Shakarian for 31 please for the meet cutes (if you like) =)
31. Sitting next to each other at a very boring meeting and bonding over your shared lack of attention.
(Reaper-free and no-Shanxi but Eliza Shepard is still an asshole AU, anyone? :D)
Garrus made it two hours through the first day of negotiations before deciding death was preferable to listening any longer to the asari ambassador’s speech. Or to being in the same room as the human delegation, most of whom hadn’t gotten the hang of the translator suite on their omni-tools – or the omni-tools in general –which meant the atrocious speech kept being interrupted by a series of long, arrhythmic beeps.
He’d have gone to sleep standing up if ExecutorPallin wasn’t glaring at him from the other side of the room. Honestly, he’d have left when the speeches started – with the human ambassador’s notable phrase To our new non-human bosom friends as the opening gambit – if Pallin had so much as blinked. Sure, he’d sworn an oath to C-Sec, to the Citadel, to the Council, but as far as he was concerned, that oath did not cover enduring a war crime. Which was exactly what this speech was starting to sound like.
Chellick nudged him. “Executor’s looking right at you,” he subvocalized. “Gonna get your ass kicked when this is all over.”
“Can’t he just kill me now and be done with it? Or at least fire me?” Garrus replied, but Chellick’s attention was back on the stage, and the ambassador rambling from behind the podium.
Garrus occupied himself for the next ten minutes by trying to pinpoint where each series of beeps was coming from, but boredom kept tugging at his attention span, and his energy levels, and no amount of glares from Pallin could keep him from dozing.
His own omni-tool vibrated against his wrist, and he nearly knocked an expensive salarian glass sculpture off the table to his left. Pallin’s mandibles went tight against his face, but he finally looked away, which meant Garrus could read the incoming message in peace.
Poor sleepy C-Sec officer. Not a fan of your fancy alliance with the new kids on the block?
He nearly spluttered out loud. The message had come to his personal account, rather than the general C-Sec channel, but it wasn’t signed, and had no extranet address attached. Solona might have sent it, if she’d seen him dozing on the newsfeed of this disaster, but this wasn’t being broadcast via QEC, so the time delay – Another vibration. He looked down at the mini-display, and almost choked.
Bet you two hundred credits you can’t figure out who’s messaging you by the time this speech ends. If it ever does.
Garrus stared out at the rustling, and occasionally beeping, crowd. No one was looking in his direction, except Pallin, but that wasn’t anything new. And of course whoever was messaging him on his personal extranet account wouldn’t be so obvious as to be looking at him, so –
I’m bored as hell, so you get a clue. Two clues. I’m human, and female. Have at it, Officer Vakarian.
Garrus breathed out slowly through his teeth, and scanned the front of the crowd.
Colder. Try harder, big guy.
Five minutes passed, and then ten. At least now he looked like he was doing his job, and Pallin’s fury faded to his general baseline of irritation. But hard as he tried, Garrus couldn’t find a single human woman who wasn’t at least pretending to be fascinated by the diplomatic idiocy unfolding before them.
Fifteen minutes. No new messages, and no success, but at least the ambassador was wrapping down. After another five minutes, she stepped away from the podium, beaming, to a light smattering of applause. The crowd immediately broke apart, in case anyone else decided to make a speech, and Garrus had resigned himself to getting chewed out by Pallin before he could make it to the booze table when someone’s hand rapped on the back of his armor.
“Really, no situational awareness,” said a cool, flat voice. “I was six feet behind you the whole time.”
Garrus whipped around, and found himself face to face with a smirking human woman in an Alliance uniform. She took a long sip from a narrow glass, holding eye contact the entire time.
“How’d you get my address?” he asked, which was only the fifth-most-predictable thing he could think of. But – he was too busy being startled by her pale eyes, by how tall she was, and by the challenge gleaming deep in her gaze, to be charming or sly. Human women weren’t usually so tall, or so his briefings had said.
What else had they been wrong about?
“Oh? That?” The woman snorted. “A simple hack, when you were checking the biotiball scores an hour ago. You didn’t encrypt the connection. Well, not enough. I didn’t read anything, if you’re worried.”
Garrus made a mental note to kick his own ass for that later. “Should I be impressed at the breach of protocol?” he asked. “Not a great first contact, Commander.”
She raised both dark brows. How did humans hide anything, with faces like that? “So you read the briefing,” she said. “Ten points to you. So – are all diplomatic functions here like this? Just so I know to get my ass discharged before the next one, if necessary.”
He burst out laughing, on reflex. “No,” he said, as she smiled. “Call it hazing the new kids on the block.”
“Noted.” She held out a hand, slim and pale, and kept smiling. “Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy.”
“Garrus Vakarian. But you already knew that, so.”
“So.” She tossed back the last of her drink, and sighed. “So, let’s go find some more booze, Vakarian. It’s going to be a long night.”
Without waiting, she strode off for the banquet tables. Garrus hesitated, watching her smooth walk, her long legs, before shaking his head and following.
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
snowghoul
2087
dailybridgerton
jbbartram-illu
