This is stupid.
Kargesh glanced out of the corner of his eye toward a far corner before looking away. He was still there. Of course he was still there. He's been at the same spot for the past hour.
"This is stupid," Rukar grunted, as of reading his thoughts out loud. The krogan extended his arms, in a gesture indicating the entire hall. "Look at us, standing here all day, every day. Like a pair of common side characters everyone forgets about. How pitiful."
"Shut your maw or I'll do it for you," Kargesh replied in a snarl, though it voice no real threat. Despite his mind's efforts, his traitorous eyes wandered over to that familiar corner once more. He still hadn't moved.
"Humph. Look at you, calling yourself a krogan. A true krogan would have had the quad to face a turian eye-to-eye."
"Watch it," came the empty warning again.
"Bah, you can barely stop ogling him. It's bad enough that you drag me along on your lovesick goose chase, but this has gone on for too long! You just stand here gawking everyday like a headless pyjack. You even got that human Shepard involved the other day. There goes your fancy fish ruse as an excuse to chat him up."
"I am not lovesick," Kargesh denied, conveniently ignoring everything else. His eyes were still trained on that corner.
Rukar snorted. "Probably for the best, though. Nobody ever got drawn in with talk of fish. Fish, of all things! Pah."
Kargesh let out a long, drawn-out rumble of a growl before turning away from his friend in petty defiance. Still, it took only a few seconds for him to find the object of his constant attention yet again.
A pale coloured turian knelt among a patch of greenery, tending to a particular bed of flowers. The skin tone created a stark contrast against his monochrome armour, which seemed well-maintained and lightly used. Again unusual for a turian, his face bore no colony markings, just an uneven expanse of bone-white extending from the tips of his delicate, fluttering mandibles to the tapered ends of his crest.
At that precise moment, the turian lifted up a large, oar-like leaf to inspect its underside, tilting his head as he did so at an angle that so happened to emphasise the perfect tangent of that same crest. Those perfectly curled talons, kept blunted and gloved to prevent damage to the plant-life, brushed along the length of the over-sized leaf as he let it fall back in place, seemingly satisfied with its state. With a smooth motion that exuded grace and effortless style, the turian rose to his feet to attend to the next patch of greens.
Kargesh released a rolling sigh like grinding stone. He wished that groundskeeper would hold his hand in his skilled talons with the same tenderness as he did with that plant.
"All right, that's enough. I've had it with how pathetic, you are!" came the sudden outburst from Rukar, as the other krogan smashed his fists together in a resounding clang of gauntlet on gauntlet. "Take my lead, I'm going in."
Jolted back to his own reality, where the distance between him and his turian was a regretful twenty feet instead of a hair's breadth, Kargesh's stare switched over to his comrade. "Wait, what?"
"Just pretend like this is one of our ryncol nights," Rukar rolled his shoulders, flexing his arms and loosening in joints as if warming up for combat. "Except this time, you're the only sober one."
A bolt of fear struck its way into Kargesh's being. Nobody liked R ukar when he was drunk. Nobody. Granted, he wasn't actually drunk, but still-
"I'm going in, cover me."
"Wait! I don't-"
Before Kargesh could do anything, Rukar let out a raucous roar that shook the ceiling and charged into the thicket of the crowd. "FOR THE MIGHTY PATRIAAACH!" he bellowed, sending shoppers, loiterers and civilians alike scattering as they ran, screaming for cover, knocking over a few of the unfortunate ones who were not quite fast enough.
"Rukar, no!" Kargesh squawked in an un-krogan-like fashion, leaping after his old comrade in arms. But short of injuring him in some way, there was simply no stopping a krogan charge. Kargesh watched in helpless horror as Rukar proceeded to wreak havoc.
What?
"RAAAAAAAAAAH!" Rukar boomed in a roar like thunder, lowering his head in preparation for another charge.
"GAAAAAAAAAAR!"
With a resounding cry of his own, Kargesh launched himself into the air, all two thousand pounds of him, barrelling into Rukar and bringing them both down to the floor in a crash that should have cracked the ground. Wrestling the other krogan was no small feat, requiring every ounce of muscle he had in his body to restrain him and pin him to the floor in an arm-lock.
"ARE YOUR BRAINS ADDLED, RUKAR?! WHAT ARE YOU- "
"NOTHING CAN STOP THE MIGHT OF THE PATRIARCH!" Rukar shouted back, pounding the already abused floor with his massive fists like a child throwing a tantrum. "THE WORLD MUST KNOW OF HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS, HE- "
"BAH, ENOUGH ABOUT THE PATRIARCH! GET BACK IN LINE YOU CLANLESS- "
"Excuse me sir, what is going on?"
Kargesh looked up at the voice he'd been eavesdropping on for the past few months, finding himself meeting the pale eyes he'd been sneaking glances at for weeks. And suddenly his stomachs felt funny. Like pyjacks were rolling around inside them.
"Oh! Er," and his tongue felt weird as well, too dry. And his thoughts seemed to come to a standstill when he needed them most. Maybe Rukar was right about the ryncol doing something to his brain cells. "Er, nothing, er, sir. M-my friend was just- "
In the brief moment when Kargesh's attention was focused solely on the groundskeeper, Rukar took full opportunity of Kargesh's distraction by rearing back his head and crashing the top of his crest into Kargesh's face with bone-shaking impact. Grunting in surprise and pain, Kargesh loosened his hold and Rukar wasted no time in leaping to his feet, eyes and wild and ready to-
BZZZZZT!
In the blink of an eye, Rukar dropped back to the floor like a stone and probably giving it another crack, judging by how it shook beneath him as Kargesh watched in bewilderment, mouth agape. Rukar twitched a little, but made no other indication that he was still alive.
"Sorry about that, he looked like he was way out of control," the groundskeeper apologised, deactivating his omni-tool and advancing toward them. "Had to take him out before he did any real damage, I'm sure you'll understand."
Kargesh nodded mutely, trying to swallow past the sudden lump in his throat while also trying not to stare too openly at the grace in the turian's step as he approached. While also trying to reboot his brain. He was talking to him. He was actually talking to him.
Pleasedon'tfuckthisup, pleasedon'tfuckthisup-
"That was a simple jolt of current, nothing harmful. Only meant to stun, he should be fine."
Kargesh nodded again, still unable to find his voice to speak.
The groundskeeper finally stopped before him, looking down at Kargesh with a questioning tilt of his head. And again Kargesh was distracted by the graceful arch of his fringe, comparing it to the crude hew of his own crest. "That a friend of yours? Bit of an energetic guy, huh?" He asked extending a hand to help him up.
It seemed to take conscious, gargantuan effort and an eternity for Kargesh to lift his beefy hand high enough to grab on and let the turian pull him to his feet with surprising strength in that scrawny frame. His knees wobbled and Kargesh thought they would give out again from the spark he felt at the simple touch. The skin on the turian's hand felt more like hide, roughened from the daily work of his trade. The talons were neatly trimmed back and had some loose earth under them. Up close, he only came up to Kargesh's shoulders which made him feel extra awkward for some reason. All too soon, the turian let go of his hand and Kargesh realised that he'd been asked a question.
Say something! Anything!
"Er, yeah, thanks. He's uh, an old friend of mine. Tends to … er, get over-indulgent on the ryncol some times."
"Really?" the turian took a moment to break their eye-contact and spare the still-twitching Rukar another glance. "Would have thought you krogans could handle their poison better than this."
"It's his birthday," Kargesh blurted, wildly inventing a story on the fly. "Thought we'd go for a little extra celebration. Don't know what kind of mixes the bartender gave him, been like this for hours. A real pain in the ass."
The groundskeeper shook his head in what seemed like equal parts disapproval and admiration. "I gotta hand it to you, having redundant systems must come in handy in times like this." He turned back to Kargesh, the enchantingly pale eyes locking onto his once more. "Sorry about this, but I'll have to take your friend into custody. It's only temporary until we get some paperwork out of the way and witness accounts taken. Just standard procedure."
"Yeah, sure, take him," said Kargesh in an absent blur, before reviewing what he'd just said and blinking hard to clear his head. Focus! You don't want to look like an idiot!
"But I thought you were just a groundskeeper. How come you have the authority to arrest people?"
"I may perform the humble duties of groundskeeper, but my individual authority is akin to that of a C-Sec officer's," he explained, looking away again to bend down and inspect Rukar's unconscious form. "Gotta do more than just stand around and look pretty, you know? Not much groundskeeping would be done if I was a push-over. Still, I think it'd be worth it for the pretty sights everyday."
"Yeah. Yeah, I get you," Kargesh replied in a daze, enamoured with the turian's movements as he checked Rukar for hidden weapons. It was no use, a lost cause. The groundskeeper in person was just too much for Kargesh to pay attention to all of him all at the same time.
A small medical shuttle designed for easy passage through the wards abruptly arrived on the scene, the single salarian paramedic driving it leaping out and scurrying over to Rukar.
"Well, looks like transport's here. Gotta go get your friend over to C-Sec, they'll be holding him there for a while."
"Right," was all Kargesh could say.
"Come see me again next week, you could probably bail your friend out then. But no more ryncol, okay?"
"Yeah, okay, sure," Kargesh nodded, slightly breathless and desperate to still appear casual.
"See you, then." With a tilt of his head, the groundskeeper helped the salarian lift Rukar into the shuttle before he disappeared with the hiss of a closing door and the vehicle zipped off into the distance.
Letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, Kargesh finally let his knees give out, sinking to the floor in a boneless heap and ignoring the growing crowd of curious onlookers around him. He was going to see him again.
Is … is that a date?
"It's a date, isn't it?" asked the turian, turning to his salarian companion at the wheel. The tiny shuttle rushed through the halls, making quick progress and it darted over the crowds with a speed that turned the view down blow into a mere blur of colour. "I mean, I told him to meet me and all- "
"Getting object of interest to pick up rambunctious friend from custody. Not exactly the epitome of romance," sniffed the salarian in reply, seeming a little disdainful.
"Well, yeah, now that you put it that way …. But hey, at least I looked cool back there, right? I didn't act dumb or- "
"Perhaps. Though romantic interest not successfully conveyed, from my observations." The salarian gave a casual twist of the controls, sending the shuttle taking a sharp left.
"What? Not at all? Come on, old pal. At least give me- "
With another disdainful sniff, the paramedic turned his head to look at his only conscious passenger. "Really, are you this dense about- "
"EYES ON THE ROAD!" the turian shouted in a wide-eyed screech that nearly cracked the windows. Shaking his head, the salarian did as he was told and faced front again. Left to his own thoughts, the groundskeeper leaned forward to smack his forehead on the dashboard.
So much for his fancy custody ruse, and he'd been planning this for weeks too.
A/N: I literally have no idea what I wrote. Except that it's bad, in every way imaginable. xD I wish I could have more time to polish it up, since this whole thing is not the end product. But I've procrastinated far too much and am now out of time, since this was meant as an entry for the July contest at Afterlife forums. Ah well, at least it will serve to screw with people's minds crack pairing-wise, grammar-wise, pacing-wise, (lack of) plot-wise, etc.
And hey, at least I wrote something (lousy attempt at justification)!
-Kasumi