Oh gods that Home Effect post gave me ideas in which the Normandy crew work at a home goods store. Why is my brain like this?
Shepard’s the manager, obvi, and his little cousin Ryder needed a job, so he’s giving him a chance to prove himself. So he gets Tali to train him up front because she’s the fastest cashier they have. Meanwhile Grunt and Wrex are out back loading up a sofa into some old lady’s truck while Garrus stands there arms crossed as he supervises. And when Wrex asks him to lend a hand he says he has to go calibrate the televisions, which are now out of sync because they had some teens messing around in electronics after school. Not that Legion can’t handle that on his own.
Liara’s in the back running inventory checks to see what they need to reorder from corporate and Traynor is trying to chase down the source of their systems crash from earlier that morning which caused them a few sales when the computers all froze. She suspects someone’s been using the internet inappropriately, but Shepard refuses to confess to that. So what if he cyber stalks the hot guy who works at their meatball stand?
“Just go talk to him.”
“He has a girlfriend, Garrus... I mean, talk to who?”
“James said that Steve said they broke up... and that he’s bi.”
“Oh would you look at that,” Shepard says looking down at his watchless wrist. “It’s almost dinner time.”
Meanwhile, Kaidan’s just taking a fresh pan of meatballs out of the oven when he hears someone clear their throat behind him, and he almost drops the pan when it turns out to be Shepard because he’s lowkey had a crush on him since he started working there and he might’ve broken things off with Rahna a lot sooner if he thought he had a chance but Shepard manages the whole store and he only makes meatballs, really good meatballs, but still.
“Um, hi. Can I help you?”
“Yes, I really want your balls, I mean, I lick your balls, LIKE, I like your meatballs. Can I have a sandwich?”
At that point, Kaidan doesn’t know which one of their faces is redder, but he’s guessing it’s him because he would absolutely love for Shepard to lick his balls. And as he finds out later that night Shepard does in fact like to lick his balls because one of the perks of being the manager is that he gets to lock up the store most nights and after the lights go out, they have plenty of horizontal surfaces to choose from, sofas, beds, tables, recliners.
But if they wake up most mornings on the floor among the kitchen utensils covered in marinara, that’s nobody’s damn business but theirs... and maybe Joker’s who has the unfortunate task of deleting the security footage. But hey, at least it gets him a raise.
