#3. KELDABE KISSES!

[ DELETED SCENE ] 

( —They get drunk. Mando learns more about Myra's origins and defects, Myra learns about Mando'a - language of the Mandalore - and a sweet gesture that solely Mandalorians share. I thought of adding this into 16, a little fluff, but made no sense but it was too adorable to leave out 🥺  )

»»—————————««

"You are going to love me for this, Mandalorian."

Din admired Myra's selfless nature and sincere ascertainment to always set something valid, hence he had a hard time saying no to her. While everyone eyed his beskar—with jealousy, hate or fear—she seemed to look at him in this perfect little image she had created in her head: a quintessence of magnanimity; the pretence of disliking the hero complex, adores it inwardly; a solitary voyager. She made his bounty-hunting profession seem like the best job in the galaxy.

To be honest, Din didn't expect to be awoken in the middle of his sleep by a toothy-grinned Myra who held a scroll of paper in her hands as if withholding a squeal. Her hair was damp and she had the fragrance of freshwater lakes and grass—she had taken a bath. Where the hell did she take a bath, though?

"Mon Cala, but this is way better," she waved off as ancient history, answering the question that arose in his mind. He lifted his groggy head off the blanket with a cocked brow to which she puckered her lips with a soft, "sorry."

"What's that?" He asked, thudding his head back on the floor to scrub the sleep out of his eyes. In an instant, his head went to the sleeping compartment where the baby continued to snore quietly. 

"I found a spell," she almost couldn't let it out without letting out a snicker, "to produce liquor."

He rolled on his back to smother a laugh into the crook of his arm. Her voice was like a refreshing drink of the coolest water; relieving and effortless. 

"Why are you like this, Myra?"

"Oh shut up," she hissed, slapping the side of his arm before unravelling the tawny paper. "This'll be good. I've never been inebriated before."

"You're not getting drunk on my ship."

"I'm not," she smirked. "You are, too."

"No."

"Stop being a weakling," she rolled her eyes, "besides," she tossed the child a look before crawling forward and clicking a button to shut the pram quietly. "The baby can't hear us."

She was going to get him wasted on the first night they had confessed their feeling for each other which seemed like a class A plan for failure. Rising from the hard ground and swaddled blankets, he tugged on a tattered, forgotten undershirt from nearby and watched her cross her legs to take a seat and read through the scroll.

"That's easy," she mumbled, impressed. "I could use this more often."

He scoffed. "And let you, an impulsive witch, be in a constant state of drunk? Not on my watch."

"You don't appeal to my understanding by mocking me," she deadpanned.

"No hate," he raised his hands in surrender, "get me drunk, Myra the Golden."

And Din watched, fascinated, as Myra's dark eyelids fluttered shut and her neck straightened. A small, excited smile played on her lips and she held out her hand which had a small sliver of scrap metal she had stolen from around the ship and her lips moved slowly to incite the spell. The metal lifted in midair to weave itself, forge itself like ripples of metallic water before laying steadily on her hand into a silver goblet of hooch.

"Oh wow," she laughed, her eyes widened in surprise. "Look at that."

He looked at her, bothered. "You've never gotten drunk, have you?"

"No," she answered sheepishly. "You?"

"Once," he shook his head, sighing out loud when he thought of the almost illegible memory in his head of the night. This night was doing to leave an indelible imprint in his mind.

She passed the goblet to him with an awaiting grin. "You go first."

"What, why?"

"Because you're the feeble one."

Stunned, he asked, "And you are?"

"Not human," she smirked, teasing him.

He rolled his eyes, grabbing the tumbler from her grasp with a small grumble. Fitting his lips between the rim, he looked at her excited expression and thought, if she wanted this, do it for her. He tipped the glass over and took a long swig until the goblet fell empty. 

A cough left him as the keen sting of the hooch left his throat and mouth wanting more. An endless loop in his mind that kept replaying when Myra seized the silver tumbler from him and took a chug of her own.

While Din continued to shake his head off the nullifying, sour taste, Myra didn't even flinch. She smacked her lips, tasting it with a soft moan. And to be honest, it was an inch more attractive. 

"Oh, that's tastes like heaven," she hummed, taking another, smaller sip. "How do you feel?"

Stupid witches and their tolerance to pain, he cursed in his head. 

"In shock," he breathed out.

"Apparently, witches have a low threshold to alcohol absorption," she shrugged, sipping longer. Din raised an amused brow. "Something about the burn not corresponding with our systems."

"So...?"

"Ha, fuck that."

He grabbed the goblet from her to take a sip of his own, welcoming the more kick that it brought, laughing into the goblet when he saw her eyelids drop in a sleepy motion.

"I think you're tippled already, lightweight."

She shook herself out of the trance, glaring at him. Her golden eyes blazed with confidence once again, holding her head higher. "I'm not."

∞

By their fifth glass, Myra was in a clear position of drunken consciousness. Her head lolled over Din's lap, reflecting more strenuously and quieter than ever. He leaned his weight into his hands, drawing a hand through the tiniest crevasses on her forehead, wondering how impeccable she really was. Zero faults, no defects—just pure paragon of perfection. 

He didn't know if it was the liquor acting up or just truly the way it was.

"How does a female possibly," she wondered out loud with hooded eyes and a drunken stupor, "answer nature's calls on this ship?"

Din lazily laughed, scrunching his nose in objection. There was a vac tube but no female ever used it—he froze them in before they ever could. He swayed slightly, the liquor guiding him to place an absent-minded kiss over the hand that lingered over his neck. 

"Do witches pee?" 

"Hmm," she looked down at her feet, twiddling them. "I never settled fluids in my body."

"Now, why would you put that in my head?" He asked, blinking at her. 

"I have never peed," she mumbled, disappointed. "Aw, no. This is wrong."

"As much as it is disgusting."

She laughed; the sound of shimmering bells in a hall. It had him in a trance, watching her lips broaden to show her straight teeth and warm sound that spilt from it. 

"Hey," he stroked her cheek to bring her attention to him, "why don't you call me by my name?"

"Your name?"

He nodded. "My real name."

"We can't unless we believe we have earned the respect to speak it," she said, oblivious to her talk and focusing on the light beyond his head. Obviously hammered.

"I think you have."

"I like calling you Mandalorian," she breathed out, a smile lifting on her lips. "Rather than anything else."

"I want to—" he sighed, rethinking his assertion. He wanted to hear her say it, in her honey-like tone and the smooth drawl of her foreign tongue. 

"I want to know what happens during your Transference," he said, instead.

"Oh," she pursed her lips, thinking back to it with a scoff, "it's a severe ceremony. Physically, mentally and emotionally demanding. It's like," a faraway look flickered in her nectarine tinged eyes, "being sawed in half, submerged in acid or having your sanity plucked away slowly—all at the same time."

 He swallowed hard. "How long does it take?"

"Moments, sometimes days," she answered easily. "Mine was for an entire week."

"A week?" He echoed in pity.

She shrugged. "Small price to pay for efficacy."

That was small, he thought to himself. Before he could indulge in a round of pity, she spoke up with a smile. "What else do you want to know?"

He loved that it was easy to get to know her. In fact, she wanted him to ask the questions and so, he did. "Why don't you like to be touched?"

She stared at him, offended. "You can't talk to me like that. That's rude."

 Din reeled back, going over what he said. How was that offensive? In a blind haze to make up for his words, he leaned forward to touch her cheek. "I didn't mean—I meant why do you insist on permission for contact? I wasn't trying to... offend."

"Oh," she said, laughing it off. "Sorry, I thought... well, the Ichor is a powerful source of energy. We think of it as the only purest form of contact that allows us to connect with everything around us."

"So you're saying everything else is," he searched for a better word, "impure?"

"Perhaps," she shrugged. "Which is why we require consent. It really depends on the character."

Din liked that she wouldn't let another man worthy of her touch come in contact with her. It was these little things that kept him on his toes around her—he found something new about her every day. 

"Would you like to ask me anything else?" She asked.

"I want to know if you like being this way."

She furrowed her brows, playing with her own fingers in an obvious state of inebriation. "What way?"

"A... witch."

She laughed easily. "It's the best thing that ever happened to me."

He lifted the cup to his lips to swallow more of the liquor to hide his grimness. How could being heartless be the best thing in the universe? To Din, the soul was the clearest mirror but to read Myra was like looking into something so enigmatic and opaque it would be hard to break. 

"After you, of course," she pushed a hand into his face, teasingly. 

"Oh?" 

"You come first," she scrunched her nose, leading him on with a stroke of her hand down his neck.  

Her words were dangerous, that could fill a tension so thick that a mere pinch of a pin could bring them both twisting into an ideal night of hitching breaths and puffed mouths. Her brusque eyes shimmered with candour, something that made his heart thump faster. 

In a moment of emotion and discernment, his forehead met hers with a snug yet, gentle impact and holding the back of her head firmly. Myra, in wonder, lifted her head from his lap with a drunken slur of a giggle when she spotted his own stupor. As if his own motion had caught him by surprise. 

"What was that?"

"What?" He quoted innocently. 

"That thing you just did," she bugged him. "It came out of nowhere."

The questioning obsidian and gold in her cat eyes were driving him mad, acting on his reckless and intoxicated self easily. His lips ran with the thoughts that plagued his mind. 

"A kov'nyn in Mando'a. It's a Keldabe kiss."

"Mando'a?" Her eyes lightened in interest. "You speak another language."

Din spoke a lot of other languages but, that was a story for later. He tried to explain it quietly. "In Mandalore, you usually use it on opponents but you know, I thought—"

"You just used a defensive strategy on me," she finished with a deadpan. 

"It's a show of affection," he justified with a small breath. Moving forward, he merged their foreheads again, this time more tenderly and she watched the minimal contact with inquisitive eyes. "See?"

"I like it," she smiled.

Her curiosity manifested in the sweetest of moments, darkened eyes waiting. He could have watched her for hours, ignoring her question, even in the drunken state of things he could not deny the affinity he felt for her. She was an extension of himself, in a way, anything seemed to cross his mind, he was able to casually fling it her way. 

Pulling back, she stuck a teasing grin on her lips. "Learn something new about you every day."

"Vice versa."

"Teach me something else," she shuffled closer, curious. 

Din, intrigued, broke out into a short laugh before clearing his throat. He looked around for any item that he could find to translate it for her, his gaze soon falling on the ruby-red crystal that slithered around his neck in the delicate gold thread.

Easily reading his mind, she placed a hand over it. He nodded at her. "Meshurok."

She nodded. "Which is?"

"Gemstone."

"Oh," she chuckled. "I'm not going to say it out loud and insult your language."

He laughed. Moving her hands a little away from the necklace, he placed it over the fast strumming of his heart. She looked up in questioning, eyes swelled with curiosity.

"Kar'ta."

"Heart," she translated efficiently. "And how do you call for your loved ones?"

He laughed through his nose. "Why?"

She clicked her tongue, swaying her head drunkenly. "I'm interested."

"We say cyar'ika," he tested it on his tongue carefully. "It means—"

"Love? Dear? Baby!"

"—darling," he finished with a playful glare. "Very impatient."

She squinted at him as he tried to say it, amusing him further. "Cya—cyar'ike."

"Ika."

"Ika," she nodded, smiling. "Cyar'ika. I like it."

"Please don't ever call me that," he warned, taking another swig from the goblet which vanished as she had snatched it from him. 

"In Iego," Myra mumbled, trying to hold her eyes open and laughing. "We say qēlos-jeson." 

He tilted his head, his breath hitching when he heard her speak her language. The way it flowed like honey from her lips, or how her tongue bent expertly to make it seem like an accent in itself.

"What is that?"

"It's a term of endearment. Means stardust."

"Yeah, no," he shivered. "Do not call me that either."

"So what do I call you?" She grumbled, folding her arms like a sulking child.

"Anything but those."

"Din Djarin," she said slowly. Upon hearing it, Din's heart fluttered away and his gaze levelled to the dark lips that had said his name. "I take back what I said. It's a beautiful name."

"Bet it's better than yours."

"I said it's beautiful, not the best," she muttered, rolling her eyes.

X X X