It's the Little Things

It's Difficult to Seduce

I thought seduction was a good idea, but the night ended with a broken nose, unconsciousness, and a house that almost turned into a nine-hundred degree convection oven. What was I thinking? Tali'Zorah, a babbling eediot of a quarian, trying to sweet talk the commander with her tongue of knots. On my list of "What Tali is Good At," seduction is so low, it holds hands with not dying after eating a hamburger. Keelah, I was so embarrassed.

Shepard had gone shopping for groceries and me, being the genius I am, wanted to surprise him with some casual evening... sex, but I wanted to do it in style. I'm an engineer not a poet—I thought this was going to be a simple task, but as usual, my over clocked brain would turn an easy task into a harrowing one. For Tali'Zorah the Awkward, this was going to be as difficult as threading a needle while jumping out of an airplane. The whole day, I was in the mood after watching Shepard maintain the herb garden out back—peeking over my novel to stare at my captain and not retaining a single line of prose. There is something about a man working with their hands that gets me hotter than Haestrom, so much that after two hours, I reread the paragraph I was working on four-hundred and sixty-nine times without understanding that author's words. I am so useless when I am in the mood, though I keep reminding myself that I had been wrapped in a suit for twenty-four years of my life before making intimate contact with someone else. In other words, I had a lot of catching up to do. With the war over and living life without the suit, all I could think was, "Bring it on."

As Shepard left the house, the evening sun began to set—bursting orange and red light glimmered over the lazy ocean, the crest of each wave encrusted in rubies and beads of amber. With night soon approaching and Shepard out of the house, I began making preparations. Back on the Normandy, Kasumi and I would watch romance movies whenever we had the chance. With Fleet and Flotilla popular amongst quarians, Kasumi showed me films that were revered among teenage and menopausal human women. Studying the movies, I had picked up many helpful hints. Well, the old Tali who fell into the romantic grip of a dashing captain thought they were helpful.

Heart pounding, I shut the door to the patio and swiped a spill of oil black hair from my face. I had found flowers in our backyard with petals of sunset orange and stripes of midnight blue streaking through the center. They were perfect.

"Okay, time to pluck them."

I felt kind of bad about tearing petals off the buds, but in the movies, flower petals leading to ground zero—our bed—would spark Shepard's interest, be intellectual foreplay. Hopefully, I would snatch his curiosity.

"How much time do I have?"

After scattering the rest of the petals around the foot of the bed and a couple on the comforter, I checked my omni-tool. He had been gone fifteen minutes. I think he went to get soap and toilet paper at the local convenience store. Shepard should be back in ten minutes—fifteen if I'm lucky.

"Keelah, I've gotta hurry."

The preparation was not even halfway done.

"Think, Tali! What else did they do in the movies?"

I shut both eyes and my answer burned bright: "Candles!"

We had a couple set around the bathtub as decoration, but we never used them. Both of us actually never use the tub. I thought showers were a waste of time and resources, so a tub was on a completely different level of absurdity. Who would want to clean themselves in water then marinade in their own filth before drying off?

Sheesh, humans are weird.

Back to the matter at hand.

Low light.

Low light is good for seducing... I think. That's what I have seen in the movies. Who would want to make love under stark incandescent bulbs? Low light is key. It turns me on, so I bet Shepard would like it. Candle light it is then. I set the wax balls strategically around the bed and they smelled like vanilla. While uncertain about what I was doing, I just had the sneaking suspicion that vanilla was unsexy, but who knows? Shepard likes vanilla, but would the smell of it while we pound away at each other be a turn off?

I threw my hands into the air and said, "I'll wing it."

Stuffing both hands into my hips, I admired the work before me.

Five minutes left until he would be home and I am still in jeans and a tank top. That's not sexy at all. After returning from the kitchen with a lighter, I set the wicks aflame and flicked the lights off. I mean hell, I could have been a set designer in any one of those steamy moves. Damn was I good.

"I theenk I nailed it."

Four minutes.

Picking the flowers for any normal woman would have been the most difficult part of this whole game because the stems had prickles on them, but I am no ordinary woman. No, the most difficult task lays ahead. In the bathroom sits a room with shelves, compartments, and hangers. Oh yes, it was the closet full of clothes. This I am not good at: dressing for a night of seduction.

Grabbing a candle from the bedroom, I took it into this forbidden and confusing room and immediately, felt overwhelmed.

Three minutes.

The clock was ticking and I wanted to be on the bed, or leaning against a door frame, beckoning Shepard with a voluptuous smile and tantalizing skin.

"Oh shit, what do I wear?"

There was only one person to call.

Someone who consulted me through the complex and bewildering situation of falling in love with Shepard back when we chased the Collectors. She was my light and rope that led me through the dark and uncharted territories of a relationship.

Kasumi Goto.

Setting the candle on a drawer, I flicked open my omni-tool and frantically searched for my emergency contacts.

"No, not Garrus. Not Joker..."

I gnawed my tongue.

"There you are!" I hit dial. "Come on you bosh'tet, pick up the phone. Please, Kasumi. Pick it up."

From under the closed closet door, I saw blue headlights sweep the tiled floor.

Disappear.

He was here.

"Tali!" Kasumi's excited voice was like a bucket of water extinguishing a fast traveling spark on a fuse. "My darling, how have you bee-"

"No time to talk," I gasped, closing the door to the closet. Swallowing hard, I gathered my wits. My mind was more clear when being shot at during a firefight than this whole game of seduction. Regret began pushing into the back of my mind.

This must be done, Tali! I have been wanting to leap on Shepard all day!

"What's the matt-"

I cut her off again and yelped, "I am horny and desperate."

Keelah, that sounded ridiculous!

"Damn it, I mean I am trying to seduce Shepard. Surprise attack him. Set up an ambush."

Uhg, that sounded even worse.

"Girl, get your act together," commented Kasumi, her voice flashing from girly to dead serious. You see, this was her game. Not only was Kasumi a thief of fine goods, in her early years, she also stole men's hearts.

Blitzed by panic, I blatted: "I got candles, dim light, and flowers set up. I need to figure out what to wear." I lifted an eyebrow, my face twisted by confusion. "Do I go in there naked?"

Kasumi laughed at my tapered voice and said, "I'm sure Shepard would like that, but no. You need a more subtle approach."

"Well hurry and tell me!"

"What are you wearing now?"

"A spaghetti strap tank top and jeans."

"Strip. Now."

I nodded and tore my clothes off with the ferocity of someone putting out a fire.

"I sent you a package as a house warming gift a couple of months ago, remember?"

"Yes!" I frantically hissed. "But those clothes you gave me didn't fit. My belly was poking out and the panties were really low in the front and back."

Kasumi sighed and flatly said, "I know."

"Why did you send me broken clothing?"

"That is the point of them."

It dawned on me—hit me like a krogan head butt.

"Oh. Sexy clothes."

"Where are they?"

Without speaking, I ripped open the bottom drawer on my side of the closet, pulling out the lacy clothing and ripped off the price tags. It was tacky to leave them on.

"You spent two-hundred credits on these things?" I asked.

"I didn't take the tags off?"

"No!"

"Well don't worry, I didn't pay that price. I got them at a one-hundred percent discount."

"Of course you did," I spat.

"Put them on and stop complaining."

"I am not complaining."

"Yes you are," said Kasumi. "Now, I think I gave you a lavender pair and a black set."

"Yes. Which color would look good on me?"

I held the black top to my chest.

"You can see through these!" I said.

"Tali, it's lingerie—that's the point."

The front door slammed shut from across the house.

"I have about thirty seconds to a minute. Tell me what to do or I will hunt your ass to the edge of the universe," I said.

"Well, you said you want to seduce the guy, right? Go for black. It is dramatic and under candle light, you'll look great."

Tossing the top over my head, I heard Shepard call out my name. Surely he was asking about the trail of petals in the kitchen leading into the bedroom. I stepped a foot through the black panties followed by the other and said, "Thanks Kasumi."

"Let me know how it goes," she whispered.

"That's private," I said and hung up. Stepping before the mirror, I unwrapped my arms from my breasts to let the dim light bounce off my curves.

"Damn Kasumi, you're good."

I kicked my dirty laundry to the corner and quietly sprinted to the bed, thinking about how the women from movies lay in wait for their lover. Mid sprint, I saw a sliver of light slice through the honeyed glow of candles. Shepard's eyes caught me midair, diving for the bed half dressed in perforated, transparent clothing and laying in a position I thought would be sexy. Breathless, I nervously smiled at him, inhaling and exhaling air faster than the wolf who longed for pork in that human child's story.

"H-hey, Shepard!" I shouted like I was trying to get his attention from across a busy street.

"What are you doing?" he shouted back.

"Seducing you!"

You idiot!

That was when I realized his eyes were wide, struck by fear of what lay before him.

I couldn't be that ugly, could I?

Then I smelled it. Gripping the blankets, not in ecstasy but in terror, I noticed a sprout of flame curling up the side of our bed.

"Fire!" Shepard screamed.

"Damn it!" I slung myself off the bed and frantically swatted at the flame with a pillow but caught the pillow on fire.

"Don't breath in the fumes!"

Instead of fearing death by flame, I was thinking about how this would not affect me if I were wearing my suit. Standing there half naked, I was thinking about the damn suit. What was wrong with me?

Shepard wrapped the burning comforter around my pillow torch ran out of the bedroom to throw them outside. After stepping out a few embers, I cursing every foul word I knew in both human and quarian. I ran out of the bedroom door and in a dead sprint to make sure the fire was contained and slammed into Shepard. White hot pain played hopscotch from my forehead to my knees as we collided.

I chained together a necklace of swear words only Jack would wear and writhed on the ground. The pain reminded me of getting hit by a biotic attack in the early days of hunting Saren. Sparing with Grunt was child's play against colliding with the captain at a flat out run.

"Shepard!" I gasped, hot tears brimming on my eyelids. Blinking away the molten pinpricks of light, I sat up to find Shepard on his back, unconscious, and nose as crooked as a politician. On all fours, I scampered over to him and rested his head in my lap, making sure no blood got into his mouth or lungs. Head hung low, I softly chortled.

"All I wanted to do was seduce you."

He groaned.

"You're getting blood on my see through clothing," I whispered to myself, wiping a bloody hand on Shepard's grey t-shirt. "You can wash that later."

Like I said, this whole game of seduction, to me, is as difficult as fighting a Reaper with a slingshot.

"Where am I?" Shepard asked, his eyes slowly opening.

"In my lap."

"That's comforting."

"Good."

"What are you wearing?"

"Oh this old thing?" I said, batting my eyelids but failing to pull it off as effectively as my favorite human actress, Audrey Hepburn. "Kasumi gave it to me as a housewarming gift."

"She did?"

"Yup."

"You look good in it."

I smiled and said, "Your crooked nose is handsome. You should keep it."

"Before you knocked me on my ass, did you scream something about seducing me?"

I didn't bother answering.

"If the lawn on fire out back?" I asked in response. "And I am sorry for almost killing you. All I wanted to do was..."

"Seduce me."

"That."

Shepard evaluated the situation and nodded his head in agreement: "How about this, I clean myself up and we give it another try. Keep the candles and... whatever you're wearing." He smiled. "I want to see you try this seduction."

I lifted my head and said, "Is that a challenge?"

"It damn well is."

"Bring it on."