GOING TO MAKE IT QUITE CLEAR I don't care for the non-privacy for Aria's section of Afterlife I think it's honestly dumb that anybody can see who's going to see her by just like da'huurrrrr looking up at where she is so I'm imagining it almost more like a backdoor situation that leads up into a balcony that overlooks the club. Like she has a private suite that can be accessed secretly if you know the right channels and the Balcony Queen Goddess Pirate Colloseum Julius Ceasar Thumbs Down Realness of it all comes as almost like a perk. Anyway will explain to follow BUT i wanted to just make that note before i start describing an area that doesn't exist in-game in a way that might be confusing ok here we go
Jack and Shepard slog their way out of the bar with no regard for grace, one arm supporting the other in an amorphous Jack-Shepard four legged beast, snickering and lighting cigarettes as they feel an air of mischief overtake them.
"I want to see Aria," Jack moans
"We probably shouldn't."
"PM her."
"She said to just come to see her. Let's go through one at a time."
"Hide in plain sight?" Jack asks.
"I'd hardly call what you're doing hiding," Shepard scoffs, fixing her hair into a low ponytail.
Jack shrugs the fur off her shoulder. "Whatever."
"So one at a time, then." Jack agrees, nodding her shiny bald head. The pair stumble down a few streets, making quick work of navigation by following the almost bodily thrumming of the base beating like a heart at the center of Omega. Shepard slips into afterlife like a nobody in plainclothes and Jack right behind her. It's nights where she can climb into the less bulky body-compressive light armors in her repertoire where she often feels the biggest rush. As a soldier, Shepard has become accustomed to the fast-paced heat-sink mass-effect real-death reaper-crisis megabattles for some time. The armor she is currently sporting was designed for espionage and not direct combat, using tiny pulses of mass effect fields that could be amplified by a companion who's a powerful enough biotic. She and Jack had become quite the ragtag wild-west team in their spare time
"Afterlife," the two split the word out, their guts vibrating with the bassline. Shepard dips away and moves through the crowd completely aloof; she had always valued her anonimity and wore her full-helmet armor at all times whilst on official spectre business, so there was no way she could be spotted now. Without N7 Markings and a trailing squad of misfits, she is a human nobody in an Earth Baseball League ball cap.
It's strange, people didn't even look at her and bumped into her quite a few times. Shepard is over six feet tall but even with size on her side she is nothing height-wise when standing beside a Krogan, Turian, or even the odd Vorcha. She had always loved being tall as a human on Earth; on Omega she loved being small just the same. She has to bribe the bouncer to get in, which is an absolute riot and Shepard has to stifle a laugh.
When she gets into Afterlife she squeezes to the bar, music kicking up a wild air in the crowd as they sway and girate to the music. The dancers wriggle in a group like a great amoeba, writhing in ecstasy as they all move through the same pulsing beats and rifs. What an energy. She senses the body heat of other patrons and is titillated by the closeness of it all.
Shepard makes her way to Aria eventually after swimming through a crowd of excitable and wriggling bodies, a guard approaching her when he can't get a scan on her Omni-tool to demand I.D. Shepard refuses and peeks over his shoulder, spotting Aria sipping on a large glass of ice water and sharpening a knife.
"Hey, Aria!" She shouts, the guard looks shocked and seems like he is going to push and even hit Shepard, which she will eat if she has to. Luckily enough the Asari sits up and turns her face toward Shepard like a great hawk. Fierce eyes dialing in on a voice she knows well.
"Calamity, is that you?" the Asari bemuses with a smile. "Isn't someone here in big trouble?" Shepard pushes past the guard and sits next to Aria, sighing dreamily. "You lookin' to run from your time, baby?"
"No," Shepard admits with reluctance. "I get locked up tomorrow."
"Aw, you spent your last night of freedom here with us?" Aria hums, gesturing vaguely at the crowd dancing all around them.
"Nah baby, just with you," Shepard makes a kissing sound.
Aria's voice deadpans. "How flattering." She pushes a hand across her scalp and purses her lips. "Where's Jack? The birds are saying you boarded together, did you not?"
"Behind me," Shepard shrugs with a vague calm.
"What can I do for you, Shepard?" Aria asks, pushing a hair out of Shepard's face with an almost fraternal tenderness.
"Aria nobody's listening to me."
"About the Reapers?"
Shepard shudders. "About the Reapers."
"I'm afraid they never will until it's too late."
"So now I'm going to Prison."
"So it goes."
Shepard sighs and there is a shuffling behind them, Jack having pushed two guards aside and shouldered her way into the private suite with quite a ruckus. "Hi babes."
"Subtle," Aria chides, holding up a hand of calm to abide fuming muscle.
"Not happy to see me, Aria?" Jack smiles, bowing and kissing the Asari on her lithe purple fingers.
"Never," she chuckles, Jack joining them on the couch.
"As thrilling as this visit is, should you two really be here right now?"
Shepard harumphs, "Probably not."
"You'd better go, Miss Thing. Too many people around here wanna see you dead and I don't want that fight to happen in my club."
"Aria," Jack wines, kissing the fingers again.
"Giddyup."
"Bye, Aria,"
"Bye, girls."
They're escorted out a back exit by one of Aria's guards and the music still makes their ribs quiver through heavy doors.
"Well that was a bust," Shepard sighs, hocking a ball of snot onto the ground and rifling her pockets for a lighter.
"Not so fast, mama," Jack snickers. She pulls a long tapered bottle of liquor from under her coat and Shepard wheezes.
"Johnny coming up big with the free booze!"
"Aria won't miss it," she chuckles, turning over the label.
"What'd ya get?" Shepard peeks over her friend's arm, huge coat obscuring her view.
"Oh shit," Jack laughs with a groan. "This is Drossix."
"Pffff fuck."
"I know a place that will trade us something for this, though," Jack contends, pulling out a spliff from the front pocket of her jacket. "In the meantime, I got this bad boy."
"Ayyy," Shepard quickly abandons the unlit cigarette for something stronger and lights the spliff with little moment for pause. "Let's go," she croaks around a chestful of smoke.
"Aight, c'mon, it's this way."
Jack leads the way, the boozed up spectre trailing behind like a tutting little ship, knocking into the occasional pedestrian or pile of scrap. On their walk they pass an old poster pasted to a wall that reads "Hero of Omega, Conciliate Angel, Savior of the Pestilent. Gods bless the Shepard." It's been ripped and defaced, but Christ it feels good to know people loved her once.
Jack throws an arm over her friend's shoulder, taking a long drag from the spliff and passing it back with a smoky sigh. "Listen, Oakley, I'm sure you won't be grounded long. When the Reapers do come, they're gunna need you anyway."
Shepard agrees with a hum of malice, complying to Jack's pulling her away from the poster as they round another corner in the slums.
"Check it," Jack grins, digging Shepard in the ribs when they arrive at their destination.
"Goddesses? Is this a girl bar?"
"More like girl-centric, don't worry I know a bartender here that will hook us up for this, trust me."
The pair ascend a set of stairs and Jack shmoozes with a bouncer for a minute before heading in, waving Shepard in behind her. Jack is a towering statuesque beauty in the strobing lights of the nightclub, and Shepard pushes through crowds of women and femmes of all species to follow her. Gender has a funny way of mixing cross-culturally, and everyone in the building is so queer it's hard to tell who comes from where and what planet and how, it's just dancing and kissing and sweating.
They're able to get to the bar in no time, and Jack is greeted by a turian with a kiss on the cheek. Shepard can't hear anything but watches as the two talk and Jack holds up the bottle of Drossix Blue to her compatriot. They exchange words and the turian bends down to pull up two handles of something Shepard can't recognize to give to Jack, who immediately winks and hands one off to the commander. She takes a swig. Tequila.
Jack grins at her and the two clink bottles, making their way to the dance floor.
Anne Caroll Shepard can hit a fly's wings off it's body with a single heat sink at 100 yards looking backwards through a hand mirror. The girl can run a 6 minute mile and make quick work of any target range with any firearm. She can hack safes and deactivate bombs and spring her best-friend-to-be out of intergalactic torture prison… however, Anne Caroll Shepard cannot dance.
Not for a lack of movement, because she has the movement, she just has no grace or sense of rhythm, it's all just feeling. Liara would play nice and say that it was more like art, that many Asari would see it as a deeply emotional method of sapien expression without the abstract limitations of what's considered "dance." Joker would very quickly burst that bubble and say Shepard looked like a fish.
Regardless, she and Jack were moshing in a huge group of women, clinking their handles of tequila and occasionally sharing with anyone who asked, waterfalling the alcohol into their open mouths.
The two of them found some quiet in the restroom amongst various persons correcting their makeup, passing the remaining handle back and forth.
"I wanna get in a fight," Shepard seeths, touching a fat lip from being knocked into out in the crowd.
"I thought you said you wanted to fuck?"
"I want both, John. I wanna fight and fuck. Is that too much to ask?"
Jack lays a hand on her friend's shoulder. "I don't believe that it is, Oak."
"Didn't think so."
"Let's not do it here, though."
"Nah let's go somewhere more… fighty."
"Let's."
They leave Goddesses in even worse shape than before, using the other as full on support and swaying with every step. They go back and forth as they pass bar after bar, eventually settling on one that seemed the most like it was looking for a ruckus.
The inside is generally occupied by men, some working class and others looked like they were gang members.
"Oh, perfect," Shepard slurs, her and Jack sauntering in with little regard for their reception into the space. Shepard's hair is curly and wild, having long abandoned the cap that's now secured around a belt loop at her hip, and Jack has never quite blended. The two make for quite a pair, and Shepard can feel eyeballs on them as she takes a seat while Jack fetches them draft beers and two waters each from the bar.
"I'm feeling this," Shepard sighs. It's a nice change of pace from Goddesses, who's siren song has long left a ringing in her ears. The space is divided into two sides, one being for seated guests and the other for standing/darts. The standing guests are in small circles of other men leaning around high tops; there's about twelve of them and a couple are definitely eclipse members. The other side of the room is just Shepard and Jack, a young couple kissing and quietly groping each other in a back corner, a handful of small tables plus a poker game of four guys. A small monitor plays Omega Access News, the only official news station on Omega. The monitor is on mute but it plays with a soft glow in the upper corner of the bar, only slightly obscured with a single bar of static on the upper third of the screen.
"Sizing them up, Annie?" Jack sips her water. Shepard answers with a hum over the foam of her beer, taking a long sip.
"In more ways than one, Jackie."
"So have you made a choice? Fuck or Fight?"
"We don't have time for both?"
"I dunno, Shep, it's like 2AM Seattle Time."
"Christ."
"I had a girl in my first all biotics gang that was into all the Christ, like actually, and would always get so upset when she'd take his name in vain."
"She Earthborn?"
"American-Earthborn."
"Oh, boy."
"You Earthborns are so weird. Like - colonists I can handle because it's all just space talk but Earthborns are always saying some crazy shit. Like - I once heard the engineer with the accent say something was 'gammie' … what even is that?"
"Kenneth Donnelly," Shepard nods with an almost dreamy sigh. "It means like fucked up or bad, like broken."
"Aw, man, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get you thinkin'bout the crew."
"It's fine if I think of something else quickly I can still repress the feelings until tomorrow."
"Uh, okay, Oakley," Jack coughs quietly, gesturing toward the bar's little news monitor with a subtle turn of her head..
No sound came from it but in large red letters the headline read "COMMANDER SHEPARD REPORTEDLY SPOTTED ON OMEGA"
The blood drains from Shepard's face. She'd counted three Batarians in there when she'd scanned the room and they all seemed occupied like normal patrons. Nobody made a fuss, nobody gestured toward her or looked her way since they'd first entered; she knew the more discreet she tried to seem the more attention she would get so she calmly turned to Jack.
"You feel threatened here?"
Jack snorts "no ma'am." Shepard raised her mug of beer. "To prison."
"Here, here."
Their glasses clink again and they sit quietly at their seats without a word, decompressing in the room's stagnant heat.
The steady bubbling of an argument grows louder behind them, and eventually the screeching of chairs gives way to full on shouting.
Shepard listened as one guy called the other guy, who is huge, indoctrinated and a xenophobe. The big guy fires back that the other is ignorant and brainwashed. They shout like this until one swung at the other over the card table with exclamations of cheer from those in the standing section.
It seems a normal poker's brawl until she catches wind of a few familiar terms: most notably her own name and rank. Then it becomes very clear about what - or whom - they're arguing. The term "Shepard Lover" is thrown out and she nearly chokes on her drink, Jack pats her back, equally as involved in spectating the squabble while her friend coughs around a mouthful of beer.
More punches are thrown and eventually more patrons become involved, one coming crashing across their table with a grimace and the two women rise from their seats freshly doused in booze.
A man knocks into Shepard and she uses both hands to throw him to the ground, another shouts at them from across the bar. She and Jack make eye contact and grin. "And you said we wouldn't have time," Shepard laughs, the two squaring off back to back.
Spectre or no a drunken brawl is a drunken brawl, and she and Jack both sustain a few hits while knocking folks out and getting screamed at by the bartender. They're not on any particular side, just dodging thrown beer bottles and knuckly paws of any swinging fellow trying to land a hit. It's a whirlwind of commotion and is over almost as quickly as it started. Shepard has broken two noses and knocked another patron out cold, bouncing idly on her feet as she prepares for more but is quickly thrown out onto the street via a side door. She trips and knocks into the opposite wall, catching herself before she can land face-first into the side of a dumpster. "Fuck." She huffs, pushing a palm across her bleeding nose. She hears someone else moving beside her in the alley and rears to face them, a great hulking person blocking the streetlight like a mast of ship.
"So, you a Shepard lover, too?" It is one of the bar attendees who was playing in poker and part of the original skirmish that started the whole brawl off.
"You could say that," Shepard huffs, coughing out a wad of phlegm and some blood. She straightens and reaches for her sunglasses but realizes she must have lost them in the fight, sighing and grabbing the bridge of her nose where the bone is and jostling lightly. Not broken.
"Damn, you can really take a hit," he observes, stepping away from the wall of the alleyway and moving a bit closer to her. Shepard snorts, pushing her hair off her neck and unlatching her ball cap from her hip.
"I sure can," she laughs, finally raising her head to look at him.
He's a big human man, broad chest, thick neck, scarred face, biceps like a fucking python. It's been a long time since she's seen such a specamine, not since basic training; as if cursing herself she notices the Alliance dog tags hanging around his neck. "Oh wow, you're a marine," she observes out loud, her own tags practically burning a hole through her jacket.
"Yes ma'am," He nods, taking up more space than he should in the albeit tiny side alley, the length of his shoulders practically reaching from wall to wall between buildings.
"You're a big boy, even for a marine," she hiccups. Less flirting and more just making observations aloud, inhibitions lifted by a heavy veil of booze, but even still she feels a blush rise to her face as the words leave her mouth. So forward, even for her.
"Yes ma'am," he laughs again. "And what are you?"
"Oh, just a ne'er do well on Omega, trying to make the best of a bullshit situation," she sighs, wiping a sheen of sweat off her forehead.
"Oakley!" Jack comes stumbling out of the bar sporting what looks like a broken finger and now stands at the mouth of the alleryway over her new friend's shoulder. Taking quick note of the two of them she cocks a brow. "You good?"
"I'm good, John."
"Going for the hat trick, hey, Boss?"
"Something like that."
"Just call if you need me." Jack laughs, bowing away and quietly muttering something about finding some downers.
"Save some for me, Jackie."
"Will do."
Her friend slinks away like a jungle cat, teetering on high heels and radiating with powerful biotic energy to keep herself upright as she makes her way back to the port where the Normandy II is docked.
"Your friend?" The large marine asks.
"My best friend," Shepard huffs, swiveling her attention back towards him. "You need a friend?"
He hitches a breath and laughs in a way that Shepard can only describe as nervous. "You gonna be my friend, Lola?"
"Lola?"
"Yeah."
"That's my name, huh?"
"You seem like one."
"Hm," Shepard muses. "And what's your name?"
"Jimmy Vega."
"Well, Jimmy Vega. You've happened to catch me on a very gracious evening where I will allow gratuitous flirting, nicknames included," Shepard presses a hand to the center of his chest between his pectorals. "Wow. You're really huge." He's so firm.
"Yeah I mean, I work out like every-"
"Sh."
"Yes ma'am."
She looks up from his chest to his face and feels a shiver go through her. He's actually very cute. "You mind if I feel up on you, Lieutenant?" She reads his rank from his tags.
"No, ma'am," he smiles. She is so drunk her filter has basically been completely shut off at this point, and inhibition is a sober man's game. Commander Shepard can't afford to care at the moment. She laughs wrily at herself and her behavior, the far-away sober forever kind of mind that watches your drunk self from a distance and just goes "oh, boy." Truly though, it is a chore. He looks like he might be soft through the middle, in the big-fucking-boy kind of way. She feels a flutter of Marine crushes and liaisons she had in the academy, a distant nostalgia that warms the biotic cyborg cockles of her rotted twice-beating heart.
She hums, pushing up the bottom hem of his shirt and pushing a thumb through his happy trail. "You're a big man," she gushes. "Oh my god." His body is moist with sweat and warm, he smells like someone spilled a whiskey on him. A trail of dark hair leads from his belly button to his pants and Shepard licks her lips, exposing his upper torso and sighing dreamily, quite pleased with the situation she's found herself in. "Oh my," She gasps, saddling her hips up to his and ravaging him with her eyes.
Shepard found a deep and profound beauty in all living things she had come to know in her great adventures, as a kid on Earth, as a grunt, as an N7 marine, as a spectre, in her friends and enemies alike, all species she knew of, she admired. Somewhere a smoldering passion for life allowed her to intake all the things around her and accept them with a deep seeded sort of grace. It was the human male form however that unlocks a dirty mammalian place in her.
She feels guilt at her secret, her identity. She looks at him again and sighs softly with want, leaning over and pressing her lips to the center of his breastbone. Gooseflesh rises on his skin and he shivers, she breathes in the response like a mouthful of water. How delicious.
She fills her palms with handfuls of Jimmy Vega's deltoids, feeling up on his thick midsection and a part of her wants to take a big bite out of him.
The alleyway is anything but a romantic setting but then again, Omega is hardly a place for romance, and Shepard feels herself get lustfully carried away. She is past the point of being able to stop herself, and her guilt is part of the fantasy by now.
"Well, I have to go," she hears herself say.
"The shuttle I'm stationed on is docked here for a whole night, you can't stay?"
Shepard sighs with a genuine air of sadness, imagining only for a moment what it would be like to get railed for a couple hours by the sexiest human man she's ever seen. She looks at her watch and bites the inside of her cheek. She has to be on her way to the citadel in two and a half hours. "I'm afraid not," she hiccups, patting him on the shoulder.
"Well, here, let me give you my number," Jimmy Vega hurriedly scribbles down his digits on a scrap of paper and hands it to Shepard, who balls it up and shoves it in her jacket pocket.
"See you around, Jimmy Vega." It's less of a lie than she thinks it is.