Heads or Tails?
By, Sonsasu
Episode One
"Reflections"
Sitting quite comfortably in the shadowed corner of a downtown bar, Faust Shepard reclined silently in a plush seat, undisturbed by his surroundings. Pounding music, rising and falling in tone, poured from invisible speaker mouths scattered on the ceiling, giving the spacious room a thundering pulse that vibrated right through the body.
Honestly, he now had an understanding what it felt like to be gelatin.
Despite this, and the noisy collection of mixed, mingling races, some cluttering along the bar, sitting on tall stools, or those hanging out in the alcoves, he felt no real inclination to slither out from his comfortable sanctuary. Dancing was an option, yes, but he was feeling lazy, languid even, with the techno music playing.
Not to mention the fact he was enjoying an expensive, yet excellent drink.
With said alcohol cradled in one hand, and the infrequent sip leisurely taken, his relaxed posture only added to the pleasant layers of his solace. Resting on a tabletop made from some kind of glossy, cold ebon hued metal, his elbow sat, and perched on his curled fingers, was his chin. It gave him an air of mellow observation, that, or a felicitous inattention to the outside world of reality.
Although in truth, he was indeed withdrawn.
Only innate functions required of organic creatures, such as the tedious activity of breathing, and the slow, nonchalant blinks that his eyelids insisted on doing, which revealed he was not a synthetic potato with limbs. These did not pester him overly much, he supposed.
Locked behind his lethargic bliss of simply being enactive for a change, he relished his little victory of sneaking off the Normandy.
Now that the Reapers no longer existed, and the many inhabitants' lives of the galaxy had slid back into a more subdued, war-free affair, others seemed not to need the heroic soldier as often. There was the occasional plea spouted, a skirmish here and there, and the need to fulfill his duties as the purportedly legendary, a laughable thought, Spectre for the council.
Beyond that, there was no longer that high demand for his aid, and no, he did not completely shrug off those who required him for assistance, he would never, no, could not, do a thing like that. Shepard just had more time on his hands then he knew what to do with now 'a days. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs to their bursting points, before expelling it as a morbid sigh.
A double-edged blessing, he considered at length.
Alone in his curved, seat like couch, intended for more than one solitary person, the notion of Garrus joining him came, and immediately went. More like hurtled out the door with cement boots, and a classic, sea-fairing ship anchor tied on to be certain it remained gone.
He still carried the memory of his last drinking episode with that damn Turian.
Revisiting that particular spot in his cache of past occurrences, and how he had wound up on a bed with their limbs entangled, and in his birthday suit no less, he pursed his lips.
Oh, that was a fine thing to wake up to, furious and foul hangover thrust aside.
Upon struggling to use his blurred vision, which transformed him into a near sighted, bug-eyed owl, he suffered the dawning realization of exactly who was beside him that unforgettable day. Shepard, in all his naked, ungraceful glory, promptly scrambled out of the bed as if doused with candy sprinkles made of acid. He then nearly had a rather unceremonial date with the floor when his head reeled in several different directions, and his internal organs clenched then undulated violently in rebellion.
He had never known such nausea.
Then again, he had never known a real hangover.
Not to mention the miracle that his legs succeeded in not surrendering to gravity during this usurp of natural senses. By the slowest wilting of seconds, the vicious assault on his inner world halted, and the comical wiggle and sway of his body paused. After the lagging return of intelligence, he juggled enough clarity to arrive at an unwanted conclusion. They had done much more then cuddle throughout the night once they had staggered from the bar and to Garrus's very own apartment on the Citadel.
Cue his momentary heart failure, and absolute mortification.
However, the whole scenario did not truly hit home until he, more or less, fled off balanced and wobbled-kneed to the bathroom. Reaching the sink, and rinsing his mouth of an unspoken taste, Shepard, recognizing his reflection in the mirror, discovered things that he would have preferred to remain in utter ignorance to for, oh say…about the rest of his life.
Bruises and love bites.
He found one hickey decorating the spot where his neck met shoulder, and found three more as he silently gapped at his disheveled reflection. A pair stared him in the face as he peered, stunned, at the inside of his right thigh, the final one resting on the lower planes of his stomach, nearest his anatomy.
An unnerving thought, if regarding the sharp teeth Turians sported.
As for the bruising, he found the, oh-so-lovely, imprint of tri-fingered hands on his hips, and at the bend of his knees. Now, what really drove the finishing nail in the coffin lid, at least to him, was not what his sight beheld, but that the knowledge, troubling as it was, failed to disturb him as deeply as it should have. Having finished the terror of apprising himself, he had turned, fully intending to leave the bathroom and confront his shocking bedmate, who was quietly lying on the bed, when he spotted it.
On the rounded curve of his backside, sat a sole, and perfectly shaped love mark.
Well, he would certainly not be saying, "kiss my ass," to Garrus any time soon, he had thought that one dim morning. Exiting the bathroom, he, while intentionally keeping his eyes trained on anything other then the individual reposing atop the mattress, held up a hand and said, "this never happened," before setting himself to the task of searching for his discarded clothing.
Somehow, they managed to land in the oddest of places. Such as his pants haphazardly tossed on a lamp beside the bed, a shoe in a half-empty, small trashcan, his undergarment, graciously pointed out to him, hanging on the whirling fan overhead, etcetera.
He also acquired the unnerving information that he was the only one drunk that distant night three weeks ago…
Like yanking on a fishing line, he plucked his wandering mind from a stream of wonton ideals and styles, and set it bobbing into a current of wonderfully boring sanity. Bad thoughts, lead to more bad thoughts, and acknowledgment of the side effects, or more correctly, effect of what said thoughts began to create was not a good thing.
It subjected him to shift to a different position.
Luckily, for him, the empty table had nothing more to offer than a fair opportunity for more legroom, and wholeheartedly content with his mute cognitions, he failed to take notice as a towering form loomed over him.
"Shepard…may I join you?"
Ah, well speak of the devil.
To be continued in the next episode
"Twirling Coin"
-Disclaimer-
I do not own Mass Effect