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greypetrel · 2 months

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"You make a fool of death with your beauty" for Max! 💗

Hi Mo! ✨

Thanks for asking Max! This is actually the first thing I finish with her and I don't know what to say. She developed a voice of her own, and that voice is silly. Prompt list here! I hope the random Italian isn’t too much, but here are notes. Her family was from Livorno, so beside "nassa" please note that everything else is typical of just that area, and won't be used or used like this outside Tuscany: Nassa: Those wooden traps you leave on the bottom of the sea to catch lobsters and big crustaceans. (she has a moment of unsureness because I have? You bet she does.) “Bravo bimbo”: “Good lad”. In Tuscany it is used as a random way to address people with a positive sense to it, the way you’d use “dude” or “lad”. The dispregiative correspondent would be: “grullo” ("Bimbo" can mean "child", but not in this case and in this region, it's just a dialectal use that has nothing to do with age. It's VERY typical.) “Maremma maiala”: Litterally it means: “Maremma is a swine”. Maremma is the region on the coast on the south of Tuscany, before Lazio begins. Today it's a beautiful place full of pretty beaches, but in the XIII century, when Siena closed the region off to agriculture, it soon became a big malsane swamp... And remained a place to swear upon for tuscanians.

Lobster Trap

Oh and you in all your vibrant youth How could anything bad ever happen to you? You make a fool of death with your beauty And for a moment I forget to worry - Hunger, Florence + the Machine

“Please. This is my mission, and you all know I’m the best qualified for it.”

Shepard groaned, rolling her eyes at the heavy clouds filling the sky, and quickly batted her eyelashes against the rain. She didn’t listen to Garrus telling her she was stupid and reckless and making him older by the minute, he swore, and climbed up the Atlas herself, grumbling right back and asking him if he knew anything of currents and underwater pressure, because she actually did. When the Turian couldn’t answer and just glared at her with reproach on his face, she ignored him and kept on muttering to herself that if her family had had an Atlas when she was little, they would have been filthy rich.

“Do you know how many… How do you say nassa in English, urgh. Lobster traps? Lobster trap.” She decided, testing control rods and buttons before actually turning everything on and belting herself in. “Well, do you know how many we could have pulled out at once? There are lobsters on Mindoir, you see, and pretty big, full of tasty meat. But catching them is awful work, they are electric, like eels. With this it would have been so easy, you guys have no idea…”

She kept on grumbling, and Liara lightheartedly hated how cool she was in all that. How she could make it such not a big deal over diving to the bottom of an ocean to speak with a mind-controlling creature forgotten since Goddess knew how many cycles. As if it was a normal Tuesday. She knew her well enough to know that it wasn’t even a façade: she was, actually, eager to get in. As if it was just another fishing trip.

“You’re not going to catch lobsters, please stop.” Liara snapped in frustration, stopping her from going on and on about how exactly lobsters are caught, how electric ones are, what’s a nassa that she kept failing to remember the exact term for not in Italian, and how big Mindoir lobster pincers were.

Max looked down at her. Battered up, hair ruffled from the fight, and make up ever so slightly melted around her eyes from all the rain and splashes of sea water. She blinked twice, pondering who knew what and considering both Garrus and Cortez, down there looking at her with equal apprehension.

“As if.” She shrugged it off. “It’s going to be ok, I swear.”

She smiled and winked, in that self-assured way she had and was so comforting for others. No one wanted a commander unsure of herself, and she had plenty self-esteem to pull through and make you believe she knew what she was talking about. Except, she said the same when the first Normandy got crashed and she stayed behind, smiling and winking at her and telling her it would have been ok. Every time she did it, right before jumping in the next crazy mission, it still felt like that time, the aura of effortless calm somewhat ruined.

And this time, there wouldn’t have been any help, or any knowledge of her. Liara was no engineer, she never sailed for more than a day, never worked on the sea as Max did in her youth, she didn’t know about currents or lobster traps or water pressure and compensation… But she knew that heavy objects tended to drown and not be brought back to surface. If she drowned, there would be no body to recover, no body to try and resurrect yet again or just mourn.

“What if something happens down there? Doctor Bryson-”

“- She is alive and well, gave me an hint of what will happen and the limits I shouldn’t push.” She interrupted her, still self-assured, still as if she knew what she was doing. “We can’t allow to let this chance go, and I’m the better qualified to get down there, beside being the Commander of this crew. It will be fine, Liara.”

“What if Leviathan is hostile?” She kept on, ignoring the hint at how she was in command. She was allowed, right there and then, to act as the girlfriend and not as the crew member. “If you’re missing, all the alliances you’ve built… You can’t afford to get down there. Leave it be, if they could help us they would have already. How many cycles did they withstand without doing anything? Why this one should be different?”

“T’soni isn’t wrong, you know…” Garrus scoffed, still working on the terminal to check everything was all right and the Atlas was functional enough. “This piece of junk has been still for too long, it’s full of salt and I doubt its joints will move smoothly.”

Max just groaned and rolled her eyes, and pushed the closure of the belts open.

“Well, it won’t have flexibility, so what? It still has reach.”

“… That was on me, was it.”

She jumped down the Atlas as Garrus sighed in defeat -no one really understood why of all things, Max would mock him with hints at stuff that had reach and/or flexibility, but it never failed to make Garrus abandon the argument. Ignoring him, she marched to Liara with a purpose, stopping but a step away and looking at her with a frown and a stubborn bent of her lips. Instead of talking, she turned back to Cortez, an eyebrow raising.

“Any other comment?” She asked.

“Bring back a lobster if you find one.” Cortez just shrugged.

“Bravo bimbo.”

Then she turned back to Liara, cupped her face with both hands -the kevlar of her gloves was wet and slippery, but she held on without hurting her. Half it was Max to bend forward, half it was always her dragging the asari so she had to take a step not to fall against the woman, but she kissed her, hard and passionately and long.

When she let go with a smack and a last nib to her lower lip, her lipstick was smudged and faded, and she was pink on the cheeks, her smile brighter.

“I’m not letting the space lobster catch me first. I’m coming back, I promise.”

Liara watched her getting back on the Atlas, bickering back and forth with Garrus who started mocking her immediately for sentimentality, and with two fingers pointed at her brow and snapping up and a last wink, she went, jumping in the sea with an excited gait.

And then, there was nothing to do but wait another time, praying that she wasn’t lying to cheer her up.

Garrus patted her shoulder, sitting beside her on a loose crate.

“Come on. She’s coming back, as always.”

“Yes, until she won’t and I won’t have anyone to scold with a ‘I told you so’.”

“I know. No wonder she gets along so well with the Krogans.”

“Yes. The same hard head.”

“Too hard to be cracked by a space lobster, for sure.” A pause. “Particularly one she wants to eat.”

She snorted then, and felt a little better.

---

They extracted her from the Atlas unconscious and with blood trickling down her nose. The glass of the Atlas cracked, and water had trickled in, splashing violently out when they forced it open. Thankfully, it reached the surface before she got submerged past her chest.

It took both Garrus and Cortez to move her and lay her down on the ground, totally unresponsive and unmoving… But as Liara checked right after, fingers trembling and a wrong set of memories dancing in front of her eyes -her skin wasn’t grey, it still was the same warm shade of brown, she wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dead- as they pressed upon her throat, back of her hand ghosting in front of her nose and lips.

She was breathing, at least, but no amount of calling could wake her, and Liara dared not shaking her. If she hit her head or her neck, jostling her too much would have hurt her more.

“Does the shuttle work?” She turned, asking Cortez.

“Ready whenever, the engines aren’t wet.”

“Go back to the Normandy, call for-”

A heavy set of coughs and when she turned, Max was rolling to her side, shoulders shaking as she violently coughed, curling on herself. Everyone relaxed some, seeing that she was, after all, still alive in spite of all odds, one more time.

“Maremma maiala, that was one hell of a lobster.” She exclaimed, breathing heavily and combing her hair back from her face with a hand. She turned to Liara, a ghastly expression on her face.

Her expression was weird. Weirded out, in a way she never was. Maybe it was just that she had blood on her upper lip, spreading widely on her wet skin and the kohl on her eyes was melted and made her look like a panda. She saw her in worse conditions, but after witnessing Ann Bryson get mentally controlled by Leviathan…

Liara glomped, dreading the answer to the next question. A quick glance with Garrus, tho, confirmed her worries. The Italian swearing could have been a trick.

“Are you… Still you? What happened?” She asked, heart beating fast and holding back from touching her.

“There were more of them.” She said, blinking, still catching up. “I spoke with them. I’m not sure they’re fully reliable or friendly, and I have no idea whether we can trust them, but…”

“But…?”

Max turned towards her, expression melting some and eyes keening, as her lips curved in a smirk. A brief anticipation for-

“… but, we can’t possibly make enough mayonnaise to serve them with, so I thought I’d better convince them to help out.”

Liara swatted her arm, exasperated, and Max started laughing.

“You’re an idiot, Shepard.” Garrus concluded, relief in his voice.

Liara cared little for it. She moved forward, hugging her neck and holding her close. Max was still laughing when she hugged her back, relaxing under her frame and resting her head on the asari’s shoulder. A minute signal of relief and tiredness.

And for a moment, thinking of ancestral aliens boiled and covered in mayonnaise -a feat which she had no doubt Max would have succeeded-, having her there between her arms, alive and breathing and with yet another crazy mission she survived in spite of all odds, and well enough to joke about it… Liara forgot to worry about the future.

---

“ALFONSO IL GRANCHIO DEL COCCO!”

Max startled up to bed, waking up abruptly with the realization. When she turned to the side, there was Liara, glaring daggers at her from the one eye that wasn’t pressed into her pillow. If she hadn’t known her better she would have believed she was about to be made levitate away from the room.

“What the fuck, Max?” The Asari asked, voice filled half with sleep, half with resentment.

“Alfonso il granchio del cocco!” She repeated, heatedly. “It’s… Sorry, Alfonso the coconut crab! Leviathan was him!”

Liara groaned aloud and turned on her back, massaging the bridge of her nose with long fingers.

“Ok.” She sighed. “I know I’m going to regret asking, but who is Alfonso?”

Max grinned more widely, and moved forward, splaying herself horizontally on the bed -and over her back- to reach the tablet on Liara’s bedside table. The Asari huffed, as her weight fell on her back, but it was but a moment. She pressed a fleeting kiss on the tip of one of her tentacles, and pushed herself back to her place on the bed, raising the pillow to prop her back against.

It was Liara who switched the light on her bedside table on, grumbling with still sleep in her voice that she was gonna get blind if she kept on reading screens in the dark. Max chuckled, slipping down a little to accommodate her girlfriend scooching closer and circle her waist with an arm, face hidden in her side.

“I thought Leviathan reminded me of something…”

“Yes, a lobster. You also calculated the exact amount of mayonnaise we’d need for it.”

“Mpf, yes, but no. Lobsters are cute and spry, Leviathan wasn’t. It was heavy and grim and basically a tank, I had it on the tip of my tongue until now…” She explained, tapping quickly on the tablet with her fingers. “AH! Look, it’s him!”

Liara sighed deeply and climbed up, hugging the other properly and resting her head on her shoulder, able then to look at the screen and whatever video she meant to make her look at. If she was speaking of coconut crabs with a name, she expected an illustrated book, or some cartoon made for children. She paid no attention and waited, eyes half lidded and relaxed, all cozy with her warm body so close and-

- and then, after too few seconds the music suddenly spiked up and there were two people screaming over heavy and horribly loud guitars and drums.

Alfonso il granchio del cocco Ti apre in due come una scatoletta di tonno- 🎶 *

She let out a yelp, now fully startled awake, jumping on her spot with heart beating fast. Of course she set the volume to full.

The screaming was continuing, and Max started to laugh out loud, shoulders shaking with it.

“You and your damn music!”

Liara swatted her shoulder, and Max just laughed more, launching the tablet away to slide back down, back on the bed and legs bent up, holding her stomach.

“No but you don’t get it, it’s from an old Italian scientist who made videos about animals, and in this he also got a song and-”

She was stopped with a kiss and a hug, which she laughed halfway through it, as the song kept on.

Max’s damn music would have been the death of Liara - she still hadn’t discovered how to stop her cabinets playing You Shook Me All Night Long every time she opened one.

In that moment, tho, she even forgot that she should have been worried about the future.

--- * Alfonso the coconut crab He opens you in two like a tuna can

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