My Normandy Family

The next morning was a lazy one. Knowing that I was hosting a big party that night, and that Tali and I would want some time to ourselves, my parents had made plans for their day and left early. Tali and I lay together under the duvet all comfortable and snuggled up. I listened to the Quarian's easy breathing and little purring noises that she sometimes made. I had to stop myself from laughing when Tali let off a little giggle in her sleep as she dreamt of wonderful things. I slipped out of bed, leaving her in peace.

The smell of the breakfast that I was cooking soon woke her up and my wife almost came down without her suit on. She laughed at herself as she darted back upstairs for it. When she was back in the safety of her enviro-suit, she came running down the stairs and jumped on my back. These playful times were what I lived for, and when I carried her over to the sofa and pinned her down on it, she bawled with laughter at my big beaming face. Not until early afternoon did we head out to get the drinks and food for the party ahead. I had had messages from everyone confirming that they were coming, a very organised bunch.

I got word that Grunt, who was still officially under care at Huerta Memorial after the battle on Uttuku, had been told that he was not to leave the hospital. So, naturally, he had broken himself out anyway but managed not to hurt anyone, leaving only a shattered window in his wake. I was contacted by C-Sec about the incident and Tali and I had to go and sort the matter out. I forked over the credits it would cost to repair the damages. Grunt was allowed to go free, but received a grave warning from the Turian C-Sec officer that next time he would not get off so easy, Spectre friend or not.

"After what we've been through," Grunt chuckled, "and he thinks he's a threat?"

"C'mon, big guy," I shook my head with a smile, "let's get you back to mine before you wreck half the Citadel."

"After another of Scott's clones wrecks the other half," Tali quickly joked.

Tali, Grunt and I spent a few hours getting together a playlist of music for the night. I found that I really needed Tali's help with this, since my own personal taste in music was very obscure and not at all in keeping with modern trends. My love of early twenty-first century progressive/djent metal was not everyone's cup of tea. I needed my wife's help to find tunes that everyone would like, or at least tolerate. Songs and artists that were popular in clubs or music vids and such were soon bundled together, but then Tali gave me a sideways look,

"We could sneak one song in there for you… you know, it is you that's the host."

"We're both the hosts," I said, "but that would be great."

That was it. Booze, food for the night and breakfast in the morning, and tunes for everyone to enjoy. I had said to everyone to head around at about eighteen-hundred hours, and at seventeen-fifty-five James arrived with his own carry out and Steve in tow, eager to start.

"First ones here!" James immediately started nodding to the music and cracked open a few of his own beers for himself, Steve and I. I got Tali a Turian drink, their version of cider, and we all chilled in the living room.

"Good songs you got on, Loco!" James said as he eased back into the sofa. I gave Tali a wink as it was thanks to her that I got the seal of approval from Vega.

"My parties are always hit and miss when it comes to music," Steve admitted.

"Stick with me, bud," James grinned, "I'm a party legend."

"Somehow, I know that'll be true," I chuckled. There was some piss taking and friendly jibes at each other before the door rang again and we were joined by Liara and Samantha. EDI and Joker were next, then Wrex. One by one all my friends began to arrive and soon the party was in full swing.

Samara came in and, at first, did not know what to do in this unfamiliar situation. However, when old friends and new faces greeted her, she soon found herself at peace enough to join everyone. Kasumi arrived and as soon as she was in the door and I had welcomed her, she turned on her active camouflage and disappeared into the apartment to get up to her own mischief. If I did not trust her, I would have been worried, but the eccentric thief was just having fun in her own, strange way. Jack, Miranda, Jacob, Garrus, Javik, the whole lot of them were at that apartment and I could feel the emotion between everyone. Not all of them had served on the Normandy at the same times. Where they were all glad to see those they had known from before, they were equally happy to meet the newest members and even those originals from the SR1. We were all members of the Normandy team and everyone in the apartment knew that. It bound us together eternally.

I had wondered about doing a quick toast to those that we had lost over our years serving on the Normandy, but had decided that the whole point of the party was to give everyone a happy, care-free night of music, drinking and dancing. So I was surprised, but definitely not upset, when Miranda stood and held her glass up.

"I can't believe that, with everything going on out there in the galaxy, we've been allowed this time to meet up with old friends who some of us thought we might never see again. However, as we all know there are some who cannot be here. I don't want to bring the evening down before it begins, but I think to honour their memories, we should drink to them. They were just as much an integral part of the Normandy as any of us here."

I raised my glass high and spoke up,

"To Kaidan Alenko, Mordin, Thane Krios and Legion! All of them the greatest heroes of our age! If we don't see the end of this war, let us hope we see them again."

"They'll always be a part of us," Garrus chipped in.

Everyone drank. There were moments of reflection and I gave Miranda a thankful nod. I really appreciated her doing that. The conversation began to return and everyone continued to enjoy themselves. Drinks were opened, glasses were clinked and slowly the gang dispersed into smaller groups around the apartment. I told Tali just to enjoy herself and let me see to everyone so she joined Garrus, Liara, Traynor and Samara in the kitchen while I grabbed more alcohol to distribute.

I had told myself that I was going to relax at the party, but I ended up wanting to be the good host and check on everyone. I found that this was better. I definitely made sure to catch up with everyone and see all the hilarious antics that everyone got up to over the course of the night. Zaeed tried to chat up Samara and even suggested that they snuggle by the fire, to which Samara gently refused.

James was constantly trying to get either Wrex or Grunt to wrestle him because he believed he could beat them. Eventually, with a huge cheer, Wrex humoured him and had the big marine flat on the ground in about twenty seconds, waiting patiently for James to tap out. To his credit, James fought and struggled as best as he could and tried every move he knew to try and find a way to roll Wrex off of him or lever himself up, but under the incredible weight and strength of the Krogan warlord, he had no chance.

My young Alliance friend took it with a smile and then started a discussion about whether or not physical strength and conditioning could beat biotics. Of course, he did this in the company of Miranda, Jacob, Liara and Wrex who all possessed potent biotic powers. He looked to me, also a non-biotic, for backup which I freely gave just to see my biotic friends' shocked faces. Amazingly, Liara then told James that her physical conditioning was better than his and challenged him to a push-up contest, which James actually seemed a little hesitant to take.

Some of the group had turned the music up and were dancing away down in the kitchen. While Garrus shuffled uncomfortably on the dance floor, Tali was blowing everyone away with her incredible, smooth, flowing moves. Traynor and Steve were having a great time trying to outdo each other and Jack started dancing quite provocatively on the dining table. EDI wanted to dance but Joker was resisting her and just wanted to enjoy his drink. When I suggested that EDI get him another drink, something much stronger, she caught on and gladly obliged. Perhaps the strangest event of the night was when I caught Kasumi snooping through my underwear drawer and musing happily to herself.

"You're going through my drawers?" I asked in total disbelief.

"I go through everyone's drawers," the thief answered cheerily.

"Can't you just mingle and have fun like normal people?" I said, but I had an amused smile on my face the whole time.

"Why would I do that?" Kasumi grinned back. I left her to it and walked away, certain that I heard her comment that she was glad to find my boxers clean.

As the night went on people got happier and a good bit more drunk. I did a short spell on the dance floor which earned me instant ridicule from everyone.

"Has he always been like this?" Traynor asked as she and Liara danced together.

"You learn to love it," Tali jumped to my defence. Zaeed and Garrus had disappeared and had spent a whole hour walking around my apartment talking about how they could turn it into a fortress if we came under attack from another one of my clones. They checked every device in the place to see how they could rig it to explode or something equally as destructive. They inspected the fridge, the coffee maker, the hot tub and even the glass, which I heard Garrus saying he could line with micro-explosives in a grid pattern.

Eventually however, things started to wind down and people were getting tired. Grunt fell asleep in one of the upstairs showers with the water running and whenever I tried to wake him, he would just grumble or shout some random word. The outburst that made Tali and I wet ourselves with laughter was when I tried to stir the big Krogan and he yelled "Sharks!" at the top of his voice.

Zaeed was then snoring loudly down in the living room and those of us still awake, feeling like our top eyelids weighed a ton, gathered in the upstairs living room where the bookshelves were.

"So Miranda…" Joker started with everyone listening, "I have to ask this. When you were rebuilding Scott… who rebuilt his, you know, "equipment"."

Everyone laughed when Miranda just about choked on her drink and seemed like she was about to tell Joker where he could stick his question, but then she saw that people actually wanted an answer.

"C'mon guys we don't really need to hear…" I began.

"I did," Miranda admitted and I stared at her in surprise. The response was amazing and everyone buckled from how funny they found it.

"Did you have to make it bigger?" Joker could barely breathe.

"Didn't need to, right Miranda?" Tali gave her a wink. In reply, Miranda simply smiled and tipped her glass towards the Quarian.

"I think this is a good time to leave," Liara shook her head and stood, Samantha moving to follow.

"You don't have to leave," I told them, "there's plenty of space here to sleep. Let me sort a room for you."

Liara and Sam gladly took my offer and I sorted out one of the guest rooms for them. When they retired to their room, there was a certain urgency to it as Liara pulled Samantha through the door with a sparkle in her eye. Sam gave a little girly smile and leapt after her Asari girlfriend and the door was firmly closed. In the back of my mind, I could not help but wonder where Kasumi was with her stealth suit. Inevitably, the conversation with the rest of us came back to the Normandy and all the crazy things we had seen and done on both of the beautiful ships.

The second-generation crew who served with me against the Collectors were interested to hear more about the confrontation that I had had with Wrex on Virmire, when he did not want me to blow up Saren's Genophage cure. Wrex asked the other members who had been there on that mission what they would have done if they had been in my place. Garrus joked that Wrex would not have been able to resist his charm, whereas Tali said that she would have tried to stop the big Krogan but would probably have received many bones broken in the process. Ashley stated that she "would have done what needed to be done" and seemed quite serious when she said it.

I remembered how, out of all of my companions who had witnessed the dangerous argument, Ashley was the one with her weapons trained on Wrex as soon as his shotgun came up right to my face.

"Would you have killed me?" Wrex asked his friend. Ashley looked pained at the question, but she still could not lie,

"If you had hurt Scott then… yeah, I would have."

Wrex considered this for a second before giving her a nod of agreement,

"And I respect you for that," he said with a broad smile.

"Wow," Jacob grimaced, "and I thought our crew had problems!"

"What? You mean me and the Cheerleader?" Jack chuckled and nodded in Miranda's direction.

"Keep it friendly, guys," I said with an unintentional seriousness. I tried to cover it with a quick laugh, but my concern was obvious to everyone.

"Don't worry, Scott," Jack said, "I'm not going to "smear the walls" with her this time."

"And I can't think of anything worse to do to her than that haircut," Miranda shot back.

"I always thought that you two just needed to kiss and get it over with," Garrus said. The two women were both taken aback by the Turian's comment. "Well, it's all just sexual tension, right?" Garrus continued, "two powerful biotics, two forceful personalities, two women confident in their sexuality…"

"And there's a big market for this kind of stuff," Kasumi suddenly appeared with a camera ready to film next to our group. At least she was not intruding on Liara and Samantha's private time.

To the disappointment of Joker and a few more of the guys, Miranda and Jack did not kiss and make up. Instead, they simply continued to have harmless little jabs at each other until it was time for bed. Tali had fallen asleep cuddled into me on the couch and many commented just how right we looked together as she purred in her drunken slumber. Some of my friends went to find somewhere to go to sleep, and a few others were staying up for a bit longer when I picked Tali up and carried her to our bedroom.

However, just as I lay Tali down, she stirred and I felt a three-fingered hand start to undo my belt buckle,

"Better make sure you're staying here with me," she said suggestively. While the mood was definitely going in a sexy direction, Tali was hiccupping like crazy with the drink which I found adorable. She worked on my belt buckle and just as she about had it out, she would jump with a hiccup and go into a fit of giggles. I pushed her on her back and lay myself on top of her, my hands feeling every inch of her body and quickly undoing the seals with a sleight of hand, unveiling her astonishing body in minutes. I threw my clothes away and pressed myself against her, feeling the incredible sensation of her smooth, soft skin against me and passionately kissing her.

Tali's hands ran up my muscled chest and wrapped around my neck and pulled me ever closer. Our legs were rubbing against the other's, and when my thigh came to rest in between Tali's, she started to grind herself against me, her eyes going all misty as she started to feel the ecstasy from my touch. I teased her breasts and slid a hand down her hot body to take over from my thigh. My blood was running hot, and so was hers. Our bodies became covered in a sheen of sweat as we rolled around together on the bed, the covers getting thrown off to get them out of the way. I pinned one of her legs down off to her side and had the other up over my shoulder. Tali lay back with her hands gripping the headboard and she purred,

"Go in hard and fast, Commander!"

With the apartment still full of our friends, Tali tried her hardest to stop herself screaming out in pleasure as my hips thrust in and out as deep as I could go. Seeing Tali arching her back as the sensation filled her brain, she eventually came hard and could take no more. After the few seconds that it took for Tali to open those lilac eyes again, I lay down gently on her, still inside her and making her giggle when I tensed the muscles a few times to make my member twitch.

That moment was perfect, as every peaceful moment with Tali was.

"This is what I want for the rest of my life, Scott," my Quarian wife kissed me. "You cannot die on me a second time."

"The same goes for you, Mrs Vas Normandy," I said, "You'll be right there with me, dodging bullets, blasting Reapers… but we know what we're fighting for. We're fighting for what comes after that!"

Now I lay back and Tali cuddled up to my side stroking my arm.

"We're fighting for our dream," she said wistfully. I nodded, but had another thought as well,

"There is that, definitely! But… if we beat the Reapers then our galaxy, our cycle will be the first in over a billion years to have a future completely to ourselves to look forward to."

"And the species who still haven't achieved space flight, or are still hunting food with sharpened stones will be able to join us one day," Tali added, "they'll have that opportunity as well, thanks to us."

"Imagine a new species that has just joined our galactic civilisation and hears about the war against the Reapers, they'll think we're all insane with the stories. Giant machines that exterminate all life in the galaxy because… you know, reasons."

Tali was laughing away and I was only too happy to join her. Soon, however, tiredness mixed with the comedown from the sex crept up on us. Tali was snoozing in my arms again, sleeping in absolute bliss and safety as I soon was.

When morning, or whatever time of day it was, arrived, I was not feeling too bad in all honesty. I grudgingly thanked my Cerberus cybernetics for that. Tali, however, I knew would be out for the count for a while yet so I slowly got out of bed, changed and headed out of the bedroom to see who else was up and about. Zaeed was awake downstairs, but told me that that was only because Wrex had finally had enough of his snoring and given him a "gentle" thump to stop it. The resulting bruise was shining on his arm quite nicely. The big Krogan himself was obviously suffering.

"A night like that was how my first liver finally dried up," he chuckled, "once you get past eight-hundred, you really have to watch the hard stuff."

Bearing in mind that Wrex was only a couple of centuries short of being two-thousand years old, that meant that even a tiny drink could kill him, though Wrex was not very amused when I told him that. Garrus was moaning about how long Miranda was taking to do her hair, taking up one of the bathrooms he had been so desperately needing.

"There are three bathrooms, you know," I said with amusement.

"Not the point, Scott," the Turian said, "it's the principle. A man needs to go, he should be able to go!"

"A woman needs to look her best," Miranda quipped with a smile as she swept gracefully past. The blonde hair was gone, and suddenly the women who had brought me back with the Lazarus project was in front of us again.

"Hey! You're you again," I said. Miranda ran her fingers through her jet-black hair fondly,

"No need to hide anymore, Commander," she grinned, "soon Cerberus will be history and I want to be there to see it happen as myself."

She believed that we could do this and it really brightened the morning further for me. Once more or less everyone was up, I broke out the breakfast supplies and started cooking up the best fry up that I possibly could considering how many hungry, hungover soldiers were sitting around starving. Poor Tali was the last to wake up and, although still feeling like alcohol-induced death, she smiled happily when everyone turned to see her enter the kitchen and gave her a half genuine, half mocking cheer.

"You look like shit!" Jack said happily. Her over-charged biotic amp gave her the advantage of never suffering from hangovers no matter how many shots of vodka and energy juice she threw down her throat, and now she revelled in it at the expense of our poor Quarian.

Everyone ate their fill and I made sure that Garrus and Tali got their dextro breakfasts. The bacon rolls and sausages with ample amounts of coffee perked everyone up a little more and conversation flowed once more, though this time less slurred and interrupted by belches or hiccups. Then I had a genius idea and got everyone to pose around the main sofa in the living room, getting Glyph to take a picture of all of us together, for what could be the last time. It was an important moment for everyone, and even after the picture had been taken and a copy sent to everyone's Omni tools, people did not seem to want to leave their spot.

With my arm around Tali and everyone else huddled around us, it was like a family. Subconsciously, I suppose we were. Everyone in that room would die for the man or woman next to them, and it would be done out of love. That bond of love and friendship between us could never be broken, and I felt so proud of everyone at that moment. Our lives would be so much lesser without those ties that bound us together. Not only those still alive, but the memories and inspiration drawn from those dear friends who had fallen in our campaigns. Every Reaper trooper I killed would be for them. Every shot fired would be for the people of Earth. When we deployed the Crucible and wiped the galaxy clean of the Reapers, it would be for every living soul in the Milky Way.