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Chapter 13

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Small Talk

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So, here Joker was. Sat at a table in a wedding reception, opposite a thousand-year old asari matriarch and, apparently, bartender. Plus three other asari, who presumably also had some connection to Liara, but whom he had never met before. Traynor was sat next to him, but apparently preferred to focus her full attention on stuffing her face, shifting the 'awkward socialising' duties heavily onto his brittle shoulders. The traitor.

He scratched his head, trying to recall something. "Wait", he said, "So you worked at that café on the Citadel? On the Presidium?"

Aethyta nodded. "Nice to be so memorable. Yeah, that's me. I remember you stopped by a few times with that mobility mech. The pay was crap, but I got to be close to the action."

Joker tried to process the career logic of that statement, but decided to give up and switch the subject. Also, he wasn't prepared to explain EDI to a stranger quite yet. "Okay... so, how do you know the, uh, happy couple?"

"I'm Liara's father."

Joker nodded, swallowing a mouthful of something delicious he really hoped was chicken. "Oh, yeah, Shepard explained all that to me. The one who gets the pregnant one pregnant, that's the father, even if it's a girl."

"She explained all that, huh?"

"Well, all kinds of things come up when you drink a lot with someone. But, hey, obviously I don't have to tell you that."

At this point, Traynor decided to get involved, gesturing to the other asari with a greasy fork. "How about you? More family?"

A teal-skinned asari popped up her hand. "I am Liara's sister Hwajh. Her half-sister. Aethyta is my mother."

"Me too", said a blue asari with yellow facial markings, briefly looking up from her omni-tool display. "I'm Esperia."

Traynor gestured to herself and Joker. "I'm Samantha, and this is Joker. We're part of Shepard's crew. Or we were. She's on indefinite medical leave right now."

Joker snorted. "Yeah, there's no expected recovery time for being dead, so she's basically on vacation until she decides she's well again." He raised a glass. "But then, so are we, more or less. They're still finishing repairs on the Normandy."

The fourth asari, a slender maiden in white, seemed to be looking over at the other end of the room, distractedly. "Is that... Vega?"

"Yeah, that's Vega", nodded Joker. "Do you know him?"

"Oh, of course, introductions. My name is Treeja. I've known Liara for years. But, well, Vega. I encountered him a year or so ago, during the whole Fehl Prime debacle. It was... difficult to talk to him afterwards."

"Damn." said Joker. Then, feeling a little insensitive, he added "I mean, Vega told me about what happened down there. He found it pretty tough, too."

Treeja sighed. "You know, there were points at which I suspected Vega had a romantic interest in me. But he... seems to have come with someone."

Joker frowned, and looked over the hall to where Vega and Cortez seemed to be doing impressions of something or someone, while falling over each other laughing. Then it dawned on him.

He waved a hand. "No, that's just him and Cortez. They've always been suspiciously close."

Traynor almost choked on something. "Moving on", she said, having cleared her throat, "Hwajh is a beautiful name. Isn't it a Hanar word?"

The blue-green alien nodded, with a smile. "Thank you, Samantha. It is the name of a blue flower popular in aquaria. My father thought that it would be appropriate."

"Wait..." Traynor tried to think of a way to ask the obvious question non-obviously. Then Aethyta cut in.

"Her father was a Hanar diplomat I met a couple of centuries back", explained the matriarch, taking a swig from her glass. "And, since you're obviously wondering how it worked, well... let's just say it involved anti-venom and a lot of cybernetics."

Hwajh covered her ears. "Mother! I do not wish to hear these things..." Esperia seemed caught up in whatever she was doing. Or perhaps she had learned to tune her mother out sometimes.

Traynor noticed that Treeja was still glancing in James' direction. She leaned forward and put a hand on hers. "You know, Vega isn't actually seeing anyone right now. You could go talk to him..."

Joker grinned. "Yeah, Vega isn't into guys at all. He's said so on several occasions. Sometimes when no one had even asked him or raised the subject."

Treeja smiled back cheerfully. "Well, maybe a bit later."

At this point Shepard came up the table, probably checking on everyone. Her face was smeared with white paint.

"So, how is everyone getting along?" she asked.

Joker cleared his throat. "Um, Commander? You have a little something..." He made a sweeping gesture over his whole face.

Aethyta grunted. "Just tell me that's all off Liara's face."

Shepard smirked, and crossed her arms. "I make no guarantees." She wandered off to the next table, smiling merrily, and slightly unsteady on her feet.

The asari matriarch shook her head. "Human female. Interesting choice for a first partner."

Traynor looked at her quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"Surprisingly challenging", she replied. "It ought to be easy- you're pretty simple down there. Just the one clitoris, totally immobile. No palps, no spines, and you don't... well, that doesn't matter. But you have a spread-out pattern of secondary erogenous zones which is probably as complex as ours. Like playing an instrument. Easy to learn, tough to master."

Hwajh rested her forehead on the table, groaning quietly. "Mother, you are doing it again..."

Aethyta finished her drink, oblivious. "Not like turians, where it's 'whatever isn't carapace'..."

Esperia made a quick excuse and trotted off somewhere else. Anywhere else, probably. Traynor, meanwhile, was staring into her glass, brow furrowed. "Just the one... spines?"

Aethyta took that as her cue to explain. Oh God, Traynor, why, Joker thought.

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Notes

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Well, I can only apologise. Having considered what a drunk Aethyta at a wedding would talk about, it was only going to end one way.
The sequence was slightly inspired by this strip- art/Mass-Effect-Comic-Paramour-165317600

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I'm actually a very slow writer. I had rough drafts of most of this worked out before I began posting TSATR, but I'm getting to the end of what I've planned. In case anyone wonders why I've slowed right down in a couple of chapters' time. This sequence will probably end up having something like sixteen or seventeen chapters, although I have one or two ideas on extending it, depending on what works in rough.