Sara was a little embarrassed. As it turned out, Cora Harper had more than just a passing fascination with the asari. So, while Sara stood back and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, Cora absorbed every scrap of information that a Captain Hydaria could give her about the missing Leusinia.

"There was a shuttle of evacuees," the captain was saying. "The Periphona. I'll upload its transponder codes to your omni tool."

"We won't let you down," Cora promised.

Sara tried not to roll her eyes.

"It's a good thing those codes are pinging toward Voeld," she murmured once they were back on the Tempest.

"It is lucky, isn't it?" Cora agreed. "Did you hear her mention Sarissa Theris? The Leusinia is good hands if she's still aboard."

"That's a name," was the only thing Sara could think to say.

"Sarissa Theris," Cora repeated. "The Sarissa Theris who singlehandedly saved hundreds with her biotic shields at the Battle of Kerkis? Her training manuals were the foundation of my huntress training."

And she was still just a name to Sara. But Cora's enthusiasm seemed to echo how Sara would rattle on about the writings of Dr. T'soni and Ilos, so she humored her second. "Someone's a fan."

"No! I just like... Look, we need someone with her experience. That's all."

"You know I won't say no to help," Sara said.

"Of course." Cora nodded. "I just need some time to think it over. I promise I'll have a plan for who needs to go where as soon as we're planetside."

"Sure thing." Sara offered a lazy salute as Cora retreated to the bio lab. It was ambitious of her to think she could figure out the logistics of tracking down a shuttle on top of reactivating a vault and infiltrating a kett base.

All that and Cora Harper still found the time to water plants and keep the underside of her scalp trimmed down neatly. At least her dark roots were beginning to show beneath that bleach job, otherwise she'd be too perfect. Sara shrugged.

The ship had quieted and was getting back to the normal doldrums since they'd dropped off the refugees. Kallo was bickering over the intercom with the engineer to the point that Sara wanted to suggest they just replace him. She didn't bother opening her mouth; Addison would probably say there weren't enough resources to support thawing another engineer, so she resigned herself to silently resenting Gil Brodie's insolence toward the pilot who continually outmaneuvered hostiles and kept them all alive.

She breezed through the kitchen long enough for Vetra to toss her a snack and then made her way to her cabin. There, Sara could sprawl out on her bed and stuff her face on the red and blue comforter while she fantasized about how she would rearrange her crew or reallocate resources to the outposts once they had the luxury of more than a skeleton crew. When someone knocked on the door, she was polite enough not to say what she felt, but not so polite to could muster more than a noncommittal grunt from where she lay draped across the bedding.

It was Liam. "Hey."

"Liam? What's up?"

He still smelled good, God bless him, but with the way he glanced over his shoulder, she just knew he was going to say something that would fuck it up. He shut the door behind him and fidgeted restlessly, his hands swinging with inaction. "Are we... okay?"

"I'm okay." Sara pushed herself up to a seated position and brushed some crumbs from her shirt. "You okay?"

"Last time we... that was weird, right?" He had a frenetic sort of energy, like he was trying to inch closer to the bed and leave all at the same time.

She decided to raise a single brow instead of dignifying that with any sort of response.

"Not the part with you," Liam continued, determined to dig himself deeper. "I mean, I was all with you. Things get close on a ship like this. Things happen."

And perhaps things would happen less frequently if he couldn't stop running his mouth. "...Right?"

"One night was one night and I'm a big boy. I won't get clingy, that's the last thing you need. But I won't run, either. So maybe keep this in mind for the future? No pressure."

"Relax, Kosta," Sara said as she idly wondered if it would be bad form to just open the door and rid herself of this conversation. "No pressure."

Apparently, that was what he needed to hear, because Liam grinned at her with those full lips of his. Beautiful for kissing, beautiful for smiling. Good for talking? Not so much. "Great! Right. So..."

"Yeah?"

"It's just, well I was thinking." Now he was venturing deeper into her room and making himself comfortable on the foot of her bed. "The angara and humans, we don't know much about each other, right? Maybe you could greenlight a cultural exchange?"

She frowned. "I guess..?"

"Great!" Liam hopped back to his feet. "I knew you'd be into it! I'll notify Jaal, you won't regret it."

Famous last words. But, he was right about one thing. Sara didn't regret that it got him out of her cabin. She was relieved to enjoy the last two bites of her protein bar alone with her thoughts.

As they neared their destination, Cora requested a meeting so they could hammer out assignments. Vetra was already in the Meeting Room along with Drack by time Sara arrived and she could hear Peebee over the intercom. Cora had a smile plastered on her face and her hands pinned behind her back. She stared down the clock on the wall and seemed to be counting down to when she could politely interrupt the gossip Vetra was entertaining Drack with. Sara moved to find a seat until she realized there were people missing. Given that one of the missions was to rescue the revered angaran Moshae, Jaal's absence was bizarre. As quickly as Sara had stepped foot into the Meeting Room, she backed right out of it, her eyes locking briefly with Cora's in mutual frustration.

Jaal wasn't in the tech lab. Or the crew's quarters or the galley. That's when she realized that Liam also hadn't been present and perhaps, the two could be located together. Sara abruptly changed her course and beelined it for the storage space that Liam had been doggedly attempting to convert into some kind of living area.

Sure enough, there were muffled voices from within the room. Sara tapped the door panel and let herself in. "I wanted to work out the logistics of strike teams with the ETA just... hello!"

If someone had asked Sara to theorize how Liam Kosta could complicate things for her, she might have suggested that perhaps she'd get sloppy and develop feelings for him. But not this. This was nowhere on her, "Liam Kosta Fucks things Up for Sara Ryder" bingo card. Bad enough that Liam chose now to hang out with Jaal instead of reporting to the Meeting Room, but they were doing so completely bare-assed naked? What had transpired in their universe? Was it a joke? A dare? Was the call of Liam's couch as alluring to Jaal as it was to her?

Questions for the ages.

"Ryder! Great, you're here." Not startled or the least bit embarrassed. If anything, her appearance had Liam flexing.

Sara attempted to stay calm and see if either of them could sense the building rage that emanated from deep within her. "We don't technically have uniforms," she said. "But this is a little casual."

That got a laugh from Liam. "Just convenience. Swapping armor." He glanced at Jaal. "Ready to go?"

The angaran nodded. "Go."

"Right." Liam chose to act not only like this was completely normal and okay, but as if she wasn't even there observing. He was focused on the entire set of armor and clothing laid out neatly on a table. He kept talking and prodding at Jaal and the longer their conversation continued, the more irritation Sara could hear color Jaal's inflections.

"The pattern on your pauldron?"

"Family honorific."

"Can I wear the poncho?"

"It's a rofjinn, and no."

"Why? Is it religious?"

"It's personal. You're not allowed!"

"Because of status- or species?"

"Maybe, it's both."

"Do all humans look alike?"

"Some of you sound alike."

Too far. "Whoa, whoa, whoa." Sara interrupted. "I know how this goes. Someone's getting offended, and someone else punched."

Jaal blinked and gave her an inquisitive look. "That's why we're doing it here?"

"It's an armor swap for answers," Liam told her, like that explained anything. "Stuff the diplomats don't ask."

"My turn was earlier. Nexus info packets leave a lot out." Jaal's eyes hadn't left her since she spoke. He frowned. "I am sorry- was this not sanctioned?"

"It was not," Sara said.

Liam was still determined to make light of his diplomatic nightmare. He turned to Jaal with a conspiratorial smirk and muttered, "You weaseling adhi."

"Nevertheless." Jaal cleared his throat and collected his belongings from the table. He paused to offer Sara a polite nod as he left. Still naked. "Ryder."

Sara watched him leave, the grooves of his spine far more prominent than any human's. As she considered jettisoning Liam into the vacuum of space, SAM helpfully reminded her that she would also be killed as she was currently standing alongside him in the same room. So with Jaal gone and murder temporarily out of the question, Sara turned her ire to Liam. "Jaal's an emissary. You've got to be shitting me."

"He won't tattle, if that's what you're worried about." Unfazed, Liam leaned against the table and continued to lounge in the nude. Whether it was to keep her distracted and unbalanced or to show how above it all he was, she couldn't say. Sara was too busy furiously wishing instantaneous death while SAM supplied her with the plausibilities of each execution and Liam continued on with his little lecture. "This was between us. We were joking around and realized we didn't know how to insult each other. Or how not to. Some things are so ingrained they're invisible. We didn't even know the warning signs. So we got it over with."

"Keep it over."

"If you like." Liam shrugged. "Jaal doesn't care, but he wouldn't want his bosses getting tight about it either. But you know our team will get hit by this stuff one way or another. If you ask me? Better over beers than guns."

At that moment Sara would have chosen a gun over his piss swill IPA. "I didn't ask you, thanks." She left in a hurry and punched the control panel to the door shut, so she could claim the pathetic victory of having the last word.

Christ. She had to find Jaal. She should have been prepping to disembark on the frozen hell that was Voeld. She should have been planning her squad and anticipating Cora's charts. Instead, Sara needed to make sure her angaran diplomat understood that traipsing about naked was not a human cultural norm and that one self-important dickhead did not speak for them all.

She thought about all that, knowing full well she would sleep with Liam again given the first opportunity.

When she found him in the ship's tech lab, Jaal was mostly dressed. Sara tapped her knuckles against the doorframe. "Hey, sorry about back there. Liam's an idiot."

"Yes," he agreed. "I was under the impression you were aware of what we were doing. I apologize if you were uncomfortable."

"Not uncomfortable. Well, maybe." She let herself in and closed the door. "Look, I'll be the first to admit that we do need to learn more about each other's cultures, but not like that. I want it to happen naturally and respectfully, not strip you down naked and poke at you like some side show oddity."

"...Side show?"

Sara sighed. "An antiquated form of entertainment where humans would put people with deformities or other different things on display and charge money so that crowds could gawk at them."

"Humans do that?"

"No! I mean, they did, but not anymore?" Perhaps, she would consider that a soft sell of humanity. That thought shouldn't have made her laugh. "Humans can be garbage sometimes, but not always and we're not all like that."

He just blinked at her with those big, blue eyes.

"Back in the Milky Way, there's an alien species called quarian," Sara tried a different angle. "They've been exiled from their home planet for so long, their immune systems have been completely compromised. They have to wear special, protective suits. Personal living environments. If someone had them remove their suit for an 'armor swap,' they'd probably die."

"You feared the angara were like your quarians?" Jaal asked.

"No, I just..." Leave it to Sara to pick up where Liam's downward spiral had left off. "I don't want my curiosity to be so tantamount that it takes priority over your comfort and respect. There's better ways to learn about each other than to strip and see what jiggles."

"Why would jiggling matter?"

"I just mean-" she stopped when she saw his smile. "You're joking."

"Yes." Jaal straightened and folded his arms across his chest, pleased.

"Liam is the one human you don't want as a representative for all humans," Sara insisted.

"Perhaps," Jaal replied. He smoothed a crease from his rofjinn before he wrapped it around his shoulders. "But he was eager to answer my questions while you were content to leave me saying 'bowl-shit.'"

"It was cute."

And the wrong answer, apparently. His chest huffed up, indignant. "I am not cute! I am a twenty-seven year old, hardened warrior."

"I'm sorry! Learning a language is hard. I understood the sentiment and didn't want to offend you." If Sara Ryder and Liam Kosta were being held up as the two primary examples of human beings, humanity was doomed. She had to fix this. "Say, are you hungry? Maybe we could share a meal? I'm sure there'd be plenty of differences that won't require any cool breezes blown at exposed nethers."

"That's could be interesting. I do not know what humans eat." He secured his rofjinn with a clasp.

Sara nodded. "We could each bring our own food. Make it like a picnic-"

"Ryder, have you located Jaal?" Cora's voice was crisp over the intercom. "Liam's up here waiting with the rest of us."

Of course he was.

"On our way," Sara called over her shoulder, before she turned back to Jaal and sighed. "Some other time?"

He laughed. "I look forward to it."