Liam went over his armor, bit by bit, repairing all the little cracks before they could become problems. Unfastening everything, cleaning it out, getting it all hooked back together. Gave him an excuse to keep his head down, in the crowded central hub of the ship. He couldn't keep his face blank, but he could keep his head down.
Goddamn that Reyes.
Even Liam could admit the smuggler was handsome. Better looking than your average freeloading drunk, that was for sure. And he had that air, like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. The man was obviously up to something. Anyone could see it.
Worse, anyone with eyes and ears could tell what it was Reyes wanted to be up to. And who he wanted to drag down with him.
Worse, Sara seemed to like the man. Spent time in his company. In bars. Voluntarily. And he knew for damn sure she'd been flirting with him.
If only his dad could see him now. Dad would have pegged Reyes for a schemer the second he laid eyes on him, and he'd have told Liam not to worry. If a woman goes for a guy like that, my boy, she's not the woman for you.
Except Liam couldn't bring himself to be Above It All. Couldn't stand back and just let Sara make her choices, like a proper friend should. If that was even what they were. They were something, sure enough, the whole crew coming together like a team or a family, and she was at the heart of all of it. But it didn't give him the right to crowd her, or pressure her.
And now he'd gone and done something stupid.
Of course Reyes knew something about the Roekar murders. And of course the man had to set up his own little explosives, couldn't be a team player. No, he had to make the big dramatic entrance. So they'd rolled up, him and Sara and Jaal, to the Roekar base without a single trace of their friendly neighborhood smuggler. And Sara asked where Reyes was.
That was it. That was when it happened. He'd felt the words bubbling and boiling up out of his chest, and he couldn't have stopped them if he'd clapped both hands over his mouth and fell backwards.
"Keep it in your pants!" He'd practically shouted. At her. While they were trying to sneak into a base full of baddies. Her eyes had gotten so wide, and he'd known right that second it was a mistake. "Or out. Whatever."
But it was too late.
He was an idiot.
He could have got them all killed. And for what?
He felt clumsy and foolish as a teenager again. All snark and painfully earnest emotions he didn't even have names for. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't supposed to be like this. As a goddamn adult he should be able to keep his mouth shut on his stupid jealousy when it could get them killed.
Ryder wandered down from the upper level, past the Nomad, and he didn't look up at her. Just watched, grateful his rising blush wasn't so visible on his skin, out of the corner of his eye. But she didn't come for him. She wandered over to Vetra and struck up a conversation.
With careful, deliberate movements, Liam put the finishing touches on his armor. All shined and polished. All but that one brace, the one that broke the day he fell onto Habitat 7. When he met Sara.
"Did you come over with anybody? Anybody special?" he heard her ask, and his head snapped up. Vetra. She'd asked Vetra that. She'd never asked him. Maybe because it was obvious that no, no he hadn't. He wasn't exactly shy about his feelings. If he had a wife or something waiting in cryo, everyone on the ship would know about it by now. They'd probably know the woman's favorite flavor of tea, favorite book, all the classics.
"No. Nobody like that. Who's got the time?" Vetra asked, but dear God, was that a flirtatious edge in her voice? He didn't know Vetra even had flirtatious edges. "What about you?"
He turned back to his armor and tried to look Very Busy. And not like a giant idiot.
"Same. Who's got the time?" Sara said.
He let out a breath he didn't even know he was holding.
He let their conversation fade into the background. No reason to eavesdrop. He should know better. Crowded ship, you've got to give people the privacy available. And pretending you can't hear them talk is sometimes the best you've got.
"Hey, Liam." Except there she was, right next to him, saying hello. And why not? Why wouldn't she? He plastered his best blank face over his nerves and met her eyes.
"Ryder. What's up?" There. That sounded neutral. Not at all like he was going to go into Raving Madman Mode the next time they were sneaking into a kett facility and start yelling like some asshole ex-boyfriend.
"Just checking in." There was something uneasy in her grimace. And, hell, that was on him, wasn't it?
Least he could do was apologize.
"I wanted to say—sorry. I lost my cool and I alerted the Roekar to our position. It could have gone bad. I just. . . sorry. It won't happen again." God, his mouth was an idiot.
But she didn't seem repulsed. She just gave him a considering look. Tilted her head to the side. And yeah, he was in real trouble here, because all he could think about was how pretty her eyes were and how soft her skin looked and maybe if she—
"Good," she said, and he yanked himself back to reality. Where they were all real adults, not teenagers going crazy, and they all had real jobs to do. "I'll. . . talk to you later."
"I know it," he said. And he gave her a smile, and a nod, and he took his armor upstairs. Because maybe Jaal would be in the mood to tell him some stories or show him how to mod a kett rifle and do something to get his damn mind off this.
He found Jaal in the tech lab upstairs, as usual, and let the door hiss shut again behind him. Jaal was mucking about with something on his reader, but his eyes flicked up to Liam when he entered.
"Ah. Good. I wanted to talk to you," Jaal said. Liam laid his armor down on one of the ever-present boxes of spare parts, and wandered over to Jaal, hands on his hips. The angara's face was serious, no trace of a smile on his mouth, but that wasn't so unusual. He could be mercurial, shifting from one emotion to the next in the blink of an eye. And he always, always wore his heart on his sleeve. It was relaxing, in a way, to always know where you stood with Jaal.
"I'm down for whatever. Came up for a distraction. Got to get out of my head," Liam explained. Jaal grimaced understanding. He knew all about staying busy to keep bad thoughts at bay. They'd stripped several kett guns down to bolts after rescuing the Moshae, working side by side in companionable silence.
"I have noticed that your people's reluctance to discuss their emotions openly extends to. . . how do I put this? Romance? Mating ritual? You all seem very hesitant to talk about that aspect of life. Even though, without it, there can be no life to follow you," Jaal said. Liam groaned. He rubbed his face hard with the heels of both hands, yanking on his hair on the way up. Jaal raised what would have been an eyebrow, if he had hair. "Is this topic shameful?"
"Sort of?" How could he explain this without really stepping in the muck? "It's not something we talk about. Except in the abstract. Until we have talked about it with the person we want to be with, and they said they want to be with us. Make sense? It's like, you don't want to say you're interested in someone you don't know is interested in you, because it will just embarrass you both if they aren't. And then if you have to work together or something it's all awkward."
"That's. . . a very clumsy and, quite honestly, ridiculous way to organize yourselves. But I had a more specific question in mind. It's about Reyes Vidal," Jaal said. Liam groaned again. He plopped down on one of the boxes of parts, hands dangling between his knees. Whatever followed, it was not going to help him get his mind off his problems. "What?"
"Nothing. Just. . . what about him?"
"It appears he is attempting to . . . win Ryder over. Court her. Or, I don't want to be crude. How would you say it?"
"Date her."
"It appears he is attempting to date Ryder. And, she seems to be receptive to that idea. Am I interpreting human behavior correctly?" Jaal asked. Liam sighed.
"Yeah."
"And you do not want them to. . . date."
"Not especially," Liam said, slipping into sarcasm. He hadn't told anyone, not even Jaal, about that night in the cargo bay. About all the little glances and touches and smiles and moments that made him feel like maybe he was falling into something brilliant and beautiful here. And then they went to Kadara. And met Reyes Vidal. "Is that obvious?"
"Yes. Of course. These things should be obvious. How can you say you're truly falling in love with someone if you can bring yourself to hide it? That goes beyond customs," Jaal said. He held up a hand as if to forestall argument. "But my point is, I do not like it either."
"Why? Are you. . ." Oh, shit. What a place for human-angaran relations to start. "Interested in Ryder?"
"She is a lovely woman. I enjoy her company, but I don't know her well enough to wish for more," Jaal said, bluntly. As could have been expected. "The point is, this Reyes Vidal is not trustworthy. It is part of our job to protect the Pathfinder. Does that extend to protecting her from bad decisions?"
"Oh, mate," Liam said. He shook his head, despondently. "Not so much."
"It is a valid concern. I would discourage any of my brothers or sisters from making such a match," Jaal protested.
"Yeah, well. You can tell her you're worried, if you want. Leave me out of it if you do. I've made myself enough of a pest about that," Liam said. "You heard me hollering at her in the Roekar base. We humans call that kind of behavior 'possessive' and it's not my best look."
"Hmm. So you are embarrassed," Jaal said, meditatively. Liam drummed his fingers against the box. "And you plan to do what about it?"
"Nothing, if I can help it. It'll blow over," Liam said. Jaal made a skeptical noise.
"And it would be rude to insist to Ryder that she not date people of unknown habits and morals?" Jaal asked. Liam beat out a quick tattoo with his fingertips. He reminded himself that Jaal was actually asking, that this was a whole other culture to him.
"Yeah. We only get to talk to certain people about their dating decisions. You only get a vote if you're family, pretty much." He thought about that a moment. "Or, I guess, maybe asari and turians do it differently. I'm pretty sure the krogan aren't shy about their opinions. And there's bound to be lots of variations. But if you're friends, you just get to say, hey that guy looks like trouble but I respect your choices."
"Hmm. Your cultural rules about emotional honesty are extremely complex," Jaal noted, not for the first time. "I maintain we should write a guide, for the angara."
"I still think it's a bad idea. Cultural norms change all the time. Your people are going to rub off on us. What's true now won't be true for our kids," Liam said. Jaal grunted- no need to talk about that all over again. They'd beat that topic to death. "Anyway, please tell me you've got something up here to work on? I'll do fluid viscosity calculations. Anything you got."
"Mmm, I do have a concern about this fusion mod I picked up on Kadara," Jaal said. Blessedly. Liam grinned for the first time all day.
"Well, give it here. Let's see what makes it tick," he said. Jaal picked it up off the workbench and handed it over. But apparently his angaran friend wasn't done.
"Have you never wanted to date someone before?" Jaal said. Liam almost dropped the tech in his hands. He laughed out loud.
"Course I have. Is that a serious question? How young do I look?" He might have expected this from Drack, but not Jaal. "Where's that coming from?"
"If you don't talk about it, how do you come together?" Jaal asked. And he was perfectly serious. Liam took a deep breath. No one ever talked about this part of first contact. It was all economics and guns and big picture stuff. How to Explain Your Sex Life To Spacemen shoulda been in the pamphlet.
"Sometimes things don't work out. Sometimes you miss your chance," Liam said. "Different people work it out differently. Everybody works differently, you know? No standard options. But usually you kind of see a moment, and you feel like it's the right time to talk about it. So you do. You just don't shout it from the rooftops the moment you catch a feeling."
"And you've successfully found these moments?" Jaal asked. Liam stilled his hands, consciously, not to tap or pick at the mod he held.
"Yeah. Couple of times. Had some relationships that worked out for a while, you know, but turned out to not be forever. Sometimes life takes you a different direction. Shit happens." Did the angara even do serial monogamy? Polyamory? They seemed so dedicated in their relationships. But that could be the effect of the kett invasion—people tended to hunker down when they didn't think they'd live long. "You ever have it work with someone for a while, but then, it stops working? So you have to call it quits?"
"In a manner of speaking," Jaal said. He rolled his shoulders, uncomfortably. Didn't like it so much when the shoe was on the other foot, did he? "She ended up falling in love with my brother."
"Yeowch," Liam said. That was much, much worse than anything he'd gone through. He held up the fusion mod like it was a peace offering. "I'm sorry that happened, mate. Let's just study this tech for a while, yeah? Shit's getting heavy."
"Sure."