Turian Worryin' Origins
Author's Note: Short prequel to my fic Turian Worryin'. The story behind Amy and Merik. How they met, and the events leading up to Amy receiving advice from Jane Shepard and Garrus Vakarian. Human female x turian male pairing. OCs. Rated M just to be safe. Also, I would have published this yesterday, if I didn't have problems with both loging in and my wireless...
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Roughly six months ago the first refugees started to come through. They were only batarians. The first ships of humans came in a week ago, but now turians have arrived. Many of them are military, most are civilians. There's also the occasional salarian, volus, or asari seeking refuge on the Citadel too.
With the surge in occupants of the docks and lower wards, comes a surge of crime as well. That's why it was no surprise to Amy Young, and over a dozen other C-Sec cops, that they were reassigned to volunteer duty in these high-risk areas.
These risks did not deter Amy, in fact she loved danger. That love is what had made her such a valuable soldier in the Alliance. But her time in the human military was long over, been for roughly three years in fact.
On her first day of volunteer duty, she decided to sign-up for a patrol in the Zakera Ward. The ward had recently had a surge of pick-pockets, scams, thefts, assaults and good old fashion brawls – well more than normal anyways. The area was a perfect place for an adrenaline junky, one who had heard enough sob stories in the other wards to last a life-time.
One other person signed up for the Zakera market patrols – a Merik Avaricious. Hmm... Sounds turian. Must've come from one of the upper wards. The patrol was to start in an hour, so Amy thought that she had time to introduce herself before.
She found Merik about fifteen minutes before the patrol was to start in the cafe. He was sitting at a table with a hot drink in one hand, and a datapad in the other. She knew the six and a half foot tall light brown plated turian with white linear facial markings was indeed the illusive Merik Avaricious, because she looked up his file. She was most certainly not going to mention that bit.
She casually bought a sports drink out of a nearby vending machine, and strolled over towards the turian officer.
"Is this seat taken?" she asked while standing at the back of the seat across from him.
He replied with a short "no," not bothering to look up from his datapad. Amy plopped herself in the short-backed metal chair, and extended a hand across the table, "Amy Young. I'll be working Zakera with you today."
That was enough to pry his attention from his datapad to the blue holo-clock on the nearby wall. He finally turned his gaze to the tall, for a human, somewhat muscular dark haired brown-eyed woman in front of him. And her extended hand.
He looked at her hand, seeming to contemplate it, sat down his datapad and gave a firm shake, "Merik Avaricious." He picked his datapad back up, "We should head to the lockers now."
The patrol with Merik contained the normal amounts of action – well, normal for Amy anyways. Two bar fights, three pick-pockets, and an armed robbery. So an armed robbery wasn't typical, with hostages, but Merik was impressed with the ease in which the seemingly fragile human woman handled the situation. She seemed to be in her element. The way she erected a barrier over the civilians and then quickly signaled him to shoot the robber, was impressive. She seemed to be a natural leader.
"I didn't know you were a biotic," he had said.
She smirked, "My abilities are... very underdeveloped. All I can really do is make barriers. I never developed any adept skills in biotics." She waved her hand dismissively, "Whatever. It's unimportant. Let's just rap this situation up."
They went out for drinks that night, and a few others joined them.
As the weeks passed and more and more refugees sought safety within the Citadel, Merik and Amy signed up for more patrols together – until they were practically undeclared partners. Amy led and Merik provided the muscle. For all her skills in examining a situation and finding a quick way to take care of it, usually the most difficult way for the offending party, Merik noticed that Amy was slow to grab her gun and use it.
He asked her one night while they were alone at a table in their usual bar, Purgatory. The other officers had long since left. "Young. How come you use your gun to hit people more than shoot? You know guns are for shooting, right?"
She would never tell him, but she loved it when she was alone with the tipsy turian. She just couldn't ever seem to relax as much as she could with him alone, versus with the other cops. Amy had always worked solo patrols, or on-call, in the past.
The also slightly tipsy human woman pushed the turian roughly on the shoulder, "Hey! I told you to quit calling me Young! It makes me feel weird. I'm Amy. Aammmyyy," she elaborated. He tilted his head at her, and she continued with a shrug, "I like fist fights. And danger. I've always preferred CQC and hand-to-hand. It's just what I do."
"I like guns."
She smirked, "So do I." She gazed at his form for a moment, lingering on his arms, "But the only ones I like, you have." She looked away, "And other things." Shit. Was that flirting? How much did I have to drink? That was horrible...
After a short awkward moment where Merik stared at Amy bug-eyed while trying to figure out the meaning of what she just said, their conversation picked slowly back up. But the awkwardness of the evening was not over, it ended in an awkward hug.
They had walked out of the bar, and Amy wished him a good-night with a hug. She expected him to hug back, even with one arm, not just to stand there and go ramrod straight. Perhaps she did drink too much after trying to recover from her failed flirting attempt, but she wasn't going to give up. She was going to fix her fail, and save her friendship with Merik. She stood there, arms around his armored chest until he slowly wrapped his own arms around her shoulders and dipped his head. His mandible tickled her cheek, and she giggled softly then looked up at him.
"Are we good?" she asked.
"Yeah," he replied, his voice seemed deeper and his undertone more distinct as he spoke, but that went unnoticed by Amy.
After a few days of not trying to flirt again, Amy decided to buck-up and do an extranet search she was certain she was going to regret.
Allergies? Talons? Teeth? Chafing? Wha-barbed! What am I thinking?
She closed her eyes and slouched against her couch in her small apartment. Perhaps she was just being silly. Maybe she didn't really have a crush on Merik. Maybe she would be better off avoiding something so... complicated. And it wasn't like Merik felt the same way, right? He's never flirted with me. She groaned, damn turians with their broad shoulders, strong arms, pretty eyes, and voices! That voice! It just makes me want to... She abruptly stopped her train of thought with a violent shake of her head. She really didn't need to dwell on that right now.
The next afternoon, Merik and Amy were on patrol at the docks, where the refugees were packed like sardines and the tensions were high. They heard shouting in the distance, at the far edge of the docks, and rushed over to find a batarian and a human arguing and just about to tear each other's throats out. Amy didn't know what they were arguing about, nor did she care, but she threw one arm up and stood in-between the two men, facing the batarian.
"Whoa. Let's calm down here. Why don't you tell me how I can fix this before it escalates?"
"Can you fix the deaths of thousands, human?" The batarian hissed, then shook his head, "All humans are the same." Merik remained off to the side, one talon firmly on his weapon, while attempting to keep the growing crowd at bay.
"We are not!" Spat the human man, "And C-Sec cannot help you!" The man pulled a pistol from beneath his shirt, and aimed it at Amy's back. People started to scream and run, the batarian included. Amy turned around as soon she realized what must be the cause of the hysteria. As she spun around to look at the human, she saw Merik tackle him to the ground, since there were too many civilians around for him to safely use his own gun. The turian then wrestled the gun out of the human's grasp, and proceeded to punch the man, flaring his mandibles at each satisfying crunch he heard. Amy sprang forward and grabbed is elbow, "You'll kill him!"
Her voice seemed to sate his anger just enough, and as he got up he grumbled, "I see why you prefer 'fist-fights'."
They took the human man in cuffs back to the precinct for processing. As Amy walked off to head to the lockers, Merik stepped in front of her and pulled her off to the side in the hall.
"What exactly were you thinking when you put your back to someone with a gun?" His voice and eyes radiated anger.
"I didn't know he was armed," she hissed as she pulled her arm from his grasp.
He looked at her in a purely predatory way, it made her stance waver. "You need to be more aware of your surroundings. Your putting yourself in danger, and I won't always be there to save your back."
She glared at him and turned on her heels and mumbled, "I don't have to deal with this."
"Wait!" Merik grabbed her wrist and spun her around to face him again. She tried to wriggle her wrist out of his grasp, but couldn't. When she looked back up at him, his eyes had softened. He silently bent his head down to rest his forehead on her own.
She stood there, dumbfounded for a moment, and finally got her wrist free. She stormed off down the hall muttering "What was that?" and "Turian asshole," the entire way to her locker. She needed a drink to clear her head, and she knew right where she was headed – Purgatory.
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Note: And insert my previously published fic: Turian Worryin'. You can find the sequel on my profile. & Don't worry! Jane and Garrus help. ;)