Once more, with feeling

[mm_lettie]

For quite some time now, Tali'Zorah had been feeling under the weather. She hadn't taken the necessary precautions with a hole she'd torn in her suit (well, that a stray bullet had torn in her suit) and she had been illThe problem with this wasn't the fact that she felt sick, for quarians spent a distressing percentage of their lives feeling 'under

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[turiansnarker]

“Yeah, let’s meet back at my room. I think I left my rifle out for cleaning anyway.” He started to head out of the forward battery alcove with her and, as they parted way to their separate rooms for the moment, he added, backhanded, “and don’t get cold feet and back out. You’ve started this rolling and there’s nothing so rude as backing out of drinks with a turian. You’re committed now, vas Normandy.” He waved as he turned down the hall. “See you soon.”

Garrus’ room was located on the port side of the crew deck, one of the few isolated quarters besides the captain’s quarters. Shepard hadn’t said specifically that the turian was stationed there because he didn’t trust all the Cerberus crew to play nice, but he didn’t need to. Back then squad had consisted of the commander, Miranda, Jacob, Mordin and him, so he’d known everyone but Garrus less than a week. That had made him the only crew mate Shepard knew and trusted at the time so… yeah he gave Garrus a decent room away from the others.

He took a few minutes clearing away his rifle cleaning kit, locking it away on one of his footlockers. Garrus absently picked up his datapad with the text comms to Solana, placed it face down on the bed. The whiskey she’d sent him had been a birthday gift, though it had arrived months late due to his… new location in Omega. He took it out of the locker at the foot of his bed, turning it thoughtfully over in his palm. He wondered… if he should vid sync home before the end of all this…

[gofor_theoptics]

That was the hard thing about knowing that most of the Fleet probably didn't trust you with a grain of salt - you didn't really have that many people to go back to. Sure, the woman who had practically raised her -- her 'aunt' -- would grieve if she was gone, but she didn't have family to worry about. The suicide mission seemed almost more bearable when she thought about it, even if she was starting to feel as if she was more worried about everyone else's survival than her own. She couldn't help it, not really - she'd grown up putting the needs of the many before her own needs.

After Garrus' comment she was tempted to back out of this whole thing. Drinking, according to everything she'd seen and heard, involved lowering inhibitions. She wasn't sure if she was even capable of that.

Still. She gave her faceplate a quick polish before she headed out of her room with the purifier under one arm, taking a deep breath and knocking on Garrus' door. It sounded louder than it really was in the relative quiet of the halls.

[turiansnarker]

“So you didn’t back out,” Garrus laughed by way of invitation. The door opened and the quarian entered holding a strange looking devise that could have been either some kind of vacuum or a small bomb with a cocktail shaker attached to it. Come to think of it, Garrus hadn’t ever seen Tali eat or drink anything or if he had, he hadn’t noted is as anything worth remembering. He’d always figured they had an internalized system within their suit for that and never thought more about it.

“So that thing will make this safe for you to drink?”

Garrus queried, taking a seat on one of the foot lockers scattered around the room. There had been a couch in here , but it was buried under a few boxes of turian grade artillery that he didn’t trust other people messing with. He set the bottle on the table and stretched a little thinking about swapping out of his armor at some point. Turian grade armor was designed to be worn for months on end if need be but that didn’t mean you should if you didn’t have to.

He eyed the purifier skeptically. “It’s not gonna change the chemical make up, strip out the good stuff, and turn it into sugar water or something is it?”

[gofor_theoptics]

That made her laugh. She shook her head, choosing a foot locker next to Garrus but not sitting on the same one as him. That would be presumptuous, and he had invited her here as a friend - she didn't want to assume anything. "I wouldn't be able to tell you either way, but I do not think that it would change the quality of things much. I could purify some for you as well, if you're curious."

She wouldn't even have to waste time sterilizing the purifier, since it did that itself. Tali glanced over to Garrus then.

"...you probably haven't seen me eat much. Or drink." She tried not to do it publicly too often, honestly, if only to save her the hassle of explaining it to random members of the crew. She wouldn't mind if Garrus asked, though - friendship had its privileges.

[turiansnarker]

He shrugged. “Go for it. Then I’ll tell you if you’re missing out on anything and make sure you’re not pretending to out drink me with some intoxicate neutralizer. I haven’t been that green since basic training, thanks.”

He’d been so drunk that he’d slept with his commanding officer, blacked out after, then woke up in her bunk late for PT. If he’d been in the Alliance military that might have been a problem but turians didn’t really understand the idea of fraternization like humans did. He always ended up having to explain that and then humans thought all the Hierarchy infantry did was fuck each other. He’d been reprimanded for his lateness and that was it. He never had issue with his ranking officer either and as he understood it, she might have invited him out to keep him out of real trouble with his fellow cadets.

Again, humans never got that nuance. “Yeah, how does that work anyway,” he asked, popping the seal and handing it to Tali.

[gofor_theoptics]

Tali poured what she assumed looked like a 'shot' (probably a little bit less than, considering) into the purifier and flicked the switch to let it work while she answered his question.

"This end here," she motioned to the 'vacuum tube' bit of the machine, "hooks into our mouthpiece. It's a bit like a straw after that." Even though she'd been told by more than one human that it looked completely ridiculous, it was the only way she could drink -- it wasn't like she could change it. Once the machine beeped, she took the tube end and tilted it so that the liquid poured into Garrus' empty cup. She repeated the motions with the purifier for her own, though she looked to Garrus to see whether the taste and quality were effected by the purifier first.

It was totally not because she was nervous it was going to taste awful.

[turiansnarker]

Garrus took the offered glass, lifted the glass semi-mockingly, and knocked it back. No, it still burned and warmed from the back of your throat to your fringe and talon-tips. The smell of it was a little sharper though. It wondered if the purifier actually made it a little bit stronger or just cleaned out any fermentation chemical that were no longer an active agent. He shrugged.

“I can’t taste a difference,” he said, putting the glass down and pouring another one. “By the way, this was my birthday present so, you know, happy birthday to me.”

He toasted her and knocked back another swallow, enjoying the familiar amber warmth of it. Palaven whiskey was a hometown taste to him and it was familiar as the sky line of his home planet. Solana tended to understand that he couldn’t come home, so she sent him pieces of it when she could. Pleasantly loosened - this stuff had some serious kick - Garrus leaned back against the stack of crating behind him and looked at Tali, sipping cautiously at her drink… or at least he thought so. It was hard to tell.

“So, just really disgusting or alright?”

[gofor_theoptics]

The cautiousness was genuine, but the straw apparatus meant that it was difficult for her to take overly large gulps of the stuff anyway. The first few sips had burned unpleasantly in her mouth, but the more sips of it that she took the more she began to enjoy the way the warmth was spreading through her body.

She paused after her most recent sip to look over to Garrus. Yep, there was a definite kick - she could see why this sort of thing could be dangerous. Still, she did feel ... a bit relaxed, at least.

"It isn't like anything I have ever had before," she admitted with a duck of her head, adding quickly, "But it isn't terrible. I think I could get used to it, but I might need to have a little more." Because that was definitely a good idea, right?

[turiansnarker]

Garrus waved in a way to say she was free to help herself. Solana had sent over a sizable bottle, certainly not an amount two people wanted to drink alone if they had intentions of walking upright the next day anyway. Tali probably didn’t drink very often so it wouldn’t take much to do the trick anyhow. Garrus noted how much she’d taken for herself and decided she shouldn’t do much more than two or three turian sized shots of the stuff. That would be plenty.

“Well, the idea is for you have as much as you want,” he said with a chuckle. “This was a good idea. I would have forgotten I even had that if you hadn’t brought up drinking. Shame if I never got to drink it. It’s kind of expensive back home. More expensive to export since the harvesting problems the last five years. Scientists can’t figure out what’s causing it.” He shrugged. “Anyway.”

Another glass was poured, though, not drunk all at once this time. Garrus folded one arm across his midsection as he leaned back again, looking thoughtfully at his glass. “Hey, Tali, I never thought to ask if you had any brothers or sisters. I know it’s uncommon with quarians but…” Another shrug. “It’s not universal.”

[gofor_theoptics]

Probably for the best if he wanted Tali functioning for tomorrow. She'd have a hell of a time already since her body wasn't used to alcohol, nevermind as much as she was planning to drink... but odds were that she'd end up passed out before she drank much more than that.

"No," she said quietly, taking a sip of her second glass of the stuff, "I don't. The flotilla's population has been so constant lately that the one-child rule has been in place since I was young." And now that her mother and father were both dead, it wasn't as if they could have more children. Tali smiled to herself, looking at Garrus again.

"I think it's sweet that your sister sends you things. After everything -- do you think you'll go home?" Because Tali was definitely not going to be thinking about Garrus not coming back from the suicide mission. He had -- well, to be cliche, more to live for than her. If it really came down to that, she'd give her life for Shepard and for Garrus, no questions asked.

"I think -- if my father had had more children, maybe I wouldn't have been so lonely growing up."

[turiansnarker]

Garrus examined the liquor in the bottom of his glass for a moment, watching light roll gold on the surface. Morbidly, he revisited the fact that sometime within the next month may be the last chance he ever had to see his family, no matter the terms of their… relationship at the time. Solana was still talking to him, but their last text link exchange had been tense and accusatory on the grounds he couldn’t tell her was he was doing or where he was. Meanwhile she dealt with the reality of their mother’s Corpalis Syndrome. The illness had had driven their kind, sweet mom to try and drown Solana in a fit of madness when she was fifteen. Garrus had been thirteen at the time.

She was still ill and degenerating and from the sounds of it the last treatment had gone to shit and the insurance wasn’t going to cover the medical anymore and he couldn’t do anything for them because he wasn’t respectably employed doing something useful to his family. He was running around trying to save the damn universe instead. When had he decided between the two? Had he? The guilt burned hotter than the liquor and he downed the last half, pouring a more sizable amount in his glass.

“I don’t know if I’ll go home,” he said honestly. “I don’t think I can until I… until I do something right by them. For the past two years I haven’t been any use to them at all. Off… I dunno, ‘playing Spectre.’” His sister’s words. He swallowed the whole cupful in his hand, grimacing.

[gofor_theoptics]

It was probably the liquor that allowed her to lean forward suddenly, gloved hands rested firmly on Garrus' knees. She frowned beneath the mask - he looked so sad suddenly, when his family was still living and no matter how frustrated, probably still cared very much about him.

"You don't really think that, do you? That you're just playing as if this is -- some sort of game? It isn't like you're doing something so awful that they're going to think of you less as family and more as some sort of enemy. They must want to see you, no matter what." She blinked, suddenly aware of how close she'd gotten to him in those few seconds.

"That is," she said quietly, drawing her hands back to rest on her own knees and trying to cover any embarrassment, "That is how I felt about my father even after his death. Even after I knew all of the things that he had done to hurt my people's chances of things...all I wanted to do was see him again." Not be held by him, for he'd never been that sort of quarian.

[turiansnarker]

Garrus leaned back a little, stifling a grin as the slightly tipsy quarian leaned forward, though he started slightly when his crewmate planted her hands rather sturdily on his knees and leaned into his face. Maybe from her perspective, with a few more inches between her face the face plate, she wasn’t as close to him as she thought she was… but he really did have to lean back to keep her from bumping foreheads with him. A quick flare of embarrassment pulsed through him. She must have not drunk liquor before in her whole damn life.

“Thank you, Tali. It’s not…” he began after she withdrew hastily to her seat. “It’s not that they hate me. It’s just that they’re disappointed. They were proud after the work I did with Shepard, after Saren was taken down but that was before the commander was killed and that Citadel smear campaign begun. Then suddenly I was… I wasn’t telling them what I was up to anymore, but I’d dropped out of Spectre training and left C-Sec and for all they knew I was working as a merc for hire on some Blue Sun mining complex in the backend of some dead star system.”

His father had… implied as much during his last conversation with him. They’d parted on incredibly poor terms. Garrus shook his head. “I don’t know when I went from being their best son to… this. I know they would understand if I could tell them but I can’t and I won’t, whatever they must think of me.” He paused tensely. “I wish I could help them. I’m out here saving the galaxy but I can’t send a fucking medical payment home for fuck’s - sorry. Sorry, that’s the whiskey.”

He tried to wave it off, horrified at himself. How had he let that slip? Fuck. “I’ll sort it out.”

[gofor_theoptics]

She realized it was extremely selfish to think that she had the worst 'family problems' out of anyone on the ship the more and more Garrus spoke. She furrowed her brows. She might not have been rich in credits, not like Shepard - but she could afford more than many quarians. She'd been frugal, her research with the Fleet had been well-funded ... she could afford to give a little. Her connections with the Shadow Broker would make it easy for her to -- track down his family.

She'd send them something for him. The thought of a member of her team suffering like this with his family was just too much to bear.

Tali reached for his hand. Funny how it looked so much like hers, but the turians were so very ... different.

"Garrus," she began, shaking her head, "They might not know or understand that what you are doing out here is for them, to make sure the galaxy doesn't suffer the same way that all those human colonies have suffered ... but it won't be like this forever." Because she had to believe it would get better, life on the flotilla meant always hoping things would get better, "One day this will all be over, and they'll be able to see you in the right light again. Until then, don't -- turn away from them because you're scared of what they will think. Just be there ... or you'll regret it."

[turiansnarker]

As she spoke, Garrus felt a deep surge fondness for Tali, followed by an equally powerful pull of unease. Maybe it was the liquor or the quarian’s proximity but he decided, after a moment, that this was a bit weird. Garrus supposed it stemmed from having been living with nothing but other vigilantes for prolonged amounts of time. For so long, there had been nothing to talk about besides, well, the next hit, the next weapons depot they were going to hit, blowing things and criminals up, how he was going to keep them all alive for a little longer in their campaign against the sinkhole of Omega.

Basically, there hadn’t been a Tali around for two years and as he listened to her, he realized that he’d kind of missed her blind sincerity. It was, really, such a rare commodity. The girl had lost so much so fast, but Garrus still had his family. They were safe, untouched by anything that had happened to him, and he was grateful for that. After an initial hesitation, the turian turned his hand over in hers so they were palm to palm for just a moment.

“Thank you, Tali.”

[gofor_theoptics]

She was surprised to feel his hand in hers, palm to palm. It was ... less strange than it should have been, considering. They'd gone two years without so much as a message, but it seemed they were rapidly growing even closer than they'd been before that substantial break. Tali smiled then, beneath her mask, giving his hand a brief squeeze before she pulled it away.

She didn't have that much nerve. "I ... should probably be going," she decided abruptly, finishing the last sip of her whiskey and feeling it warm her to an almost uncomfortable level, "I wouldn't want to say anything silly." Because the heat that chased up her neck, she was sure, wasn't completely from the liquor, and she was a much younger woman than Garrus a man and -- she swallowed thickly, moving unsteadily to her feet.

She'd send those credits to his family tomorrow.