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The whiskey burns.
“This tastes like shit.”
“I thought you liked the bad stuff.”
Tiso looks at the bottle in the bartender’s hand. Amber liquid sloshes as she pours him another glass— neat. He only ever takes it neat. Quirrel, on the other hand, likes all that girly stuff. You know, the big, flamboyant cocktails with umbrellas and a thousand colours. They’ve got ingredients like Blue Curacao and Empress Gin, blue and purple blending in an angular crystal glass.
“I do,” Tiso grumbles. “This is just really bad.”
“What is the definition of a ‘bad-good’ whiskey and a ‘bad-bad’ whiskey?”
Under the dive bar lights, Quirrel shines like a phantom. He’s a pale guy, though the heat of combat and the temperatures of foreign planets have tanned him up a bit. Not like Tiso, whose skin is a tawny mixture of parents he never knew, now painted over with scars and cuts and bruises. Quirrel, as always, remains blemish-free. Freaky.
“I don’t know. Like, good whiskey burns. Bad whiskey just burns,” Tiso says, emphasizing burns as his tongue underlines the word.
Quirrel laughs. “Alcohol shouldn’t burn.”
“That’s literally the defining trait of alcohol.”
“Lieutenant, I didn’t know you were so versed in the chemical makeup of alcohols!”
The name still sounds strange to Tiso. Lieutenant. Hours ago, he was a sergeant, and that was the title he obeyed. Sergeant Tiso, the man who you came to when you needed your ARs assembled; and Sergeant Tiso, the man who you avoided after you had said ARs assembled, because fuck him if he wants to do your work for you, though he does it anyways. Not because he’s a nice guy— no. But because Commander Quirrel’s unofficial ship motto was ‘kind actions make kind minds.’
Tiso’s promotion was a surprise. The day had started off fairly normal, a standard escort mission landing in Commander Quirrel’s inbox just as everyone was sipping at their regulation-issued coffee that had more grinds than actual caffeine in it. Quirrel said they were heading to Palaven, and so to Palaven they went.
The mission brief was simple: escort a group of human dignitaries to some office branch on Palaven, the turian homeworld. It should have been easy. Another day in the office, so to speak. In reality, it was a mess of annoyances. The commander was saddled with dealing with the complaints of the dignitaries, who were en-route to meet a couple of high-ranking turian politicians within the aforementioned office branch. So-and-so needed to discuss trade, and what’s-his-name required a report. It didn’t matter to Tiso, especially not when the dignitaries just couldn’t hold back spouting classic human-supremacist rhetoric the moment they landed on the alien planet. It was like the second the Warsaw touched down, all that sewage came spilling from their silver-spooned mouths.
On Palaven, Quirrel did what he did best: mitigate. Sometimes, Tiso has a hard time reconciling the fact that Quirrel is literally a commander. He doesn’t always act like it, because for an unknown reason in Tiso’s mind, a commander is someone who has unparalleled strength. They don’t take shit— they dole it out. But Quirrel isn’t like that, always wanting to find a middle ground, a place where everyone can stand.
The meeting went badly. Guns were pulled. The turians didn’t take very kindly to overhearing about the “inherent elevation of human genetics” on their home planet. Go fucking figure.
Quirrel had been standing in between the turians and humans. The turians had the upper-hand (upper-claw?), packing way more heat with those custom-modded shotguns in their grips. But the humans weren’t going to go down without a fight, self-defense pistols raised and shaking while standing in an office building atrium, the quiet tap-tap-tap of turian talons clicking along the high ceilings above.
Tiso has been a soldier for longer than Quirrel. His instincts are honed to a fine point. But it also means that the world of violence has been weaved through his skin like a needle does a cloth, threads stitching him to blood. He’s not unused to danger, putting himself in front of it and daring it to take a damn hit.
Perhaps it was because he was still a sergeant at the time, meaning that his boss would take more flak for his actions. Or perhaps it was something else that drove him to take a firm step forward, his own gun still holstered, as he pressed his chest up against the barrel of one of the human dignitary’s guns and egged him to shoot.
Do it, he said. Do it, and fuck up all the things the Alliance has done to get us here.
Bravery, their captain later claimed after the mission report was sent out and received, was exemplified in Tiso’s actions. He called the dignitaries’ bluffs, got them to stand down, and all without pulling out his own weapon, no matter how much his fingers itched to. That’s what a real lieutenant is. They don’t back down.
Tiso won’t ever admit it to Quirrel, but he doesn’t think he deserves the title. It’s not like he doesn’t like being a lieutenant now— really, he loves it. The name, the power, the sudden rush of adrenaline from being called over the intercom, “Lieutenant Tiso! You’re needed on deck 2!” The sensation is addicting, like the first drag of a cigarette or the lingering spice of a good red wine. It soothes the animal part of his brain that’s always two seconds from ripping itself out of his mind.
But the more poignant, responsible part of him insists that he’s not cut out to be a lieutenant. The trembling responsibility. The frightening knowledge that he needs to watch for the entire crew. The terrifying prospect of holding Commander Quirrel’s life in his grasp; being his second-in-command, his right-hand man.
He’s no legendary warrior. Not like the Alliance’s best and brightest, like Commander Shepard (the Blitz, his brain supplies; could he have survived what she did?) and Captain Anderson (there was no way he would have gotten out of the First Contact War alive).
Those are real soldiers. Real veterans. Real Alliance Navy folk. Tiso is just some Earthborn kid who’s still trying to tie his boot laces while the drill sergeant wails in his ear that he’ll never be a real man.
They’re well into their cups now, if Tiso’s thoughts are wandering down such well-treaded paths. He’s not sure when they started— probably more than an hour ago now.
It’s an Earth Wednesday. Tiso doesn’t care. Quirrel probably does, but he’s too polite to tell Tiso to stop chugging his drinks like he’s a fish and do fish actually drink water or is that just a bad idiom? Don’t they breathe water? No, wait. They breathe underwater.
Shit. He’s drunk. The whiskey’s gone to his head and beneath the dive bar’s lights, he feels as if a beached whale, moments away from decomposing in the hot sun. His guts are rotting; his teeth have fallen out. He scratches at his skin, nails sliding over old battle wounds from before Quirrel was a soldier and Tiso was only ever a soldier so this is a moot example that means nothing.
Tiso scrapes at his scars. They feel like speed bumps.
“Remember when…”
Quirrel is talking about some old war story of his. It’s not that old, actually. Quirrel has been in the military for less than a decade, making the fact that he’s already a commander an even more impressive achievement. People don’t climb the ranks that quickly unless they’re talented or have something to prove.
Tiso guesses that it’s the former. Quirrel has never needed to prove anything in his life, all his evidence laid bare in his actions. When he aims down his sights, he hits his targets. When he needs information, he schmoozes this way into people’s hearts. And when he needs to get his hands dirty, he forgoes his gloves and lets the blood cover his skin— but never seep into his pores.
And while all of this is fine and dandy, there’s one glaring problem about Quirrel’s military conduct. Although the man is good at his job, he’s not a good soldier. Soldiers are mean and tough. Hewed muscle. Hardened eyes gazing out into aimless fields.
Quirrel is soft and gentle.
But he’s not really that soft and gentle, is he? Not anymore, not since Tiso first saw him in the same docking bay and stood stock-still at the sight of his old friend from Earth’s rancid streets that they used to rule as stupid kids without parents. It was all the more shocking when he remembered that Quirrel had fell in with the right crowd (a teacher, an education, a life), whereas Tiso enlisted the moment he turned eighteen. Quirrel had the chance to learn kindness, shed it, and then regrow that layer of skin.
Tiso, though?
He’s been filed down to the bone.
“… but you know how it is. Bureaucracy, red tape. Sometimes makes me want to go back to research work,” Quirrel finishes, sighing into his drink. Tiso wasn’t even listening to the story. It was probably some re-hash of that mission they did back on Omega— a place they weren’t ever supposed to be at. Although they had done great work there, the Citadel covered up all that glory with a single swish of black ink.
Red tape. Bureaucracy.
Same old.
“Would you?”
“Hm?”
Quirrel looks up from his drink. His eyes are glassy, moss-green shades shifting into hazel swirls. Fuck. Now, Tiso’s being poetic. This night’s gone long enough; he should call it here and get back to the ship, make his way through the long roads of Vancouver-Seattle, not daring to look at the looming Alliance HQ that speckles the darkening horizon. Not daring to linger on anything Navy-related, commanders or otherwise.
He’s been staring. In his drunken stupor, he’s just been sitting there, staring at his commander who’s awaiting a reply.
Tiso forces his words out. They taste like ash on his tongue, and he has to take a swig of his whiskey dregs to get rid of the dusty flavour.
“Go back to research, biotics. Nerd shit, y’know.”
Quirrel doesn’t deign Tiso’s little comment with a retort of his own. He’s a big boy— doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t bite. He’d make a bad fish. Or maybe that would actually make him a good one, swimming on to live another day as he stays his temptation.
Instead, Quirrel turns to look out the grease-mottled window. There are handprints all over the glass, smears of oil muddying the sunset view behind the frame. Quirrel’s face reflects back in it and Tiso does his damndest to avoid watching the way his commander’s field of view shrinks on a woman striding by, long hair and short skirt and entire body screaming— civvie.
“No,” his commander eventually replies. “I gave that up the moment I enlisted.”
The bartender comes back and refills their glasses, as if they need to be liquored up even more. Whiskey trickles from the bottle until it’s empty. The bartender apologizes— Tiso’s glass is barely a quarter full. She skitters off to grab another and disappears into the kitchen through a pair of swinging doors.
Quirrel turns back to look at his lieutenant. Lieutenant Tiso.
“Enough about me, though. We’re celebrating for you! Your promotion!” Quirrel says with renewed gusto, all that damp, drowsy melancholy falling from him he moment he picks up his glass. “To you, Lieutenant. Cheers.”
Tiso raises his glass to Quirrel’s, clinking the side. The sound chimes out and Tiso drowns himself in the last of the whiskey bottle’s remnants.
It burns, burns, burns, when it should be cooling his parched throat.
It’s Quirrel’s idea that lands Tiso in the parlour chair.
The night fizzled out into a blur the moment they left the bar. One of them was leaning on the other, far too drunk to be regulation appropriate, but Tiso just blamed their closeness on the weather. Vancouver-Seattle was cold this time of the year and Tiso had never known such a chill, the biting wind of the States’ and Canada’s border city gnawing at his bones. He half-expected it to be raining, although he was informed earlier by a few crew members that it was more likely to be foggy. They were right, mist gathering around the commander and lieutenant’s hips as they strode through the streets, arms over one another’s shoulders.
Quirrel mentioned somewhere along their walk back to the docking bay that they should— no, need— to commemorate this night. They need to celebrate in more than just some kind of intangible, alcohol-laden way. It’s gotta be permanent. It’s gotta be forever. You’re with the Alliance forever, right?
You’re eighteen. You have no family. Your only friend in this entire galaxy just got a full-ride scholarship into the best university in the state.
And so you enlist. Forever.
They learn that at 0200 hours, not many tattoo parlours are open. Large closed signs decorate each storefront they pass by until they discover one that still has its lights on. There’s a girl sweeping the floors inside, bracketed by black leather chairs and mosaic designs on the walls. She glances over at the clock and then rushes over to the door.
But Tiso and Quirrel beat her to the punch. The standard “Are you still open?” questions are deployed and when the girl grits her teeth and replies that they’ll be closed in half an hour, Quirrel brightens and tells her that they only want a small design done.
They’ll be quick, he promises. It’s just an itty-bitty tattoo. Pretty please, miss tattoo girl?
She lightens up after that, laughing at his strange wording and amiable demeanour. Quirrel has that effect on people. He smiles and they bend toward him like sunflowers do toward that flaming ball in the sky— they can’t help but search it out, their biology wired to find the closest source of warmth. People are like that, too, Tiso has noticed. They crave closeness. They crave kindness. It only makes sense that they’d gravitate to someone like Quirrel, who is an endless sunbeam even on his worst days.
Though they’re commander and lieutenant (and friends, the traitorous part of him whispers; you were friends, you are friends; do friends keep secrets from each other, even the big ones?), there are certain things Tiso doesn’t tell Quirrel. Secrets are meant to be kept. That’s why they’re called secrets. And so, there are a few tidbits about Tiso that he keeps under lock-and-key, with the titular key having been tossed in some ravine years and years ago.
One of those secrets includes being petrified of needles.
The design is chosen. It’s some fancy, curly script of an Alliance Navy motto— Quirrel’s choice, not Tiso’s. It’s always Quirrel’s choice. That’s what being a commander meant, like having the final say when bullets were etched into his soldiers’ skin, and having the final say when ink was being pumped through their dermis, too.
The girl tells them that being drunk affects how the tattoo is inked. Tiso tells her that he’s not drunk. She doesn’t believe him, but the credits have already been paid and the parlour is closing in twenty minutes. She doesn’t give a shit.
Tiso is laid on his stomach, and the girl is busily scarring him with ink on the back of his left shoulder. Her arms dig into his muscles, pressing as she rushes drawing preliminary lines over the stencil’s markings. Tiso grinds his teeth together and wrenches his eyes closed, dismissing visions of needles piercing his skin.
He takes bullets to the chest, for God’s sake. He takes blades to the stomach. So why is it that the idea of a tiny needle pressing into him makes him so lightheaded?
His breaths come lighter, faster. The world slows to a crawl and then his lungs are heaving to bring him back to the first layer of consciousness. He’s sealed in. His muscles are failing to break through the tough shell above. Then the parlour is shrinking, hot and musty like a desert storm. Tiso braces for the suffocation under the growing dusty smokescreen.
Until, Quirrel’s hand winds around his. A calm almost immediately settles over Tiso. Quirrel’s grasp is cool, a wave of water on a summer’s day, feet dug in the sand and the ocean’s lapping water washing over one’s entire body. The touch— it smothers the flame. The burn. Blows away the acrid ash.
“It looks good,” says the commander. Tiso trusts him implicitly. Explicitly. Whichever— both.
“You’re fuckin’ lying,” Tiso replies, face lodged in between his elbow.
“No, no— it’s very lieutenant.”
Tiso stands and looks in the parlour’s wall-length mirror when the tattoo is finished. He cranes his neck to see the design, the delicate font that’s now lodged in him evermore.
Per aspera ad astra.
He should probably regret the tattoo, especially considering the fact that it’s a drunk tattoo in a dead language. People don’t speak Latin anymore— and if some people still do, it’s a pretty lame party trick since universal translators are a thing.
But the tattoo looks nice, at least. The dark lettering doesn’t look as stark as he would have expected on his skin, although the light white highlights make it pop enough to show that it’s there. The girl is a talented artist. And she’s barking at them to get the hell out of the store so she can close up, forcing the two soldiers to stumble their way out of the door even as sobriety is starting to make its claim in them.
Like with everything else Tiso touches, the tattoo dilapidates.
The tattoo girl had given him a packet of harried instructions before he left the parlour, aftercare methods and lotions to put on it; what-to-do and what-not-to-do rules.
Keep it dry. Don’t exercise excessively. Don’t sweat.
All things that a soldier can’t avoid for four weeks, or however long it takes for tattoos to heal.
Unsurprisingly, the tattoo gets infected. Tiso notices it a week after he has it done, the skin bubbling up pus and spitting out some nasty-looking juice. It fucking sears him. The thing pulses a pain that thrums along to his heartbeat, every push of blood that his ventricles force through his body. Tiso winces when he cleans it with a towel. Each swipe brings up a new wave of fresh pain.
Then, the battlefield calls. Combat summons him. He ignores the fire on his shoulder and the licking, fervent flames that trickle from it.
A month later, the tattoo looks like shit. The script is warped and the text is almost illegible. The only people who know what it remotely says are the people who were there to watch it be created. Quirrel never asks to look at the tattoo, and Tiso never offers.
It clings to his shoulder, now healed.
But it burns— fuck, it burns so bad.