#galacticgalilea

21, 22

Todor put his head in his hands and screamed.

He did that a lot lately. Admiral duties were a lot of pressure, captaining the Nuok was even more pressure, and his son starting his “parents aren’t cool” phase certainly didn’t help. There was just so much to worry about, all the time.

The sound of knocking on the wall reached him, and he paused, looking up. Lia was standing against the doorway, brows furrowed in a small frown. “You alright?”

Just seeing her was like feeling a weight get lifted from his shoulders. “No,” he admitted, “but I’ll be okay.”

She raised an eyebrow and meandered in. “You sure about that?”

He managed a smile. “As long as you’re here, I will. I’m better when I’m with you.”

She grinned at that, one of the wide, toothy, beaming smiles that he’d fallen so in love with. “Aw, I’m touched.”

He stood up and slipped over to her, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her with all his might. “I mean it, Lia. You make me so happy, I... I can forget how bad things are when you’re around.”

She squeezed him carefully, nuzzling the base of his neck. “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

“You’re perfect for it.”

2, 7, 11, 12, 17

“Alright, those coordinates for the Fleet I found are in,” Todor said, heaving a sigh and pushing himself away from the flight controls. “With the head-start we got, we should be safe for a little while.”

It felt like every cell in his body was humming like a high-tension wire, and his heart was beating a parsec a minute. They’d escaped. They’d escaped the asari, escaped the Citadel... Now they just needed to escape the pursuers a sympathetic control tower operator had warned them about, get back to the Fleet, and they’d have escaped slavery.

And then keep escaping, for the rest of their lives, because the moment they set foot in asari space they’d be in danger again.

Lia flopped into the co-pilot’s chair and rubbed at the bandages they’d hastily wound around her neck. “What are you going to do when we get back?”

Todor paused, then bit his lip. “I don’t... I don’t know. I sort of figured I’d go into the marines, I mean, I’m not that good at much of anything, so I guess it’d be my only option...”

Lia was quiet for a moment, then softly asked, “What about me?”

He froze, and she must have taken that as a bad thing, because she sat up a little, eyes widening. “Shit, I mean... I mean, like, I don’t know anybody else, and after all that, I can’t just...” She bit the inside of her cheek. “Please don’t leave me, Son.”

His mind whirled. What? “I, ah, um...” He swallowed, then looked down at his feet. “I... I thought you didn’t want me.”

She sucked in a breath, then got to her feet and paced over to him, taking his hands in hers. “I want you, Son’Todor. Only you.” She attempted a smile. “Shit, without you, they’d probably have killed me, or shipped me off to somewhere worse. You’re the whole reason I’m here.”

If brains could flatline, he was pretty sure his did just then. “Wh... Why..?”

There was a flash of irritation in her eyes. “Keelah, you idiot, it’s because-” She paused, took a deep breath, and continued more calmly, “It’s because I love you, dumbass.”

He swallowed. Oh. “Uh...” He swallowed again, then took a deep breath and let out a shaky, “I love you, too.”

She smiled for real then, just a small one, and pulled him a little closer. “Can I, uh...” She turned red. “Can I kiss you?”

There was only one possible answer to that, his brain decided. “Of course.”

20

Orion weaved quickly through the heaving throngs of partygoers, his heart practically singing. Today was the day. Every kind of demon in the same place, a party to celebrate putting down another rebellion, and his partners were going to be reunited at long last.

He found Narnihna standing stiffly next to a Wrath general, listening to praise be lavished upon her skills in the gladiator pits. Her face was carefully neutral, but as he approached, her eyes flicked over to him and widened in a clear help me.

He winked at her, then cleared his throat. The Wrath general and the Greed judge he’d been talking to turned with expressions like they were prepping themselves to berate some insolent child for interrupting, only to stiffen when they saw him, then snap a sharp salute and drop into a hasty bow, respectively. “Prince Orion,” the judge murmured, “It’s an honor, Your Highness.”

He hesitated. He’d been back in Hell for decades now, and he still wasn’t very good at responding to the deferential treatment he got from everyone but his parents and uncles. “I need to steal Narnihna from you, if you don’t mind. Lord Asmodeus wishes to speak with her.”

The general gave Narni a critical eye, then shook his head. “Of course not, sir.” He looked at Narni and jerked his head towards him. “Go on, Sergeant.”

She snapped to attention and saluted him in one fluid motion. “Yes, sir.”

Orion wasted no time. He grabbed her wrist and dragged her off, pulling her up to walk beside him once they were further away. “Mom has someone he wants you to meet.”

Narni shook out her shoulders. “Honestly, I just want to go to bed.”

“Too late.” Orion pushed past a couple more people so he could walk up behind his parents. “I’m back.”

Asmodeus turned lazily, one hand reaching up to brush his hair out of his eyes, then smiled. “Oh, there you are. Thank you, Orion. Narni, my dear, come here.”

Narni shot Orion a Look, but approached. She’d spent the past several decades deep in the heart of Wrath territory, so whatever programming she’d had since birth would be back at full force. She couldn’t refuse a Lord, not even one with as off-putting a reputation as Asmodeus.

Asmodeus ushered forward a small, pudgy succubus with a wild mane of hair. “Kady, sweet, this is Narnihna. Narni, this is Kadlin.”

Narni went stiff, eyes widening, and Kadlin, half-hiding behind her hair, reached up to part her long mane like a curtain so she could see more clearly. The look in their eyes was one Orion had seen before, when Asleik and Narnihna had met.

Slightly-parted lips, slack shoulders, limp wings, wide eyes full of stars. The expressions of two mated souls who had found each other again.

Asmodeus’s hands covered his mouth, but Orion could still see the delighted smile peeking out from behind. Normally, when Orion’s mother smiled like that, he didn’t take it as a good thing, but just this once, he could understand.

Narni slipped closer to Kadlin and took her hands in her own. “Hi,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Hi,” Kadlin echoed, cheeks turning a faint red. “Um, I... I’ve seen you in the pits. You’re really good.”

“Thanks,” Narni mumbled, and every inch of skin bared by traditional Wrath dress armor flushed deep red. 

Kadlin’s own blush deepened. “Um... Look, this sounds stupid, but... I feel like I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”

halwn and lily

Halwn hid a yawn behind his hand as he drifted into the kitchen, shooing Dresden away from his feet. “Move, dog,” he grumbled. “I cook people food only, not doggie food.”

Dresden vanished, then reappeared in front of the oven like he was walking out of an invisible door. He sat back on his haunches and regarded Halwn for a second before his form shifted, and a sickly human child who couldn’t have been older than nine or ten was sitting in front of his oven. No sooner had Halwn jumped and opened his mouth to scold him than Dresden’s new form flickered and returned to his more canine appearance.

Halwn took a second to catch his breath, then scowled and shook his head. “Now you’re really not getting any. Go find your boss.”

He got a bark and a smug wag of the tail in response, then the stupid ghost was gone in a few wisps of smoke. “Dogs,” he grumbled, going to start digging for ingredients in the fridge.

He was just starting to pull out the requisite pans when quiet footsteps sounded behind him. “Hey,” came a voice slurred by sleep, “dog said you’re bein’ mean?”

He looked up at Lily, her hair a matted mess from sleep, and smiled. “The dogs always think I’m being mean. I think it’s in their contract with the Folk to be as grudging and uncooperative as possible. How’d you sleep?”

“I was fine for a while, but then you got out of bed and left me all cold,” she complained, trudging over to hold his arm and lean against him. “D’you need any help with breakfast?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart.” He kissed her forehead and added, “Besides, as much as I love you, your cooking is atrocious. Go nap on the couch and stay out of my kitchen.”

“Thought it’d be polite to ask.” She managed a sleepy smile and pecked his cheek, then drifted off, hand on a half-corporeal Zachary appearing to help her balance.

graat

“Dude.”

Echo looked up, arms full of varren treats, to see Graat perched on top of one of the shuttles. It whirred at him, and a thousand voices posed a query.

Graat crawled forward, walking on his knuckles like in Echo’s recordings of Terran “gorillas.” “I go to all the trouble of teaching you to lockpick... and you use it to play with the varren.”

A buzz and a whirr. Five hundred simple affirmatives, two hundred and sixty indignant “so?”s, and a handful of sheepish shrugs.

“Dude, at least get me in on it.”

thorax, pt 1

Thie groaned and let his head thud back against the cell wall. “This is wonderful. Lovely decor, nice architecture...”

Axilus tilted his head, and a high subvocal trembled in Thie’s chest. Confusion, query regarding status, wariness, the translator the salarians had hooked him up with informed him. “It’s a jail cell, Thie.”

Thie scowled. “I was being sarcastic, Ax.”

“Oh.” There was some scratching of talons on floor, then Axilus sat down next to him. “So... what do we do now?”

“Hope Aria was feeling generous enough to put our names on a do-not-touch list, what else?” Thie sighed and leaned forward to put his head in his hands. “If the Council gets ahold of us, that’s it, game over. The Fleet will have alerted them about me right after I got exiled, it’s standard protocol.”

Axilus whined. “It won’t be that bad...”

“I know what I’m talking about, Ax. One of us is right, and the other one is you.”

thorax, pt the gay

Thie stumbled as the Eijalsen shuddered, almost falling over into Brulek as he made his way up the bridge. “Axilus!”

“Little busy!” came the panicked response from the cockpit.

Thie paused, then sprinted the rest of the way up the deck, almost somersaulting over the pilot’s chair when the ship shook again. “Axilus!”

Axilus yelped, hands frozen over the controls, mandibles fluttering wildly. “I’m fine!”

Thie righted himself, then ground out, “Do you even know how to fly this thing!?”

Axilus whined. “Well, I’ll give you a hint: that was a dock we almost totaled.”

Thie took a deep breath. Don’t yell, Thie. Yelling bad. “Okay, what’s wrong with the ship? Why can’t you fly her?”

“I mean, she’s new, and I didn’t train on this flight system, and it’s just different enough that I don’t know what to do...”

Deep breaths. “You flew us through a gas giant, right? You can handle this, Ax.”

Axilus looked up at him, and for a second he stared into mottled grey abysses of panic. Then his mandibles came up, and he nodded. “Right, right. I mean, I know what everything does, it’s just been rearranged...”

Thie nodded. “So you can figure it out?”

“Yeah, sure, just gimme a few.”

“Make it quick.”

“Right.” Axilus looked thoughtful for a second, then, before Thie was really aware of what was happening, his mask was getting lifted off his face, a hand was at the back of his head, and rough plates were being pressed against his lips.

Dazed, his brain hadn’t finished processing the kiss until after Axilus had already replaced his mask and was grinning at him cheekily. “For good luck,” the idiot turian chirped, turning back to the controls.

Thie shook his head, smiling in spite of himself. “Get to work, Flight Lieutenant.”

“Yessir, Captain, sir.”

dresden

Dresden started to yawn, then stuffed his fist in his mouth to muffle it. “God, I’m tired,” he complained, trailing behind Tony as they wandered through the deserted mall in search of anything that could lop off Dresden’s handcuffs. “When do we go to bed?”

“After your cuffs are off, dude,” Tony said, peering in a dark window.

Dresden curled his lip, but otherwise stayed quiet. It wasn’t worth the energy to keep whining. While Tony started pulling out a makeshift lockpick he’d put together on the bus, Dresden simply thought over the events of the past few days- almost dying of thirst on an overturned prison bus, finding Tony again, getting kissed by Tony... It was all just a little too bizarre to comprehend.

By the time the door was open and Tony was digging a plasma cutter out from behind the counter, Dresden must have mulled things over a thousand times. “Hey, Tone?”

Tony grunted and gestured for him to put his hands on the counter, firing up the tool. “Yeah?”

Dresden obliged and looked at a wall, tensing as the tool got closer to his hands out of the corner of his eye. “What you said on the bus, man, about liking me back? Did you mean it?”

Tony grunted with exertion, there was a horrible shriek, and there was suddenly a lot more give between Dresden’s hands. “You said life was worth living again. Did you mean that?”

Dresden stretched out his shoulders and arms. “Hey, man, I’ll be the first to admit I can’t lie for shit. Mighta been an exaggeration, but it wasn’t a lie.”

Tony gave him an odd look, and Dresden had a moment to mentally kick himself. People don’t like it when you make suicide jokes, dumbass. He always forgot. This was why he didn’t have friends- in an ironic twist, nobody hung out with the suicidal dude because nobody wanted to make him commit suicide, thus making him want to commit suicide.

Tony disappeared for a second as he put the tool away, then popped back up and rounded the corner. He appraised Dresden for a long moment-

-then there were lips on Dresden’s and his eyes were closed and one hand between his shoulders and the other at the small of his back and oh god oh god oh god and he didn’t know what to do except open his mouth and press back against him and hike up one leg over his hips and-

-and there was a loud rapping towards the door, and suddenly they were broken apart again, looking back as Lili and Otto and the big-pawed puppy Otto had found were watching them with critical eyes. “Uh.” Tony swallowed. “Hey, guys. How- how long have you been there?”

“Long enough, boys. Long enough.”

durtta

“Oh, hel-lo, baby,” Lili crowed, pulling a beat-up baseball bat out of the pile of confiscated loot Dresden had located in the Project Phoenix base. “Mama missed you, yes she did...”

Durtta exchanged a look with Dallin, then asked, “Uh, Lil? What’s that?”

“Custom-made Louisville Slugger,” she chirped, giving the bat an experimental swing. “My daddy got me this when I was fifteen, said to use it with extreme prejudice if anybody ever did anything I didn’t like.”

Dallin snorted and glanced at Richard. “Might want to take notes, Dickless.”

While Dallin ducked the incoming lamp Richard threw at him, Durtta raised an eyebrow and held out a hand to Lili. “Let me see.”

She clutched it to her chest. “Only if you promise not to kill nobody with it. She’s not meant for cavin’ in more'n a couple skulls, and I already used her on Adam.”