Squishy/Beir – present.
If you've only ever met Reegar outside of battle, then you probably wouldn't know this, but he can be the biggest stubborn son-of-a-bitch sometimes. Especially in battle. As if Haestrom wasn't bad enough, now I have to put up with it here on Palaven, too.
When Gabi came running to get me to tell me Reegar had been injured and wouldn't leave the landing field, my first immediate thought wasn't how bad it was. Instead, it was cursing the idiot for making his injury worse by continuing to fight, and that the rest of the squad saw it fit to drag me into this too because they couldn't get him to leave themselves.
I follow her to the landing field and once we arrive, pause to take in the situation. The reapers are dropping troops into the field, sure, but it isn't that bad. We are pushing them back and it's not a full scale attack. Reegar doesn't even need a reason to be stubborn this time, he's not even making any difference refusing to leave. His aim is sloppy because he's wincing every time he leans out of cover to shoot.
"Reegar," I growl, then duck towards him and take cover behind the shuttle he's slumped against. It's close to the edge of the field, so it's not like he can use that as an excuse for staying, either. When he ignores me, I shout at him. "Reegar!"
He glances at me briefly and probably glares. "Damnit Squishy, I don't need you to babysit me!" He tries to fire another round from his assault rifle at a marauder. Lirin kills it before him with a clean headshot.
"I'm not babysitting you," I start but I lean out of cover and shoot my pistol to at least help out against the reapers. "I'm saving your goddamn ass."
Reegar turns to me and points towards the landing field with his gun. "I'm not leaving because of a suit puncture! I can still fight-"
"Don't be a hero, Reegar!" He snarls at me, but I push on, standing inches in front of him and holding what part of his gaze I can make out through his visor. He's still a good head taller than me though. "I'm not letting this become another Haestrom, even if I have to drag you out of here myself!"
Reegar hesitates, then scoffs at me but I interrupt him again.
"You are not almost dying on me again."
That time, I hit a nerve just as I knew it would. Reegar glances down at the ground away from me, then at his gun before he sheaths it. He caves. "Fine," he whispers, but the memories I brought up don't calm him for long. "But I'm not forgetting this you bastard. I'm not a fucking civilian that cries the second they get a suit puncture!"
He can be so frustrating sometimes. "No, you're a fucking idiot who doesn't know when to stand down," I spit at him and he makes a gesture like he's rolling his eyes.
"Lovers tiff again, I see," Lirin remarks far too loudly for it to have not been intentional. Trin snorts to himself.
"Shut up!" It takes me a while to reason Reegar said that at the exact same time as me. I glance at him, blush, and he quickly looks away at almost precisely the same time as me, which doesn't help the situation at all.
Thankfully though Reegar, still pissed and irritable, moves to leave under Lirin and Trin's covering fire. He grunts from his arm and I reach out to help him, before he slaps my hand away. "I can still walk, I'm not a fragile glass canon like you."
I feel like punching him, but figure that might not make his injury any better, even if it might make me feel good. "You're such an ass sometimes," I mutter to myself as I follow him.
Reegar laughs then cringes and doubles over momentarily. "Urgh, damn, hurts like a bitch to laugh."
I grin at him and for a moment I think he might be able to see it. "Serves you right."
Kal'Reegar – Haestrom.
It's not so easy filing a report to the fleet and at the same time trying to ignore Siri and Jen's roundabout and entirely confusing conversation about which out of the non-council races would be the least dangerous and/or most fun to bed. Personally, I stopped paying attention after they brought vorcha into it because it made me squirm and entirely put me off even thinking about stimming for a good few days. Even if most of the time when I stim I think of him, anyway.
Thankfully, Tali walks in and gives me a distraction. Zeke, another one of my squad, is behind me pretending that he can cook, throwing the occasional random comment over his shoulder towards Siri and Jen. As Tali approaches me, she seems somewhat mortified or embarrassed about their conversation. Sometimes I pity her, surrounded by men that she has to try and command. Sometimes I find it funny. Most of the time it's the second, but I wouldn't tell her that.
"Reegar, you busy?"
"Nothing immediate, ma'am."
Tali lets out an exasperated sigh at my insistence on formalities, but doesn't bring it up this time. "A reinforcement and supply ship just landed," Tali tells me. "Can you go meet them, sort them out?"
I glance up at her briefly, then nod. "Of course, ma'am." Actually, any excuse to get away from these three buffoons under my charge I'll lunge at.
She thanks me as I walk towards the exit of our makeshift quarters towards the landing strip outside. In reality, it's really just an empty courtyard that's big enough for our ships to land and take off from. Well, big enough for the one that we brought at least, and the few the fleet has sent since to drop off supplies, but those ones don't stay more than the time necessary to unload. We haven't had any incidents that would require reinforcements yet though, but the Admiralty board and military high command get twitchy about teams like us that get sent into geth controlled space, so they figure giving us more firepower will help them sleep better at night.
In truth, we don't really need it. Everything has been quiet here, and I'm expecting it to stay the same. Our work here is valuable or so I've heard, and Tali is important, so wasting more soldiers who'll just end up spending their time twiddling their thumbs is considered acceptable to higher command. Apparently.
I reach the landing strip and sure enough, docked in there is one of our ships, door already unlatched and a small group of four marines stepping out. I don't recognise any of them, but they beeline for me anyway and I figure they've been briefed that I'm in command, second only to Tali.
"Communal rooms behind me," I say and gesture over my shoulder. "You can sort yourselves out. Don't expect much combat here, so I hope you all brought something to do."
Two of them exchange looks, but they all walk by me and make there way into the building. I move to turn around, when I'm distracted.
"The system's sun aggravated our kinetic barriers when we were landing." It's a familiar voice, eerily so. I turn and see a quarian dressed in a purple, pink and gold enviro-suit striding out of the ship's exit while addressing the pilot beside him. "I'm hoping it's not going to screw around with the rest of the equipment here, or the amount of time I'm going to be spending calibrating and running maintenance-"
The engineer cuts himself off mid tech-blabble and stares at me. I'm staring back, I realise, and it's kind of surreal, because deep down I know it's him, but it hasn't really registered in my brain yet.
"Kal," he half whispers, as if he's trying my name out again and seeing how it rolls off his tongue.
I'm about to respond with his birth name, my lips part, forming around it, before I hold myself back and cock my head to the side, arms crossed over my chest. "Squishy."
Beir cringes and shakes his head. Under his mask, I imagine him rolling his eyes in half annoyance, half amusement. A gesture to match the soft chuckle that leaves his lips.
o0o
I really should hand it to her, when she tries, Tali can be surprisingly crafty and mischievous. It didn't really dawn on me at first, until I saw her constant glancing over towards me and Squishy as we entered the communal room. Then I heard the faintest of chuckles to herself, and I realised she'd known he was going to be on that ship all along. Maybe even arranged it herself, because somehow I don't see his father allowing it without some resistance.
But it doesn't matter now.
I've tried to be professional, but its difficult when you're working with the person you've spent most of your nights thinking about for the last few years.
"Reegar, what's the access code?" It didn't take him long either to start calling me like everyone else has. Or maybe he's just doing it as revenge because I keep calling him Squishy.
"Mmm?" I blink a couple of times and glance at Squishy. His fingers are poised over the control panel of our comms unit expectantly.
"I can hack into it if you want," he continues. "But I think the Admirals might prefer it if I, you know, get into the system the old fashioned way."
It takes a couple of seconds before my brain decides to co-operate and I regurgitate the access code out automatically.
"Thanks." Squishy's entered the password and has already efficiently opened up the configuration panel and begun murmuring to himself in annoyance as he tries to battle with our malfunctioning equipment.
"If it's any consolation," I offer as I watch him work, "it was a heck of a lot worse last week."
Squishy shudders at the thought. "They briefed me that Haestrom's sun was making all your equipment glitch, but I didn't think it would be this... bad..."
He trails off to himself as he concentrates and I picture his brow furrowing. After a few seconds he sighs and hangs his shoulders, turning to face me. "Has Tali been able to clean up the input from our scanners at all?"
"I don't think so, she's been too busy researching to fight with our machinery."
"That's why they sent me to help," Squishy mutters then shakes his head. He was never really a scientist, always an engineer, through and through. He's not here to research with Tali, he's here to fix the machinery so that she can research. "It's probably going to take me days to get this cleaned up to a state of being able to tell what the fuck's being picked up on our scanners."
I nod at him. "Get to it."
"Of course."
I turn to walk away, but his voice interrupts me. "And, ah... Reegar?"
I glance back at him in what I hope is a casual, non-chalant way. "Yeah?"
"It's good to see you again."
I can't help the smile that tugs at my lips. "You too."
