Archive of Our Own

Paz liked spring best. It was when the sea came back to the life he could spot from his boat, or from the weathered yet solid pier reaching out into the water. Shoals of fish skimmed just under the surface, glittering and too small for him to even bother hauling a net out. If he sailed out a bit farther, he would come across the reef — the official threshold to the open ocean and the line marking how far out Ragnar was allowed to go. 

Paz glanced at the boy through the window. Ragnar was walking through the shallows, sifting through the sand in thick rubber gloves, no doubt looking for seashells he so adamantly collected. A small display laid on his bedroom window, the smaller specimens and coral pieces kept in a small jar. His greatest treasure was a chambered nautilus shell, meticulously cleaned of mucus and sand, left to soak in water overnight, dried and carefully placed on the windowsill. Paz himself wore a necklace with a coral piece, small and dainty but sturdy; one of Ragnar’s first finds after a particularly violent storm. Back then Vizsla still sailed far out to throw nets in the open ocean, often for days at a time, so the boy gave him the trinket as a safety switch, to guarantee that his father would always come home after a grueling job.

Paz knew from early youth that the sea was cruel and unforgiving, and that it was never a good idea to face it unprepared. He’d heard stories of ghost ships — fishing boats floating with no soul onboard, abandoned and eerie — of unsolved disappearances and of phenomena unseen on land. Presence of entities just behind an unsuspecting sailor, constantly in their peripheral until they turned around and all that they saw was an empty deck. Leviathans of the deep rising to the surface once the sun came down or entire swathes of the sea glowing with a mysterious light. Paz wasn’t a man blindly giving into superstitions or stories passed around for decades, he investigated a few of these mysteries himself either as a boy or a young man (he was too tired to constantly try to explain every single mystery the ocean unveiled one at a time); the intriguing glow was nothing more than bioluminescence and the enormous creatures could suffer from deep-sea gigantism. 

Paz spent hours explaining them to Ragnar when the boy was small and couldn’t sleep. He did his best to soothe the fears that seemed to haunt him, extending their tentacles like a giant octopus all to grab the shaking child and pull him down to the depths. Everything was possible to explain in Vizsla’s book. All the mysteries had to have a logical, sensible solution. There were no sea monsters , only species yet undocumented. 

Deep down, though, he worried sick every time he had to sail out at dusk. He’d seen a few bizarre things himself, but he buried them deep below. A school of pale, silvery predators piercing the dark water at night, fast enough to only glint in the moonlight. An undoubtedly giant something that bit clean through the yellowfin tuna he was hauling up, leaving him with a gored half of a fish, its flesh pink with blood. A thing that smoothly rose above the surface, exposing its ridged back and a tail unlike any other Paz had ever seen, and he worked with fish for a living. He’s hooked, netted, cleaned and gutted thousands of them by now — that thing was unlike anything else. Mackerel, salmon, tuna, grouper, halibut, dorado, none of them resembled the creature even slightly. It was neither a shark (the silhouette was all wrong) nor a sunfish (too sleek), nor a ray (not flat enough). 

Maybe he was going insane from all the time spent alone out in the open sea. An unexplainable apparition would be a pretty steep first step, though.

Paz put the knife down, finishing his daily work. He rarely had to buy fish, he was usually easily able to supply whatever they wanted for dinner unless it was something that didn’t come from the sea; then he made his way to the stalls with Ragnar in tow, the boy holding his hand as if he could get lost, as if Paz would let him get lost ( a Mandalorian is never lost , his father used to tell him when teaching him how to navigate with a compass) and bought what they decided on. He cleaned his work area, put the cleaned and gutted salmon on the pan on low heat and looked out again.

Ragnar was nowhere to be seen. 

Before Paz’s heart managed to stop for a second, the door opened and Ragnar was right there, leading inside a man. Vizsla huffed. In any case, a gutting knife will have to do as a weapon of self-defense.

“Buir!” Ragnar rushed inside, but the man stood still in the doorway; at least he had enough decency to close the door. 

“Ad’ika”. Paz crouched to look his son in the eyes. “What have I told you about bringing strangers home?”

The man shuffled uneasily, clutching a rolled blanket to his chest. “Are we strangers now?”

Manda, Paz thought. He hadn’t heard that voice in a decade or so, ever since Din Djarin left the town for a bigger life. A part of him was glad to see he had failed, miserably so if he was back here, on Paz’s doorstep at that, but another part of him — could it be his heart? — was ablaze with joy that he had returned. Din Djarin was the only man Paz had ever truly loved, stupidly like only a young man could, with his entire heart and without a single thought. He had had everything planned out, there was nothing he had wanted more than to grow old together with Din, except Djarin apparently hadn’t wanted that at all.

He disappeared one day, just when the sun rose at dawn, took his boat and sailed away. All he left was a note, a rapidly cooling spot in Paz’s bed and a broken heart. The ring that signified their love laid unused in the bedside table drawer, slipped off and buried among other trinkets.

“Aren’t we?” he replied coldly, herding Ragnar to his room. “Give us a moment. I’ll call you for dinner”.

The boy obediently left, closing the door. 

Vizsla straightened up. “What do you want?”

“There's a storm coming in” Din said, as if that would sufficiently justify his decade-long absence. “I just docked when your son came to me and told me I should hide”.

“What if I don’t want you here? You left on your own volition, abandoned me, and now you want to come back?” Paz crossed his arms. Shock gave way to anger, surging in his veins, cold and violent like a current. “You’re too late”.

Djarin shifted uncomfortably. “Please. Look, if I was alone, fair, I would have huddled it outside. But I’m not”. The bundle in his arms began to whine. Din gently rubbed it. “Fatherhood found me anyway”. 

They argued about children back when they were younger and looked at the future together. A child or two, adopted and given a new home, raised according to the Six Tenets. Paz knew he was meant to be a father, that he was meant to raise a child — of his own flesh and blood or an orphan taken in — while Din still wondered. The force that drove Vizsla with such confidence seemed to be absent in Djarin’s case, and that was the bone of the conflict. Still, Paz expected the solution to be a mature discussion and small steps, not leaving in the early morning without a single word, only a note to afford the man he loved some closure.

Manda, if he was alone, Paz would have thrown him out without a second thought. Let him get soaked to the bone, cold and tired until he came begging to the door, hands pressed flat against the wood, but when there was a child involved — especially as small as the one Din cradled, its size classified it as definitely a newborn — Paz was inclined to cede some ground. “Fine” he decided. “Your kid must be cold. I’ll see if I have any of Ragnar’s old clothes somewhere”. 

“Thank you”. A moment of silence laid heavy between them. “It’s a boy. His name is Grogu”.

“Grogu” Paz repeated. “What kind of name is that?”

Din shrugged. “It’s the sound he makes when he refers to himself, I think”.

“You think ? What kind of kid do you have?”

A resigned, exasperated huff was his only answer. “See for yourself”.

And Paz did. He expected a wrinkly, scrunched newborn, wrapped in something warm under the tattered blanket that shielded it from the element, but the child was anything but. First of all, it was green . Green like washed-out, sun-dried seaweed. Its eyes were big and beady, yet somehow the same warm brown that Djarin’s own. Its ears were huge and pointed, triangular in shape, and seemingly very sensitive; the kid babbled when Paz’s finger accidentally touched one. 

It was the first time in Paz Vizsla’s life when he was truly and completely at a loss for words. 

“What the fuck” he spat out after a while. “What is he?”

Din shrugged with unease, as if his shoulders were weighted down with the mass of the steel-grey, rolling storm.

“I don’t know. He got all tangled up in my net, I took him out, cut him free and nursed him back to health. I just couldn’t throw him back in, he was so tiny and helpless”. Din gently caressed the kid’s head. “Something would have eaten him”.

Paz nodded. It made sense; the open ocean was a highly competitive zone. A zone as ruthless as possible, full of sharp teeth, piercing bills and svelte hydrodynamic bodies, where if you couldn’t defend yourself, you had to be fast. The child, obviously, was neither. “Probably. Okay. Fuck. Give me your kid—”

“Grogu”.

“—give me Grogu. Go take a shower, you reek. What does he eat?”

Din’s tired gaze was a response enough, he figured, even if the man hadn’t added everything before going off to the bathroom. The kid seemed small in Din’s arms, cradled and tenderly embraced. In Paz’s arms, however, he seemed tiny, nearly drowned in the dark blue material of his shirt. 

“Alright. Let’s see”. It’s been ages since he’s held a little child like that; Ragnar has been too big to carry on his arm for years now. When the boy was small, newly adopted, he spent days clinging to his father, adapting nearly all his habits and behaviours. He refused to cut his shoulder-length, black hair, the only compromise they found was braiding it to keep it neat and out of his face. With Grogu, he mused, there would be no problems like that, as he had no hair whatsoever, only big dark eyes.

They reminded Paz of a certain fish he’s accidentally hooked once. A stargazer. This species of fish spent its days buried in the sand, with only its protruding eyes out, solidly set in their sockets, aiming upwards. 

Big, beady eyes, terrifying at first glance yet weirdly endearing as well.

It turned out that Grogu really ate everything. Paz offered him some cooked fish, which was refused in favour of small raw fish. The kid slurped happily, chewing on soft flesh and occasionally hiccuping. Vizsla reacted just in time to pry an unopened clam out of its mouth. 

“You need to open it beforehand. Look”. He cracked the shell and spooned the contents out. “There you go. Don’t go so fast, you’ll choke”. 

Grogu only stared at him, swallowing. A few more fish later he blinked slowly, burped loud enough to scare himself and promptly dozed off. Paz wrapped him in a clean blanket, deciding to give the little one a bath when it woke up again. 

Din was standing in the living room when Paz returned. He was still wet, but at least clean, dressed in Paz’s sweatpants and a sweater. Now the dark rings under his eyes were obvious, stark against his complexion, and exhaustion seemed to have settled in his bones. 

“I’ll give it back when my clothes dry” he explained, almost apologetically. “I’m sorry”.

“Don’t worry about that”. It was nice to see his clothes on Djarin once again, just as oversized as they used to be. “He’s fed and sleeping, but he needs a bath”.

“I’ll wash him. We won’t be trouble”.

“I hope so. I don’t need any more trouble than I’ve got with Ragnar. Ragnar!” he called. The boy came in, sheepish in his posture. Paz pecked his forehead. “It’s all fine. Set the table for three, please”.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all wrong; that this wasn’t how they were meant to share meals and spend time together. They were supposed to be in love, to be building a life together in this house, to found a family. It clung to him like salt after a long day at sea, like the smell of rotting seaweed to beaches when the summer season came, like barnacles to anything submerged for long enough. 

“Thank you”. Djarin’s voice was raspy. “I didn’t expect to be welcomed”.

You aren’t, Paz thought to himself, but decided to be civil. There were children sharing the table with them, and he would never intentionally drag Ragnar into the mess that his past love was. “I wouldn’t leave a father and his child outside with the storm rolling in”. 

The waves were already breaking on the pier, white foam smothering the surface and drenching the old, sturdy wood. Rain turned into downpour, smattering the windows until the view behind the glass was nothing but splashes of cold, muted colours. 

“Still. I will be out as soon as I find a place to live”. Din wiped his mouth and put his utensils down. “I’ll wash up. Please” he added quickly. “I feel like a leech already”.

Ragnar left for his room — they put Grogu there down for a nap, in an old armchair in the corner that Paz used to sit in when reading his son bedtime stories — and the men were left staring at each other. There was nothing they could possibly say that would make the fault forgiven and the respite recognised, and yet. 

Paz sighed. This wasn’t how he envisioned his day would go. He was supposed to finish his work (done), prepare dinner (done) and rest after a long day before he would have to haul it out to check the nets (derailed). He worried a little about the nets, if the storm would leave them undamaged or if it would thrust more fish into them, but he’d have to sail out anyway. Maybe he’d take Djarin with him; Ragnar could easily keep an eye on Grogu for a few hours.

“I did tell you that wherever I was, there was always a place for you to stay”. He stood up heavily. “I won’t throw you out, but I’ll need you to help out here”. 

“Paz”. Din looked at him wearily, the clattering dishes carefully lowered into the sink and a sponge in his hand. “I’m sorry”.

“Don’t. It’s not going to fix what happened”. Vizsla shook his head. “We’ll find you somewhere to stay and go our separate ways”. That would be best, he decided. He wasted years on mending his heart, he won’t risk having to do it again. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to love anymore, and that was okay. He knew people who fell in love with the sea, as cold and unforgiving as it was, with salt making them sick and waves threatening to pour down their airways. They loved it equally when it was sunny and transparent, deep and intriguing, violent and stormy, and they seemed happy. 

His father was like that. Always out in his houseboat, as if the sea called out to him, sang a song only he could hear. A siren song, both haunting and enticing. A call of the void. To Paz it was pretty obvious that Vizsla senior loved the sea more than his own son, and it only proved true when one day, not long after Paz turned twenty-five, his father didn’t return.

It was a month after Din abandoned him.

The port had a monument for those lost at sea. Dead or alive, they were mourned without closure until finally enough time passed to declare them deceased. It was a lighthouse, too damaged to be of use anymore — a new one stood proudly at the entrance to the bay — but still lit up, too weak to confuse the docking boats yet strong enough to uphold the memory of those lost to the waves. 

“Thank you”.

“This is the Way”. Paz nodded. It didn’t sit quite right with him, a twist of fate like that. “How did you find Grogu?”

“It’s… complicated”. With the last plate on the dish drainer and the cutlery drying in a metal holder, Din wiped his hands on a dish rag. “I was fishing, pulling up my net when I noticed him entangled inside. He was even smaller than he is now, trapped in some remnants of an egg or an integument, he couldn’t free himself. The net must have hurt him, because when I got him out he was bleeding. I couldn’t just throw him back in, he was defenseless”. He recalled Grogu’s big, sad eyes, the interdigital webbing between his fingers, the tiny hands clutching onto him. “When he cooed at me I knew I was going to do everything I could to protect him”.

That Paz could sympathize with. It was their third meeting at the centre, with a watchful caretaker present, when he felt he would do anything to give Ragnar the life he deserved. He made sure that Ragnar wasn’t missing school and put effort into his homework, that he was always neatly dressed and never hungry, that he knew he could always come to his father with any trouble and would receive help first, scolding second if any was merited. 

“He was so tiny”. Din smiled softly. “Like a newborn”. He cleaned Grogu off the slick residue, washed him in warm water and swaddled him in a warm blanket. Whenever the sun came out, the little one liked to crawl onto Din’s chest and sunbathe there, splayed out like a starfish, steering clear of the houseboat’s edge as if he could sense danger. Din always gently caressed his big ears and sensitive neck, earning giggles and mrrp! sounds. 

“He’s still very small. No bigger than a mackerel”. 

“I don’t think he’d grow much more” Djarin doubted. “He doesn’t need to, though. I only wanted to nurse him back to health and let him go, but it became clear very soon that the little rascal wasn’t going anywhere”.

“He’s got time” Paz replied before he bit his tongue. No, he didn’t. Din Djarin’s presence in his own home was tearing Paz’s heart apart into a bleeding mess, festering like an untended gangrenous wound. 

Din, however, seemed to have taken his words as a peace offering. 

“If you say so”. 

Vizsla would rather throw himself into a whirlpool and die a horrible death than let Djarin hurt him again, but the fact that he arrived with a child in his arms changed almost everything. He wouldn’t leave the kid to fend for itself, because he wouldn’t want anyone else to treat Ragnar like that. Grogu was just a baby — a very weird, semi-aquatic, greenish one — and any baby was a lot of work. Had a lot of needs and quirks, none of which could be fulfilled if he threw Din out.

He was doing this for Grogu, he tried to convince himself. Not for Din.

“Does he wear any clothes? There are some from when Ragnar was little. I can’t promise they’d fit, but they’re better than whatever rags you kept him in”.

Djarin’s look drifted somewhere between offence and gratitude. “Thank you. I know it couldn’t have been entirely comfortable for him, but I had limited resources. Our situation wasn’t exactly stable”. 

Paz bit his tongue to refrain from spewing out something he would regret later on. Had Din stayed, his situation would have been stable all along. He would have an honest job, a fixed monthly income and a warm house waiting for him to come back in the evening. Maybe a kid or a couple running around, barrelling into his arms the moment he opened the door. Someone to share all his worries and joys with, to share a bed or the boathouse’s cot every night. 

Something to look forward to when out at sea. 

“It could have been”.

“It could have” Din agreed regretfully. “If I stayed, I suppose”.

“Why did you even leave? What was out there that you couldn’t have had here? with me?” Vizsla crossed his arms. “Was it really worth it?”

He recalled Din’s face to be handsome and elegant, and while it hardly ever disclosed any emotions, they were crystal clear in his eyes. They resembled tide pools, shallow and glittering in the sun, the species lurking under their surface as various as the conflicting feelings swirling in Din’s irises. He was still a handsome man, only tanned by the sun and weathered by the sharp, salty wind, and where Paz remembered was some kind of wonder, there was certainty as hard as steel.

“It was. I will never regret finding Grogu. Although…” he added quickly, seeing the other man look away “I will regret that I never said goodbye”.

Remorse, at least.

“Will you stay now?”

“You don’t want me out of here anymore?”

Fair question. Paz pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll see how good you are at hauling nets. I could use some help”.

“Okay”. Din sat down next to him. His eyes wandered relentlessly, drinking in the sight he didn’t realise he had missed; fair hair and eyes the same colour as the sea, its colour seeping into the irises every single day. Strong shoulders and steady hands. A classic, elegant nose. Vizsla hasn’t changed all that much, really; both time and the ocean were kind to him, sparing him their more merciless side. The ring that he gave Paz all those years ago was gone, replaced by a piece of coral on a chainlet around his neck. “You’re not wearing it anymore”.

Paz hummed in response. 

“I didn’t have a reason to. The man I loved left me stranded; what could possibly be a good enough reason to honour him like so?”

Dank farrik, Djarin thought. When he loaded the boat and sailed out, leaving the port and his entire life behind in search of something else, of something more, he didn’t fully take into account what it would mean for Paz. To be ditched like that, discarded like scales and fishbones, without a word, barely with a note that was a far cry from what any abandoned lover deserved. 

Was the tempting mystery truly worth abandoning what was well-known and loved? Why was he so sure, that decade ago, that the call of the void was something worth pursuit?

Din looked at Paz, his eyes pitiful.

“Maybe the fact that he’s willing to atone”.

Paz had to admit that having Din in his house did not jar him as much as he had thought it would. Djarin pulled his own weight in work — and Grogu’s, though admittedly the rascal was probably lighter than a decently-sized fish of any species — and chores, keeping the house clean and the kids looked after whenever Paz had to sail out to check the nets or cast new ones. They washed and gutted the catches, cleaned up scales and guts, rubbed cutting boards with soda and acid to keep the fishy stench off the wood. 

Honestly, it was so much easier. Another pair of hands to bury in work. Another pair of eyes to keep on the children. Another person to talk to, adult to adult, where he could shed his fatherly duties and think of himself as anything else. 

Not to mention that Din’s presence served yet another purpose; it was comforting. Whether at night when Paz couldn’t sleep due to the wind whistling or the waves crashing ashore or at any given time of the day when they netted fish, did the chores, cleaned up the house or just sat together in companionable silence reading or solving crosswords. Sometimes they would put on something to watch that didn’t require too much focus and wasn’t too noisy, so it wouldn’t stir the kids from their sleep. The polite distance between them began shrinking into a comfortable space for Ragnar and Grogu to nestle in, Grogu sprawled on his father’s torso like a starfish and Ragnar’s cheek pressed to Paz’s chest.

The closure between them grew like barnacles on the pier pillars, slowly but surely, abrasive if abused but resistant to even the strongest waves.

“Were you serious?” he asked, wiping his knife. 

Din sliced cleanly through another fish. A haddock, judging by the big eyes and a characteristic, pencil-thin black lateral line. “About what?”

“About atonement”.

He wondered for a moment in silence. Was he? He knew Vizsla well, loved him and was loved back, and perhaps that would be his saving grace. “I was. I wasted us ten years”.

“Did I scare you off?”

“No”. Din shook his head. “Manda, no. I knew you wanted marriage and kids, and that was fine with me”. He exhaled, anxiety spiking in his chest, as if what he wished to say would damn him in Paz’s eyes. “Do you know how some people… hear the call of the sea? How there’s always an old, tired fisherman claiming that the sea called out to him and that he followed the song, but stopped early enough to save his life? I heard that too. Please, believe me. I had to go search for whatever sang to me”.

 Paz closed his eyes. Manda have mercy. He did believe Din, of course, having known firsthand that this call was irresistible. 

“So did my father. He sailed out and never returned”.

Din’s chest grew heavy, pain rose under his heart as if someone shot him with a harpoon. The knife slipped off the fish, almost catching his fingertips in the process. 

“Paz, I’m… I’m so sorry. Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la” he added quietly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I should have been”. 

He unintentionally made his partner’s suffering worse. By the time his father was pronounced deceased by local authorities, Paz’s heart had not even been shattered into pieces; it had been beaten into a bloody mess.

“It’s no use now”. It was the most logical thing to do, to assume that his father was dead, buried beneath the waves, somewhere in the abyss. Yet as the saying went, there were three kinds of people — those who were alive, those who were dead, and those who were lost at sea. “But thank you”.

“I will not make that mistake again”. 

Paz only nodded in confirmation, but to Din it was enough. They were walking in the shallows, not quite ready yet to leap off the deep end and disappear under the waves, and that was okay. 

When they took off their gloves, stained with blood and mucus, he reached for Paz’s hand. Paz’s fingers wrapped around his own, tightly, as if to anchor him in one place. Din wasn’t so sure he wanted to break the hold. 

“I meant it. I will stay. I spent a decade trying to hunt down what called me; I’m done. I wasted all those years on looking for something that might as well not exist. I don’t want to do that anymore”. 

“You do”. Vizsla squeezed his hand. “You shouldn’t ignore the call, not if it makes you feel fulfilled, and I can’t keep you anchored here against your will”.

Din sighed. What did Paz not understand? He wanted to stay. There was nothing else he wished for more, even if he would have paid for it with longing aimed at the horizon, where the sea met the skies or with staring into the depths until, one day, they stopped staring back.

“I want to stay”.

Paz exhaled. What was he supposed to do? Keep Din here, like a boat in a dock, at the mercy of collapsing waves and the ever-abraiding rope, hoping that one day he doesn’t walk out on the pier and see it gone?

“But you also want to go. And it’s fine. As long as you come back to me” he specified. “As long as you anchor here”. Every time Djarin would sail out seeking the source of the song, Paz’s heart would clench in pain and cry out, powerless against the force that took no hostages and made no truces. How could he compete with a void that swallowed fishing boats and sunk entire ships? With an abyss whose song held Din mesmerised for ten years?

“Are you sure?”

He nodded, sadness rising in his eyes. “I am. It would be like having a ship and never sailing out of fear that something might happen to it. A waste of a vessel”.

Din turned to face him, his forehead ridged with worry. 

“A ship is safest in the harbour”.

Paz nodded, pressing Din’s hand to his heart. “But that is not what ships are for”.

Din Djarin would, however, stay in his harbour a little longer. Anchor sunk, flag down, hawser tied around a docking pole. Whatever sung to him would still echo through the vast expanse of the ocean and he would respond, he convinced himself. 

One day. 

He rested his head on Paz’s shoulder; Paz shifted to embrace him. Maybe they could mend this, like a net torn after a particularly vicious creature fought its way out of it. Slowly and painstakingly, but they would. 

The blue light of the TV painted their faces with a pale blue glow. Vizsla’s fingers tickled Din’s scalp, buried in his curls. He missed this. They still fit together perfectly, slotted like two pieces of a clam shell, as if his body never forgot the shape of Djarin’s body against it, the shape of his skull under Paz’s chin, the gentle slope of the hips or the dip of the waist under his hand. 

“I’m sorry” Din murmured, rubbing his cheek against Paz’s chest. “I should not have left”.

“All that matters is that you came back to me. All will be well, in time”. 

“Will you ever forgive me?”

Vizsla froze for a split second. He pulled Din closer, but suddenly the man went limp, as if the verdict had already been announced. 

“Din’ika” he sighed “I will. I have loved you all this time, but I have also spent years pulling myself back together. I can’t afford something like that happening again”. He had a son now, a child to care for; a child that should never have to raise himself if Paz is too distraught by grief to properly fulfill his duties. “You have to promise”.

“I promise”. Djarin smiled softly, his doe eyes devoid of sadness. “I want to stay. The call is still there, I can still feel it, but it will never — alright? never — be more important than you”. The sea still intrigued him, mysteries and wonder lurking in every crevice or buried in coral reefs, enchanting under the moonlit waves and sun-soaked shallows, yet he would never choose it over Paz again. After ten long years of searching to no avail, maybe he was ready to leave that mystery for someone else to solve. “It took me ten years, ten fucking years, to realise I made the worst mistake of my life”.

“I always hoped you’d be back” Paz confessed, rubbing Din’s side. “I didn’t want to accept that you’ve left for a long time. I would never predict that you’d come back, with a kid at that”.

“Grogu has been clinging to me since I found him. I don’t know what he is, but…” Din’s hesitation said it all. Don’t alert any scientists. Don’t tell anyone that his kid is a little greener than others. Don’t do anything that would tear little Grogu out of Djarin’s arms and slam him onto a lab table. For a moment, his eyes burned with steel determination. “I won’t let him suffer”.

God, he would tear him out of any nets, rip him out from any contraptions, break him out of any laboratory if it was necessary. He’d slap a target onto his back and chest himself , if it meant protecting the little one from more pain, he’d risk becoming a fugitive if it meant he would provide safety to his child.

Paz pulled him closer, aiming to soothe Din’s anxiety.

“He’s safe here. For all the town knows, you have returned with your own adopted child”. He’d have to dust off Ragnar’s old clothes; maybe some of them could be altered to fit Grogu. “And you are welcome here as long as you want to stay”.

“Thank you”. 

They woke up by dawn, stiff and aching a little after having spent the night on the couch, huddled together like resting nurse sharks. The warmth between them was too alluring to break apart, Din’s cheek pressed to Paz’s chest and Paz’s arm wrapped around Din’s shoulders. 

Vizsla sluggishly moved to stand up; something wrapped around his legs, causing him to stumble. A blanket. 

An amused, badly-muffled snort caught his attention. Paz only rolled his eyes. 

Fondly.

“Get up”. He tugged at Djarin’s sleeve. “We need to make breakfast before Ragnar and Grogu wake up. I will be off to the market in a moment, so I’ll leave them with you”.

“Alright. Are pancakes okay?”

Paz hummed. He’d be done with shopping in an hour top, carry the groceries back home and have a whole day still ahead. “Yeah. Ragnar will help you, point you around”. With barely any hesitation he pressed a kiss to Din’s temple. “I’ll be back soon”.

“Right”.

Early morning trips to the market were undisputedly his favourite parts of the day. The stalls turned the empty lot into an unrecognizable labyrinth of fresh produce, fish and seafood, trinkets and commodities of all kinds. When he came back — having spent a little more time at the market than he had predicted — Ragnar was already getting ready to get down to the narrow strip of the beach while Din was doing the dishes with Grogu plastered to his chest.

“Paz, su cuy. Your pancakes are on the pan, should still be warm”. The man smiled at him, yesterday’s exhaustion gone and the dark rings under his eyes slowly fading. “I think he likes water. He’s been babbling for a while”. 

Grogu squealed in delight when water from a freshly-cleaned plate splashed in the sink, a few droplets reaching his tiny hands and catching on the translucent webbing. 

“Thank you. Ragnar, be careful. Don’t go where I can’t see you from the terrace and—”

“—be mindful of your surroundings. I know, dad”. Ragnar beamed at him. All he decided to take was a small shovel and a plastic bucket. “I can take Grogu if he wants to go, we’ll look at the tide pools”.

A loud coo and intense wiggling clearly signalled the little one’s willingness to go. Soon enough tiny feet stood flat on the floor, taking wobbly steps towards the boy. 

“Alright, but don’t let him out of your sight”. Din placed a cup of coffee in front of Paz. “He’s only waddling so far, but I wouldn’t put any mischief past him”.

Ragnar looked at Grogu, the big dark eyes staring at him in return. Finally, Grogu squeaked and latched onto him, clutching the material of his t-shirt. 

“We’ll be back for lunch, I promise”.

“At the latest!” Paz called behind them. He shook his head, amused. “We’ll still see them anyway. I chose this house because I could see the entire beach from here. There are hardly any obscure spots over there, but Ragnar isn’t allowed to go there anyway”. 

Djarin glanced outside. 

“They will be good friends”.

“I hope so”. 

Later that day, with laundry hung out in the sun to dry, two tall glasses of soda and an unfinished card game on the table between them, Paz Vizsla was pressing his lips to Din Djarin’s own. Had he broken the kiss and turned around to face the sea, he would have seen a ridgeback creature breaching the surface, its long tail and strong body unlike anything else he had ever seen.

Din cradled Paz’s head, his hand curving around the nape of his neck, the fingers of the other buried in wavy blonde hair. Paz tasted of soda and of salt, and Din couldn’t get enough. 

For the first time in a decade, the sea was deafeningly silent.