Squishy/Beir – present.

It's strange how something as simply as seeing another's skin would be considered so trivial by most other races, and yet for us, it's sacred, beautiful, something you only get to experience if you're truly close to someone, or a medical practitioner. Or if the latter isn't available and you're pretending you know anything at all about treating injuries. Which I do, thankfully. It's part of standard training for quarian marines, fixing suit punctures and minor injuries while in the field. But usually its on your own suit, not someone else's.

I guess Reegar just has to be stubborn and difficult that his injury is in such an awkward spot that he can't get to himself.

I run my fingers over his red suit absent-mindedly at first, before Reegar's slightly gruff, "you doing this or what? Hurry up or I'm going back out into the field," interrupts my thoughts.

I mumble something incoherent to myself and shake my head. It shouldn't be such a big deal. I shouldn't be making such a big deal out of this.

I undo the seals on his suit, the one that runs over his shoulder blade and the closest one further down his arm. As the material and fabric of his suit comes away, my breath hitches in my throat at the sight of his skin. The sight of the actual man that has been dancing around me, and I him, for Keelah only knows how many years.

He's pale, with a sort of purple tinge. I'm pale too. Maybe there's quarians out there with different skin colours, but I'll never see them.

But Reegar's a beautiful kind of pale, clear, milky, and soft, if not for the splatterings of blood on his skin. I remind myself I have to work fast to lessen the chance of infection, and I can see the bullet wound clearly. It's not actually that bad. A lot of the time our injuries aren't, they're just superficial cuts or wounds, but it's the fact that our suits have been compromised that makes it dangerous, and absolutely any puncture, no matter how small, ends up with our bodies being flooded with antibiotics.

I can see the bullet round still embedded in Reegar's flesh, and I apologise as I grab a pair of tweezers and yank it out. Reegar grunts and I hear him gritting his teeth, his hands balling into fists, but he puts up with it. I know he's been through worse pain.

The emergency first aid kits also come with various injections and treatments to stop infection, so I apply them to the sight of the wound, or straight into his blood stream. Once it's done, I turn to start fixing the seal on his suit again to protect him from the rest of the world once more.

Afterwards, Reegar is quiet, and he gives me this soft, thoughtful posture that I lose myself at first and smile unbidden beneath my mask. Keelah, I wish he could see it.

Squishy/Beir – Haestrom.

I should be sleeping. But should and actually doing so are two different things, and even as I yawn, lazily blink and tap with one hand on the console before me, I know I should be sleeping in my bed, not working. This machines been giving me grief for days, though, and maybe it's because I'm stubborn, but I keep thinking if I take the program on a portable device and sit up for another hour in my bed, maybe I'll figure out a way to make it stop being a dick.

That was three hours ago. I don't think anyone else is awake that's not taking the graveyard shifts and I can hear Zeke, one my roommates, rolling over in his sleep on the bunk above me. It's not even distracting me, I'm that far into exhaustion.

I sigh as the screen before me flashes an angry red INVALID COMMAND at me again. I shake my head, stretch, and then rest my chin on my hand as my other slips lazily over the panel controls.

I don't notice the person walking past our room, and far less that I left the door open, until a voice interrupts me. "Squishy?"

I glance up sleepily and find Reegar pushing his head around the doorframe. "Hey. Evening." I pause and look at the clock ticking at the bottom of my screen and grimace. "Uh, morning."

Reegar chuckles and welcomes himself into the room. "Why are you still awake?"

"Because this programs been giving me hell and I'm stubborn," I reply grumpily, and then add an annoyed, "hey!" as Reegar settles on the end of my bed and snatches the console swiftly out of my sleepy grasp.

"You're not going to fix this any faster if you're half asleep," Reegar chides and shuts the machine off. I have to admit he's probably right, the bastard.

"I just hate not being able to fix it," I admit angrily.

"Mhmm." There's a brief moment of silence as Reegar places the console down on the table beside my bed.

"I'm sorry I haven't contacted you since my pilgrimage." It's left my lips before I even realise I'm saying it, and I surprise even myself with my words.

Reegar sits very still for several seconds, then shakes his head. "That's the dumbest thing you've ever said. Even dumber than getting your nickname."

"I didn't choose my nickname, you wouldn't let me live it down if I remember correctly," I counter but I can't stop a soft chuckle escaping my lips.

Reegar laughs but it's fleeting and he's serious seconds later. He has that intense look about him and I squirm and stare at my hands. "I reasoned they were making it difficult for you to do so. I hoped you were trying."

"I was," I whisper.

"Good." Reegar reaches for my hand, and I find, not for the first time, wishing there wasn't a mask of plastic between us.

"Beir?" Tali's voice causes the both of us to jerk away from each other, like we're just two kids caught hacking into an admiral's emails again and nothing more. She's looking in through the doorway of the room and winces. "Sorry it's so late, but something keeps coming up on our scanners and I wondered if you could... help me..."

I can tell she's nervous because she's twisting her fingers and staring at her hands the way I do.

"Sure," I respond. "It's not like I'm getting any sleep as it is." It's true at least, but I feel a little guilty leaving Reegar. Again.

I stand up and make my way towards Tali, but she's already slipped away and is walking down the corridor.

"Mind if I steal your bed?" Reegar asks.

I blink and shrug my shoulders. "Go for it."

"Thanks. Jen snores like an angry krogan in heat."

I laugh softly and as Reegar moves past me his hand brushes against mine. I'm certain it wasn't accidental, but it's enough to make me stifle a groan and wish I could stay with him, no matter how inappropriate.

o0o

"So why are you awake, anyway?" I glance briefly up at Tali as my fingers dance across the controls of the machine she's been trying to figure out.

"Same reason you are, I imagine." I just know she's smiling under her mask. We're too similar sometimes, it's almost scary. "Here."

Tali points at the screen in front of us at an intermittent flash on our radars. It only appears briefly for a few seconds, then disappears once more only to return soon after. I frown and try and clean up the scans output, but realise Tali's already tried that, and it hasn't made any difference.

"Haestrom's sun is interfering with our scanners," Tali starts.

"Yeah, and pretty much every other bit of equipment we have," I add in under my breath.

"But from what I've managed to pull up on this ship it keeps picking up... it's giving off signals like a geth ship."

Geth. To a quarian, it's enough to make our blood run cold momentarily. "We're in geth controlled space, it wouldn't be unreasonable," I admit somewhat reluctantly. Though, we haven't seen any signs of them yet and we haven't made any move to attack them either, which is usually a surefire way to get their attention.

"That's what I was thinking," Tali says. "As soon as I saw it I expected the worse, but then I thought... why Haestrom? There's nothing here of value, and I've been watching it, it's just been circling us for hours, it's made no move to attack."

"Maybe it's plotting?"

Tali sighs at me but I can hear the slight hint of amusement in her voice. "I've never met a geth that plots before."

"You've never met a geth that you haven't fired your shotgun at before," I counter. This time she does laugh, and I realise I am too.

o0o

"Squishy, you've been at that machine all day long. I think the comms are well and truly calibrated and functional by now."

I don't hear Reegar properly at first, and it's only when he ducks his head in front of mine that I startle and acknowledge him. "It's not that," I start as I push him gently away. He huffs but leans against the wall beside me, inspecting his assault rifle for lack of anything better to do.

That same something Tali found has been up showing up on our scanners all day long, and more like it. I keep seeing flickers of them, but they're so intermittent, so brief, that I can't track it long enough to do anything. We mentioned what we found to Reegar the morning after, and he took it as a precaution at least to prepare his men, but-

"Geth!"

Reegar's leapt into action the very second one of his subordinates runs into the room confirming my suspicions. "How many?"

Straight to the point, as always. He's really born to be a soldier, he can adapt that quickly.

"I don't know," Jen replies, and for a change, he's being serious. "A bunch just landed on a drop ship, but-"

"Squishy, can you pick up any more incoming?"

It takes a few seconds for me to realise he's talking to me, but then I snap into working and try to force the scanner to do what I want it to do, even as it still glitches and sulks. "There's only weak intermittent signals, I was picking them up before but I didn't realise they were-"

"It doesn't matter," Reegar interrupts. I cringe guiltily anyway. "With me, now."

I nod quickly. "Yes, Reegar."

Abandoning the stupid console, I hurry after him and the rest of the soldiers emerging from their quarters.