Luminosity

Nihlus was willing to admit this may not have been a bright idea. Another round of stims had made him cocksure of himself when he'd left his apartment. While they kept him wide awake, he still felt drained and exhausted. If he shouldn't be operating heavy machinery, he doubted he should be attempting to rekindle a relationsomething.

When the door didn't close in his face, he decided his judgment couldn't be too heavily impaired. Shepard didn't say anything in response to his greeting, and continued to fix him with a crimson glare.

"I thought we could talk." He offered after another round of awkward silence.

"What about?" She folded her arms across her chest, a defensive posture in any culture.

The first flaw in improvising was that you were improvising. "A lot of things," He shook the tequila enticingly. She eyed it for a minute, and then finally stepped aside. Nihlus decided her alcoholism wasn't such a bad thing after all.

"Have a seat, if you can find one." She joked humorlessly, and took the only chair in her small apartment. He wondered if the difference in their rooms actually bothered her, or if she was just looking for reasons to be upset.

Nihlus put the bag on her desk and sat on the cot. Shepard rummaged through the sack, setting aside the dextro-alcohol he'd brought for himself and placing the tequila bottle next to her. She manifested two shot glasses and slid one in his direction. After she'd had a shot, she rested her elbows on her knees and cradled the glass in both hands.

Realizing she wasn't going to say anything, he spoke first. "About what happened at Redshift-"

"It happened." She interrupted as soon as the words left his mouth, "I don't need another psych eval, but then you'd know that from my files."

He decided to ignore the snide comment. "You don't want to know why I broke my word?"

Shepard shrugged and poured herself another shot. "I'm sure you had a good reason."

He poured himself one least he fall several drinks behind while they spoke. "I did."

"Well there you go." More silence. More shots.

"I didn't know who you were." He started again, referencing her comment on looking up her files. She obviously didn't like being looked into.

It took him a moment to gather himself to bring it up, since he knew he'd have to have the same conversation again later, when he explained how he'd referred her to the Spectres. He didn't want to worry about how she'd react to that right now.

"If I did, nothing would have happened." Nothing did happen, he reminded himself. Shepard seemed more interested in the tequila than what he was saying. "And it would have been my loss." That made her snort.

"Look, Nihlus," She gave him a sidelong glance. It sounded strange to hear his name from her lips. "If you're trying to sweet talk me-"

"I'm trying to be honest," he snapped. Calm down. Don't woo angry. "I have no interest in sweet-talking you." Liar. "I also have no interest in explaining myself, but I'm doing it anyway. If you'd prefer I didn't…" He trailed off and waited.

Shepard didn't say anything, so he continued. "I take my job seriously. You'd have only gotten in the way." She rolled her eyes, and he took her flippancy as a good sign. He finished his third shot and leaned over to set it down on the table. "But you're already in the way."

"Well color me seduced, smooth talker." Shepard quipped, shifting in her seat. She looked torn between playful and uncomfortable, and rubbed the back of her neck while keeping her eyes off him.

"Look," She stood up abruptly and he followed suit, running off instinct and not thought. Mixing alcohol and stims was another not-so-bright idea. "Thanks for the tequila, but you're wasting your time." She walked him to the door, which was to say, she took three steps back and ran out of room. Her eyes fixed on the window, which Nihlus hadn't realized existed until just now. It had to be the smallest window he'd ever seen. "I don't want to do this cheaply, not anymore."

"Neither do I." Nihlus felt relieved. If that was her only issue, he wouldn't have to spend the evening justifying his actions and his instincts. He'd faced enough of that in the military; he didn't need it from a relationsomething.

His inability to compromise was probably what kept him single, but she seemed just as incapable. It was reassuring; the way she still wouldn't look at him wasn't. He closed the distance between them, and trailed a talon down the scar on her face. "I-spied-on-you-too," She blurted at the contact.

He stiffened, and must have looked imposing enough to intimidate her. She took a step back.

Nihlus tried not to be affronted. Privacy was an illusion; no one knew that better than the Spectres. The galaxy's secrets were at his finger tips; he had clearance to things that would make the Shadow Broker blush. Why should his secrets be any different?

"And?" Nothing she could have found would be flattering. He'd had his name removed from three separate legions. Technically, his time in the military had been for nothing. He knew what a turian would think of it; he had no idea what a human would.

Shepard turned around and scrambled under her desk, searching for something he couldn't see. When she found it, she crawled backwards and knocked her head on the underside of her desk trying to get out. "Ass," She swore through grit teeth, knocking the chair over in a fit of catharsis when she finally freed herself. The entire episode was far from graceful.

Nihlus tried not to laugh. He'd been worried about his past being unflattering to Commander Shepard, one of humanity's most decorated soldiers. He'd almost forgotten who that soldier was.

She handed him a datapad and rubbed the back of her neck again. "I paid an information broker for the intel." She explained, the hastily added, "I didn't read it."

"Sounds like you didn't get your credit's worth." He set the datapad down on the desk, and then returned to his spot on the cot. "What do you want to know?"

He poured himself another shot, waiting for an onslaught of uncomfortable questions. He expected her to ask about his family or his military career. He didn't expect her to pull her chair up in front of him, throw her feet across his lap, and ask, "What's your favorite color?"

"Red," His face twitched as he tried not to laugh once he realized what was happening. He made an awkward effort to remove her shoes, and threw the question back at her. "Yours?"

"Same," She took her shoes off for him when he frayed one of her laces with his talons, "Song?"

"Die for the Cause." It couldn't be helped. Nihlus had heard it every day for years in the military. As far as he knew, turians weren't allowed to have a different favorite song. "Movie?"

"Starless." She returned immediately. He was surprised it wasn't a human film he'd never heard of. She may not have thought so, but at least he wasn't lying when he told the Council she wasn't like her gang.

Starless was an asari gothic horror filmed on Faringor, a world with no atmosphere. Its set was still preserved by the vacuum of space. He'd been once, not that he'd ever admit to it. Shepard raised an eyebrow at him for his favorite movie while he kicked off his boots.

"The Phage." A cheap salarian horror film, so low-budget she'd likely never heard of it. Shepard grinned; she must have recognized it. Well, that confirmed it. She couldn't hate other races if she didn't hate their culture.

Shepard leaned her chair back on two pegs and stretched out, tapping her glass on the table as she tried to think of another question. "What's a Supernova?" She decided finally.

"A quarian thruster fuel mixed with dextro-Tupari."

"I knew it was a fruity drink."

Nihlus huffed, "Tupari has no fruit in it."

"… A fruit drink with no fruit. Well that's just stupid." Shepard set her drink aside and took a deep breath, a sure sign she was going to be serious. "This doesn't break regulation?" She dropped down to all four pegs. "Is this even allowed?"

"If I said no, would you care?"

"Not really. I mean, I hit on you so I could learn more about… well, you. Before I knew you were you."

"That makes two of us." As uncomfortable as it made him to admit it, Nihlus was sure his willingness to be with a human had been motivated by his interest in learning more about Commander Shepard's race. Selfish and irrational, but then, what one-night stand wasn't?

Now that he knew who she was, and was interested in her for her, he still felt selfish and irrational. He'd effectively erased her past and was trying to force himself into her future.

"Aren't we renegades, breaking rules, hearts, bones..." She glanced at his chest, where he'd been shot after a Red had blinded him with a flash-grenade. "How's your side?"

"I'm fine." Part of him wanted to bring the Reds up again, but if she said she was fine, then he supposed she was fine. She certainly didn't seem to have any reservations when she got up from her chair and sat in his lap. She trailed her fingers, all five of them (which oddly didn't bother him), along the clan markings on his face. He stopped himself from telling her his carapace had next to no feeling and tried to appreciate the gesture for what it was.

Nihlus wrapped his hands around her waist, slid them under her shirt, and ran his talons along her skin. His carapace protected him from radiation and little else, with a side-effect of dulling his sense of touch unless it was directly on his skin. He couldn't help but appreciate the difference; Shepard felt everything everywhere, as was clearly evidenced by the contented sigh that escaped her.

"Are we crazy?" She mumbled, resting her forehead against his. Nihlus froze for a moment, and had to remind himself yet again she wasn't a turian. She didn't know what the gesture meant. It didn't mean anything to her.

"Without a doubt."

"How's this going to work?" He tried to ignore the double entendre in her words and failed, making his reply come out in a half-chuckle.

"Personal stays personal and professional stays professional."

"That never works." Shepard smiled. She'd phrased it that way on purpose.

He threw her earlier words back at her with a shrug, "There's a first time for everything."

She raked her nails down his neck, and then wrapped them around the bottom of his shirt. She was about to pull it off when Nihlus couldn't help himself. "Wait."

"What?" She frowned.

"Nothing." He tilted his head to the side, "You hear that? Silence. No calls, no assassins, no explosions…"

"Shut up," Shepard laughed, "You'll jinx us."