The Tempest crew decide to show Jaal the best part of Milky Way cinema (that isn't Fleet and Flotilla).
Normally they would watch movies in Scott's room because he had more space, but Vetra had opted out in favor of going to bed early and didn't want to be kept up all night, so Gil, Jaal, Liam, Scott, and Peebee instead found themselves fighting for space on Liam's beaten up but undoubtedly comfortable couch.
"So what are we watching this time?" Jaal asked inquisitively.
"Oh you're gonna love this!" Liam replied. "We went through our database of vids and found a bunch of classic horror movies!"
Gil paged through their list and stopped on one called Tentacles of Slaughter. "Oh I love this one! It's got the star of Blasto in an early role as a very polite hanar serial killer!"
"Is that the one where he attaches a bunch of razor blades to one of his tentacles and then high fives a guy, taking all his fingers off?" Scott asked.
"Yeah, that's the one!"
Jaal looked confused. "And you people find this entertaining because why?"
"Because potatoes," Peebee replied. "Now shut up and watch the movie!"
They stayed up the whole night and went through their entire supply of microwave pizza watching every horror movie they could find from Tentacles of Slaughter to some really old film about a killer snowman. Five minutes before the last film ended, the lights outside the room that were on an auto-timer kicked on, signaling the start of the morning hours. Gil was the only one who hadn't made it through the night and Liam and Scott had spent the last hour pushing him back and forth between the two of them when they got tired of being used as a human pillow.
"Wow, I can't believe we stayed up the whole night watching turian zombie movies," Scott said when he noticed the lights. "Vetra's going to kill me. I told her I would be in after three films."
"I thought that last one was pretty good," Peebee said through a yawn. "Though the killer doll was kind of hokey..."
"Yeah, I never really understood how people were afraid of dolls," Liam replied. "The concept just seems laughable to me. What did you think, Jaal?"
Scott looked around when there was no answer. "Jaal?" His spot on the floor was empty.
They leaned over the back of the couch and found Jaal curled up in the fetal position and whimpering, "Can't sleep, doll will eat me!"
"Oh come on, it wasn't that scary!" Liam pointed out.
"It had a tiny knife! And plastic eyes!"
"Okay, I guess that's our cue to shove off," Scott said before they could get stuck with the task of comforting a grown angaran who was currently hiding from dolls.
They shook Gil awake so they could move him and finally went to bed, leaving Liam behind mumbling, "Why do I always have to be the one to coddle him?"
The next day…
"Hey Jaal, you want to go...oh hey, you're asleep." Scott quietly snuck away, leaving him passed out on top of a makeshift bed he'd laid out on top of a crate. He swore that Jaal could fall asleep just about anywhere.
"We'll be grounded for a while. If he wants to go out, he'll have time," Kallo reasoned as they all opted to leave for the Nexus without him.
They were digging through some loose junk up for sale from one of the Nexus vendors, hoping to find something that they could use, when Scott came across the most hideous doll he'd ever seen. It had eyes that opened when it sat up, one that was broken and always in a shut position, fake hair that looked like it had gotten into a fight with an ant hive and lost, and was lacking any clothes.
"Hey Peebee, look what I found!" he said.
"Wow, that's the fugliest looking thing I've ever seen!" Peebee replied. "I love it!"
"You want it? You can have it. That thing got mixed up in my stock somehow during the rebellions and I can't get rid of it because it keeps creeping people out!" the shopkeeper replied.
"Jaal is going to flip out when he sees that thing," Gil pointed out with mild amusement.
All of a sudden, with that single comment, the same idea simultaneously popped into the heads of Scott, Peebee, Gil, and Liam. They all looked at each other to confirm that they were on the same page, quickly paid for their stuff, and rushed back to the Tempest.
They borrowed some of Cora's makeup without asking to doctor up the doll to look even more uncanny than it already was and hot glued a butter knife into its hand. With the addition of a packet of hot sauce to make it look all bloody and as creepy as possible, they found Jaal, still fast asleep and snoring loudly on a crate of rations, and propped it up so it was poking out beside the crate, just behind his head.
Two hours later they were all in the middle of a game of Cards Against Humanity in the kitchen and had nearly forgotten about it when a high pitched scream made them all jump and flip their cards into the air. Realizing what had just happened, they tried to contain their laughing as Suvi marched into the room and put two and two together when she saw them trying to hide their giggles.
"I hope you know that the Devil has just reserved an extra toasty pile of brimstone for you all," she said bluntly to even more laughter before walking away to help Vetra and Cora coax Jaal down from a light fixture.
And then Vetra made Scott sleep on the couch for a month. Liam's couch, so you know she's angry.