KEELAH SE'LAI

Following this headcanon: Have someone be Sabiq’s first time and have them both agree on being nothing more than friends with benefits from the get go --- until Sabiq of course catches dumb feelings after all and he’s basically stuck in the hell that is unrequited love.

“Well, more… I sell weapons,” Val’an explained. She hadn’t really covered it well enough to avoid confusion. Maybe because she was trying to rush this without being quite aware of it herself. You know, like how one might sweep some glass shards under the rug and hope no one brings up the missing cup. “But I don’t store them well, and uh…” She gave a little shrug with her hands up in the air a little below her shoulder height. “Whoops.”

Yes. Whoops. Making the Eclipse you’re trying to sell to want your hide. Just a whoops. She repeated, “It’s volatile.” The she shook her head and corrected. “Toxic. It’s toxic.” With a wide hand gesture in an attempt to illustrate how big of an area she’d affected, though not quite able to bring that across on account of her small size, she said, “Entire container, contaminated.”

She wasn’t whispering, unlike what some might do if they had gotten some beef with one of the main gangs, but she did speak more softly than usual. Of course, she was unnaturally chipper about it all. Outwardly so, at least.

“Surprisingly, my roommate is not toxic. Maybe a little disinterested, but not toxic,” she finally answered on Sabiq’s last questions with a little shake of the head and a gesture of both her hands like pushing the very notion of it away. Though, that may have been a confusing use of the term, so she quickly clarified, "I don’t mean chemically so, though I do wonder what would happen if he took the X3.” 

“Who’s your roommate now? Is he also in the Blue Suns?” he asked, a little less overcome by emotions now that she had told him that she didn’t sell drugs. Weapons had the potential to be dangerous too, but at least it wouldn’t straight up make her a criminal to sell them.

Well, this certainly hasn’t been a pleasant surprise to come back and be left without a place to stay. When he left to return to the fleet, he did tell her that she could do whatever with the flat. After all, he had packed all of his things and took them with him to the flotilla since he expected to be living there for the next few years if not longer.

Sabiq would have thought that Val would at least search for another roommate first if the rent for the apartment got too much for her alone -- but he realised that it ultimately wouldn’t have worked anyway since the Eclipse were after her apparently, which probably wasn’t too much fun for her.

But to be fair, it wasn’t particularly fun for Sabiq either to walk up to your apartment door, just to be faced by a stranger who immediately assumes that you wanted to break into their home. After that’s happened, he really didn't know any better than to give Val a call and meet up.

A pang of guilt hit Joker square in the chest and he was almost tempted to lash out rather than come to terms with the fact he was being unnecessarily rude to someone who was simply eager and surrounded with new technology his exiled people could only dream of having. Or developing. He pursed his lips in annoyance before his features softened and a sigh made his tensed shoulders relax.

“The Normandy is equipped with some pretty unique technology that no other ship on both the human and the Turian military currently possesses, but the controls are common for the Alliance,” he said, fingers skimming over the 3D console, “otherwise, it’d cost extra to train a crew just to fly a ship.” Though Joker felt fairly certain he could learn the ropes of any ship in a short amount of time.

Maybe that was more ego than reality, but fuck it. Let a guy dream.

“From what Tali’s told me about the flotilla, you guys are working with the immediate ancestors of these controls. Unless you’re planning on being an engineer, I think you’ll find a lot of familiarity with the way things work around here. It’s just shinier and flashier.”

"Oh, so that’s what it is,” he said before glancing over the entire control panel with all its shininess and flashiness as Moreau put it. He’s neither been on a human space ship nor a turian one so it wasn’t completely unexpected of him to be overwhelmed at first glance, yet he attempted to locate whatever may have seemed familiar to him while filtering out all the lights around; this time more focused.

There! That circular hologram must have been the primary flight display --- with what seemed to be the navigation display right to its left!

“You have not met many turians,” Nihlus noted. Well, not spoken to many turians about various aspects of their culture, at least. Not that he knew every intimate detail of human culture, and he had met plenty of those. Odd that turians cutting each other open alive for study was believable. One would think that’d be seen as more of a Salarian thing. At any rate, Nihlus seemed absolutely unbothered by the misunderstanding. He’d dealt with worse. 

Now he was curious, however. “If it were, as you say, a turian thing, what purpose would you’ve believed it had?”

“I haven’t, no,” he admitted, shaking his head slightly. It really was that obvious. He had heard that turians were highly respected in the galactic community -- almost as respected as the asari -- so he really shouldn’t have any more slip ups like if he wanted to leave a good impression.

“Advantages?” Val chuckled “That’s the beauty of a synthetic prosthesis: it’s adaptable. My philosophy? Why just replace…”

The pointer finger of Val’s synthetic arm opened up lengthwise, giving way for the compact omni-welder hidden inside.

“…when you can upgrade.”

If you listen to the songs on my autoplay from top to bottom, you may notice that it’s got a continues plot:

There was a brief silence in which Nihlus looked down at Sabiq and blinked. “You didn’t know?” He asked, bouncing his shoulders and mandibles a little. His voice was genuinely surprised, raised slightly in pitch. He had two options. One was string this guy along, the other was to be honest and cut this interaction short. Both were appealing in their own right. There was definitely an idea for the former. It’s very important to my people. Saren would vivisect me all day. I’m surprised your people don’t do it.

Though, that was maybe a bit much. More reserved for friends… Friends he didn’t have. “You see…” Suddenly, his voice dropped into a much more serious tone, and he stated, “It isn’t.”

Sabiq’s face dropped all of the sudden. His cheeks flushed and warmed up in embarrassment. Of course. It would have been way too crazy otherwise. Keelah, what was he thinking? He just as well could have called all turians a bunch of violent warrior freaks.