Chapter Text
“Phrixus.”
He stuck his head out of his door. “What?”
“C’mere for a sec.”
His mothers were unpacking in the living room and kitchen, one unwrapping dishes at the bar and the other sitting cross-legged on the new couch, a forgotten box beside her and a datapad out. Workaholic. But that certain spot behind his crest started to itch when he saw the way they were carefully not looking at each other, their mandibles too perfectly composed.
“What?” Phrixus stated.
“What,” Domera mimicked, putting away a glass. “Don’t be such a thirteen-year-old boy.”
“I am–” he stopped. Abruptly turned back the way he came. “I’m not getting sucked into this.”
“Hold up!” Domera ordered.
Phrixus stopped. In the living room, Calix was studiously scrolling through her datapad. The old prefab house on Niiet way outstripped this apartment in size; the old living room could have held the new one and the kitchen and the single bathroom. If they really worked at (and they probably would), his mothers could smooch stretching from the couch over to the bar counter.
Domera chuckled. “Good. Now, we have something to tell you.”
“‘Kaaaaay,” Phrixus said warily.
In the corner of his eye, Calix’s mandibles twitched.
“We’re pregnant!” Domera all but shouted gleefully.
“What,” Phrixus said.
“Isn’t it great? You’ll be a big brother, you can change diapers, clean up puke–”
“Eaugh, spirits, Mom,” he groaned, his subvocals dipping to the pitch on ‘Mom’ meant for Domera alone. “One, disgusting. Two, you’re just screwing with me.”
Domera cackled. “Guilty. But listen– aren’t you relieved now? Makes the move seem like a cakewalk.”
“Yeah, it could always be worse,” Phrixus drawled, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, don’t be like that. Look, at worst it’ll–”
“–Only be two years until bootcamp,” he finished for her. “Yeah, I know.”
She shook her head, chuckling. “Okay, okay. We get it. You and your teenager-iness are impervious to consolation. Go on, then. You’re released from our cruelties.”
“Thanks,” he stated flatly, mandibles twitching.
As he retreated to his room (all of a few yards from the main room), Domera, with her voice rising with amusement, said to Calix, “Did you see his face?”
“I know!”
“He goes– he goes, ‘Eaugh, spirits, Mom!’”
The two of them shrieked with laughter.
Hilarious.
-
Later, when he was down range, watched by the sarges and their overbearing expectations, or when he was surviving the interminable numbness of trench boredom with the occasional furor of a firefight– later, he wouldn’t be able to picture the face or name of the salarian the teacher sat him next to in chemistry. Didn’t matter really; the salarians were always coming and going. Give them a month, and suddenly, oooh, I’m too wise and smart and sooo much older than you to associate with you children. The asari had the opposite problem. Always there but never growing up.
Anyway. Years later, he could never quite place his lab partner, but he would always remember when he sat down and the girl in front of him swiveled to inspect him. And those clan markings. He would recognize them anywhere; any turian worth his salt would. A Quentius. That girl was a Quentius. And that was when he knew he was way out of his depth.
After her deliberate perusal, the Quentius girl turned back around in her seat and whispered something to the female human beside her, her hand coming up to hide her mandibles from his view. And as he glanced around, Phrixus recognized nearly all the flashes of clan markings around the room. Ambassadors, generals, governors, presidents. These kids were from the top of the Hierarchy.
And here he was, just Phrixus Jaril. Just a nobody from some backwater colony. Yeah, Calix had just been assigned as the colony rep to the Citadel, but she was literally the first ever in her office. Until last year, Niiet had just been an outpost and only barely met the criteria to upgrade to colony status. The Hierarchy wasn’t supposed to be like that of course; nepotistic or whatever. You were accountable for yourself, and your actions would earn your position. But everyone knew better.
It wasn’t that much of a coincidence that certain clans bred excellence.
In front of him, the Quentius girl and the human were whispering. He caught the human’s eye over her shoulder. She whipped back around and elbowed the Quentius girl when she giggled. He could count on his hands the number of humans he’d met. And all of them had been adults.
Students were still filing in, and Phrixus looked up when a salarian paused in the aisle between the tables. She– Bavak, that was it– sat down beside him and introduced herself. In front of him, her stool squealed as Quentius swiveled fully to face them.
“Bavak, introduce us,” she commanded. The human looked at them, too.
Her nostrils and eyelids fluttering, Bavak stared between them all. “How about some manners?”
Quentius’s mandibles flicked. “Whatever. Don’t be such a salarian.”
“Yes, ma’am, Capt’n Turian Commander ma’am,” Bavak said, high-pitched. “Phrixus Jaril, this is Aela Quentius. She sucks. Stay away from her.”
Aela Quentius made a rude gesture with her digits and mandibles.
“And Mira Ryder. She’s okay,” Bavak added.
The human made a little wave, sparing a smile for Bavak. He’d thought he’d been ready to pull out the whole, ‘What the hell do they know’ against these people and their thinking that he was some hick. But maybe he’d accidentally painted it onto his forehead the last time he’d done his markings: HICK, in giant block letters. He didn’t know how to figure the look in Mira Ryder’s face, or Bavak’s. He’d seen plenty vids, of course, but– how did they tell each other anything without mandibles, anyway?
“And where do they grow Phrixus Jarils?” Aela asked, her blue eyes squaring him up.
“The tissue replicators are pretty amazing these days,” Phrixus stated drily.
Aela and her friend snorted.
“Funny,” Aela said.
And the two of them stared at him expectantly (three for that matter, but salarians always looked like they were staring at you), so he cleared his throat.
“Niiet,” he said.
“Oh, Niiet,” Aela said. He thought she was being sarcastic, and he was prepping some vicious comeback he’d think of in three days, when she leaned forward.
“Niiet. Myredda system, only three jumps to either the Citadel or Palaven. Nice mineral deposits, even eezo. Not a lot. But the Hierarchy always needs it. You must be the new representative’s son.”
Phrixus struggled to keep his eyes calm and his mandibles still. Aela Quentius was dressing him down like some sort of research project. He didn’t think even he could pick out Niiet on a cluster, on a system map. It was a single column on an infinite data list. A speck of snot.
But Aela Quentius was looking at him as if compiling away means of operation, tax deductibles, overhead– all the things that declared him on one side, her on the other. As if she already knew where he and she would stand, come two years and bootcamp’s trials by misery. Well. Maybe she did.
That’s mostly what he thought about through the drone of the lesson module.
He would wonder later on why, despite his complete determination to tough his two years out at the fancy Citadel prep high as a silent loner– why he had lunch with Aela and her friends when she asked, and why he hung out with that group after classes on the Silversun Strip. Whatever his inclination to despise such a notion, he’d guess he had still been a kid that wanted to belong.
-
“So… you just moved to the Citadel?” Mira Ryder asked him, twirling the straw of her drink.
They’d all gone to Armax Arsenal Arena and played a (mostly) friendly match, casual settings, no armor. He hadn’t done terribly; running after the local vermin back home with shitty half-baked lasers had given him some experience, at least. Turned out, Mira Ryder had a twin that was loud and flashy, and liked to sneak biotics into a no-biotics-allowed match. The twin– Forta Ryder– and Aela Quentius ended up with best scores. Their bloodthirst sated, the lot of them had trotted to a dextro-levo food stand, and Phrixus had somehow been shuffled to the back of the line where Mira Ryder had waffled for ages about her order. Her brother had gotten fed up and run on, but Phrixus felt awkward just ditching her.
That was how he came to trail after the some-odd half dozen teenage turians, salarians, asari, and single human (all of them making a lot of noise reenacting the finer points of their match), and walking beside a human girl through the neon controlled chaos of Silversun.
Phrixus flicked his mandibles, and then wondered if he should be more “obvious” and shrug or something. And then he hated the impulse, didn’t want to change just because of some alien. But then, isn’t that the feeling of a hick– basically, he was over-thinking it like an idiot.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Got here three days ago.”
“First time here?”
“Yeah.”
“Well. What do you think so far?”
“Of the Citadel?”
She nodded. Her long… hair swished about on top of her head. Like a… like a head-tail or something. Strands stuck to the side of her face.
“It’s…” Phrixus said. “It’s too big. And somehow, kind of too small.” He eyed the false afternoon sky. “Claustrophobic.”
Mira Ryder’s straw squealed as she pulled at it with her teeth. She appeared to be biting at a smile.
“That’s funny. Every time I’m planetside, I’d say the exact same thing,” she said.
At his look, Mira supplanted, “We were born here. Me and Forta. Lived here all our lives. Don’t go down gravity wells that often.”
“Huh,” was all Phrixus could think to say.
As a pair, they darted past a pamphlet peddler. Ahead, the other group was hooting and making general nuisances of themselves. From the corner of his eye, he studied her. What vids didn’t really convey was how small humans seemed. And, like. Proportioned incorrectly. Like they shouldn’t be able to move. He remembered the way Forta Ryder had shot across the Arena floor like a rocket. Like they shouldn’t move as well as they did.
Mira glanced up at him. He looked away. His mandibles were vibrating a little, but surely she wouldn’t notice.
“Umm,” she hummed, chewing on her straw. “Don’t take this weird, but have you never met a human before?”
Shit. Of course. Lived on the Citadel all her life, friends with a turian. Of course she would be able to interpret his expression.
The pause in which he scrambled to think of a reply dragged on. Until he made a weird subvocal-rattling cough.
“No,” he muttered. “I mean, you know. Passing ice merchants and stuff. But, uhh… I guess, never really one my age. Niiet’s hundred percent turian.”
“Hmm,” she mused. “Opposite problem here. We were the only human kids around for a long time.”
“Huh,” he said.
It was getting on toward evening, and the crowds had thickened. An elcor declaimed couplets on a corner, laughter shrilled out of every back alley, a diffusion of harsh neon glyphs burned on every stationary surface: the total sensation of the area, the closeness of literally every kind of alien ever– it all whirled and swam in his head.
“For what it’s worth,” Mira Ryder was saying. He turned to her, just to have something to drown out the deafening muddle of everything else. “I really like the Citadel. It’s the center of the galaxy. People are always coming and going, something’s always happening. You’ll find something you like here.”
And then ahead of them her brother waved back at them, shouted something (he didn’t really remember), and Mira waved and ran ahead. When she jogged over there, weaving between people, the image of that float-y, bouncy mass of head-tail streaked with fluorescent blue light got lodged into his memories. Years later, he’d see it. Having a beer out of uniform, getting jettisoned from a drop ship. He never knew why, exactly, that particular bit of early-Mira so stuck with him.
Some things were just permanent, he guessed.
-
A month later, Bavak left the prep high to pursue her bachelor’s. Her first bachelor’s, anyway.
The class having an uneven number, Bavak had done most group assignments with Aela and Mira before Phrixus came. So he ended up doing the same when she left. And he took her spot in Aela’s Arena group. It was weird how easy a turian could fill the hole left by a salarian. And it was weird how easily he got caught up in Aela’s… whatever.
She had more followers on the extranet than any thirteen year old girl had a right to, and it seemed like she knew the entire clan history of each and every one of them, down to their most obscure family branches. She knew everyone, she knew everything, and she clearly was unafraid to let you know it.
He wanted to turn a cold shoulder at every nosy extrapolation she made about Niiet’s integration into the Hierarchy whole. He should have; most of her nonsense bewildered him. But the brightness in her eyes and the excited quiver in her mandibles bore down on him like the artificial sun of the Citadel holo-sky.
He wanted to tell Forta Ryder to go shove it whenever he dragged him on a suicide blitz against Aela’s team, or to the arcade, or to the food stands. He wanted to tell Forta to knock off with his incessant habit of taking photos of everyone ever and selfies. Yet somehow Phrixus ended up with an endless string of snaps of Aela and Mira, Mira and Forta, all the others, himself interspersed with his dumb sour look– all cycling on his room’s monitor along with his photos from home. From Niiet.
“Phrixus? Can you get the door?”
He dropped his datapad beside him and sat up on his bed. “Just a sec.”
Brushing the console beside it, the door silently slid open and revealed Calix with load of laundry hefted on her hip.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he told her, reaching to take it. He’d been doing his own laundry for over a year now.
She swiveled deftly out of his reach and ducked around him into his room, her eyes glittering with curiosity.
“Call it nostalgia for a task that didn’t involve licking the boots of some ambassador’s undersecretary,” she told him, flicking her mandibles. “And a thank you would be appropriate, I think.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She dumped the laundry on his bed and started folding. She was looking around in a totally obvious way, determined to gather as much intelligence possible on this rare foray into her mysterious teenage son’s den. Phrixus stood beside her and picked up a shirt to fold.
“So,” Calix said.
“So,” he said.
She bumped him with a hip in retaliation. She eyed him.
“You’re ‘adjusting’ well. That’s the word, right? Adjusting?”
“I guess,” he said.
She tilted her head toward his monitor and the image of Aela and five of their group. “You’ve made friends. They seem, you know. Cute.”
He flicked his mandibles. And stayed quiet. He meant to keep quiet, too. Except she was staring at him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That one’s a Quentius. Her father’s, like, a stone throw from primus. I mean, you know.”
Calix kept folding. She hummed lightly.
He cleared his throat. “The salarian councilor’s grandson is in my programming class? Did you know that?”
“Hey,” she said, looking at him. “You know something? You’re a snob.”
He dropped a pair of socks. “What?”
“Or reverse snob.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“You’re making it a thing,” she told him. She dropped a folded shirt and patted it, then turned about to face him. “Stop trying to find something to angst over. You’re Phrixus Jaril, and you don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. Your grades are apparently good, even with your backwater education. ‘Cause we haven’t gotten any accusatory calls about you dropping out. Your friends are cute.”
She poked him in the arm. “I’d call this move a success.”
He blinked at her. And then, shook his head with a snort. “I guess.”
“Hey,” she said, taking his arm into her hand. “You’re doing good. I’m proud of you.”
His mandibles tucked in embarrassment. Her hand tugged smartly, and she pulled him to a hug. She was still taller than him, but they all knew it was matter of time. Still, it was nice. To be hugged with her able to reach all around and then some, while it was still possible.
“Thanks, Mom,” Phrixus murmured, his subvocals inflecting up for the ‘Mom’ just for her.
She patted him on the back. “There we go. Much better.”
They went back to folding. She side-eyed him. He stumbled when she sharply hip-bumped him again.
“Hey–”
“Jeez,” she said. “Making me say such corny stuff.”
“What! You were the one–”
“So corny,” she groaned loudly over him.
He finally laughed and threw a pair of socks at her face. She retaliated with a pair of pants. In the aftermath of the laundry war, Calix lightly skipped out and left him to clean up the mess they’d made.
-
“Forta, no–!”
Completely disregarding Mira’s shout, she and Phrixus both were flattened by the sudden pressure blast from Forta’s biotics. He was gone, trailed by blue after-image. Mira swore under her breath, and her hand shot to Phrixus’s sleeve to keep him pulled down under cover. The reason why became clear when buzzing shots of orange light, deadly to their “vital” sensors, filled the air over their heads.
It was a trap.
“We got them pinned, keep it up!”
A gleeful chorus of whoops answered.
“Dirty bastards!” Phrixus yelled.
“Some friends you are!” Mira added.
“All’s fair!” N’tessa (asari, galactic lit, a year ahead of them but pretty decent about it) shot back smugly. “But hey! Hold up guys, hold up.”
The barrage of orange lasers ceased.
“We’ll give you a chance to surrender. Two clean shots, and you guys can get out before it gets too embarrassing.”
Phrixus looked at Mira, and she looked back at him.
When he thought back to this moment, he’d remember it as the first time he really saw something other than “human.” He’d been thinking it for a while, he was sure, but something about seeing it made it different. The way her stray curls clung to her temple and cheek, sweat beading and binding. The roundness in her features, so strange to his eye. The softness, the thin skin, all of it– or maybe he was just making himself remember it that way. Because things had ended up the way they had, and he didn’t want to believe that he had never had these sentiments, that… Well, he supposed it didn’t matter if all you did was remember.
Mira’s brow came down. And that, he would later realize, actually translated to him. She must have seen the answer in his own face, because at the very same moment they drew their fake Arena pistols and fired over the edge of their cover.
N’tessa squawked, and the score display overhead flashed for another point to Team Rydin’ Hygh (Forta was kind of pushy about getting to name things; and about pushing all the buttons).
After that, their enemies still outnumbered him and Mira, but they had the advantage of surprise and cleaned out their immediate area. Their friends groaned, shot them dirty looks, and skulked off to the exit. Then, they finally found Forta in a messy dogfight with Aela, and Mira picked her off with a pretty shot from long range.
It was– all things considered– fucking awesome.
Phrixus and Mira tied for high scores, so they were treated at the usual street stand. His team told off Forta for falling for such an obvious ploy, and they all served him a generous round of ribbing. But it was hard to really put heat into it when the guy smiled so broadly and laughed just as hard as any of them.
Phrixus didn’t even feel his usual compulsion to accuse Forta of potentially getting people killed in a real gunfight. His carapace felt lighter than it had in a long time.
He turned in his seat toward Mira. Reaching across the table, he clicked his cheap aluminum drink container against hers.
“That was an awesome shot at the end there,” he said.
The group of them sat around the street stand, making enough noise to earn a few glares from the owner. The batarian was clanking about in his tiny kitchen, huge billows of greasy smoke drifting out the tiny order window. But even through the smoke, he saw her swivel sharply, look at him, and just as sharply look off to the side.
“Uh, thanks…” she stumbled. She cleared her throat. “I mean, yeah– oh, not yeah it was awesome– not that it wasn’t–”
She stopped. And did a thing with her lips. “I meant, uh, yeah, I’m thinking of trying out a sniper rifle. Dad thinks I’d be good for it.”
His mandibles pulled out. “He military?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Alliance. Obviously. Oh! I didn’t mean– just, you know, the human thing.”
“Right. I, uh, got that,” Phrixus said.
Her face seemed a bit… like a balloon with too much air or something, all puffed out and taut, staring at him. Then she looked down, deflating a little.
To be frank, he had no clue what the hell was happening.
He remembered that well enough: the busted grav stabilizer feeling of bewilderment. It was much better, and yet much worse, than the feelings that followed. The anxiety, the neediness, the flutter, and all other manners of adolescent torture.
-
The aftermath or the fallout– or maybe the beginning?– was unmistakeable. But he would never be able to figure out where or when the seeds for it got sown. Maybe it had been that tap between cheap aluminum drink cups, maybe it had been the exchanged look at the Arena, maybe it had been the very first meeting. And then, maybe it had been something in them all along.
The symptoms could not have manifested with more clarity.
When Mira struggled through chem and geometry, and had her little freak-outs over their group chat room– Phrixus would send over the files of his notes and copies of his homework. He eventually had to encrypt them for her alone when everyone else thought they were being cute and started bitching about not getting sent the files, too.
When Aela started in on one of her tears through political-economic webs in the clans and their potential expansions throughout the fringe colonies, and then Phrixus started making passive-aggressive jabs which Aela returned like the impending squabble was some kind of puzzle– Mira would jab Aela in the ribs and tell her to leave it alone.
When Mira stood there at the food stand, abandoned by her brother and her indecisiveness popping a vessel in the batarian stall owner’s forehead– Phrixus would brush past her and order for them both. And she would go, “Oh! How did you know that’s exactly what I wanted!” And he would flick his mandibles dismissively to hide the strange warm pit sprouting somewhere near his chest.
When Phrixus got into a mood (that’s what his moms called it anyway), complaining about the state of the school food– supposedly best school on the Citadel, a cold spit away from the Presidium even, and this is what we get? Or what the hell even was art and lit classes supposed to do for him? He was shipping out soon, probably end up artillery fodder anyway– Mira’s bitten smile would finally burst into a laugh, calling him grumpy or something similarly demoralizing to his ire.
And it didn’t even seem to matter.