#ryderxjaal

Scott x Jaal by TeresAnime

For those of you who don’t follow me on Instagram (shame on you) here are some Mass Effect Andromeda sketches ~ :D

[Prompt: This is for @meflashfanwork based on the theme ‘what might have been.’ What if Alec had survived and Wren Ryder wasn’t the Pathfinder, but just one of the companions? How would her relationship with Jaal changed? It’s a series of vignettes, essentially, because anything else would be ungodly long.

Jaal x Ryder]

Alec Ryder. Pathfinder, hope of the Initiative, pseudo-leader of the human ark. All titles he wore with ease, carrying hopes and dreams on his shoulders as if they weighed nothing at all. Things he could not include in his list of titles: diplomat, which made meeting the angara an interesting complication, a wrinkle in his plans that he clearly didn’t approve of.

Thus, the angara representative, Jaal, had ended up more or less dumped in the laps of Scott and Wren Ryder. “Babysit him. I don’t have time for this,” Alec said, already turning and stalking off. Wren and Scott exchanged a look and both shrugged simultaneously.

“You know I’m not much better than dad. I leave this in your capable hands.” Clapping his sister on the shoulder, Scott left her with Jaal.

“Your father- he is always like this?” It was the first thing Jaal said to her, and Ryder couldn’t determine if he was serious or not. A beat of tension, and then Jaal smiled at her, hesitantly, and Ryder let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding and smiled back.

Bashful in the face of having to confront Alec’s dubious charms, Ryder nodded reluctantly. “Pretty much. He takes getting used to.” It was unfortunate that this was Jaal’s first real taste of humanity, but it wasn’t as if there was much she could do about that. As usual, she could only pick up the pieces and try to smooth out Alec’s rough edges, making sure he didn’t offend too many people in his wake. It was, after all, the main reason she was even allowed on his precious Tempest in the first place. Everyone had to pull their own weight, and though it never went said out loud, it was understood that the Ryder twins were there to be the charm and charisma that the Pathfinder lacked.

***

From the start, Ryder had alternative reasons for playing nice with Jaal. She couldn’t help but notice he was good looking, even if he was alien. Maybe it was the fact that he was so incredibly alien that made him appealing; either way, six hundred years of no action could do things to a girl.

Jaal didn’t trust her. That much was clear. He trusted Alec even less, and while he seemed to get along with Scott, he also held himself aloof, refusing to answer certain questions about his family and about angaran culture until some mythical proof of trust could be earned.

“I’d like to get to know you better. Privately,” she stuttered out one afternoon, and to her surprise Jaal looked her up and down appraisingly and finally replied.

“I would like that,” he said, a smile touching the corners of his mouth. That’s where it all began.

***

It wasn’t until they rescued the Moshae that Jaal truly began to warm up to any of the crew, and Ryder hadn’t even been along for the ride. “It’s too dangerous,” Alec told her. “You and your brother are staying behind and staying put. No arguments.” All this before she could even open her mouth, stuck on the ship and fuming as her dad left with Jaal and Drack, leaving behind a restless ship that could only try and communicate with comms.

“I have utmost faith that your dad will pull this off,” Cora said, trying to sound reassuring and trying not to look annoyed that she hadn’t been brought along.

“Of course he will. Dad is perfect.” Rolling her eyes, Ryder stalked off to her bunk to flip through an old-fashioned, physical book, flipping the same two pages back and forth for an hour before giving up and trying to watch a vid instead. She should be there. What if Alec was hurt? What if Jaal was hurt? Was it wrong that the second thought made her more worried than the first? Damn it, she was going to fall into this too deeply if she wasn’t careful. It was time to distance herself, to not think about what the angara looked like as he smiled, how good of a shot he was, how he had helped her take apart her sniper rifle the other day, holding intricate pieces between two fingers with surprisingly delicacy. Definitely don’t think about his hands.

Damn it.

***

“We have to deal with this Aksuul figure before he causes any further trouble. Wren, you’re coming with us.” It was a tacit admittance that he was diplomatically challenged, the closest Alec would ever come to admitting weakness. It was also the only time he had been willing to drag out his daughter and Jaal on a mission at the same time, preferring to keep them separated.

“Remember not to fraternize with the angara, Wren. Keep your head.” That had been a few days ago, a frown etched onto his features, permanent lines creased downward. Wren could only blush and shrug, muttering polite deferrals that sounded half-hearted even to her own biased ears.

“Ryder, you must listen and trust me about Aksuul. I can’t trust that Alec would,” Jaal whispered to her as they finally left the Tempest, ready to face whatever the steaming jungles held.

She nodded but bit a corner of her lip, doubtful. “I’ll do my best. You know what dad’s like.”

“And that is what I’m afraid of.” There wasn’t time for them to say more; already Alec was moving forward, SAM propelling him into feats of athleticism that Wren couldn’t possibly even contemplate.

With Alec leading the way, there was no time for quiet contemplation or examining their surroundings. A cursory look, enough to establish that Jaal’s family wasn’t there, and they moved on, Aksuul’s voice a distant, booming background whenever they entered a building. Every time she wanted to stop to look more closely at something, Alec pushed her onward, and though Jaal shook his head, there was nothing either could do to stop the Pathfinder once he had a mission firmly in mind. This was what he had trained for and he was a man of action, not of contemplation. Putting the picture together didn’t matter as much as getting results, and he was determined to do that much. Ryder strongly suspected that Alec didn’t even care about rescuing Jaal’s family so much as he did getting on the angara’s good side; his attempts at placate them still weren’t going well, and few of them trusted him.

Every angara killed felt like a blow to Ryder. How did Jaal feel, killing his own people? He and Alec had identical facial expressions; calm, determined, though Jaal’s was underwritten with a current of worry. Bullets flew as all three sought cover behind some crates, pushing ever closer to their goal. “Wait! I know those voices.” Jaal held a fist up to halt their fire.

Alec kept firing in steady pulses, either having not heard or ignoring it entirely. “Dad, stop!” Once again, there was no response until Ryder physically shouldered him, causing a shot to veer off wildly. Alec turned to look at her angrily, scowl only deepening.

“Dad. Jaal knows them.”

“Lathoul! Wait! Stop!” What followed was a terse exchange of words, a stray shot that rang out… and then hugging. A great deal of hugging, none of which involved Alec and all of which left Ryder faintly bemused. Yet when Jaal sought out a human to show his family that humans weren’t all bad, he didn’t reach for Alec, instead grabbing Ryder by the arm and dragging her into the spotlight, showing her off with an air of faint pride, making her feel Alec’s glare radiating heat through the back of her skull.

Another flash of action- shooting, defusing bombs while Alec watched over her shoulder, shouting out terse commands. A bullet slammed into her shields, sending Ryder back, but she shook it off, fingers shaking as she pressed levers and flicked switches, trying to save this piece of angaran history, knowing that if she didn’t, the failure would rest squarely on her shoulders. They would never blame their Pathfinder, but it was too easy to blame his daughter.

And then Askuul, pointing a gun at Jaal, and Alec pointing a gun at Aksuul. Jaal’s earlier words, his emphasis on trusting him, came back to mind, but Alec’s finger was already hovering near the trigger, and he rarely missed. Ryder could only do something incredibly stupid, something Alec would yell at her about back in the Tempest- she stepped in front of his gun, preventing him from taking the shot, and in doing so, she had to watch Aksuul shoot a single bullet at Jaal, skimming the surface of his flesh and passing on.

A tense moment, and then diffusion. How could everything have possibly turned out okay?

****

Later, she and Jaal leaned against each other, her hand reaching up to touch where he had shot.

“You stopped your father,” Jaal finally said to her.

“I was so worried.” Even now, she could feel Alec staring. Screw Alec. Right now, her dad was the least of her concerns.

“All wounds heal.” They leaned forward, and then Jaal broke away, arching the approximate region where brows would be to gesture at Alec. “I should let you two speak.”

Wren Ryder and Cora sat across from each other on the Tempest’s broad table, Ryder pushing reconstituted eggs around with her fork, Cora reading something a datapad but looking up periodically as the fork hit the surface with a clang that destroyed the fragile silence sacred to breakfast.

With a sigh, Cora put her datapad down. “Ryder, what’s bothering you?”

Rather than just opening up (Jaal would be ashamed,) Ryder grew defensive. “Nothing’s wrong, Cora. Everything is normal. Perfect. Peachy.” Another circle of eggs on her plate, pushing a little more aggressively this time.

Cora rested her face on her fist, using her free hand to rub small circles on her temple. “Cut the crap, Ryder. Don’t make me call in Lexi for a psych eval.” This was no idle threat- if Cora said she’d do something, it would happen.

Okay. Fine then. Alarmed, Ryder put down her fork and pushed the plate away. “We’re speaking in hypotheticals here. Understand?”

“Perfectly.” Was Cora trying not to smile?

“What if, hypothetically, you were some big, important title in the Initiative. You had your own ship, and your own crew. The crew is great, and you like them a lot, but there’s one of them you like more than you should.” Her hands were looking for something to do, anything. Not looking at Cora’s knowing smile and nodding head, she snatched a cup of coffee, swirling a spoon through it in broad spirals. One, two, three. “You even meet his- or her- family. But isn’t it kind of… unethical? Or something. It’s one of your crew. An abuse of power. Asking for a friend. For a hypothetical. Not for me.” Very convincing. Very smooth. She hadn’t even managed to trick herself into believing it. Finally she looked up from her coffee.

Cora was still smirking, damn her. “I’d say that there’s paperwork you have to fill out with Lexi’s approval. Theoretically, of course. I would also say that I could email the forms to the interested party- commander and crew liaisons, form 90417 B.” She bent over her omni-tool for a few seconds, swiping through something and then leaning back. “I think, in this purely hypothetical situation, a woman’s friends might ask her if she’s sure, though.” The smile faded slightly; it was still prepared to emerge again, but caution had clouded Cora’s features.

Ryder couldn’t keep up with this charade for any longer. “Listen, Cora. I feel like I’m going crazy and I just had to talk with someone about it. Don’t laugh, but I think I’m in love.” Actually, she might laugh at herself just for saying that, sounding like a teenager too caught up in the emotions of her first real relationship to understand there was a world outside her own feelings.

“And Jaal?” Gently, Cora pulled the coffee cup away from Ryder, shaking her head. “You don’t need more caffeine right now.” Fair point.

“He took me to meet his family.” To her credit, Ryder managed not to turn entirely red- just partially, high on her cheekbones and the tips of her ears. “I think it’s serious.” And there was only so much longer she could keep it quiet from the rest of the crew, especially when she wanted things so many normal couples seemed to take for granted- holding hands, those light touches that said your lover was there, a kiss on the lips when the opportunity came.

Lifting her eyebrows, Cora stroked her chin in an oversized gesture, clearly mimicking thinking deeply about the situation. “Does he make you happy?” she finally asked.

Another moment of feeling stupid, of wanting to sigh dreamily and act like someone ten years her junior. “Sometimes he’s the only thing in this damn galaxy that makes being Pathfinder bearable.”

“Then do it. You’ve been happier lately. Don’t forget that you’re still only human, Ryder. Your dad did, sometimes, but you’re not your dad.” For the first time, there was no criticism as Cora said those last words. It was simply a statement of fact. “Fill out the forms. I think someone is here to see you, by the way.” Nodding to the stairwell that led up to the comm table (which was also their breakfast, lunch, and dinner space,) Cora stood and gave Ryder another nod and a wink before vanishing down the other side of the stairs, her breakfast plate in hand, clapping Jaal on the shoulder as she did so.

Ah, shit. “Jaal! How long were you listening?” Was there any egg stuck in her teeth? Did she reek of coffee? No and no, thankfully.

In the dubious privacy, Jaal pulled Ryder into his arms, crushing her to his chest and kissing the top of her head. “Enough,” he finally answered. “Your people must fill out forms to be with one another?” He sounded confused, but still didn’t release her, and she was glad to rest her head on his chest, feeling it rise and fall with every breath he took. It felt risky to do this out in the open when no one else in the ship really knew, except for Cora, but if they were going to go public anyway…

“No, not at all. It’s just because you’re technically a member of my crew. You don’t mind signing it?” What if he didn’t want to? What if he found the human concept of military permissions too obviously foreign and decided that the cultural boundaries were too much?

Six hundred years of stasis and a few months of running around and Wren Ryder still wasn’t pleased with what she saw in the mirror. What had she expected? There were problem areas still, and it was never more clear than after a shower, when she would scuttle back to her room and stand before the mirror, counting flaws like they were stars in the sky.

Despite an active lifestyle, there was still that softness to her stomach and her thighs she didn’t like, reaching down to grasp them and wrinkling her nose, perceived flaws no matter what directed she faced the mirror. In part, it was because this felt easier to control, something she admitted to herself only reluctantly. Being Pathfinder was nothing like how she had expected; no one seemed to respect her or listen to her as much as they would have if she had been Alec. It was better than it had been, but things were constantly slipping through her fingers. There were people she couldn’t save and people she couldn’t please, nightmares that happened almost every time she closed her eyes. Easier to fixate on the way she looked when she wasn’t in armor, and think about that, than to think about anything else.

 Intent on studying a cluster of freckles high on her upper thigh, lifting the towel to peer at it with a frown, Ryder didn’t notice Jaal entering the room, the sound of her door muted by music she had left on. She did notice, however, as he tapped her on the shoulder, careful not to startle her, though there was a question written into his face, the area where his left eyebrow would be slightly raised. “Darling one, what are you doing?”

 It must have looked more than a little weird for anyone walking in on her, the way Ryder stared at the mirror intensely, turning in micro increments this way and then, but she couldn’t offer any good defense beyond a shrug. “Just… looking. I always thought that one day I’d wake up and be better looking, you know? But I guess even the Pathfinder has cellulite and acne. Er, not that you know what that is, but…” Not that she’d ever been into the magazines marketed towards women, but she’d picked them up as a teenager and they’d left their mark, coupling with societal expectations strong enough to make her feel unsteady on her feet.

“Come here.” Jaal pulled her close and then, with the faintest hint of a smile, revealed the towel, simply taking her in. There wasn’t anything inherently sexual in his gaze, though there was a faint hunger; he simply stood a small distance apart from her, hands on her shoulders, and appreciated. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the galaxy.” It was cheesy, but coming from Jaal, it felt so genuine, his face so open and earnest. 

Ryder shook her head. “Not really, but thanks anyway. I mean, look at Cora. Or don’t look at Cora. Actually, don’t do that. But everything about her seems so… perfect.” Cora was always meant for this position anyway, and had spent the first couple weeks reminding Ryder of that as often as possible. They had developed a rapport now, but it was faintly uneasy now and then, reminders that nothing was supposed to be like this coming up more often than either would like. It didn’t help that the woman was beautiful, jaw slim where Ryder’s was wide, waist more narrow, shoulders less broad. So many damned flaws. 

“If you’re giving me permission…” Jaal’s voice trailed off and then he laughed at Ryder’s stricken expression, shaking his head. “Cora is a beautiful woman, but she is not you.” It was hard to pick herself apart when he was looking at her like that, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up in a way not unpleasant, body rising to goosebumps in anticipation.

“It’s not perfect,” was what she settled on, taking her towel back from the bed and winding it around herself again, if only so she wouldn’t be tempted to look.

“Perfection bores me. Perfection is a kett concept,” Jaal replied, taking the towel from around her again, hands careful but deft, one trailing downward to rest on the small of her back. “You interest me, Ryder, as you are.” Maybe she wouldn’t believe him tomorrow, but for right now, her mind was going other, pleasant places, his hands moving to prove a point. Okay, she would give in.

[[Anonymous requested “Jaal and Ryder at the waterfall location” and I took liberties. Also, this got sort of out of control.

NSFW, smut

Ryder x Jaal

AO3]]

There were certain perks in being Pathfinder, one of which was that if you asked people to clear out of a small area at a given time, they generally fell over themselves in their haste to accommodate. At one point in time, it was something Wren Ryder may have felt guilty about, but today she was reveling in the comparative freedom it gave her, steering the small shuttle from Aya’s bustling city into the quiet of the foothills.

“Ryder, you are sure you can drive this?” Jaal was stuck in the passenger seat, blindfolded and trying to sit with his hands folded, every now and then turning his head in her approximate direction and trying to look as skeptical as one can with half their face blocked.

“Nope, but how difficult can it be? Few switches, ignition… I’ll wing it.” And winging it she indeed was, having not yet managed to crash and burn and kill them all. It would be a bad beginning to what she had envisioned as the perfect day. An anniversary. Their first, hopefully of many. She was uncertain if angara even thought of anniversaries in the same way humans did, and even less sure that they followed the same calendar year, but she kept her mouth shut, simply telling Jaal it was a surprise. He would have to live with that.

With surprising smoothness, the shuttle landed, a soft burst of hair preventing it from crushing too many plants. They were here, and the butterflies in her stomach were suddenly overwhelming. “Okay, you can take off the blindfold. Uhm, surprise?” Doubts assailed her; this was a bad idea, he wouldn’t care, this was cheesy, too over the top. It took all her willpower just to look at him and try and gauge what his reaction would be, rather than looking away and just attempting to hope for the best.

Jaal pulled the blindfold off his face, eyes widening. “The hot springs. You have taken us back here.” He turned to smile at her, his hand drifting over to cover her own and squeeze it gently. “I asked Liam to show me a human calendar. It has been a year since you said yes to being with me.” Ah, so he hadn’t forgotten. Not at all. “I was going to surprise you back at the Tempest, but I see you’ve beaten me to it. The punch.” The phrase came out garbled, as if Ryder had ever expected anything else.

“There’s more. Come on.” Stepping out of the shuttle, Ryder walked with more confidence than she actually felt, moving to the edge of the water and looking out over it. It looked the same as it had before- maybe slightly more lush, but equally as beautiful, the cool air contrasting with the natural heat of the water and creating a pleasant shimmering effect over the whole area. It had been perfect then, and it was perfect now, and there was a comfort in this new familiarity. A year and it felt like yesterday in the best possible way.

Jaal followed her with his eyes, leaning against the shuttle and simply watching with a half-smile on his face. Shooting a look back at him, Ryder removed her shirt, hoping that this paid off. It had involved a lot of asking around human settlers woken from Nexus, trying to figure out who had their priorities out of order enough that they would bring the item in question in the first place. Eventually she had found someone, but talking the woman out of it had been another battle entirely, and it had cost her so many credits… Not the point Ryder, she told herself. This is the point.

Her back was to Jaal as her shirt landed on the rocks, and when she looked over her shoulder, she was trying to gauge his reaction to the swimsuit she was wearing. Two pieces, far flimsier than her tastes usually ran. She felt almost like a kid playing dress up than an actual adult, but the last time they had been here they had undressed themselves, and there was something lacking in that. Jaal’s hands couldn’t deal with the intricacies of human clothing so well, but pulling on a few pieces of string? Even a krogan could manage that.

Jaal’s hands carefully settled on either side of her waist, pulling her around where he could look her up and down with obvious appreciation. “I will devour you,” he said simply, emphasizing ‘will’ to stress how imminent it truly was. “But what is it?” One hand picked up one of the strings, rubbing it between two fingers gently, the texture clearly strange for him. To be fair, neoprene felt weird even just on her skin after so long in either armor or her own ship clothes, like it was too slinky and too slippery, as if it could slide right off. Which was kind of the point, come to think of it.