Archive of Our Own

“Stay still for me, my love,” you whisper, raking your hands through his hair, his warm, armorless figure pressed against yours.

He’s sat against the back wall of the sleeping bunk, legs outstretched, you perched in his lap, hands freely roaming his torso. He whimpers as your lips hit a particularly sensitive spot, just beneath his jawbone. The sounds makes your lips curve into a small smile.

He struggles with the attention. You know he does. You know that urge in him—to constantly be doing something because the opposite is contrary to everything he’s ever known. He’s known drive, hard work, servitude—all testaments to a past life he wishes to let go of.

And that past life seems to indefinitely remain in his head, always sending his thoughts racing when he’s not doing something. He seems to think and think and think till he has the urge to push you away in spite of the exhilaration coursing through him, thrumming and thrumming till it becomes complicit in how overwhelmed he feels.

“Din…,” you murmur, and when his eyes snap open, he finds you looking at him, gaze soft, yet unwavering. “Get out of your head.”

The stark reminder is enough to sober him, make him groan at your touch once more.

And you renew your task. Perhaps it’s odd to think of it as such, but it still remains a welcome one.

Because when it comes to pleasure, you want to give him everything he’s never had. You want to alight every nerve in his body that’s never been lit. You want to trigger every pleasurable neuron in his brain that’s never been fired.

Till he’s panting in your ear and closing his eyes in ecstasy because this is the kind of affection he has always deserved.

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Unconditional protection is the next victim.

You’d suspected that protection had always been transactional to him—the Creed had protected him as a foundling for the sole reason that he would one day protect the Creed.

And so he expects nothing more than what he can return.

It’s why he tenses up on those cold nights—those nights where he dreams horrible things, waking with a quiet gasp and then laying so rock still that you’d think his heart has stopped if you didn’t know better.

He tenses as you wrap your arms around him from behind, hand laying over his chest, his back nestled against your body. The slightest shuddering sound—his breath—flutters about in waves that torment him even as you do your best to quell everything.

“You’re okay,” you whisper, and the statement holds a different meaning than what he’s used to. It’s not simply an affirmation that he can forge onwards—it’s one that tells him he can relax, that he’s safe.

And you want him to truly believe that more than anything, that he has someone, that he no longer has to forge his way alone in this unstable new world.  

Your fingers find the raised ridge of a scar on his stomach, making him jolt slightly. The feeling’s not unwelcome, but strange.

And you wish for him to let into it, for his darkest parts don’t define him, and since they certainly don’t, you don’t even bring up such a fallacy. You simply nudge him on, gently, encouraging him to let himself not just be touched, but felt.

I’ve got you. Even when you’re like this.

He lets out a gasp of a breath he’s been holding too long.

Always.

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Din still fights that self-doubt. The one that comes when he thinks, and thinks, and thinks.

Love feels wrong, as if he’s not built to receive such a thing.

You push him slowly—he’s grateful for your effort and patience. Each new move is taken with care—the first time your fingers twist into the curls at the base of his helmet, the first time you slide your fingers beneath his shirt, the first time you say that you care for him.

But some part in the back of his mind flinches at your method of approach, like he’s some nervous creature to look upon with pity.

Even further so, he fears that maybe he is that creature—he fears he’s not strong enough to brave the new territory you want him to traverse.

And all this leads back to the core fear—why me?

He can’t fathom why you would choose someone who’s so terrified to let you near despite the softness of you, the kindness of you.

Because I love you.

That’s your answer when he stutters out his thoughts. Stumbling over words and barreling right past periods. Halting when that whisper leaves you.

Why? he asks.

You gently rest both hands on the sides of his helmet. He think you’re going to take it off, but you merely lean in, pressing your lips to the side of the cool metal. You know.

You brush past him without another word.

I don’t, he wants to say. I don’t.

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But as time passes, he finds that he no longer has a problem with not knowing.

Everything else is enough.

The wandering he’d partook in begins to feel like adventure once more. The thrill he’d thought he’d lost the ability to achieve seems to slowly hum its way back to life.

You’re mine, Din, you murmur to him one day, somewhere quiet, somewhere beautiful.

And he decides he like the feeling of being someone’s.

Someone’s.

Not an idea’s, not a loyalty’s, not a creed’s. Someone’s.

A person he can see and feel. Who can look him in the eye and know him for who he really is. Who can whisper his real name because he’s not a nameless part of anything—he’s himself.

And in the end, he realizes—you’re simply someone who has the capacity to love him back.