out, “Morning, Mando!”
“I love you.”
The simple declaration rocks you nearly down the short flight of steps, and your eyes widen at the Mandalorian as he continues to stare at you resolutely, not even moving when the little drooling boy asleep in his arms snorts. Your smile wobbles, a delicate thing balanced between joy and disbelief. You cup the back of his neck and press your brow gently upward to his helmet, smiling when you hear the trembling in his breath. You allow him to pull back as Cara nears, and you lift the baby into your own arms, standing on shaky legs.
“Good morning, Cara,” you call out only when you know you have control of your voice. Din’s hand settles at your lower back like an anchor, and you smile giddily in welcome as the ex-shock trooper comes to stop at the base of the stairs, propping one of her boots on the bottom step. She has a bag slung over one shoulder and knocks her head to the side with a smile.
“Time to say goodbye. We got a ride to catch.”
Din heaves a sigh before standing up, too, and you watch as he follows his friend toward the cottage to give thanks to your host. You return inside the barn, making the most of your time by changing into the spare pants Din loaned you and one of his old tunics. You look over at the little child sitting on the bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and whining softly at being woken.
Once you’ve slipped your cloak on, the thick fur soft and warming you quickly, you pick him back up and cuddle him close to you, smiling when he buries his face against your neck. He clings to you all morning, through the walk back to the Razor Crest, all through take off protocols and breeching the atmosphere, and even when you take the pilot’s seat so Din can have the freedom to move around while he and Cara begin to map out a plan for capturing the bounty.
Running your fingers over the illuminated controls, you press an idle kiss to the top of the baby’s fuzzy head, reminding yourself where the different switches are that you might need to pull in case of an emergency. The cockpit is still and quiet, and you relish the peace of the soft hum of the engines. After a few moments of stillness, though, you feel the need to occupy yourself so you reach beneath the control board where Din keeps your book tucked beneath for the times that you join him late at night and can’t sleep.
The University of Sanbra Guide to Intelligent Life cracks open with a satisfying strain of leather and paper, and you tuck the baby in the crook of your arm so you can balance the book on your lap. You had marked different sections that Corde and Venka had asked you to read to them more than once, both of them intrigued by so many races and species. A smile lifts your face, remembering Corde declaring she wanted to meet a Cerean, insisting they would have answers to her questions.
A tight knot begins to form in your throat remembering the little ones you left behind, and you blink hard against the burning beneath your lashes. Pressing your face against the wrinkly brow of the baby, you take a deep breath, forcing air in your lungs and the tightness out. His little hands pat at your face, and you listen to his concerned gurgles, as if he might take away your sadness by sheer force of will alone.
And you wonder then, about something that has never occurred to you. Sitting up, you gaze down at the baby in your arms who only looks back with his large, twinkling eyes, and you spread your hand over the open book. None of the species you have read about so far shares anything in common with your little one, but you wonder...
Din told you he doesn’t know anything about the child’s parentage, homeworld, or if there are any others like him. Flipping the pages, you try sorting through the index, which proves to be unhelpful. All you know for sure is that the baby is older than you or Din while still being an infant, yet he understands your language, intentions, and feelings. He reacts when you’re happy or sad, he knows the difference between safety and danger. And he has a power you cannot explain.
Surely someone has documented something about his kind.
“I need a holopad or something-” you mutter, looking around and finding nothing. You remember the paper you’d bought, though, and take a deep breath before setting your book aside and bringing the baby up against your shoulder. You set him in the temporary cradle that occupies the co-pilot seat, and a small afterthought of making some kind of sling for the child passes your mind as you leave the cockpit and descend the ladder into the hull, only to hear two different voices strained with grunting.
Blinking in the dimness of the hull that’s only lit up by meager lights and the open weapons’ locker, you can make out Din and Cara. They’re sitting across from each other, leaning over a shared crate, both of them clasping the other’s hand. They’re straining, trying to overturn the other’s arm, and you blow out a long stream of air.
“Oh blessed Maker, not this again,” you mutter. The last time Din arm wrestled someone, it nearly broke him in half across a cantina bar in Canto Bight, and you remember that very clearly.
“Easy money,” Cara grits through her teeth, reminding you more of a wolf than a woman in how she grins. You cross your arms, unimpressed with their needless display of strength. Cara’s tongue pokes out and wets her lips. “I got you Mando.”
“Care to double the bet?” While Din is straining, he doesn’t sound out of breath. They’re at a deadlock, and you frown. You hardly had enough money for fuel, much less to pay Cara for her reconnaissance, and you’ve never known the Mandalorian to gamble away the few credits he has to his name.
“I’ll never understand gambling.”
“It’s how I make most of my credits these days,” Cara shoots you a grin and wink, and you fight the flush of heat in your face. “I’ll get you something pretty if I win.”
Now fully blushing, you huff, “I wouldn’t accept!”
“She isn’t winning.”
You break into a smile at the petulant tone, watching over Din’s shoulder with renewed interest. “She looks like she’s winning,” you whisper to him, and you bite down on a grin when he leans forward very suddenly, pushing all of his strength into one arm.
“Gev ibac,” Din growls in your direction, and though you don’t know exactly what he’s saying, you can’t keep the giggle down from how annoyed he grows between the two of you. To Cara’s credit, she doesn’t even flinch at the imposed push of strength, the bulge of her muscles remaining engaged and firm from wrist to shoulder.
“I thought you two were planning out how to capture the bounty.”
There’s a silent beat before Cara admits, “She’s right.”
Another tense moment of silence follows, and neither of them disengage. A sigh escapes you, and your eyes roll. “Really? Just-”
Everything in the hull is suddenly thrown on its side, and you are thrown right off your feet. All the crates in the hull slide to the left, slamming into the wall, and the doors to the weapons’ locker bang shut as the Razor Crest swings into a hard dip. Cara is thrown from her seat, rolling across the floor before she scrambles out of the way of several heavy crates careening towards her.
Your back hits the door of the weapons’ locker, and for a moment, you’re so disoriented that you can’t make heads or tails of your surroundings. Din grapples toward the ladder, bumping and sliding into things as he hauls himself up onto the upper deck. Heart pounding, you push yourself up and climb quickly after him, grabbing the hole ridden hem of his cape. He grunts when the Crest takes another unhinged swing in its flight path, and you tug yourself up the ladder until you can get your footing enough to climb up after him.
The child is squealing as he bats the center stick around with glee, and Din nearly hurtles through the observation window trying to grab him up. Another swing of the control and you both careen into the wall, but Din manages to grasp the baby around his middle with one hand and pull the lever back evenly. He hoists the child up in the air above his helmet so you can take him, quickly regaining control to steady the ship.
The Crest settles with a clamoring shudder, and you hold the baby close to your chest, sinking against the back of the pilot’s chair as Din cancels several blaring emergency protocols. As soon as the alarms stop and the cautionary lights cease flashing, he slumps back into his seat with a loud sigh.
There’s a long stretch of silence where the child in your arms simply giggles and burps, his tiny clawed fingers shuffling through the long strands of your hair playfully. You press a kiss to his wrinkly forehead, hiding a little smile against his skin, and you support his back as he begins to try and crawl up your shoulder. After your heart falls back into a quiet rhythm, you ease yourself into the co-pilot chair, petting the child between his ears.
“I should’ve kept an eye on him.”
“I can too,” Din responds immediately. He doesn’t turn in his seat, remains staring forward through the observation deck, and his voice is quiet and subdued. You allow your back to rest in your chair, sliding the little child down into your lap. He gurgles happily, reaching towards you until he can hug at your abdomen and press his face against your tunic. Din’s tunic.
“I’m the caretaker.” You mean it as a joke, something lighthearted and easy.
He turns his chair around then, and you see his boot lift to rest on his knee with the ease of a man who didn’t just have to regain his ship’s trajectory from a tiny alien infant’s chaos.
“And I’m the protector.”
You aren’t certain where this playfulness is coming from, this easy, close feeling after so much darkness has bubbled up in your lives, belching out of the ground like pollution.
Once, you would have held the belief that good things like love are constant, never fading and only growing, but now you can see that it resembles a wide valley between those who choose goodness. What prospers is what you plant there, and the man you know to be your closest friend, the one putting himself in danger to keep your shared love and cloaking his smile behind steel, has never seemed so dear to you.
He begins bobbing his knee up and down, helmet tilting to the side. Sinking your elbow on the co-pilot’s arm rest, you hide your smile behind curled fingers, letting the baby in your lap chirp happily in his own little world as you stare back at his father.
“This is my favorite part,” Din confesses, a surprising depth in his gentle baritone. He rests his gloved hands in his lap, tilting the sharply shaped visor toward his son. “The...flurry before everything snaps into place. So much can go wrong,” his voice softens, and your eyes watch his orange leather clad fingers rub what must be a smudge from his thigh cuisse. He adds, a quiet afterthought to himself more than to you, “If the will isn’t fierce enough.”
“Some things can’t be brute forced, Mando,” you whisper, a secret you have learned hard and honest over the years. Some slaves can’t free themselves, some flowers hold poison. Fervent wishes don’t change what is actually true and real.
His helmet tilts up in one, smooth motion. “You’ve never called me that before.”
A gentle accusation, softened with wonder. You allow him your smile then, dropping your hand from your chin. “It seemed rude, before,” you say, allowing the baby to grab your hand and play with your fingers. Your ring gleams in pale comparison to his little green hands as he turns it about your finger. “Lesser than what you deserve.”
He sits still as a stone statue, silent to the point you think he may have stopped breathing.
“So why now?” he hedges, dropping his boot and bracing his elbows on his knees.
“Because we have a guest on board,” you tell him easily, gesturing over your shoulder to the open cockpit door. You’re not sure how long Cara has been there, beyond your view and hidden, but you can taste her self-satisfaction hanging in the air like woodsmoke, heavy and aromatic. She makes herself known, slouching into view and leaning lazily against the threshold. You ignore the urge to look at her. “And some things-” His name, you think, feeling like a dragon hoarding a prize. “-are private.”
“You shouldn’t listen at doors,” Din mutters, his chastisement bittersweet toward your friend. You think of Corde and Venka, of the two small children he similarly reprimanded, who he protected and cared for more than himself for so long. You swallow down that threat of emotion, though, even when you think of the mudhorn in your dream.
“You should close your door, then,” Cara says, dropping down in the opposite co-pilot chair. She has no fear of spreading herself out, of taking up as much space as she pleases. It’s demanding, irreverent, and a not insignificant part of you finds it charming. She tosses a hand in the child’s direction, who has now settled with his ear pressed to your tummy and holding your hand against himself like he does with his stuffed toy. “You learn a lot from eavesdropping.”
You puff a laugh, shaking your head. “Cara.”
Din rolls his helmet to the side before turning back around. “We’ll be making a jump to hyper drive,” he says, and you can tell by the incline of his shadow that he’s listening for the sound of seat belts buckling. You wait for Cara to fasten hers before asking her to pass the blue blanket draped over the back of her chair, and you fold it around the little child clutching you as Din makes the jump with perfected ease.
“We’ll take Corellian Run. It’s the busiest, but it’s the fastest.”
“That’s a major lane,” Cara says, her voice tense with caution. “What if we get stopped?”
“We won’t.”
Your curiosity prickles like a living thing, tilting your head to try and make out any of the coordinates on the control display as Din types them in. “How do you know?”
“New Republic systems don’t recognize the Crest. If we can get in and out fast enough, no one should even know we’re there,” Din’s voice pitches low, and you swallow when he adds, “I hope.”
Cara cracks the joint in her neck, her heel taking to bouncing her knee. “I swear to Maker, Mando, if you leave me stranded on Coruscant-”
“No one’s getting stranded,” you say quickly, glancing down at the baby checking to make sure he’s close to sleep. The last thing you want to do is start an argument and upset him, and you relax when you find his eyes growing heavy. You take to petting his back, and soon his little snores are the only sound in the cockpit.
“You should get some rest,” Din says over his shoulder, and you don’t know if he speaks to you or to Cara. Probably both. “We’ll be in hyper for a little while.”
Cara heaves a sigh and begins situating herself in her chair as you stand, carrying the baby out. You take him down into the hull where his pram floats quietly, its anchor to Din’s vambrace turned off, and you tuck him into it with gentle hands. His eyes pull open with a mountainous effort, and he starts to fuss, holding his hands out toward you.
“Oh, there now,” you murmur, sitting on the edge of the medical bay and pulling the pram closer. You rock it gently, cooing quietly until his ears droop once more and his eyes fall shut. When his breathing evens out, you withdraw your hands and bow over the pram, kissing his little cheek before closing the shutters.
“Mesh’la.”
You jump in your shoulders, looking over at the armored warrior with one hand on the ladder rung, leaning to one side. You hear a breathy chuckle, and he lets go of the ladder to approach you.
“Sorry.”
You look back down at the pram before turning away and reaching into the medical cot to lift out the old woolen blanket Din keeps as a pillow. “I thought Cara might want it,” you explain, holding it between your hands as you move carefully back toward him. Your own tooled leather boots come to stand nearly toe to toe with his own, and you don’t realize that you’re looking down until a crooked finger gently raises your chin so your eyes meet his visor. You can smell the blaster fuel on his fingers, and it is no longer an unpleasant kind of scent.
“That’s kind of you.”
He doesn’t move his hand away, using his thumb to swipe at your chin in an affectionate touch. His whole body seems to expand and deflate when he sighs next, though, and only then does his hand fall. “I need to tell you something...ask you something.”
“Anything,” you whisper, a smile plucking the gentle curve of your mouth.
His gloved hand gently touches your elbow, and he leads you to one of the crates near the hatch, surprising you when his hands slide around your waist to lift you on top of it. You’re more of a height now, and you feel your body warm when he cups your knees and gently presses them apart. The blanket falls from your hands, and squeaking his name is more instinct than will when he rests his hands on top of your thighs.
But he seems content to just simply lean close, resting against you and the crate and making no further move to incite the heat gathering in your belly. In fact, with the way he barely moves, you recognize the familiar nervousness, the same sensation you had when he wished to take you and the children away to the only place you can remember feeling like home.
“I have enough credits to give Cara for this. Or enough for fuel, but not both,” he finally says, one of his hands picking at a loose thread on his old tunic. You listen patiently, nodding in understanding. The smoky glass of the visor is more shadow to you now, his entire outline like something out of a dream. “Either way, we’ll need the credits, so I thought I might try to take a job while she’s on Coruscant for what we need.”
Your eyebrows lift at the news, though at the same time, you aren’t surprised to hear this. It felt too smooth of him to offer Cara the job at all if he didn’t have a plan in his back pocket. Months before, you would’ve been annoyed, possibly even angry that he would withhold such ideas from you, but you’ve come a long way since his duel with Paz Vizla and making decisions without telling you.
That alone excites you even more than his hands on your body.
“I was thinking…rather, I know,” Din mutters the last bit. “That you won’t like either suggestion, but I need to know what you think is best.”
Now, that is a surprise.
“Me?” you ask dumbly, allowing the blanket to slip to the floor where it pools around his boots. Din glances down at it, then hesitates before nodding his helmet. “Why me?”
His breath puffs through the vocoder, creating a slight static. “Because I don’t want you to go with Cara on Coruscant,” he says slowly, tilting his head back as if looking up at the ceiling will give him strength to get the words out. “But it might be safer than you coming with me.”
It takes you more than a moment to decipher what exactly he means, and you draw yourself up defensively when you realize he’s giving you the option to argue not going with him. He once asked you to stay on Nevarro, too, but he has learned that lesson and learned it well.
“You want me and-and the baby to go with Cara?” you blink at this, especially when he doesn’t speak or move. He makes a long-suffering groan, and you knock on the beskar chest plate, drawing his attention. When he drops his helmet forward, you’re smirking. “Why don’t you try to tell me the entire truth of the matter, and then I’ll give you my opinion?”
Din sighs again, but then he’s moving his hands from your legs to your own fingers, warming them beneath the orange leather of his gloves. “The job came through a hologram, and-and it’s with an old group I used to work with.”
You wait for more, giving him the time and space to find the best words. It’s easier, you think, talking truth and fairness in the dark with sweat cooling on your skin and lungs burning bright. It comes easier to him, in those moments, when there’s a quiet joy shared between you so tightly that nothing feels impossible. It is no small knowledge to you how much this must cost him-far beyond a few hundred credits.
“They’re bad people,” he finally admits, squeezing your hands. “And I was one of them, once.”
Your gaze falls from the visor to his bandolier, counting the ammunition it holds before you choose your own words. It is not hard to imagine this husband of yours creating hurt and pain, and you repress the shiver it brings upon you. That shade is not the man you vowed yourself to, and it is not the one who is trying to keep your son with you, either. Your voice cracks like crunched glass when you ask, “Will you have to do bad things, again?”
“I don’t know.” He pauses, adding, “They might want to.”
You can’t be sure where the peace comes from, the assurance that lays on your shoulders like a warm cloak, but whether it’s from how small Din’s voice sounds or how desperately he holds your hands in his, you are, in the quietest shift, the one holding the answer, the knowledge, the permission to do what needs to be done. These things that would help him to finish the job to protect your little one, to keep your family safe. With the gentlest of pressure, you turn your hands around his own, holding his wrists with comfort, and you smile.
“That was a long time ago, now. I cannot promise I will like what I learn, but it will not make me love you less,” you whisper, letting go of one hand to trace the sharpened cut of the helmet’s cheek. “We both promised to do what’s needed to protect him,” you add, lifting his hand up and pressing a kiss to the inside of his wrist. It’s just where his glove and sleeve don’t meet, baring a glimpse of golden skin. You breathe in the scent of soap, of stale oxygen and well oiled steel, and you look up at his visor. “No matter the cost. Right?”
It takes a moment before he nods, shaky and unsure, and you let go of his wrist to cup both sides of his helmet. Your nimble thumb releases the catch beneath, and you lift it up just enough for your lips to find his own in a quiet, warm kiss. His breath trembles as you smile against his mouth, feeling his hands drop to your waist. He sways when you pull back, and you bump your nose to his.
“I’m coming with you.”