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There’s another fight, but only one side always emerges the winner with a quirk of her brow and a few words hissed rather than spoken so after storming out of Afterlife, the loser hails a rickety skybus back to her rickety apartment in Gozu District, swaying hip-to-hip with the other passengers whose stories aren’t much less inspiring than hers. The bus rounds a sharp corner that throws Nyreen against a solid wall of elcor who rumbles in a tone that seems disgruntled. She shuffles back to her original spot, softly cursing the number of stops needed before reaching her humble abode.
Her talons grip the railing tightly. Their spats have been erupting more and more frequently, but she doesn’t remember any of them matching this afternoon’s outburst. They were both in a bad mood; she wouldn’t have stood her ground otherwise. No matter, Nyreen decides, unexpectedly sent into a coughing fit by an unknown stench entering the packed space, she’ll clock in tomorrow at the usual hour, and the lieutenants who’d been present at the time of their fight will turn their heads and talk about their next assignment, pretending not to see the angry discoloration on her faceplates from where the confrontation had turned physical.
Nyreen touches her cheek and winces at the lingering sting. Emotionally charged biotics are nothing to mess with—and the older woman didn’t even lay a finger on her, but they had gotten in each other’s faces, and raised their voices, and breathed hard through their noses. She closes her eyes. The argument had been utterly pointless. The way they’ve been at each other’s throats lately is utterly pointless. By the time public transport finally creaks to a halt in her neighborhood, shooting her stomach into her chest cavity with the sudden drop in descent, she’s resolved to forget about today in a haze of exercise followed by exhausted, dreamless sleep.
Thankfully, the walk back to her apartment building is uneventful, and Nyreen’s favorite street vendor waves at her from his food cart on the opposite side of the street. Trash litters the sidewalk leading to the apartment building, but the loiters normally found around the entrance seem to have cleared out. Inside, she passes by an empty front desk. The sole, functioning elevator is devoid of occupants as well, and she takes this brief opportunity to sag against the wall, counting the minutes until her number comes up. Her steps echo on the polymer flooring that’s cracked and dented enough that she can feel the unevenness through her boots.
The oddness of the silence throughout the building fails to register; instead, she welcomes it. No gunshots in the lobby, no drunken brawls in the hallway, not even a faint tinny of noise from her salarian neighbor three doors down. Nyreen touches her plates again and hisses, hoping that her cupboard still has some salve left over from the last scuffle that left burns on her skin. Without any external distractions, she stews in the implications of her (albeit minor) injury. Will this be the norm now? Will it affect her job performance? Should she have seen this coming sooner?
At the end of the corridor where her apartment is, someone’s posted by the door. The closer Nyreen gets, the more light-headed she feels as the person’s outline sharpens into focus. It’s no surprise to either of them then by the time she reaches her door. Her throat bobs up and down. Aria, to her credit, doesn’t look out of place at all in such a dingy, residential district. For one panic-filled moment, she wonders where the asari’s security has been strategically placed.
“Relax, it’s just me,” Aria answers.
Nyreen’s shoulders ease by a fraction. The strange vacancy of her apartment building makes sense now at least. “How long have you been waiting?”
“Not long,” she says with a shrug, “though I was beginning to think you took the scenic route home.”
Aria had changed out of her usual gear—no white jacket or commando leathers, just boots, leather pants, and an intricate top half, the sleeves for which crisscross her arms in a carefully worked pattern. Even out of uniform, she strives to be noticed. Nyreen turns to the keypad affixed to the wall. “I would’ve walked faster if I’d been expecting visitors.”
“Get a lot of traffic here, do you.” The incline at the end suggests a question while the tone reveals the curl of her mouth Nyreen knows is on the other woman’s face.
She punches in a long sequence of numbers. “Fortunately not,” Nyreen replies guilelessly, in no mood to play this game.
The door cycles open with a creak. “I agree,” Aria says, sounding too casual for somebody who’s shown up on her side of town for the very first time.
Inevitably, Nyreen hesitates at the entrance, which Aria obviously notices by moving next to her to peer down the shadow-bathed foyer. “Wrong apartment? Unless, I’ve interrupted a breaking-and-entering.”
She glances at her. Not a single mark on that deep, violet skin. Of course not. Her own feeble biotics are nothing compared to hers. Is she here to put another reminder on her plates then?
“Am I?” Aria repeats, shifting her feet from side to side, and Nyreen can’t stop the small intake of breath at that subtle, physical tell.
“…No,” she says simply and walks inside. A few seconds later, the door cycles close with Aria standing on the other side.
In the split-second before the lights flicker on, Nyreen is alone with Aria’s silent silhouette in the near-darkness. She swallows, her throat suddenly dry. Then the fixtures come on and emit a low hum from the ceiling for as long as the apartment remains illuminated. Dim as the lights may be, they manage to highlight the specks of dust in semi-permanent suspension in the air with a fine coat of it layered on the makeshift curtains that frame the lone window in the room. Relief floods her insides at having put away most of her personal effects this morning before leaving for Afterlife.
Aria surveys the apartment with her head cocked at an angle one could almost call curious.
“Just ah,” Nyreen begins, and gestures to the two-seater couch in her common room. “Have a seat. I have to…have to do something first…” She turns down the narrow hallway without seeing if the order that rolled so strangely off her tongue is followed.
It’s only a few, long strides to the bathroom, and she waves the door shut and leans over the tiny sink, breathing slow to calm her heart rate. The rhythmic thudding in her chest fills her ears but eventually subsides. Opening the mirror-cabinet right above, she murmurs thanks under her breath at finding one firm squeeze left on the tube of salve. Nyreen clutches it to her chest like a life-vest, considering what’s to happen for this unprecedented turn of events, before coming out of the hallway again.
As a creature of habit and routine, the layout and object placement of her apartment has stayed largely unchanged since moving in. Her colony banner has its place above the couch; the square, sturdy mat by the door has faithfully kept her filth-soled boots from touching her floor; a number of crates containing weapons and extra clothing are stacked in the far corner. What Nyreen lacks in lively decoration, she makes up for in painstaking neatness, and the lack of personal possessions weigh what little she does have with that much more meaning.
Naturally, Aria’s not on the couch when she comes back. “Nice view,” she throws over her shoulder, having plucked the window curtains aside to peak out.
“I don’t have much time to admire it.”
“It’s been years since you slept in the dancers’ barracks.” Aria turns to slowly circle back around the couch, her fingertips dragging across the upholstery. “Your current pay-grade’s not this low.”
Nyreen crosses her arms. “The apartment’s grown on me.”
“This miserable looking place?” she sniffs. “Yes, I can see the charm.”
“There’s actually nothing charming about it,” Nyreen says and with a flare of her mandibles, adds, “But luckily its appeal lies elsewhere.”
That earns a swift look—and then a sharp chuckle. Nyreen wants to laugh as well, but Aria’s reaction leaves too quickly, and they’re left in silence again.
She holds up her tube of salve. “Give me a moment, I just need to…” By the time Nyreen realizes her sentence trailed off, she’s backed around the skinny kitchen counter.
Aria gives a pretty little shrug. “No one’s stopping you.”
With a flick of her talons, the cap pops off easily, and Nyreen dabs some on her plates without another word. It stings at first, and then the salve begins to dissolve as she rubs slow, small circles across the uneven plane of her cheeks. All the while, she keeps her eyes studiously trained on a spot near the ceiling, the edges of her vision growing blurry by her concentration. A brief movement on her periphery shows the other woman fidgeting.
“I have water in the fridge if you’re thirsty,” Nyreen abruptly announces. “Filtered it last night.”
A brief pause ensues; Aria must be taking in the glamor of her kitchen with its cramped contours and worn cabinet edging. “I’m fine,” she answers seconds later. Her head turns back to the tube Nyreen’s holding. “You’re almost out.”
“There’s enough,” she says almost defensively, “I don’t even use it that often.” She spreads the cream across the inner sweep of her mandibles, rubbing some on the tip of her nose for good measure.
Without any other stimuli (which had been the point of offering her water), Aria’s attention inevitably roams, whether it’s drumming her fingers on her hip one minute or sifting her hand through the bowl of pebbles on the counter the next. But her eyes continue to re-settle on her face after every revolution around the apartment, causing Nyreen to finish applying the salve much faster than she had anticipated.
“I’m putting this back.” She winces at suddenly speaking so loudly and sticks to the same volume to hide the nervous flanging in her voice. “Wait here.”
Nyreen turns down the hall for the second time and listens for the bathroom door sliding close before letting her shoulders fall. After putting the salve away, she contemplates the evidence of their argument on her face. Truly, it could have been worse. No one but a turian would notice the mottled discoloration, and by the end of next week, there would be nothing to see. None of this alleviates the sting stubbornly lingering on her cheeks, however. And Aria’s still waiting for her in the kitchenette too.
But when Nyreen gives one last exhale and opens the door, she sees that her last thought wasn’t true. She has to take a step back so her vision lines up with Aria’s face instead of the top of her crest, but really, the height difference has never mattered less than it does(n’t) with them. With her. The shorter woman’s eyes flick up and down while she waits for one of them to speak first.
“Those’ll scar.”
“They won’t,” Nyreen says easily, “It was a shallow burn.”
“Didn’t look that way at the time.”
Without her iconic ensemble, Aria could look like any other asari on the station. Could look like anyone but who she is. The faux-disguise makes Nyreen feel reckless. “Touch them then.”
Her eyes widen by either the request or its tone, but Aria only hesitates a moment before raising her hand to trace her nose with the lightest of touches. Her fingers hover, then graze her cheeks, and her thumb presses on the side of her mandible. She holds still as Aria hums in mild interest.
“Feels raw.”
“Ah,” Nyreen hisses at a particularly tender spot, “Care—“ And stops herself.
She blinks slowly, the side of her mouth twitching. “’Careful’? I always am.” Her hand doesn’t withdraw, but merely moves to flatten itself on Nyreen’s chestplate. “And when I’m not, I have you to remind me.”
“Is that why you’re here?” The question slips out too fast for Nyreen to catch.
Aria cocks her head at Nyreen as if she should know better. “It’s why you let me in.”
But a detachable conscience isn’t what you look for in me, she doesn’t say. In fact, there’s plenty she doesn’t say, hasn’t said. Instead of doing that, she does things like walking away after being burned in the face and letting the person inside her home a few hours later so she can put her hand on her tender skin and—what? The very idea of hoping for more is laughable.
“You’re drifting.” Aria snakes an arm around her waist, closing the rest of the scant distance between them.
Nyreen opens her mouth. Aria beats her to it.
“Don’t.” The word comes out thick, gently slurred by what’s steadily edging the corners of Aria’s eyes in black.
She’s here when she doesn’t have to be, soothing and persuading when there’s no reason to. Maybe that’s enough for her. It could be—is.
Nodding, Nyreen leans down.