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The light in this place is all sickish pink and dangerous, the potent you’ll-be-sorry color of some small and venomous animal, and Cobb Vanth is still laughing as he’s tossed bodily over the bar.
Even as his back impacts the grand glass liquor shelves with a sound like ecstatic applause, even as the display explodes around him, even as his knees and elbows leave wet red smears on the floor when he picks himself back up, there’s no pain—or rather, it’s far away, somebody else’s problem, something to be laughed at. So he does. Laugh, that is, again, harder. There’s music being piped in from somewhere, thrumming away like a full-body toothache.
Cobb’s palms are slippery on the bar when he hoists himself up, and there are diaphanous silks fluttering from the ceiling, and the Mandalorian is shining all sunset-pink and silver behind them, and he’s beautiful, so Cobb jumps on him.
They go down together in a flailing tangle, landing on one of the delicate little low tables and reducing it to matchsticks. Cobb tastes sugar and iron and for one brief glorious second he catches hold of the Mandalorian’s throat, digs his fingers into the wool of the cowl there and squeezes, fingertips mining for warm soft meat to bruise. But in the next instant there’s a knee and then a boot in his stomach, folding his diaphragm like a greeting card and putting him on his back among splinters and sparkling glass. It hurts, in an abstract, academic sort of way, and Cobb doesn’t care. The Mandalorian is standing tall now, looming, and the light in this place loves him.
“You look like a moon right now,” Cobb wheezes at the Mandalorian, smiling dreamily up into the dark T of the visor. “I wanna turn you inside out.” And then he’s hooking the Mandalorian’s feet out from under him with a sweep of his leg, bringing him back to the ground where he belongs.
The Mandalorian’s got the gear and training and hard history, sure, but Cobb fights all mongoose-mean and ugly—more than barebones me-or-you brawling, it’s the kind of fighting that’s learned in awful dirty places, the kind of fighting born of deep hurt and a dark sick need to hurt back threefold.
Cobb’s got his hand over the cold face of the Mandalorian’s helmet, grinding his head down into the packed dirt floor, and then the Mandalorian’s rolled them and there’s a steel-plated forearm at Cobb’s throat and a gloved hand in his hair threatening to snatch him bald. Cobb chokes and marvels at how pretty it is, how crazy-making that the Mandalorian fights him like he’s appreciating art, delivers and takes blows like he’s sampling imported brandies, absorbs all of Cobb’s nasty little tricks and gives them right back with vicious good grace.
And now the Mandalorian’s on his feet again, kicking for Cobb’s knees, but Cobb dances out of reach. It’s a blessing that Cobb knows exactly where the vulnerable points in armor like the Mandalorian’s are—joints and underarms, abdomen and crotch—otherwise this fight would’ve been over as quick as blinking. He accepts a glancing right to the jaw as fair recompense for getting up close enough to sink his knuckles into the Mandalorian’s gut.
As the two of them break apart again and circle like desert hyenas eyeing a carcass, Cobb thinks he might not be the only one laughing now, but it’s difficult to tell with the music pounding away like that.
It’s hard to breathe in here, and it’s not just on account of the punishment Cobb’s ribs and stomach have taken. The air is just so damn thick and wobbly, heavy with some secret pathology, sweet like a festering infection. It’s terrible. It’s delicious. Cobb wants to wriggle out of his skin and eat it like a shedding lizard. He can’t remember why they came here in the first place and he wants to go to his knees and pray at the bar like an altar. They’re probably going to die here, like this, expiring with their teeth in one another’s throats, and it will be perfect. Cobb wants to scream, to touch, to cry, to kill, to come. His face is the wrong size. His eyeballs are boiling in his skull. He smiles and snags an enormous hookah by the neck from a nearby table, shatters it against the Mandalorian’s shoulder.
(“I’m expensive,” the Mandalorian says, doing a sort of holo hero hip-cocked lean against the doorframe that toes the line neatly between effortless and ridiculous.
Cobb, a little giddy with the thrill of tracking the man down on little more than vague rumor and dumb luck, reaches out to slap one of the silver pauldrons amicably. It’s hot beneath his hand, and his palm comes away stinging. “Sure you are,” he says, and grins. “Bet we can figure out a payment plan, though.”
All around them, idling ships hum themselves to sleep in the cradles of their berths while Mos Eisley drowses in the hellish heat of midday. The Mandalorian’s impassive helmet tilts first one way, then another, and he peels himself out of the spaceport mechanic’s doorway. “I’ll hold you to that,” he says.)
Cobb goes down like a sack of shit and bites his tongue when he hits the ground. It tastes good. He’s bleeding. His teeth don’t feel like they’re holding onto his jaws as tightly as they ought to be. The Mandalorian’s boot is on his throat, and yeah, oh yeah, he’s laughing too, Cobb can hear it now beneath the pulse of the bass. He sounds happy, really happy. Cobb likes that for him. It’s a good sound, kiddish and sweet. Cobb thinks he might like to chew it out of the Mandalorian’s chest.
It’s lucky Cobb’s a bendy old bastard, always been weirdly loose at the joints, so it’s easy (not so easy as it would’ve been say twenty, thirty years ago, but even so) for him to pull one knee up to his chest and drive his heel into the fork of the Mandalorian’s legs.
There’s something there, he can feel it, some kind of cup or something beneath the Mandalorian’s trousers cradling all his tender bits, so Cobb probably doesn’t do any real damage. Maybe he’s disappointed, maybe he’s relieved. He can’t tell. He’s still deciding as the Mandalorian staggers back with a strangled little dank farrik and folds double over his own lap.
Even like that, even all crumpled up like a used hankie, Cobb can still hear him laughing—hell, giggling.
(“I think I hate Mos Eisley,” the Mandalorian says, unprompted.
“You do?”
“More and more each time I visit.”
Cobb chuckles, unaccountably pleased. “Everyone hates Mos Eisley.”
They’re crouched atop a low round roof, Cobb and the Mandalorian, side by side in the bruisey evening light. The air is cold now but the roof is still radiating heat. The contrast is a little thrilling. Cobb feels new and hungry and dangerous for the first time in a long time. Something in the air, maybe something in the cockeyed glare of the moons. It’s a ghostly sort of night.
Below, music bumps away and the squat little club oozes sugary pink light onto the sand outside from its little porthole windows. There are gauzy purple curtains at the door, stirring in the breeze. It’s arresting, almost pretty, in a sleazy sort of way. It’s the sort of place bad men go to try and make-believe softness for a night. A long time ago, Cobb might’ve just torched the whole damn building and all its inhabitants and been satisfied. He finds collateral harder to shoulder in his old age.
“I’ve got… hmm, two, three,” the Mandalorian says, sniper scope clicking tinnily against his visor as he pans from window to window. Cobb wonders if he ever loses track of where his own eyes are. “No, four.”
“Should be six,” Cobb says, and smiles wide. The dry night breeze is cold on his teeth and gums. “I want the complete set, y’know.”
“Guess we’ll have to go in and find the other two, then. Wouldn’t want to short you.”)
The Mandalorian is fetched up against a be-ribboned support column, knees splayed, gloved hands tight around Cobb’s ankle.
“Does it hurt real bad?” Cobb asks, grinding his bootheel down just a little bit harder into the Mandalorian’s crotch, feeling the shape of the cup and pushing it down, in. He feels taller than he was when they walked in here, wider. He wonders how he’ll ever fit back through the door when they leave.
“I don’t know,” the Mandalorian says. He doesn’t try to pull Cobb’s foot away. There’s a laugh hiccuping beneath his voice, still. One of his hands has started to pet at Cobb’s calf, up and down. “This is good. I feel good.”
“Yeah, good,” Cobb agrees, and rolls his ankle slow and deep. The Mandalorian makes a high, whining sort of sound, so Cobb does it again, to decide if it’s a pain noise or not. Cobb says, “You could shoot me, you know. Burn me.”
The Mandalorian shakes his head no. “Yes,” he says. “I could.” He cups Cobb’s knee in one hand.
“I could shoot you,” Cobb says.
“You could.”
“I want to hit you again,” Cobb says.
“Okay,” says the Mandalorian, and tips his helmeted head.
“I want you to hit me some more.”
“Okay,” says the Mandalorian.
“I want to stay here all night. I want you to break all my ribs,” Cobb says. “I want to see your mouth. I want to stick my cock in your mouth.” He’s a little puzzled. He doesn’t think he wanted that a second ago. He wants it now. It’s funny how simple things can be, if you let them.
“Okay,” says the Mandalorian, and it’s easy as that. He’s got one hand behind Cobb’s knee and one hand at the lip of his helmet now, pushing it up and holding it there at nose-height, expectant. His lower lip is bloody, split or bitten.
Somehow, Cobb’s pants have come undone. He might’ve done that himself, he can’t be sure anymore. He’s hard, maybe has been the whole time, and he doesn’t know how he didn’t notice that until now. He’s—kriff, he’s so hard his hips ache. Somehow, it’s not as nice of a feeling as having the Mandalorian’s hands around his throat, the Mandalorian’s fists in his kidneys. This hurts.
“Hurts,” he tells the Mandalorian’s bleeding mouth, hoping it understands somehow.
Gently, the Mandalorian relocates Cobb’s foot from his crotch to the floor so he can push himself up onto his knees and shuffle up close. He sets his free hand on Cobb’s bony hip, fits his thumb to the bony ridge of Cobb’s pelvis. “I think maybe something isn’t right,” he says, sounding dreamy and untroubled, and opens his mouth all wide and soft in invitation.
(“Suppose there’s no point going in there and trying to be sneaky about this,” Cobb says. They’re standing outside the club just out of sight of the doorman, blasters in hand, indulging in a few final bracing deep breaths before whatever’s to come.
“Suppose not,” the Mandalorian agrees.
“Alright, then.” Cobb thumbs back the safety on his blaster. “We’ll talk payment when we’re done, yeah? You know I’m good for it.” He can’t suppress a wink. At least he thinks it’s a wink. He’s never really sure if he’s winking or just blinking aggressively.
There’s a hand on Cobb’s forearm suddenly, and the Mandalorian is looking at him, helmet at what Cobb has come to understand is a contemplative angle. “Buy me a drink,” the Mandalorian says. “Or two.”
“What, now? Here?”
A low huffing noise fizzes out through the modulator. “Later. Somewhere else. Long as you’re good for it.”)
He feels better with the Mandalorian’s mouth on his cock, Cobb decides. Pleasantly far-away again. Less like his soul is dying a slow heat-death in his balls. There’s an awful lot of teeth, though. Not much creativity, either—just poultry-like head bobbing and no small amount of gagging.
“You’re not very good at this,” Cobb sighs, not unhappily, and pets the silver dome of the helmet. “It’s nice, though. Feels nice. It’s helping. Feels better. Real nice. You’re nice.”
The Mandalorian makes a sound in his throat, maybe in acknowledgment of the dubious praise. He’s still got one hand on the edge of the helmet, holding it up at the bridge of his nose so it doesn’t slide down.
“You’ve got a mustache,” Cobb informs the Mandalorian helpfully, in case he wasn’t aware of this fact. The Mandalorian makes another little noise around his mouthful, and a follow-up thought surfaces sluggishly amid the mud of Cobb’s brain. “Do you have hair? I want to see. I want to pull your hair. If you have it.” Some deeply-buried part of his mind bleats in protest, as if this could possibly be a bad thing to ask. He can’t think of why that would be.
Without pausing in his efforts, the Mandalorian pushes the helmet up further, pushes it up and off, lets it roll right off his head and onto the floor. He doesn’t look back at it, doesn’t even seem to remember that he took it off from one second to the next.
There’s some reason this shouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t matter. Cobb’s got his fingers in the Mandalorian’s dark hair and it’s good, a perfect handle for him to move the Mandalorian’s head and correct his rhythm. Better. Much better.
“Feels nice,” he says again, and pulls the unresisting Mandalorian’s beaky nose hard into the gray thicket of his pubic hair so he can come quick and sweet into his spasming throat.
(“Evening, gentlemen,” Cobb drawls.
There’s something to be said for making an entrance through billowing door curtains, he thinks. Sort of puts the Mandalorian’s proclivity for capes into perspective.
It’s almost sweet how every member of the party at the low table is sporting a matching yellow kerchief—around the upper arm, around the neck, around the forehead—like kids playing at bandits and war. And they are kids, really, all pink-cheeked and sparsely bearded, trying to look brave and unbothered for the hungry-eyed girls in their laps.
They’re so young. Cobb knows them, has been them. It doesn’t make him hate them less.
“Marshal,” says one of the kids, tipping his chin up defiantly. He’s got one of the house girls on his knee but he doesn’t seem to know where to touch her. She keeps grabbing his wrists and patiently relocating his hands to her waist and breasts. Cobb doesn’t think he’s imagining the see what I put up with? look she shoots his way. With one hand clutching at the girl’s breast like a doorknob, the kid grins broadly and says, “Hope you’re just here for a drink. We’ve got you a bit outnumbered, otherwise.”
As if on cue, another yellow-kerchiefed kid comes sailing through the back exit, landing in a heap atop another party’s table and scattering them like screeching sand-skitters. The Mandalorian strolls in after him and he looks enormous in this place, this little no-name club, not entirely real.
“Found number five,” the Mandalorian says, quiet modulated voice somehow managing to carry even over the music.
The blaster is warm in Cobb’s hand, drawing a steady bead on the mouthy baby-faced leader of the jolly little crew. “Where’s your sixth man?” Cobb says, smiling. “There were six of you, at my count.”)
“Hurts,” Cobb whines again when the Mandalorian pulls back to hock a thick wad of come onto the floor. Cobb’s still hard, thinks he might never stop being hard. It’s the worst thing he’s ever felt. But maybe they can go back to before, he thinks hopefully, to the fighting, when everything was all savage and perfect and pain was a distant memory. Cobb pets helplessly at the Mandalorian’s dark hair, the stubble on his cheeks. “Hit me again, will you? Will you? Can I hit you?”
In response, the Mandalorian reaches up to catch hold of Cobb’s unbuckled belt, using it to tug Cobb down to his knees on the floor in front of him. Cobb’s pants slip down beneath his ass, but the momentum carries him down with them.
“Hurts,” the Mandalorian agrees, voice rough and foreign, and he’s got eyes the color of the new moon. His mouth is bleeding still and there’s a pink froth of blood and come dripping down his chin, so Cobb leans in to lick it off his teeth, to kiss it from his mustache.
“Hit me,” says Cobb.
“Fuck me,” says the Mandalorian.
(“I could tell you about how he had two kids and no spouse and all that kark,” Cobb says conversationally. “But I won’t. You don’t care. So just know this: that town and its people are under my protection, and you’ve proven yourselves to be a problem. So I’m gonna solve the problem. Simple as that. Ladies, go ‘head and get yourselves gone.” He motions with his blaster, and the working girls disappear, quick and quiet as rats.
In fact, the entire club has emptied out without fanfare—those who frequent places like this on the regular tend to know the score.
“Warm or cold?” the Mandalorian asks, and the visor of his helmet gleams like something holy, something that demands tribute.)
Cobb’s palms are cut up, bleeding. At least it’s something wet to work with.
“I want—I want—I need—” the Mandalorian is groaning into the crook of his elbow. He’s bent over the bartop, fever-hot around Cobb’s fingers. The angle’s bad—bar’s too high—but he’s rolling back against Cobb and making noises like he couldn’t dream of anything better if he tried, like he needs this to survive. Cobb can feel his pulse inside him, can count his heartbeats with his fingertips. He leans in to put his nose in the Mandalorian’s hair, and it’s easier to breathe.
“Yeah, sugar, oh honey, oh you bastard, oh it hurts,” Cobb whispers into the place where the Mandalorian’s skull meets his spine, and wriggles a third finger in, slippery with his own blood.
(They never do see the sixth man. But it must be him they hear give a short sharp whistle just before something small is tossed in through the window and lands at Cobb’s feet.)
They fuck against the bar, hard and fast and graceless, and then again on the floor next to it, and then standing against the column. The music is far away but Cobb still feels it in the roots of his teeth. Every time the Mandalorian comes, he laughs and shudders. Every time Cobb comes, he feels like all his organs are evacuating his body through his cock. The air smells like rotting fruit.
The Mandalorian puts Cobb on his back on one of the low tables, leans in close to his face and tells him, “I think I’m lonely,” and smiles an awful smile as he sinks down, working his hips in slow torturous little circles.
“You feel lonely,” Cobb agrees, and grabs the Mandalorian’s sharp hips to pull him down closer and get deeper, to maybe get near enough that the two of them will fuse into one many-limbed monster.
“I’m not lonely right now,” the Mandalorian says, and guides one of Cobb’s hands insistently to his own cock, wraps Cobb’s fingers around himself.
Cobb works the Mandalorian hard and slow, pulling another breathless laugh and something like a sob out of him, growls things like honey and sweetheart because it makes the Mandalorian pant louder. When the Mandalorian comes this time it’s violent and almost dry and he clenches hard around Cobb and screams, and somewhere, distantly, Cobb thinks he hears himself screaming too.
(The object bounces once, twice, and then there’s light, white and blinding. Cobb’s on his knees. The music is loud. There’s a smell like burning sugar.
When his vision clears, the baby-faced murderers are gone and the Mandalorian is standing over him, tall and glittering and sort of crooked. The air has gone wobbly and pink.
Cobb feels his mouth move, hears his own voice saying, “I want to hit you,” and, “I want you to hurt me.” And it’s true, he realizes. He does want those things. He laughs at the realization.
“Okay,” the Mandalorian says muzzily, and he leans down to seize Cobb by the collar and the back of his trousers and heaves him over the bar as if he weighs nothing at all. And Cobb is still laughing.)
“Dank... farrik,” the Mandalorian mumbles into Cobb’s neck.
Something’s changed. The air is clear. The music is still loud. Cobb feels like hell.
“I feel like hell,” he says aloud.
“Mmngh,” the Mandalorian agrees. He’s heavy and hot and Cobb’s softening cock is still inside him but if either of them moves, Cobb thinks he might scream again, or possibly die. Cobb feels like a human sunburn, every inch of him raw and tight and tender.
“What in the hell was that?” Cobb groans.
“Dunno. Something creative.”
The Mandalorian’s hair is plastered to the side of Cobb’s face with sweat and other unmentionable fluids. His hair? His… Cobb frowns. Oh. He might vomit.
“I’m sorry.” Cobb squeezes his eyes shut, but he knows it’s too late, far too late.
“Hmm?”
“Your helmet,” Cobb whispers. He wonders if the Mandalorian will kill him. He doesn’t want to die. I’m good for it, he hears himself say.
“Hmm,” the Mandalorian says again, and doesn’t move.
“I’m sorry.”
With an almost audible crunch of drying come and blood, the Mandalorian peels himself up off of Cobb, and yes, Cobb does have to bite back a scream as his flayed-raw cock slips free.
“Hey. Vanth. Hey, look at me,” the Mandalorian says. His voice is mostly gone, scraping low in his chest.
Cobb shakes his head.
“Come on. Please.”
The Mandalorian’s leaning over him when Cobb opens his eyes, hands braced on either side of Cobb’s head on the table. He’s filthy. His mustache is dripping with sweat and it drips onto Cobb’s chin. His breath is rank. He might be trying to smile, but it could also be a grimace. Either way, it’s not the face of a man about to execute a trespasser
“It’s been a weird year since I last saw you,” the Mandalorian says, and licks his swollen bloody lips. “I’m… learning. Adapting. Trying to, anyway.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Cobb says. He wishes he could smile back but his face is too tired.
“Me either,” the Mandalorian says, and laughs—just a wry little snort, not the high wild sound from before. He looks nervous, but not afraid. Shaken, but not shattered. “Let’s regroup. Finish the job. Then buy me a drink and I’ll try to explain.”
Cobb examines the Mandalorian’s dark eyes, the bridge of his prominent nose, the curl of his damp hair. Somehow, it isn’t a stranger’s face.
“I hurt you,” Cobb says, one last token protest.
The Mandalorian shrugs. “I hurt you.”
It’s the sort of truth Cobb thinks he can live with, given time and distance and maybe a drink in friendly company.
“Okay,” he says, and adds, experimentally, “partner.” There’s no mistaking the Mandalorian’s smile for anything other than that this time.
Between the two of them, they retrieve Cobb’s shirt and trousers from atop the bar, the Mandalorian’s boots from under a table, his helmet from the floor, his thigh guards from beneath a stool. The place is, mercifully, empty as a cracked bowl. There’s gray morning bleeding in through the windows, and the music is still loud.
It takes only one shot from the Mandalorian’s blaster to destroy the speaker hidden behind the bar.
Later, Cobb will laugh only a little when he apologizes for kicking the Mandalorian in the jewels, and the Mandalorian will use forceps to delicately remove glass from Cobb’s knees, and while they sit together stinking of bacta and sweat and worse, the Mandalorian will remove his helmet again, carefully, and smile when he introduces himself as Din.
But for now, ears ringing, skin and bones and guts aflame, they lean on one another and walk out of that place like one awkward four-legged beast, limping and wounded and halfway dead but moving forward all the same.
