"And you're sure this is going to work?" Cameli asked from the back of their skycar, her sub-harmonics drenched in scepticism.
"How many times have you asked that before?" Conroy countered with a question of his own, looking back from the passenger's seat towards the turian woman sitting relaxedly with her arms spread wide, taking up both of the back seats.
"Lost count," Zig chimed in with a rumble from the driver's seat, answering the question in Cameli's stead, his sturdy krogan hands placed firmly over the car controls, "The answer's always going to be the same."
"'Hopefully'," Conroy gave his standard reply to Cameli's standard question and grinned at her, to which she sighed and rolled her eyes.
The skycar cruised through the busy traffic, the Tasale star burning over Nos Astra for a few final minutes for the day before it disappeared under the horizon, its light mixing with the hot fumes of engines and reactors to create a spectacular sunset.
Zig banked left off of their lane of traffic, slowing down and flying towards a parking platform jutting out from one of the countless towers. "I think this is it," the krogan said as he steered them closer to the tower, sounding almost uncertain.
"Looks like it," Conroy agreed as he peered out of the side window, "There're a whole lot of people down there and they're all well-dressed." He straightened up the collar of his '21st century inspired' suit and rechecked his hair in the mirror for the last time as Zig parked the skycar in an empty spot.
In his early thirties, Conroy noticed he was starting to look a little 'rough around the edges'; upon close observation, one could see that there were a few grey strands in the midst of his jet black hair and that some wrinkles were forming on his pale white skin. His eyes, however, remained physically the same as they had been for as long as he could remember, except his gaze looked slightly tired now. Older, somehow.
"How many times have you checked your damn hair today?" Cameli asked from the back, now sporting a grin herself and fluttering her mandibles in amusement, "It's always going to look the same."
"You kind of look like an asari with your hair like that, Conroy," Zig chimed in again before the human, who was wearing his hair slicked back, could reply.
"This was how the mobsters back on Earth wore it back in the day," Conroy replied in mock offence.
"Hard to believe you humans wore fabric wrapped around your neck to be taken seriously," Zig grunted.
"It's called a tie, Zig," Conroy said ruefully, "You'll never understand."
"No, I won't," Zig said giving a small krogan chuckle, which was plenty loud and rumbling, "You understand the plan right? It's simple enough, even for a human."
"Get in, grab the data, get out," Conroy recited as he opened the door and stepped out of the skycar, quickly followed by Cameli, who was wearing a modern turian dress.
Made of a high grade organic material sourced from Palaven, the material was soft to the touch, accentuated by a royal purple dye. The cut was one which complimented the turian figure well, starting extremely wide from Cameli's shoulders with excess material stacked and wrapped around the base of her neck, tapering and narrowing very quickly as it approached her thin waist, only to widen again to accommodate for her hips, covering them naturally and cleanly. From the waist, the dress introduced a small slit down the skirt all the way down to its lowermost end at Cameli's ankles, revealing a portion of her naked right leg, and her feet were covered in a pair of platform shoes, which complimented and accentuated their natural turian arc and were of the same colour as the rest of her outfit. Overall, Cameli's attire made her give off a calm and elegant aura.
Conroy unashamedly scanned Cameli up and down as she stepped out of the car, giving a light and equally unashamed nod with a look of casual approval. In no way did he have a fetish for turians, but he knew when he saw something beautiful, and he also knew that by turian standards, she was a real 'looker', as his turian friends had often hammered into his brain.
"While I do appreciate the sentiment," Cameli said with playful annoyance and a smirk, "As always, try not to gawk." With that, she walked passed Conroy towards the entrance to the tower, followed closely by the human, who was walking at a slightly faster pace to catch up to her.
"Two guards," Conroy whispered to Cameli as they approached the entrance, "Well armed." Two turians, wearing full medium armour and carrying assault rifles were standing on either side of an unarmed and unarmoured salarian. "Here, put your arm around mine."
Cameli complied, confidently and without reluctance, placing her right arm through the hole that Conroy had created with his left.
As they arrived at the door, the salarian greeted the two of them with a smile, "Welcome to Narina Towers. Names, please."
"Mister and missus Terius-Long," Conroy said, with a demeanour of practised cool and meticulous casualness.
A moment passed as the salarian looked over the guest list on his omnitool, "Ah, yes. The scan will take just a moment."
After the salarian had waved over the couple with his omnitool, checking for biometric matches and hidden weapons, it pinged to signal that they had passed the security test.
"Thank you," the salarian said politely as he moved out of the pair's way to let them pass through the entrance, "Please enjoy your stay."
Cameli and Conroy both internally let out a silent sigh of relief as they walked past the salarian and on towards the door.
"Wait," the salarian raised his voiced to hold them up, just as they were about to enter the building, "It says here that you two have been married for twenty five years?"
There was a moment of awkward silence as the salarian looked suspiciously at the duo, now locked closer to each other by their arms than before. The sound of skycars flying overhead seemed to become louder for a few seconds as Conroy thought of the only thing he could say.
"It's the big twenty five this year," Conroy said, his voice still unwavering, his expression still unalarmed, "We married young."
"At the ages of ten and eleven?" the salarian questioned, looking increasingly doubtful. The two turians at his side were looking a little tense now, holding their rifles with grips that were noticeably tighter.
"We married very young," Cameli said, affectionately stroking Conroy's left arm with her free left hand.
"Are humans and turians even allowed to be bound by marriage contracts that young?" the salarian seemed almost genuinely curious.
"We took credits from our parents and travelled to a small Terminus colony where it's legal to hold that kind of ceremony," Conroy explained quickly, but not too quickly, "It was dangerous, our families disagreed and we faced heavy uproar, but we did it anyways."
"Petty legalities couldn't get in the way of our love," Cameli said, almost melodramatically, as she softly leaned her head on Conroy's shoulder.
"Oh," the salarian said a little quietly as he looked slightly taken aback, as did the turian guards, before he returned to his senses. "My apologies for the inconvenience," he said with his head slightly bowed and sounding almost touched by their fabricated story, "Identity theft is extremely common on Illium, especially in Nos Astra."
"Not at all," Conroy said with a natural swagger, "You're just doing your job."
"Yes, sir," the salarian said with a smile, his suspicion completely gone now, "You are now free to enter."
"Thank you," Cameli farewelled with her refined charm as she and Conroy turned and made their ways into the tower.
"Look," Zig said over their communications line, "I'm sorry, alright?"
"Married at ten?" Cameli hissed, "Spirits, what were you thinking?"
Cameli and Conroy were walking down a flight of carpeted stairs towards the main dining area of the party, their arms still locked together.
"Krogan start breeding at around a hundred or so and we live for over a millennium!" Zig said defensively, "So relatively speaking-"
"Well now you know it doesn't work on a one-to-one scale," Conroy said, hiding a chuckle under his voice, "Let's just make sure this doesn't happen again."
"You think this is funny?" Cameli said incredulously, looking to her side to face her partner.
"You don't?" Conroy replied with his trademark grin as he looked back into Cameli's glaring eyes, to which the turian woman's eyes softened in resignation as she groaned and shook her head, before regaining her composure and continuing on down the stairs.