Chapter Text
“Hey uh. Wanna come admire the view in here for a minute?”
There’s amusement, more than a little innuendo and something else in Felicity’s voice, and okay, so, Vetra’s spent more time gaping at the view over Meridian from the little balcony then anything else since they came up here. It’s a view she’s pretty sure she’s not going to get tired of any time soon.
The view inside is leaning against the wall with a grin, hands jammed in her pockets as she watches. It’s only the nervous jittering of one foot that betrays that she’s not as relaxed as she’s trying to appear, and when Vetra surreptitiously flicks a glance at the relevant corner of her visor, it shows her heart rate is skyrocketing.
“…everything okay?” Vetra asks, and Fliss’s smile falters.
“Yeah. Um,” she begins, and it’s remarkable how the we need to talk face is recognisable, no matter the species. There’s a feeling closing in around her carapace, one that feels remarkably like that time she took a full krogan headbutt to the chest, and that smug little voice that always sounds like her mother’s is saying I told you so. There was always that old joke, about relationships formed in intense situations, but she’d thought —
“So. I know it’s not a farm,” Fliss continues, twisting her hands together and peering at Vetra anxiously. “I know you wanted something out in one of the outposts — so do I — but um, I don’t think we’re done pathfinding yet? And I just thought that maybe we could try this first, you know, live together properly when we’re not on the Tempest?”
The sucker-punch feeling in her chest loosens so abruptly she actually staggers, and her mother’s voice is replaced with a mental image of Sid, just rolling her eyes in exasperation. Something of Vetra’s astonishment must show, because Fliss rambles on even faster.
“I mean, only if you want to? Nothing’s confirmed yet, so if you don’t — if it’s ‘no’ that’s okay, I know it’s probably early and I don’t even know if you — ” she inhales, and plunges on determinedly. “I know that everything’s changing and settling and I don’t even know if you feel the same way now that we’ve had a chance to stop and catch our breath and —”
She’s learned from experience that action is the only thing capable of stopping Fliss once she gets started like this. She’s also learned that the great advantage of species that use their mouths to kiss is that usually — Fliss has certainly tried to prove otherwise — kissing distracts them long enough to be able to get a word in edgewise, and well, Vetra’s not above using this to her advantage.
As predicted, application of mouth-plates to pliable human lips has Fliss stuttering to a halt, breath catching as she looks up at Vetra from under her lashes.
“Back up a moment,” Vetra says slowly. “Are you — you’re asking if this could be home? You and me, living here together?”
As soon as the words left her mouth she wishes she could take them back. Saying it out loud makes them real, makes the prospect of heartbreak all the worse. But she’d said them, back on that bluff on Kadara, and maybe, just maybe her luck will hold twice.
“Yes? I haven’t accepted anything yet, it’s just been offered —” she waves her hand at the empty, huge, rooms around them. “— So we don’t have to take it if that’s not what you want, or if it’s too fast for you, but yeah. Yeah, I really want live here. With you. Make it home, you know?”
Her face goes from hopeful to pained uncertainty when Vetra’s subharmonics take charge all on their own and make some embarrassing trilling keen.
“Vee, I — “
The great thing about applying kisses with a brow, like a civilised species is that it leaves the vocal cords free to put all the things that can’t be said in words, into a low trilling hum. Fliss apparently understands just fine, because she relaxes, returning the press with a relieved huff of her own.
“Just — one condition,” Vetra adds after a few minutes, and her mandibles splay out in a grin of her own when Fliss leans back, giving her an inquiring look. “We’re leaving the pjack on the Tempest,”