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Pathfinder, Scott’s comm says, and his eyes fly open, all his muscles tightening. There’s that moment of sheer panic, that someone needs him and he’s fallen down on the job - and then the world rights itself as he registers the comforter under him. Just nodded off over his mission reports. He’s embarrassed to find that SAM has dimmed the lights for him.
The comm speaks again, softer. Are you awake?
Too late. Well, he wasn’t asleep, necessarily, just dozing with his cheek mashed against the screen of his tablet. There’s a smear of drool across the part of the mission report that says TANN and then, a few lines later, EVFRA. Yeah, now he remembers why he stopped reading.
“Of course I’m awake,” Scott says. He’s thirsty as hell. His voice sticks to the sides of his mouth, so his words come out sloppy. “What’s up?”
“I woke you,” Jaal says.
Of course, the polite lies reasonable people tell each other don't work on angaran.
“I was having a terrible dream,” Scott says. He lets himself rest his cheek against the comforter. If he’s just been asleep, how can he be so tired? “Addison was making me dance for her in a coconut bra and a blond wig. You did me a favor.”
“Coconut?” Jaal says.
“Big, hairy earth fruit. …are they a fruit? I guess they’re a nut. Anyway, they come in a shell. You can crack them open into two halves, and they can be used as a bra.”
“Bra?” Jaal says, and Scott can’t help it, he laughs. He hates laughing at Jaal, because it feels unkind and unfair, but he figures it’s okay this once.
“Ask Liam,” he says. “Anyway. What can I do for you?”
“Pizza,” Jaal says, which isn’t what Scott was expecting.
“Yeah?” Scott says. “What about it?”
SAM has left the lights down, so the room is just lit by the glowing of the small SAM node, and his email terminal, and the nightlight Vetra got him for his space hamster’s cage, because the little guy seems to be nocturnal. It’s peaceful.
“Is it really so delicious?” Jaal asks, with the same amount of gravity that he affords to questions about remtech, and Salarian-Krogan relations, and the First Contact War. Scott smiles into his comforter.
“Yes,” he says. He wonders what Jaal is reading that mentions pizza. “It’s really that good.”
He rolls over onto his back in a concerted effort to stay awake. The tablet glows a faint orange, reminding him he’s not done yet.
Pathfinder, SAM says through their private link, tone as gentle as SAM’s can ever get, I could summarise them for you.
No, Scott thinks back. That would be cheating.
“Think of that food that nearly everyone likes,” Scott says aloud. “I figure every culture has one, right? Pizza is one of those foods where sure, there are people who don’t like it, but everyone is going to look at you funny.”
“Tilapiin,” Jaal says immediately. “That’s our food.”
“Tilapiin,” Scott attempts. The long i sound doesn’t come out right, but Jaal gives a little rumble of approval over the comm anyway.
Scott stifles a yawn with his fist. Kallo has the ship in a restful glide, one that has the distinct feeling of autopilot. Scott smiles at the thought of Kallo drowsing at the controls, chin propped on his hand. He likes to tell anyone who’ll listen that Salarians don’t need to sleep.
“Pathfinder,” Jaal says, after a few seconds, “thank you.”
“It wasn’t – it was nothing,” Scott says. It startles him every time, the way Jaal says thank you for the smallest things. It’s so formal. He’s not sure yet if it’s an angaran thing, or just a Jaal thing.
“I woke you,” Jaal says. “It was not “nothing”.”
“I should have been awake,” Scott says, and too late he realizes the roughness in his voice could sound like annoyance at Jaal, instead of frustration with himself. He makes a conscious effort to soften. “I should be thanking you for waking me.”
There’s no answer. That’s not enough? Right. Time for super direct.
“I wouldn’t mind if you called me again about this stuff,” Scott says. “Anytime. Whenever.”
He pinches the comforter up in his fingers. He really hates the pattern on it. A bunch of different muddy beige and brown and green swirls. Almost kett colors.
“I mean, if I’m in the shower or on the can I’ll call you back, but. You know.”
That gets him a chuckle. Score one for Scott’s evolving understanding of angaran social mores.
After he hangs up the call, he picks up the tablet again. Without being prompted, SAM lifts the lights a little, giving Scott a warm amber glow to work by.
|
Jaal calls back in the morning while Scott is brushing his teeth over the sink.
“What is a ‘cow’?” he asks. It pulls Scott up short for a second, until he makes the mental calculation: reading about pizza – come across the concept of cheese – find out where cheese comes from… Makes sense when you break it down. Most things do.
He spits into the sink.
“You mentioned milk last night,” he points out. “There’s milk in tilapiin.”
“I – yes,” Jaal says, sounding sweetly surprised that Scott remembered the word.
“But not from cows?” Scott hazards. He examines his jaw in the mirror, thinks about shaving.
“No,” Jaal says. Scott can picture the look on his face, the furrow in his brow. “I do not believe so. Unless your cows also fly.”
Scott is arrested by the image of a black and white cow mooing as it floats across space. No wings or anything, just zooming around, regarding everything with a placid bovine eye.
“No,” he says slowly. “Ours stay on the ground. I kind of want to see an angaran cow now, though.”
“They’re rainbow-colored,” Jaal says. “They have long hair that angaran children like to brush and braid. When you make true friends with an angaran cow, they let you cut the braids off to wear as arm accessories.”
“You’re messing with me,” Scott says, delighted.
“I do not know this word, “messing”,” Jaal says. “So I could not possibly say.”
“Hmm.”
“Tell me about Earth cows.”
“They have four legs, and they don’t fly. They’re big and heavy, and not that fast. Herbivores. They live in big herds. They have this peaceful expression pretty much all the time.”
“You like these things,” Jaal says. “Cows.”
It’s weird how much that angaran tendency to verbalize the emotional cues they pick up feels like having his mind read. Because of course they’re not psychic, or anything. They’re only picking up what absolutely anyone can, and that’s what makes it unsettling. He wonders what all the others are able to read off him all the time, all this stuff he doesn’t realize he’s broadcasting.
“Yeah,” Scott says, because there’s no point in lying. “There are people who look after cows, farm them, for their job. Milk them, and stuff. When I was a kid, that was what I wanted to do.”
“Ah,” Jaal says. “Like – like the little asari, on the Leusitania.”
Scott’s throat tightens, thinking of the childish typing on the datapad. How she knew she had to be brave, but all she wanted was to be a farmer.
“Yes,” he says. It comes out raspy, so he fakes a cough and then lifts his mouthwash so he won’t have to say anything else.
On breaks from school, mom would take him and Sara to the agricultural sectors, way out in the boonies. Not to the places the real work was being done, but to the educational farms set up to show city kids how farming was still relevant, even with all the technological advancement of the past hundred years. Scott remembers seeing fresh-faced demonstrators, barely more than kids, patiently fielding hundreds of questions as they led the animals around the barn so grasping hands could feel them. He remembers the glow that came with putting his hand in the air and getting a question right. Remembers the taste of the air out there, and how all the farmhands looked so healthy.
“When I was small,” Jaal says, “I wished to be a tyrannical dictator.”
Scott blinks.
“My translator just borked. Run that by me again?”
When Jaal speaks again, there’s a smile in his voice.
“A tyrannical dictator.”
“Yeah,” Scott says, laughing. “It’s broken.”
“What is it telling you?”
“That you wanted to be a tyrannical dictator,” Scott says. He imagines a tiny Jaal waving around a sceptre that’s taller than he is. It’s disarmingly cute.
“But that is what I wanted,” Jaal says. He raises his voice a little over Scott’s laughter. “I told my mothers that I wanted to be in charge of the world so that children would no longer have to go to school, and the adults would have to clean up the dinner table every night – that was my job, you see – and all the younger children would have to listen to me, and always play the games I wanted to play. They told me there was a word for that: dictatorship.”
There’s… so much there to process. It’s too early for it.
“Don’t say anything else funny, okay?” he says. “I’ve just picked up my razor.”
“Ah, I should leave you to –“
“No, you don’t have to –“
Another call comes over the comm. Cora, asking to see him. She hasn’t been… quite right since the whole debacle with the asari ark. He needs to take it.
“I will let you be. Thank you for your indulgence, Pathfinder,” Jaal says, and hangs up the call.
|
On the one hand, Scott thinks leaders should probably have more control of and authority over their team than he does, but on the other hand he likes that when he walks into a room the chatter doesn’t stop. Nobody’s wary of him.
“What are we talking about?” he asks when he comes into the kitchen and finds breakfast in full swing, all the seats occupied and Liam sitting on the table. Drack and Jaal between them are taking up most of the long bench seat.
“What breakfast foods we miss most from the Milky Way,” Vetra sighs.
“Waffles,” Scott answers immediately. Jaal shifts up a bit to make room, and Scott slides into the space. There’s not a lot of it; his thigh is jammed up against Jaal’s warm, solid one.
“Ooh, waffles,” Liam groans. “Didn’t even think of those.”
“Want to swap out one of your choices?” Peebee asks him. She’s eating what looks like purple cardboard. The food on the Tempest is a bit lacking.
There are a few protein bars and sachets of nutrition paste left in the center of the table. Scott braces himself, and grabs one.
“My turn,” Peebee says. She pauses for dramatic effect. “Omelets.”
“With varren jerky,” Drack sighs, which starts a whole argument.
“Was it a fraught conversation with Cora?” Jaal asks, in a tone designed not to carry.
“I – no,” Scott says. “I mean, she’s still upset, but that’s normal. Why?”
“You have cut yourself,” Jaal says. He reaches out and touches the spot just under the hinge of Scott’s jaw. Scott accidentally squeezes his sachet too hard and gets paste on the back of his hand. He swallows.
“Is it bleeding?”
“Yes,” Jaal says. He frowns at the cut like it’s a remnant decryption grid. “But not much.”
The cut stings a little, where Jaal is putting pressure on it. To stop the bleeding faster.
“I’m just terrible at shaving,” Scott says. He swallows again, and then realizes abruptly that Jaal can feel the flicker of muscle in his jaw, so he holds himself unnaturally still, trying not to breathe. Jaal takes his hand away and inspects his fingertips; they’ve come away clean. Must have clotted already.
Scott takes an overly large mouthful of nutrient paste and almost gags.
“How do they make this stuff so gritty?” he laments, in a tone designed to carry. “Are they trying?”
|
The first baby is born on Prodromos while they’re still chasing the kett. It’s kind of a big deal, because the long cryo messed with people’s biorhythms enough that there have been several concerned calls from the repopulation team to the Nexus higher-ups. Plus, stress isn’t the greatest aid to conception, and neither are mildly radioactive living environments. So it’s a whole thing.
Tann wants a puff piece about it, and apparently Pathfinder duties are not unlike those of a politician, because Scott is expected to go and gladhand and kiss the baby. He says he’ll only do it if they have Keri cover the story.
“It’s a good thing Sara isn’t the Pathfinder,” he tells Jaal over the comm the night before the ceremony, “because she hates babies.”
He’s standing in front of the (very) limited selection of clothing he possess that is not armor – because that seems like a bad idea, in this circumstance – and trying to decide what looks most non-threatening. When there’s no answer, he wonders if Jaal is concentrating on whittling something, or beating Liam at electronic chess.
“It is painful for you to talk about your sister,” Jaal observes. “And yet you do it anyway.”
Scott closes his eyes.
“I’m not getting any better at it?” he asks, hating the plaintive tone in his voice.
“It is painful for you,” Jaal repeats, which means no.
Scott lifts out a soft blue hoody with a zipper down the front, and holds it up against himself. It’ll probably do.
“Sometimes I worry that I’m treating her like she’s dead,” he says. He fingers the cuff of the hoody, folding it in on itself. “And she’s not. She’s going to wake up. So I should talk about her.”
“You could tell me about her.”
Scott sucks in a breath through his teeth. He smiles.
“You know, I tell people that I got that scar on the inside of my elbow from climbing a tree, but really she bit me. We were five.”
He hangs the hoody back in the closet.
“I deserved it. She collects ornaments shaped like bees – Earth insects, they’re sort of cute and fat and fuzzy – and I broke her favorite.”
They’re somewhere in storage on the Nexus, all the bees. Ready to be unpacked for Sara’s new life. They’ll be starting to collect dust.
“I greatly anticipate the day I will meet your sister,” Jaal says.
“Yeah,” Scott says, blinking furiously against the hot feeling in his eyes. “She’ll really like you. She’s gonna ask you a million questions about the insects on Aya. I… what are you reading tonight?”
It’s so obvious that normally Jaal would call him out on it, but he says nothing.
“A rather fascinating document on krogan anatomy,” Jaal says. “Courtesy of Dr. T’Perro.”
Scott snorts.
“Don’t tell her you find it fascinating, or she’ll bring out her thesis.”
Jaal hums. There is a swish of fabric over the comm, like he’s getting up and moving around.
“Are you ready to be the angaran poster-boy tomorrow?” Scott asks. “Yet again?”
There’s a pause.
“We Resistance fighters are nothing if we are not adaptable,” Jaal says primly. His voice has changed slightly; he must be lying down now. It’s late.
“As an Evfra impression, that wasn’t very convincing,” Scott says. He grins, and flops down on his kett-colored bedspread. “Besides, I think you like it. People standing around admiring your –“
“My what?” Jaal asks.
Scott stumbles.
“I mean, looking at the way you –“
“The way I what?”
These are not unreasonable questions, and yet Scott feels hassled. His ears are hot.
“Your rofjinn, I meant,” he says. “Most humans have never seen one.”
“I see.”
“It’s very… striking,” Scott says. This conversation is a sinking ship, and his foot’s caught in a coil of rope on the lower deck. “It sort of goes like –“
He blows air out from his cheeks, and then stops because it’s ridiculous, and starfishes onto the bed. He turns his face into his comforter.
“Are you gesturing?” Jaal asks. “Because I can’t see that.”
“No, I’m not gesturing,” Scott says. It comes out muffled. “I’m asleep.”
“Well,” Jaal says. If he’s thrown, he doesn’t show it. “Goodnight, then. Ryder.”
Once Scott is completely sure that the connection’s been dropped, he says, “SAM, I know you normally record my comm calls for posterity –“
“Yes, Pathfinder.”
“- but could you delete that one? And possibly set it on fire? Whatever the digital equivalent is?”
“Of course, Pathfinder. Would you like me to delete only a selected portion?”
“No, you can just –“
“Should I start here?”
He hears – horrifyingly – his voice saying I think you like it. People standing around admiring your –
He does not sound like that.
“Okay, so you’ve clearly doctored that somehow,” he says. He points an accusing finger at SAM node, which makes him feel five percent better. “Also please, make it stop.”
It stops. SAM node undulates like a wave, sending light patterns over the ceilings of Scott’s quarters. Really enjoying themself.
|
The ceremony is sort of sweet, actually, held out in the open air under a huge canvas. August Bradley says a few words, and Vetra looks very uncomfortable without her visor, and Scott tries hard to stand in a way that looks casual and doesn’t betray all the concealed weapons secreted about his person. There’s a gun in his boot.
(“Would be a perfect opportunity for an ambush,” Cora had said, pressing more weapons on him as he went to disembark the Tempest. “Forget the soft nice fuzzy-babyness of it all. Where’s your head, Ryder?”)
Jaal delivers an angaran blessing for new life, and then Scott has to say a few words, too, but they’re scripted and SAM feeds him his lines, so it’s not too bad. He embellishes a little at the end, adding some stuff about hope and renewal and a flower metaphor that’s clunky but that he really means. Pretty much all the colonists have turned out for this thing, and it’s unbelievable seeing them seated all in front of him, their faces raised towards the dais. He’s moved.
Vetra quite visibly panics when someone tries to hand her the baby afterwards – a little girl, dressed in an almost unbearably cute sleepsuit – so Scott slides in to receive her instead.
Marvana, her name is. ‘New water’. She blinks up at him once with her huge bright eyes, and then goes back to sleep. She’s like three days old, or something. It kind of overwhelms Scott, thinking about it. Being that tiny, and vulnerable, and knowing nothing. Seems impossible.
“How do you know how to hold a baby?” Vetra asks. She peers down at Marvana in his arms with cautious interest. She’s lifted a drink from the buffet table so she has a legitimate excuse if someone brandishes the kid in her direction again, and looks altogether more at ease for it.
“I don’t,” Scott admits. He bounces a little from his knees, swaying the baby. “Am I getting away with it?”
“Yes,” Jaal says. He’s looking very intently. Scott has to remember not to tense up.
Vetra makes a face at Scott behind Jaal’s back that’s clearly supposed to be significant, but he has no idea what she’s trying to say. He tries to twitch his nose in a way that will somehow communicate what?? Just like that, with two question marks. In return, Vetra makes a face he can read – that’s despair. He sees it often enough.
“Hey, Pathfinder,” Keri interrupts. “Look up.”
Vetra sighs the sigh of the supremely put-upon, and marches herself back to the drinks table.
The spot only takes ten minutes to film, and Marvana doesn’t cry at all; she even opens her eyes a little. Tann gets him to say a bunch of stiff, unnatural stuff that sounds as if a really poor translation program wrote it, and Liam is going to find the video and play it on a loop in the galley, but he doesn’t even care.
“You’re a natural with her,” Keri says, already packing up her equipment.
“Nah, she’s pretty much just a model baby,” Scott says, loud enough for her parents to hear. They look exhausted but proud, like people who have just assembled a tricky piece of furniture despite laughably inadequate instructions.
“May I?” Jaal asks them, indicating Marvana. The look on his face suggests he’s just been biding his time, waiting for his moment.
When Jaal takes her from Scott, it’s clear he knows how to hold a baby. She looks ridiculously tiny in his arms, against the wall of his chest. Like a doll.
“So this is a human baby,” Jaal says. He’s looking at her as though she is a wondrous thing, an ancient secret or a map thought long-lost. He balances her expertly in the crook of one elbow so he can stroke her cheek with one reverent fingertip.
Scott hears several distinctly feminine sighs from somewhere behind him, and at least one masculine one. Jaal continues to rock the baby, completely oblivious. If he noticed it at all, the pull he has over people, it would make him unbearable; as it is, his complete unawareness only adds to the charm. It’s terribly unfair.
“She is very delicate,” Jaal says, perhaps to Scott, or to her parents. “And most beautiful.”
Vetra comes back from the drinks table with a fresh glass in each hand. Wordlessly, she hands Scott one, and then knocks back the entirety of her own.
|
The whole Kadara… thing kicks off later in the week. It’s a snarled-up mess, but Scott enjoys himself anyway. It’s all bang-bang big hero stuff, sort of ridiculous – and Reyes is sort of ridiculous, sly and knowing and also perfectly coiffed, like someone playing themselves in a movie. Scott doesn’t mean to flirt, but he has all this energy and it finally has somewhere to go.
So he lets Reyes touch his wrist, his hip, guide him places with a hand to the small of his back. Laughs at Reyes’ jokes, fires an innuendo back. It’s fun. It doesn’t mean anything.
Liam drowses in the back of the Nomad as they head back to the Tempest. Jaal is definitely awake, but he’s silent in the seat behind Scott’s. Scott can hear him shifting around. He keeps thinking of things to say – considers starting that game they play sometimes, where they try to decide what animal the rock formations resemble – and then discarding them.
Reyes pings him while he’s still driving.
“Ryder,” Scott answers impersonally, trying not to betray the pleased jolt in his stomach.
“You will come back soon, won’t you?” Reyes says, with no preamble. Scott can feel his mouth curling up into a smile, but he tamps it down.
“We’re not done with the job yet,” he says. “So.”
“So that’s a yes,” Reyes says. A pause, like he’s making himself comfortable. When he speaks again, there’s a grin in his voice. “I have enjoyed your company, Ryder.”
“Thank you. Yours is tolerable,” Scott says.
“Ah! You wound me,” Reyes pouts. Scott’s grinning, he can’t help it.
“So, was there anything else?” he asks, trying for unaffected. Reyes hums for a second.
“On a scale of one to ten, how believable would you find it if I said I had come up with a way to foil Sloane, but it would involve you posing as my handsome, doting boyfriend at a party she’s hosting?”
Scott snorts – half scornful at the ridiculousness of it all, and half thrilled.
“About minus ten,” he says.
“On a scale of one to ten,” Reyes murmurs, “how likely would you be to go along with it anyway?”
Scott sees it, Reyes’ hand on his thigh, proprietary; Reyes’ head thrown back in a laugh, his shirt open at the throat. And Scott wouldn’t have to do anything other than sit and make cow-eyes at Reyes, and let Reyes stretch his arm along the booth behind them, and watch everyone else. Playing at being completely non-dangerous, letting Reyes lead.
Before he answers he flicks a glance up at the rearview mirror, which is a mistake. Jaal is watching in the dark, his eyes reflecting what little light there is. Scott looks away, afraid that steady blue gaze is judging him.
“Reyes,” he says. “I’ll have to call you back.”
“You know where I am,” Reyes says cheerfully.
The silence in the Nomad is thick now. Scott tells himself that he has no reason to be self-conscious or embarrassed. And anyway, he hadn’t – he hadn’t voiced that idle little fantasy about sitting at the party and being… Being taken care of. Looked after. The only person who could really have cause to complain is SAM, because like it or not, SAM has a front row seat to this junk.
Pathfinder, SAM pipes up over their private link, fantasies of passivity are extremely common amongst people in positions involving high-level leadership.
Thanks, SAM, Scott thinks, in a tone he hopes conveys both his fondness for SAM and his fervent desire that his AI will someday learn to shut up.
In fact, I obtained some very encouraging bioreadings, SAM goes on obliviously. Flirtatious contact with Reyes raises your endorphin production by thirty-seven percent -
Thanks, SAM, Scott thinks.
The Nomad goes over a sharp rock. Scott looks in the rearview again, but Liam’s still dead to the world, and Jaal is still… There.
“So,” Jaal says, and Scott has a split second to think oh wonderful, because no good conversation ever begins with that kind of ‘so’, “your people have these kinds of relationships.”
And that trips Scott up. ‘These kinds of relationships’? ‘Your people’? Is Jaal asking if humans flirt without intending on it going anywhere? If they flirt at all? Judging by what Scott has overheard on Aya, angaran women sighing over how Jaal fails to react to their repeated advances, perhaps he’s unaware that flirting is a thing anyone does.
“Um,” he hazards, “yes?”
“I see,” Jaal says, and then Scott’s brain turns the puzzle pieces round and tries them again, and it’s suddenly obvious. Scott has assumed that everyone on the crew knows that Gil is gay and has a huge, hilarious crush on Tiran Kandros, but maybe Gil has only shared all that with him. Suvi, meanwhile, keeps herself to herself. She and Jaal exchange little more than friendly hellos.
“Do angara –“ Scott begins, and then realizes he doesn’t really know anything about angaran gender, or sexuality, and shuts up before he puts his foot in something.
Naturally, though, Jaal is like a dog with an awkward bone.
“Also enjoy sexual bonds that are procreationally inert? Yes.”
“Oh,” Scott says. “I – good to know.”
Later, alone in his quarters, he stands in the middle of his floor and jumps up and down with his hands screwed up into fists, thinking hopelessly good to know? GOOD TO KNOW?!
|
He doesn’t spend the next few days hiding, no matter what Vetra says when she comes across him holed up in the armory. (Well, what Vetra actually says when she comes across him in the armory is Ryder, you scared the crap out of me, and Scott has to admit there is something weirdly creepy about the armory. It’s probably because it’s virtually soundproof and would be such an ideal place for an enemy to corner you and murder you, if the ship happened to be invaded by murderous alien pirates. It’s so cramped. Like being in a tin can.
Uh… huh, Vetra says, and then the first time he hangs out in her office with her for five hours she goes with it, but the second time she says No, I’m not getting involved in this and actually shuts the door in his face. So.)
The point is, he’s not hiding. He’s communing with SAM in his quarters.
When they dock the Tempest on Aya so everyone can get off and stretch their legs and blow off steam, Scott stays on board to take advantage of having the full run of the empty ship. He can work out in his quarters, but it’s not the same as having the nice big echoey space down in engineering. SAM interfaces with the ship’s comm system, patching in the music from his quarters, and he empties his head completely.
“Ryder,” someone says, from directly behind him, and he freezes mid-punch. SAM cuts the music.
It is only Jaal, Pathfinder, SAM reassures him, and Scott thinks, right. Only Jaal. Yeah.
He slowly lowers his fists, and then he messes with the tape around his knuckles.
“You’re not with the others?” he says. “It’ll probably be a while before we’re back on Aya.”
“I –“ Jaal says, and his eyes dip quickly from Scott’s face to the rest of him, sweaty and flushed, and then back up. “After meeting the little one at Prodromos, I started reading Dr. T’Perro’s introductory dossier on human biology. I have found it too fascinating to put down.”
Which doesn’t make sense, really, because –
“You could read on Aya,” Scott says slowly. “There are benches, and stuff. In the marketplace.”
Which you know, because it’s your homeworld, he doesn’t say.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Jaal says, as if Scott hasn’t spoken. “I have noticed you have blue eyes.”
Is Scott… Dreaming? This is the exact variety of exhaustion dream he’s been having lately, where everything is almost normal, but just slightly sideways when you look too hard. The last one escalated pretty quickly, until he was riding off on POC into the sunset.
“I mean, yes?” Scott says. “Like angarans, right?”
“Yes,” Jaal says. “We are almost all blue-eyed. But in humans, this is not the most common eye-color, I believe. Neither Liam nor Cora has blue eyes, nor does Gil, nor does our… friend Reyes.”
“Suvi’s are grayish,” Scott points out. “Pretty close.”
“In humans, the gene for blue eyes is recessive,” Jaal says. Scott might as well be spitting into the ocean, for all the notice Jaal is taking of him. Probably he should just shut up and watch this play out. “I have just reached that chapter in the dossier.”
“Yeah,” Scott says. “But that doesn’t necessarily make those qualities more rare. Sometimes the dominant gene actually ends up manifesting more rarely.”
Jaal waves a hand.
“Oh, I know, I know,” he says. “There are recessive genes in angaran biology too, of course. Blue eyes have become rarer and rarer, however, throughout human evolution.”
And actually, now Scott can see why Jaal is interested. He’s immediately curious about how typical or atypical Jaal is as an angaran.
“Okay, I’ll give you that. What did you want to ask me?” He’s still betting on this being a dream. Jaal is never normally so obtuse.
“I am curious to see these other recessive and dominant features, and I thought you would have some I could examine,” Jaal says. "I will, of course, extend to you the same courtesy should you wish to learn more about angaran genetics in future."
He touches his tablet twice, and begins reading aloud. “‘Facial dimples’.”
Right, okay, so apparently they’re doing this right now.
“Well, that’s easy, I have those,” Scott says, and smiles to demonstrate.
“May I touch them?” Jaal asks, and Scott’s immediate reaction is to shy back, but then he figures, well. Either he’s asleep, or Jaal is drunk somehow, and whichever it is, there’s probably no harm. He kind of wants to see where this is going, and he'll probably never have the chance again.
“They don’t really feel any different to the rest of my face,” he says, “but sure.”
Jaal traces his dimples with a look of utmost concentration on his face. It turns out to have been a monumentally bad idea to let him, because Jaal might be drunk but Scott definitely isn’t. He’s probably whatever the direct opposite of drunk is, and he’s going to remember every second of this, exactly how close and intent Jaal is. The pads of his thumbs are rough.
Pathfinder, SAM begins over their private link, I would like to point out that you in fact registered this as a bad idea 0.02 seconds before you agreed to allow Jaal -
“What’s the next one?” Scott asks quickly, ignoring SAM and pulling away from Jaal. Jaal doesn’t step back.
“Earlobes,” he says. “Whether they are attached or free is genetically determined.”
“Mine are attached,” Scott says. He’s always thought it looked weird. As a teenager Sara complained bitterly about hers because she had so little room for ear piercings.
“This is intriguing,” Jaal says, peering while Scott turns his head. “The dossier says these are rarer.”
Jaal’s tall enough that he looms over Scott. It’s not necessarily unpleasant, and that’s not a field of thought he wants to wander into.
“Next?” he asks, trying to shut the gate.
“Freckles,” Jaal says eagerly. “I am most interested in these. I have already observed that you display this characteristic, but I have not had the opportunity to study them up close.”
Scott has freckles across his nose, and down his cheeks. A couple just below his bottom lip. Several on his eyelids, and the backs of his hands, and in a spray across his shoulders. He never really thinks about them.
“Don’t angara have freckles?” he asks, as Jaal starts running his fingertips over them like they’re going to tell him something in Braille. His heart thumps, but he tries to ignore it. This is just a science lesson, to Jaal.
“Not like these,” Jaal says. “We do have mottled skin, but the effect is not so pleasing as with these. I have also noticed yours darken when we spend time on Kadara and Eos, and retreat on Voeld. Angaran skin variation is static. Fascinating. And utterly beautiful.”
“So, what’s the verdict?” Scott asks. He’s trying to keep it light, but there’s a faint hysteria bubbling up. Jaal’s fingertips are still on his skin, singular points of heat on his cheeks, his chin, one perilously close to his lip. “How typical a human am I?”
Jaal hesitates as though it’s a terribly difficult question.
“Completely atypical,” he murmurs finally. “It is the most maddening thing. I cannot boil it down to matters of simple biology, or psychology, though Dr. T’Perro has attempted to assist.”
He moves his fingertips across Scott’s cheek down towards his jaw, grazing his mouth in the process. He watches their progress with those unfathomable eyes. He might as well be using a scalpel. Scott closes his eyes against the feeling.
“All the humans I meet are beautiful in some way,” Jaal goes on, still so quiet. Scott feels a fingertip trace his eyelid. “But none are so beautiful as you. I try to get my fill of looking without disturbing you, and I cannot. Even this is not enough.”
Scott takes a shaky breath. He doesn’t even know if angarans kiss, and he doesn’t care. He’ll take whatever it is they do, rubbing noses or butting cheeks and nuzzling like lions. He just wants it to happen.
So of course it doesn’t. Jaal’s hands fall away. The warmth retreats.
“I apologize,” Jaal says. “I have overstepped.”
Scott opens his eyes, and doesn’t reach out to grab Jaal’s wrist. Which will, at least, let him have some dignity when this is over, because clearly there’s been some big misunderstanding, and meanwhile Scott’s been standing here swooning like he’s in Fleet and Flotilla.
“I don’t understand,” Scott says, trying and failing to keep an edge out of his voice. “You asked if you could touch me, and I said yes.”
Jaal looks shifty. There’s something he’s eliding, and he’s terrible at it.
“Scott. Are you really courting Reyes Vidal?” he blurts.
Scott tries to keep his eyes from crossing at the idea of ‘courting’ Reyes. He’s immediately struck by an image of the two of them strolling around together under a frilly parasol. The translator really couldn’t find another word?
“Uh, no.”
Jaal draws back, clearly shocked.
“Does he know this?” he asks. He sounds like he’s about to take Scott to task over Reyes’ (non-existent) honor, and it makes the hysteria bubble over.
“Yes, Jaal,” he says, laughing, feeling his heart lighten. Is that all this is about? “He most definitely knows.”
Jaal frowns and falls silent. Scott can practically see the gears grinding in his head, throwing up sparks.
“Maybe angara don’t do this,” Scott says, moving a little closer, “but humans often use flirtation solely as a social thing. Just for fun, and to express fondness. Friendly fondness.”
Jaal’s expression is pure exasperation. Scott wants to kiss his scrunched-up nose.
“Then how in the galaxy is anyone supposed to know if a human is receptive to their interest?” he demands.
Which is, honestly, a completely legitimate question.
“Actually, if I’m interested in someone, I don’t flirt with them,” Scott admits. Jaal glances reproachfully at his tablet.
“The dossier did not cover this in adequate detail,” he complains.
Scott chances moving even closer, until their knees are practically touching. Jaal doesn’t move away.
“I’m flirting with you now,” Scott says. He hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels, and he hopes he hasn't read this completely wrongly. “And I have no intention of doing anything with Reyes beyond some civic clean-up. And although this is the most elaborate and unnecessarily complicated seduction scenario I have ever been part of, I appreciate it. And I think you should kiss me.”
“Thank you,” Jaal says fervently, and puts his big hand on Scott’s jaw. Scott has just enough time to anticipate the kiss before it comes, like the moment he stands on top of a remnant pillar and cues up the jetpack, and then steps off the edge of the world.