Chapter Text
“Ryder?”
He heard his name but it didn’t stick. It passed over his swirling consciousness, a cloud above a choppy sea. He was busy plotting murder. Stewing over all the reasons his mechanic boyfriend deserved it.
“Ryder!”
Peebee’s exclamation, in tandem with a high-pitched, untranslatable squeak from Vetra, hooked his consciousness. Reality reeled him back just in time to see the Nomad leave a cliff side, go airborne for a good five seconds before reconnecting with the near vertical embankment. Despite the shocks and the inertia dampeners, the impact jarred his teeth. Normally, the shrieks of horror and disgust such driving techniques extracted from most of his crew (Drack excluded), brought a smile to his face.
Not today.
He half-heartedly steered, barely missing a boulder twice the size of the vehicle. A jagged edge scraped the driver’s side of the Nomad with a piercing screech that even made Ryder grimace.
“Oh, Gil’s gonna be pissed - uh-oh.” A blue hand shot to her mouth, trying to catch the words. To stuff them back inside her hasty mouth. Too late.
Wrong. Thing. To say.
Scott took his foot off the brake and floored the accelerator. He jerked the steering wheel hard to the right, just enough to extract some screams of horror from the girls. Not enough to actually flip the vehicle. Despite popular opinion to the contrary, Scott knew how to drive. He drove very well, in fact. It was his best kept secret. No one knew, though he believed that Gil had a sneaking suspicion.
Just how he wanted it. He could have all the fun he wanted in an extra-terrain vehicle and could play it off as bad driving skills. One long-running practical joke. Normally, whenever a crew member cursed him as they sailed over a cliff or muttered “learn how to drive” as they walked away from the Nomad, rubbing a jarred knee or aching back - well, it made him giggle inside. Even as he professed his apologies, he mentally said “gotcha” and un-holstered his metaphorical finger guns.
But now, nothing lifted his spirits. Not even the moment he extracted an asari curse word from Peebee in tandem with a weird, turian clacking sound from Vetra, both of which confounded the translator, as he careened around a corner and swerved yet again to “miss” a rock outcropping. The loud crunch of rock against metal told him that he had left some of the Nomad’s paint behind.
Good. Just as he wanted it.
Sure, his reckless driving piled up hours of work for his boyfriend, Gil. Usually, the fact that his antics resulted in some hard labor for his man caused him quite a bit of guilt. Not enough to actually stop, but he made sure that he paid him back in other ways. Besides, something about seeing those tufts of red hair jutting above a welders mask did something to him that usually brought good rewards for Gil later. He just had to shrug off all the curses emanating from the undercarriage of the Nomad on a regular basis.
This time was different. This was pure, premeditated revenge. In this case, Peebee and Vetra were just collateral damage. And the amount of damage inflicted on the Nomad: sabotage. But, in Scott’s estimation, the man had it coming.
It certainly didn’t have to be this way. Could have been different. He could be down by the lake right now, beer in hand, Gil’s crotch in the other, working on a tan. Sure, Scott knew very well that there was no working on a tan for him; it always proved to be more like a man painfully metamorphosing into a lobster, complete with a trip to the doctor the next day for burn salve. Then, days later, sloughing off the lobster skin to reveal the baby pink skin of a new man underneath. So, yeah, good times.
He could be having a fucking good time. But nooooooooo. No, no, no. Gil had been too busy. Busy, busy, busy. Their first true vacation since arriving in Heleus - a fucking well deserved vacation; yet, it would seem, the man had no concept of the word. Hello, I’m Gil. And I work. It’s what I do. Fun? What is fun? There is work to do.
Scott couldn’t even say for sure how it came to this. There had been a flurry of activity. Planning. Preparations. A general air of excitement suffusing the Tempest. Perhaps he shouldered some of the blame. One vacation commitment with a friend turned into two, then five. It snowballed somehow. Everyone wanted a slice of his time. Even Kallo asked for an outing, which he still hadn’t quite figured out. Kallo didn’t seem the outing type.
Still, he blamed Gil mostly. Scott had bugged him for weeks, filling the mechanic’s ears with all the things he wanted to do, which consisted primarily of doing nothing. The said day by the lake. Perhaps a hike up Clingmans Rock - the shorter part, not the spiky part that only crazy adventurers scaled. Nothing too strenuous - it is vacation after all. Oh, and definitely a romantic sunset picnic out on Devil’s Leap Overlook. Oh, they should totally camp there!
“Ok.” “Sounds good.” “Whatever you want.”
It took a while for Scott to discover the pattern of non-committal responses his eager planning had been met with. His own excitement clouded the fact that Gil seemed anything but excited. The one time that Scott commented on Gil’s lack of enthusiasm, he’d gotten an “I’m just tired” excuse as a response. Scott had bought it. Of course his man stayed tired, he worked non-stop, save for a poker game now and then and their regular trysts in various parts of the ship. The latter could only add to Gil’s exhaustion.
Scott never saw it coming. The gall. The betrayal. The memory drove his eyebrows plunging further down between his eyes - and the Nomad off yet another cliff.
Oops. This one hadn’t been planned. Scott had been too preoccupied to the see the bog below them. One of the side-effects of terraforming. With the renewed rains that swept across the plains on a far more regular basis, some of the areas which remained in shadow never fully dried out. They now sailed over one such shadowy mud hole.
Well, fuck. Scott stomped the accelerator. Sure, he knew it would do zero good as they were mid-air. It served more as a physical, actionable equivalent to prayer. Come on, baby, make it over.
The Nomad landed with a softened thud, slid several meters, then stopped. He could hear four of the wheels digging into the mire. He glanced at his passengers. They did not look amused.
“Are we stuck?” Peebee, sitting in the passenger seat, crossed her arms across her chest as she scowled at Ryder.
“Nah. I just gotta put it in six-wheel drive is all. I’ll have us out in a jiffy.” He toggled to 6WD and pushed the pedal. Gently at first, then harder as his desperation revved higher while the Nomad remained stationary.
“Does ‘jiffy’ mean ‘soon’?”
“Haha. Funny, Vetra,” Scott shot a look of death towards the backseat as Peebee snickered next to him. “I’ll just have to get out and push.” And yes, he knew very well the impossibility of pushing a vehicle that weighed several tons out of a mud pit that he’d probably just sink into and die - which didn’t seem like such a terrible idea after all, given how he felt at that moment.
Fortunately, his passengers must have sensed this and remained quiet for several minutes while he sulked. His mind reeled for possibilities but the only reasonable one that came to him he refused to entertain. So he sat and stewed. Perhaps, out of eventual boredom, Vetra stuck her neck on the chopping block and said it out loud for him. “We have to call Gil.”
“No! Absolutely not. I don’t need him.”
“Ryder, seriously.”
It was the kick in the ass he needed. Not to radio his boyfriend and ask for help. Oh, no, no, NO. But it did get him moving. He jerked the handle and the door flipped up with a hiss. He stood up and surveyed the situation.
Not good. But -
The closest solid ground appeared to be a good forty meters away. Nope. Impossible. Unless…. Dammit he had to try. His pride was at stake. He focused on a spot. Got it in his head. Breathed in and out. Deep breaths. Trying to find his zen. He turned his head slightly back to the Nomad’s interior. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”
“Pathfinder, if you are considering a biotic jump, the distance to solid ground is greater than the -”
Scott didn’t wait for SAM to finish before charging. That familiar split second of electric air whooshing by him met with a not so familiar end. Instead of the usual impact of projected force against a solid object that always brought a tingle to every cell in his body, he felt - nothing.
Mmmm… not quite right. It was like punching your fist into a wall only to find the wall was made of putty. When the dazzling blue glow dissipated to let his eyes take in the situation, he found himself chest deep in mud.
Well, that went exactly as it should have, despite his expectations to the contrary. He sighed. Fantastic. At least his arms were free. He’d had enough sense to have his arms outstretched toward his final goal. And they remained so, hovering mere centimeters from mud level. He tried to move but to no avail. The mud proved to be quite thick, which he supposed he should be grateful for, otherwise he’d likely sink into the bog. Not the way he’d want to go, if given a choice.
“Ryder!” Peebee called from the Nomad, her shrill voice burying Vetra’s mumbled “not good.”
“Don’t worry, guys. I got this.” He didn’t have it. He knew it. They knew it. But one thing that had gotten him this far as a pathfinder was his plucky, can-do attitude. He just had to refocus. Just one more jump should do it.
“Pathfinder -”
“SAM, so help me -”
“A biotic jump at this point is impossible, even after cooldown,” SAM continued unfazed by Scott’s threatening tone. “The mud encasing you cannot be -”
“Okay, Sam, I get it!” As his amp cooled down he continued to consider attempting another charge anyway but finally decided against it. He tried not to appear desperate as he looked around for anything that might be his saving grace.
His eyes fell on a tree a bit to his right, half fallen but still rooted. It looked sturdy. Well out of his reach but he had another biotic trick that might work. He threw out a biotic line of pull. He could feel the tendrils gripping the leaning tree. He just prayed it was stationary so that the connection would have the effect of pulling him instead. Should work. In theory.
Sure enough, the mud around him began to gurgle and bloop in protest as his body began to escape it’s suction hold. He began to feel his body go up and forward in fits and starts as the bog resisted giving up its newfound prize. Slow going but he neared the tree and dry land in small increments, though every second risked overheating his amp. After some extended moments, his ears buzzed and blood drained from his eyes, making the sight before him dim.
“Ryder, your biotic implant is at 98% capacity. I advise immediate cooldown.” SAM delivered this news in his usual deadpan style. Fine. That just made it that much easier to ignore him as he pulled even harder. His body gave a significant lurch forward, his torso now completely free.
A crack.
“Please hold. Just a little - bit - longer.”
The tree’s limb that, due to the tree’s angle, had its ends just inches above the mud, snapped and began to drag towards him from the pull - his own momentum halted. Well, shit.
He wanted to cry. He refused to cry. He cursed instead. The howled word reverberated off the barren rock surrounding them. Like every pebble in witness now mimicked him. Mocking him.
“Hey, Ryder. This might work, good job!”
He looked up to find Peebee standing there. On the bank. Next to the tree.
“What the -? How did you -? How did you get over there?”
“I used my biotics to levitate over here.”
“You what?!”
“Yeah, Ryder, I floated over here.” She said this with the same nonchalant tone she might use to announce she had just taken a nap. No big deal.
“So, let me get this straight. Have you always been able to levitate yourself?”
She shrugged. “Yeah. All asari can.”
“And I’m just finding out about this now?” He didn’t mean for the volume and the pitch of his voice to raise throughout that sentence but he just couldn’t help it.
“Can you reach him?” Vetra scrambled over some of the half exposed roots and some rocks that had settled between them - or the tree had grown up between them more likely, not that that had helped to keep it from tipping over.
“Vetra, I swear to god, if you tell me you are biotic and levitated over as well, I will drown myself in this mud.”
“That I what?’
Peebee burst into laughter. “Vetra, I told you to stay in the Nomad. I really had him goin’.”
“It’s too hot in there. Ryder turned it off.”
Scott would have strummed his fingers in front of him in his half exposed, nearly horizontal position but stopped himself short of shoving his fingers in the muck. Whatever the explanation, their presence on dry ground in contrast to his current predicament did nothing good for his mood.
Once Peebee got hold of enough breath in between her guffaws, she pointed back toward the Nomad. “So, there was a rock close enough to jump to on the other side of the Nomad.
Well, of course there was. He would have known that if he had looked. But he blamed his passengers for this. “I think it is important that you know that, once I get out of here, I’m going to hurt both of you. See if you can get that limb to me, I can almost reach it.”
Peebee lifted it with her biotics and drifted it his way. “Grab hold,” she instructed as she pulled it back towards her. The suction of the mud made funny poopy sounds but he made no comment and mentally dared the other two to say anything. They must have received the message and remained quiet as his feet finally reached solid ground.
He came down with lazers blazing - from his eyes. Jaw set and nostrils flaring. Much of the anger he had felt toward Gil earlier now threatened to turn to embarrassment - anger at himself. He would have none of that, so he redirected that anger towards the innocent bystanders. They both took a step back. “Not. A. Word.”
Peebee bit her lip but remained quiet while Vetra took a sudden interest in the horizon.
“Promise me that this stays between us. The Nomad being stuck. Can’t hide that. But the whole personally getting stuck in the mud thing. That never happened. Understood?”
The girls mumbled acknowledgements.
“Say that you promise. You will speak to no one about this.”
“Yeah, ok, I promise, I won’t tell anybody,” said Peebee. He was pretty sure he heard her tack on the word “jerk” at the end, just under her breath, but he let it slide.
“Not a word. Got it.” Vetra nodded, with nothing more to add, thankfully.
“Good. Now, just let me think.” He glanced at his chronometer. Still an hour before meeting Reyes. That’s good. Then he looked down his torso. His once colorful shorts and teeshirt now a solid clay brown up to his chest. Definitely not good. He felt pretty sure that, despite Vidal’s insistence that they dress casual for lunch, sitting at the table caked in mud might be pushing the envelope.
“I need clothes. SAM, is there some place to buy clothes in this town?”
“Yes. There are currently three purveyors that offer men’s casual attire.”
“Really?” Fortunately, SAM seemed to understand this as a rhetorical question. He’d gotten much better at that. To be fair, Scott knew himself to be a ‘think out loud’ kind of person and SAM had adjusted.
It surprised him that New Hope, Eos’ newest settlement, had grown so quickly. A commercial hub strategically situated amidst the older three settlements, it had become a major destination for new merchants being awakened from cryo. Probably why Reyes had chosen it as the location of his new venture of which Scott and Company were due to be the first patrons.
“Are we close enough to walk?”
A non-rhetorical question and SAM responded dutifully. “Given your standard gait I estimate that you would arrive there in fifty-three minutes; however, given Peebee’s lesser stature, arrival should be in seventy-two minutes, barring unforeseeable circumstances.” Whether this was an attempt by SAM at a joke or he merely gave more information than strictly necessary, Scott couldn’t quite tell but it made him happy either way. He particularly enjoyed the “Hey!” that this comment extracted for Peebee.
“Ok, so we’re hoofing it. I’ll call Reyes and let him know we are going to be late since I have to stop to do some clothes shopping, too.” He said this to no one in particular, already moving toward the nav point. As a second thought, he called back to the befuddled crew behind him: “Ok, campers, let’s move out!”