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Din tries his best to get a grip on himself, knowing that if he were to fall too deep into his thoughts, he wouldn’t be able to get you to safety. He should have known about this. He should have inspected the ice before either of you made your way over the frozen lake. But more importantly, he should have been watching you, or better yet, he should have tried to argue a little more about you going after the quarry with him.
“Pfassk,” he swears to himself when he looks down and sees your skin look more and more faded with every passing second. His legs are beginning to hurt from how fast he’s running. Fucking hell, did he really have to land the ship so far away from the lake? He looks down again and his heart clenches tightly inside his chest. He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he stopped to rest even for a minute, so he tries to run faster, not caring that he’s been making his way through the frozen land for a good while now.
“Stay with me mesh’la,” Din orders you as he shakes you in his hand, breathing a momentary sigh of relief when you force your eyes to open and look at him. There’s a ghost of a smile etched on your beautiful features as your hands try to hold onto the clothes beneath the beskar and it occurs to Din that he was probably making things worse because of his armor. But he can’t care about something like this right now. All he needs to focus on is returning to the ship and putting some heat back into your system.
“I- I’m...s-s-sorry,” your lips are quivering and Din kicks himself at how helpless you feel in his arms, how small and fragile your body seems to be.
“Shhhh, sweet girl. None of that,” his voice breaks when he looks down and sees your tears almost stand still on your bluing skin. His grip on you tightens when he sees his ship in the distance and he somehow manages to sprint even faster now that he was close to saving you.
He tells himself he’s almost there and as he looks down to his vambrace to lower the ramp, he sees your eyes shut slowly before your hold on his clothes loosens. You looked so peaceful like this but he’s reminded quickly that this was quickly becoming the kind of peace that he wouldn’t want, couldn’t forgive himself if you reached. This peace was eternal, and he would be damned if he allowed it to grow closer to you.
“Please cyare, stay with me,” Din begs as he lowers the ramp and stands aside until he can walk through. He steps onto the ship as soon as he can and quickly shuts it behind him, not caring to lock it as he walks through the small hallways until he’s in his room. He thanked the maker for this new ship, knowing that if he had the Razor Crest, it would have been much more difficult to navigate through without bumping your head. As carefully as possible, he lays you on his bed before he runs to the cockpit, immediately turning on the heating system and not caring for how hot it will become within the hour.
He’s back in his room a minute later and before he can think twice of it, he throws his gloves aside and begins to strip you of your wet clothes. Din hisses as he struggles to get the frozen fabric off of you and when it becomes too difficult, he takes out his vibroblade and forces it across your clothes until they literally break off of your skin. He has no time to dwell on the exposed skin his hands are skimming across and when you are as naked as the day you were born, he begins to take his own armor off, depositing the beskar on the floor before he begins to cover it with his flight suit.
Din hesitates for a moment on whether he should remove all of his clothes as he’s done with you but one quick look across your fading skin and he realizes that none of this mattered now. You were the only thing that was important. He lowers his trunks before he removes his helmet and slithers into his bed with you.
He is thankful that you’ve seen him without the helmet before because he’s sure he would have had some sensory overload had he been naked and without his helmet in such a position. Shaking the thought aside, he rests his back across the wall of the ship before he slowly pulls you into his arms. You’re limp underneath his touch and he clenches his jaws at how much smaller you feel now that the two of you weren’t wearing anything. You make a soft noise when Din finally seats you in his lap and he hisses in return when he begins to feel your skin pull the heat from his body.
Din softly moves you into his space, allowing you to nuzzle into his neck as he bends your legs so he’s touching as much of you as possible. When he’s sure this is the closest you can get, he takes hold of the flimsy sheets around his bed and pulls them across to offer you some decency. The last thing he wants is to make you feel uncomfortable when you wake up and even though he was beyond the point of discomfort, he reminds himself that you needed this.
“Please,” Din whispers down to you as he pushes his cheeks against your forehead to try and get you to warm up more quickly and with each moment you don’t respond or move in his arms, his heart sinks even further and he blames himself for not being more careful with you. He moves his arms up and down your thighs and back, trying to force your body to regulate more rapidly.
He thinks back to the past few months you’ve been with him and as he throws his head back against the wall harshly. If only he’d told you how he feels before today. He’s wasted so much time not wanting to grow closer to anyone, afraid of opening up again only to be hurt when you eventually walk away from him.
“I can’t lose you cyar’ika,” Din confesses into the warm air and he shuts his eyes as he feels tears rolling down his cheeks. It’s hard for him to stop once he lets his bottled-up emotions run for him and he can’t find it in himself to care because he’s not sure what he would do if he loses you.
It feels like an eternity later when you begin to shake in his arms and his eyes snap down at your whimpering form when your skin crawls with goosebumps and you try to burrow yourself more into his skin. Never in his life did he think that the sound of your chattering teeth would be sweet music to his ears but he smiles and lets out a pathetic huff when you begin to grab for him and fold yourself even more around his limbs.
“D-Din…” your voice is barely audible but Din thanks the maker that you’re finally awake, and he frantically rubs his large hands across your body to get you to stop shivering. He’s beginning to feel sweaty from how hot the ship is, furrowing his eyebrows when he looks towards the digital numbers displayed on the wall and realizes that the two of you have been wrapped up around each other for almost an hour now.
“I’m here ner ka’rta, I’m here.” He soothes your anxious nerves when he notices you looking around to see where you are. When you finally look into his eyes and gasp, Din has to remind himself that he shouldn’t blame you for whatever reaction you’re having to the proximity. The two of you never really spoke of the obvious, always ignoring the bantha in the room whenever he took off his helmet to eat or lounge around.
But now that you were widening your eyes at him and forcing him to keep your gaze, he feels a little out of place and he prays that you shut your eyes again if only to focus on warming up.
“Ma-maker...you- you’re p-pretty...reall-ly pretty…” Din gulps at the intimate exclamation and he doesn’t know what to say in response so he blinks down at you in confusion. But then you’re reaching up and swiping your thumb across his lips and he feels his heart threaten to jump out of his chest and run away. “I’ve a-always th-thought of yo-your lips...s-so soft, so kis-ssable.” He thinks you’re delirious and he’s about to brush aside the comments but you take your hands away and rest them on his chest as you nuzzle closer into the crook of his neck. Din is hypersensitive and he thinks that there might be a place between heaven and hell, and that it is this moment. You’re in his arms, touching him so intimately and whispering your darkest secrets to him, but he can’t do anything about, can’t respond in likeness, and can’t try to ask you if you truly mean your words. When you shut your eyes, Din panics and unintentionally squeezes your thighs to get your attention. You jump at the sudden touch and look up at him immediately.
“Don’t close your eyes mesh’la, please.” His request tugs at your slowly warming heart and you nod at him as you throat your head back against his shoulder and focus on his brown orbs. It takes you a few more moments to recognize how red they are and you frown when you see the streaks of tears across his scruffy cheeks.
“W-why are you c-crying?” You ask as you reach up and wipe at his cheeks before you lower your hands down his throat and rest it against his chest again.
“I almost lost you ner ka’rta.” It’s perhaps the simplest response you’ll ever receive from him and yet it’s the most complicated due to the intimacy of the moment. You want to ask him why your mistake would make him feel so sad but you feel a shiver run down his spine from where you’re digging your nails into his skin and you finally register the odd feeling that woke you moments ago.
Maker, this was not how you imagined it would be.
If Din notices the sudden shift in your demeanor, he says nothing of it and chooses to lean down and touch his forehead against your own before he shuts his eyes.
“What...w-what does th-that mean?” You ask as you try to shift in his arms so you can return the affection and Din smiles down at you once as his soulful eyes flutter open and hold your gaze.
“My heart.”
You’re not sure what to make of such a declaration, mostly because you never thought your own feelings would ever be reciprocated. So much makes sense in that moment, the way he’s often behaved around you, how comfortable he felt in taking his helmet off when it was only the two of you, how trusting he was in telling you about Grogu and everything that took place before he met you, how thoughtful he was whenever you needed something but were too reluctant to say it. But mostly, it makes sense why he was crying.
“Din.”
“Yes sweet girl?” Din shivers when you whisper his name at him and his eyebrows furrow when you part your lips as your eyes shift to focus on his lips.
“You are...ner k-k’arta.”
It feels like a weight has been lifted off of his soul and he allows the tears to flow more easily as he leans down and softly molds his lips with your own. When you part them to deepen the touch, Din thinks back to moments before, his mind dismissing the previous thoughts the more you seek him out, not just for physical warmth but for a deeper, more emotional one.
No, this moment wasn’t a place between heaven and hell. This was very much heaven for him.
You were heaven for him.