He didn’t spend much time in the mess area. Like most of the other residents of the SR-2′s engineering deck, he wasn’t much of a team player, and thus far Mess Sergeant Gardner hadn’t made anything better than what he could put together himself in the shitty pre-fabricator he kept under his surveillance station. He got company, sometimes - Shepard came by a lot, was always keen to listen for a bit, and that Chambers girl had been pretty determined for awhile, although he got the impression that he’d finally scared her off with that one about the Turian recruit whose head had been pulped by a sniper on Taetus. He didn’t mind it - liked it, even, but there was a reason he had access to ship-wide surveillance in the first place, and there was a reason he didn’t eat in the mess; because he was a paranoid son of a bitch, and the SR-2 was too squeaky-clean for him to ever feel safe without his back to a wall in a room he knew forward and back.
He didn’t spot her on the cams coming down - might have glanced away at just the wrong moment - and another knife hit the makeshift dartboard across the cargo compartment dead center just as the door slid open. Not Shepard - that new one, what the hell was her name? Silence. No, Quiet, that was it - merc handle if he’d ever heard one. Young, just a little more dressed than Jack on any given day - hell of a shot with a rifle, way he’d heard it. And she’d brought coffee, apparently - good stuff. There wasn’t much left of his olfactory nerves but a couple of implants and a nasty lump of scar tissue, but he had the smell of synthesized coffee pinged, and that sure as hell wasn’t it.
Probably said something about him that his first impulse was to be suspicious. Said something else that he took the cup anyway. If he was going to die from poison laced into real coffee, so fucking be it.
“Hell of a first impression you’re makin’, sweetheart.” It was good. He usually added liquor, but you didn’t blaspheme a drink like this with alcohol unless you were some kind of goddamn heathen. “Stuff must’ve cost a fortune - gonna tell me what I did to earn a cut of the take?”
Quiet watched him with slow blinking eyes, that long pause between unnatural, unnerving to most. She was waiting, careful to drink from her cup at the same exact moment as him, her eyes locked on Zaeed’s, though giving an unfair favoritism to the cybernetic implant. She wondered which one saw her clearer.
The cups lowered at the same time, and with it the sniper’s posture changed, suddenly relaxing and taking time to stare out the view window by the compactor. At the great void beyond. Another strange piece of the ritual, and with it done she sheds it’s skin like a snake in the desert.
She’s surprised, though she doesn’t show it. On the ride down the elevator she had considered a lot of scenarios, most of which involved her favorite coffee cup shattered to pieces as he slammed her into a wall, or having to have yet another uncomfortable meeting with Chakwas as she pulled the serrated combat blade Zaeed kept on his hip from her shoulder. She pegged him wrong, he did know how to control those instincts. Better than she did.
His questioned stopped her pointless cross examination. He had accepted the coffee, liked it even, mission accomplished. A loose shrug her way of answering, before nodding her head toward the ancient rifle on the table. Quiet appreciated a well cared for weapon, her own sniper rifle was an analogue hold over from the old days, the only modification the scope. It didn’t even use heat sinks. Zaeed’s affection for the weapon was obvious, even from an outside view. She admired that.
Admired him. Zaeed was a legend, even to her numb ears. And now here he was, attempting to save the galaxy and make a profit doing it. Who wouldn’t admire that ?
izzy806
blakekathryn
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
andulkaphoto
gracieabrams
