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dulcidyne · 7 years

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Experiments in Diplomacy: Fine-Tuning [5/?]

There’s nothing in the Interspecies Diplomacy subsection of the Initiative handbook that covers sharing a tech lab with an angara who can kill her in her sleep. She knows, she’s read every page. Twice. (A collection of in-between vignettes from the Tempest tech lab) //Jaal x Ryder // Humor. Romance. SFW // 2687 words // Voeld Spoilers Previous chapters: [1][2][3][4][5] or read on Ao3

Se-ah makes it ninety-seven minutes before clawing away the sheets and rolling clumsily out of bed. At least, attempting to. Mid-roll, her legs tangle up in twisted fabric and one knee wrests free only to smack hard against the deck. Hissing out a choice curse, she stops struggling and lets artificial gravity do the rest of the work of pulling her down one centimeter at a time until she’s lying in a heap on the blessedly cold decking panels.

By the time she flops over onto her back, the overhead of the compartment is where it belongs. She knew it would be. She didn’t actually believe it was inching down lower and lower, getting closer with every rapid, shallow breath. This is the Tempest, not a Prothean temple ruin in a cheesy action/adventure vid--the ones with archeologists who have a better working knowledge of verbal zingers than proper site excavation.

Groaning, she rips off the transdermal patch nestled into the crook of her arm. A mild sedative. Lexi’s idea when the melatonin supplements didn't make a dent into her godawful sleeping habits--or convince her brain to stop imagining that the Pathfinder’s cabin was attempting to kill her.

It's almost insulting how little effort her subconscious put into this. Why couldn't the crushing weight of her inherited responsibilities manifest in a less obvious metaphor? Why can't she imagine herself pinned beneath a pile of old-school Blasto merchandise every night?

“SAM, do you have any sway in that department? I'm officially filing a complaint.”

“While within my capacity, neural modification of this nature has not been tested and therefore cannot be recommended.”

Reluctantly, she drags herself up off the floor. Her legs are killing her. “It was just a joke, SAM.”

“Noted. Should I notify Dr. T’Perro regarding the state of your injuries?” She shakes her head. “It’s nothing I can’t handle. Just the side-effect of getting backhanded halfway across a landing platform by seven thousand kilos of kett-engineered menace.”

Really, she was lucky to escape the facility with nothing more than a fractured femur, ruptured tendon, and some deep tissue bruising. It was a lucky day all around. One no one was in the mood to celebrate.

Se-ah snatches up some more transdermal medi-gel patches on her way to the door. She slaps one on her smarting knee and adds a couple more to her thighs and lower back before pulling on her clothes. “Pathfinder, Dr. T’Perro highly stressed the need for rest.”

“I’m aware.”

She’s also aware that Lexi has the Moshae to tend to, which means she’s too preoccupied to check-in on the crew with minor fractures and bruises and make sure they’re getting the rest part of their R&R. “I just need to check something with Mags real quick.”

Not only is Jaal awake, but he doesn’t even look surprised to see her when the door opens. Instead, he glances up from the bench with expectant happiness and one knot in her stomach loosens just as another one tightens.

“Trouble sleeping?” he asks.

“No rest for the wicked,” she quips, examining the parts he's scattered over Maggie’s top. Reaching forward, she picks up a tiny capacitor from the jigsaw puzzle of metal pieces. Kett, judging from the symbols printed on the side. Not her specialty. Jaal dabbles in anything that takes his interest, like Liam, whereas she and Peebee share a passion for narrow focus.

He plucks the capacitor from between her fingertips, touch lingering. The disconcerting intensity of his gaze captures her startled glance before it can dart away.

“And...you've been wicked?” he asks, all careful enunciations and thoughtful pauses. Jaal treats language the way he treats tech, taking the time to consider each component before he fits them all together into a working whole.

Maybe it’s the last dregs of the sedative still churning around in her bloodstream like alcohol minus the splotchy flush. Maybe it’s the fresh memory of three simple words, ‘fascinating’, ‘special’ and ‘strange’, curling up around her ribcage and squeezing her so tight she still can’t quite catch her breath. Maybe her cabin really was rigged to kill and she’s in the most unexpected version of the afterlife ever. Heaven is real and it has angara.

Or maybe…he’s flirting with her?

She doesn’t quite know what do or how to respond, so Se-ah filches another piece off the bench--a metal-capped glass cartridge containing coils of wire--just for the excuse to look away. By the time she looks up again, a playful smile is pulling up at the corner of her mouth. It’s half defense mechanism. A familiar tactic in her ‘Avoiding Emotional Risks’ playbook: when in doubt, make light of the situation.

As if her heart isn’t pounding against her sternum, she teases, “Are you flirting with me right now?”

There are two things she knows about Jaal Ama Darav. The first is that he is unflinchingly candid. The second is that the look of utter bafflement on his face is the exact match to the one he had when she stuck her hand out, unthinking, for the universe’s most awkward handshake. Together they mean she’s milliseconds away from complete humiliation.

“No.”

Yup, she’s in the afterlife alright and not the good one.

“Is it customary for humans to flirt with questions about someone’s perception of poor moral character?” The concept clearly perturbs him the more he considers it. At least, that’s what it sounds like. She can’t actually see on account of burying her burning face into her cupped palms. The kett fuse digs into her cheek, cool glass rapidly warming against her skin.

“No, it’s not. Just forget I said anything, please.”

“I apologize--there’s something I’ve missed.” Fabric whispers as he draws closer to brush fleeting fingers over her wrists. The request is unspoken but every subtle shade of feeling hums through her. Plaintive. Undemanding. Kind. Please look at me.

She does.

He’s closer than she expects, standing in front of her, head tipped down so that he can meet her eyes despite the differences in their height. The gust of her shallow breath breaks over his collar before eddying back towards her smelling like Jeju tangerines and sandalwood soaked in hibiscus tea with a curl of cinnamon bark--and simultaneously nothing like any of that. Every cell in her body lights up with the disorienting sensation she gets during a-grav failure, forces tethering her down snapping away until she is weightless and floating adrift in the intoxicating current.

Embarrassment flash evaporates and she laughs into her steepled hands before letting them slide down the rest of the way past the tip of her nose and over her lips--the fuse still cradled in between her thumb and index finger. He’s already pulled back, taking the warm pocket of tangerine and sandalwood air with him. Which is good, she tells herself. Jaal being that close is dangerous for coherent thought.

“Just a miscommunication,” she says, trying to alleviate the traces of dismay still lingering in his eyes. “Asking someone if they’ve been wicked--most humans...well, most Milky Way species that I’m familiar with, would read that as an innuendo.”

The word clearly does not translate. “Like a sexually suggestive insinuation, which is how we flirt for the most part--double meanings that hint at interest instead of...more overtly conveying it, if that makes any sense? Not everyone is subtle of course, I mean, you’ve met Peebee. Are angara similar?”

Jaal makes a small, frustrated noise. “Some, to an extent-- I am not in the habit of veiling my interest. I have little patience for it. But, no, my confusion has more to do with why wickedness has another meaning that is sexually suggestive. It’s equivalent in Shelesh is…”

He struggles to come up with a translator-proof explanation. “It’s a word we associate with deep moral wrong. It has nothing to do with physical intimacy.”

“Ah.” And she thought idioms were troublesome for the translators. Idioms have nothing on the grab bag of culture-specific double meaning, nuance, and subtlety that constitutes flirtation. Hell, she’s had her fair share of romantic miscommunications in her own native tongue. Do you like me or do you like me? Did you mean hot or hot?

She sets the fuse down before she can forget about it and drop it. Glass clicks against the bench top. “I’m not actually sure. SAM?”

“I would venture that the ironic usage arises from certain ancient cultures viewing sexual acts as amoral. But this is not my area of expertise.”

Jaal nods. “I see.” There’s no judgment in his voice. It’s distant, lost in thought.

“The phrase ‘No rest for the wicked’ references eternal torment depicted in the religious text--”

“Thank you SAM, but it was just a joke. A terrible joke. It really doesn’t need further explanation.”

Se-ah leans a hip against Maggie and exhales slowly. Objectively, she should be humiliated over this latest misstep. Anyone else and there would be two weeks of careful avoidance and pained, awkward silences--hard to manage on a frigate this size but she’s done longer in smaller spaces. But Jaal is...different.

“A joke. That is...reassuring. I was concerned for you. I’m thankful for your decision on Voeld. But neither of us are blind to the cost.”

He looks at her. “And you’re the one who must bear the burden of that knowledge.”

So he’d interpreted her joke as a crisis of self-doubt. Only someone with the emotional sensitivity of a potato could misread that for flirting.

“I don’t believe in doubting decisions after I’ve made them,” she says but the answer has all the mechanical automation of something memorized and then recited. It’s an Alec Ryder answer. Dad wasn’t one for regret. He wasn’t one for giving up a tactical advantage either, even when it came with a cost.

Willing the ‘stand at attention’ rigidity out of her spine, she tries for something that doesn’t sound like she had to study it for an exam, “Just how I was raised. My dad...once we made a decision, we had to stick to it. Good or bad. When I was seven, I got it into my head that I wanted to learn the same instrument as my best friend. The siithara, this massive 20-string zither--asari, which is important because they spend entire centuries becoming proficient. I was terrible . I was terrible even after ten years of daily practice, which Scott always argued constituted a violation of anti-torture Citadel Council Conventions.”

Jaal chuckles, full and deep and she flashes a wistful smile. Her baby brother, always and forever a little shit. “It didn’t matter though. It was my choice, I took responsibility for it, and that was all Dad cared about. Although, he never had to suffer through any of my recitals. He might’ve changed his mind then.”

Before she can stop them, the words are already out of her mouth. “He would’ve destroyed the facility.”

Her smile withers on her lips as if the words are poison. Maybe they are because she’s shaking her head, trying to clear the bitter-cyanide taste from her mouth. “It doesn’t change anything. I made my choice already knowing that and I’d make it again.”

Fingernails catch on the fabric over her elbows when she folds her arms, tight, across her chest. “I’m not beholden to his decisions. It doesn’t matter what he would’ve done.”

In the murky depths of her subconscious, something clicks to life and she can’t help but prod at it with blind, curious fingers. It feels like a jumble of sharp metal and glass fuses, coiled wires twisting snarls of conflicting feeling into an emotional trip mine. Instead of backing off and leaving the damn thing alone before it goes off, scattering fragments of pressurized grief like shrapnel, she teases out a tangled filament. Realizations strobe up in quick succession, blinding flare after blinding flare.

It's not that dad would've chosen differently, it's that she would--the dead woman. Professional. Logical. Scott was still trapped in his cryopod and she suited up, business as usual. Mission first. That Se-ah was like her father and their cost-benefit analysis on Voeld would have gone much differently.

Scott’s derisive snort is sudden and clear at her ear. As if he’s standing right next to her, on the Tempest, like he should be, instead of lying comatose on a ship entire systems away. Where was that cost-benefit analysis on Habitat 7? She’s one breath away from tripping a full-blown detonation when Jaal spans the distance between them and settles steadfast hands on her shoulders, bracing her. It’s as close to a hug as her crossed-arms will allow but somehow he manages to make it feel like his arms are enfolding around her, drawing her against his expansive chest.

“I know very well what it’s like to stand in someone else’s shadow and lose sight of yourself.” One large hand drifts up from her shoulder to smooth over the line of her jaw. It’s so big, it spans from the point of her chin and past her earlobe. “Do you want to know what helped me?”

Throat dry, she gulps and his eyes flicker down to trace the faint, fluttering shadow of her adam’s apple. Not trusting herself to speak, Se-ah nods. Tousled hair slips over and parts, feather-light, around the fingers tipping past her ear and a tiny, almost imperceptible shiver travels from his skin into her scalp. “Being here. With you...and with your crew. I feel as if I can finally see myself clearly, see my purpose. I’m...illuminated. This galaxy is brighter and more beautiful than I’ve ever seen it before.”

Eyes impossibly luminous and impossibly blue, he curls his fingertips to capture the sifting amber fall of her hair. “That is your doing.”

Every word is a mote of stellar dust gleaming radiant in the air between them. They collect in her lungs with each stuttered breath and coalesce into a single incandescent point--a star in miniature forming in the lonely, neglected hollows of her heart. It’s singularly painful. Too dense and too heavy and too much.

Either she’s about to burst into tears or kiss him. Neither option is good, considering the circumstances. So she does nothing except go rigid and try to school her expression into something that doesn’t scream ‘I can’t handle this’. It does not work. She can feel it not working and what she can’t feel, she can infer from the look on Jaal’s face when he suddenly clears his throat and releases her.

Shit. She scrambles for something, anything to convey how much his words meant to her without fully conveying how much they meant to hear.

“I--thank you. That’s really nice of you to...I’m...halad. I mean, glappy. Er...glad. I’m glad.”

It’s as close as she’ll get so she takes it. She also changes the subject before her heart pounds through her chest. “So uh--why are you awake? You’re usually out by now.”

Jaal shoots her a wry look like he’s just caught her trying to bluff her way through a bad hand in one of Gil’s poker games. But he lets it slide. “I couldn’t sleep. Your ship is a wonder but it is very quiet. Angara live communally and I find it difficult to rest without snores buzzing through the walls.”

She can finally breath easy enough for a halfway decent laugh. “You could always bunk with Drack. No chance of quiet there.”

He gives her a pointed look. “Most nights, there’s no chance of quiet in here either.”

Ah. Her absent-minded habit of humming to herself when she’s concentrating. The omni-blade temperature trials aren’t exactly whisper-quiet either. And then there’s Maggie’s array of beeps and chimes.

“So that’s the reason you never kicked me out? I’m your ambient noise machine?”

Jaal’s laugh is a quiet rumble in his big chest. “I don’t know what that is but I can safely say that is not the reason. I never ask you to leave because I enjoy your presence, immensely. “ “See,” he adds to clarify. “ Now I’m flirting with you.”

#jaal romance #jaal x ryder #jaal ama darav #rydaal #Dulcidyne writes #Tales from the Tempest Tech Lab

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