I've altered the naming scheme of the chapters to echo the poetry. A minor detail, but it helps me sleep better, haha. More importantly, I've made a few plot/timeline edits to previous chapters. Nothing huge, just some tweaks for consistency.

This chapter contains references to alcohol use. Also, we're finally getting to the wacky interspecies shenanigans. So maybe don't read this in front of your boss.

Strauss II's "An der schönen blauen Donau", Op. 314 is my suggested listening for this chapter, though it's certainly optional. The 2001: A Space Odyssey audio-visual version is ideal.

You saw the great sky turn blacker, you saw the spray of stars
and your hair got tangled in the windscreen wiper.

/ Hey.
/ Hey you.
/ Why don't you come up and see me sometime?

/ / Because you're below decks…

/ [User has forwarded an attachment]
/ [Open Mae_West_Best_Of . vid? - Y/N?]

/ / What is this?
/ / What am I even watching right now?
/ / Is this some kind of test?

/ HAHA!

/ / You do know it's almost 2820, right?
/ / This vid has got to be at least 850 years old...
/ / Also, that's a misquote.
/ / The actual line is, "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"

/ My body hurts and I'm boooored.
/ I asked Liam to forward me something to watch while I 'convalesce'
/ The man has got a boner for old vids.
/ Really really REALLY old.

/ / Have you slept? How are you feeling?

/ Like I said...
/ Why don't you come up and see me sometime?

The first time Kallo visits the Pathfinder's private cabin, it's to file a noise complaint.

After Ryder's success resetting the vault on Eos, the crew is too astonished to celebrate. There is no drinking, no back-patting, barely even a party, except for an awkward meeting to welcome aboard two new self-interested shipmates. Once that obligation is met, everyone takes a collective breath and the crew promptly retire to their separate bunks.

For the first few hours, Kallo enjoys a lonely kind of peace. The Tempest's engines are cold and quiet. The ship slumbers sweetly around him; even the view-screen is in low-power mode. Dimly projected on the glass at half opacity, he watches the expanse of Eos' night sky, tracking the progress of her moon.

Kallo stares at that reborn vista with no small amount of wonder. Millions of dim, twinkling stars stare back at him, beckoning.

He drifts into that distance, easing into a light but peaceful nap beneath a blanket of stars. He dreams of burying his feet in moist black earth, squeezing sand between his toes, falling backwards into a loose snowdrift. Sensations that evaporate before he can savor them - a parade of immediate pleasures, immediately forgotten.

He blinks, suddenly awake.

Below, there is thumping. Rhythmic, throbbing, bass-heavy. The resonant frequencies of bad, bad music.

Well. That's an unpleasant quirk for the Pathfinder to have. Easily ignored, he supposes… for a while, anyway. But the pulses are a little too regular, the volume a little to pernicious. And it's only getting louder.

He busies himself, not wanting to come down on her like some nagging prude, but there are only so many diagnostics Kallo can run on a brand-new ship… And when the same mindless, droning thumpa-thumpa track starts to repeat on a constant loop, he runs out of adequate distractions. All of his omni-tool pings are stonewalled.

Molars grinding, legs twitching, he tries not to bang on the floor with his foot. After all, he's not her upstairs neighbor. This is his bridge, not some piss-stained alleyway behind a Terminus dive bar.

He stomps anyway, but nothing changes.

For a wild second, Kallo considers spitefully disabling the onboard gravity… only to remember he's planet-side for once. Grounded on an alien world tamed by a Pathfinder with objectively, offensively terrible taste in music. Historic the occasion may be, but all that matters now is that the laws of physics have suddenly become irreversible, and Kallo is out of options. If he wants her to shut up, he's going to have to go down there…

Suddenly, silence.

Kallo stiffens and holds his breath.

He counts the seconds with his heartbeat in double-time. One… two… three…

…It returns. Another repeat of Thumpa-Thumpa No. 2 in F-U Major.

Snarling, he springs from his chair. A few furious, leaping steps take him to Ryder's door, where he skips the courteous chime and goes straight from zero to battering ram.

"Hey! Ryder! Excuse me!" He winds up for a hard knock but nearly falls on his face when the door whooshes away. She'd left it unlocked.

Her noise rolls over him, louder and more inescapable than ever. Stunned by the sloppy cacophony of it, he stumbles into the room, shaking his head in a fruitless attempt to just make it stop.

"SAM!" he yells. "Mute this insufferable racket… NOW."

The AI doesn't respond immediately, which strikes Kallo as more than a little rude. A super-powered machine intelligence playing favorites. Nothing disturbing about that.

In the din, the only other thing to greet Kallo is a smell: a pungent, humid atmosphere, thick as grease. High-proof alcohol and the reek of human sweat. Too much of both. Then his eyes land on the Pathfinder and he freezes, stunned.

Confronting him is the unadulterated sight of Ryder's loose, billowy sleep shorts, spread wide.

Ryder is sprawled lengthwise on her couch in an unconscious heap. One foot dangles to the floor. Her other foot points directly at Kallo, leg thrown over the back of the couch so freely that he feels slapped by it.

Instantly paralyzed, he stares at this incredible revelation. Sara Ryder's cute, utilitarian underwear: they're blue as the sky. A simple and unassuming scrap of almost nothing that clings and stretches… suggesting. A sharp contrast where the soft flesh of her thigh meets the swell of her groin.

Oh.

He should leave. Yes. Now.

He turns, but like some kind of vindictive trap, the door has already closed behind him. Speaking of vindictive machines, Kallo's implant tingles, then SAM echoes loudly over the local comm:

"Please clarify your request, Flight Lieutenant Jath."

Standing in front of Sara's door, Kallo fidgets with his jacket, his sleeves, his belt buckle. He clears his throat a few times and considers how best to knock.

No, no, don't knock, idiot. Use the chime.

He extends a trembling finger toward the haptic interface, but the door opens before he can touch it. Sara stands there, crooked and tousled.

"How was Aya's vault?" he asks. The words just happen, before he even knows what he's saying.

She blinks for a moment, then gently yanks on his elbow and draws him into the room.

"Oh... Informative, I guess. The Archon wants a thing on someplace called Meridian and we've got to stop him. There's some angaran resistance leader who might know where the Archon is, so I've got to find him… You know. Cat and mouse. Pathfinder stuff… yadda yadda…"

"Yadda yadda? I don't know, that all sounds kind of important. Wouldn't you rather I take us somewhere, maybe try to get a head start-"

"Later."

"...Later. And until then?"

"You never did have that drink with me, Kallo."

"Oh, I don't really imbibe-"

She pushes a glass into his chest, then unscrews the top of an unpretentious vessel. "It's not booze. It's some kind of juice. Jaal brought this massive crate aboard. It's good."

He takes a sniff. Sweet and floral, a bit tangy. One sip confirms: it is good.

Sara sits on the end of her bed.

"Now, since you promised so nicely when you thought I was going to die… Why don't you finally tell me about Havarl?"

At the sound of SAM's voice, Ryder wakes with a start. In her confusion, she jumps halfway off the couch and knocks over a bottle. For better or worse, the bottle has long been emptied, nothing spilled but curses.

"Oh shit!" she slurs. Dizzly, she swerves upright, triggering a head rush that Kallo can feel from half a room away. She smacks her omni-tool - once, twice, three times - before she finds the right interface.

The music doesn't stop completely (such refined motor control seems beyond her) but the mood does change. A new song… a piece, actually. Much, much quieter, all timid strings and frolicking wind instruments.

"Sorry," she says. She blinks furiously and squints in his direction with so much apologetic intensity that he worries he might catch fire. "I'm so, so sorry," she says, wiping her face. "I found Dad's playlist and I guess I got carried away. I think I fell asleep on the repeat button..."

She flexes her back and cracks her neck - apparently the 'repeat button' had not been particularly comfortable to sleep on.

"You mean. All that…" He coughs. "Music. Those weren't your selections?"

Ryder yawns and shakes her head, slumping into the couch. "Hell no. This is, though. Hope you like thousand-year-old Austrian snoozers." She points to the ceiling as if that's explanation enough, but Kallo knows the gesture is meaningless. The speakers are cleverly hidden in the floor.

Ryder's music fills him with chastened pause. A brassy but pleasant waltz, steadily growing in intensity.

Oh.

Misinterpreting his silence, she shakes her head, embarrassed. "Yeah, I know it's schmaltzy. I can turn it off…"

"Don't."

She blushes visibly, then turns away. Mumbling, she says, "I'm sorry if I kept you awake," as she rummages around in her couch cushions for something. "Hey. Stay a while, huh? Want any- yeah! A drink? I have… um… this stuff?"

She picks up a bottle and squints at it, trying to decipher a sweeping, florid, mostly ornamental Asari script. "Ssshsllllshhhennnananna? I think. Yeah. Milky Way's finest 'shlenninaaa…hhhummina.' It tastes like it was super expensive… six hundred years ago. Before it went bad. Now it just tastes like butts and ass and more butts."

"Mmmmm… yes. You know, after that glowing sommelier review, I think I'll pass."

Nonetheless, he steps a few paces further into the room.

"Aww mannnn…" She whines high in her throat, frowning at the bottle in her hand. "I can't drink any more of this crap by myself."

"So… don't?" he suggests, keeping his voice bland.

She rambles over him. "See that sounds smart on the outside… but on the inside?" She clenches a fist and pounds it against her chest. The impact resonates through the room, surprisingly hollow. "I kind of have to drink it, you know? Not because of-" A crude mime, guzzling from the unopened bottle, then she puts it down on the coffee table next to its sibling. "This one's Dad's. That one's for Scott. He brought one for all three of us, apparently."

She glances away to the empty bottle on the floor, moping: "And I already drank mine."

Kallo teeters, braving a few more steps, hovering near the couch. Ryder pats the cushion next to her, looking hopeful. Looking terribly lonely.

"Might be better to share this with your brother," he says, pointing to the pair of still-unopened bottles.

"Yeah…" Her voice goes thin, wavering in her throat. "I- I guess. When he wakes up. If he-"

He sits down next to her, silencing the thought.

"Thank you for telling me," she says, eyes on the floor. "Getting the whole picture…" A puff of air, then she wipes her face with one hand. "I'm sorry if I ever made you feel pressured or… I don't even know. Oh man, I can only imagine how confusing this has been for you."

"For both of us," he corrects. "I haven't exactly been communicative."

The quirk of her eyebrow says it all. "Is this… is it real?" She can't meet his eyes. "Everything you're going through. Everything you're feeling. Can you… are you… is this your choice?"

He wants to move closer to her, but his body won't budge. Instead, he clutches his empty glass and feels something in his chest go whomp.

"Some alarming physical changes are underway, certainly. But Lexi insists that everything I feel, everything I… want. My attraction to you. That condition was…" He stares into the dregs of his juice. "Pre-existing."

Sara laughs dryly, wringing her hands across her knees. She's wearing shorts and a loose top, everything rumpled from a recent nap. Her face still bears a few pillow marks, soft red impressions dug in along her cheek.

"If you didn't mean for this to happen, I don't want us to rush into anything." She bunches up her face, groaning. "I don't really understand what I'm feeling either. I mean, I know it's not the same, but I never, ever thought, 'Yeah! Salarians! They're sexy!'" She flinches. "Not that I mean you're not good looking… actually you, specifically, are very good looking-" In a garbled rush, she corrects, "-but that's not all I care about! I- I mean! UM. Uh huhh… Oh Jesus I'm bad at this. Please throw me out the airlock so I can die with some dignity."

He smiles, feels his joints loosening. "Sorry. I can't space you just now. We're grounded." He puts down his glass, replacing it with her hand. "Well, Pathfinder, as your pilot I feel it is my duty to inform you: it appears we are hopelessly lost."

A small laugh. "At least we're both clueless. That's comforting, right?"

"Actually, it is." He guides her hand to his chest, gently leading her fingers to the flat, vulnerable concavity above his heart. "See? My pulse is only beating twice the normal speed. That's a marked improvement over yesterday."

"I can feel it…" Her hand spreads out, exploring. Carefully, tenderly, permanently curious. Sounding short of breath, she whispers, "Your heart beats so fast. And so strong."

"Oh? Yeah. Right there I'm all cartilage." He tries to laugh it off. "It's a weak point."

"I'll be careful," she says.

Huge and round, her eyes stare up at him, a dark, cool gray like the center of a storm. He threads his fingers into her hair, letting that strange weather wash over him. One last breath before the plunge.

"So will I."

Kallo hands Ryder another glass of water; she drains half of it in one gulp. He watches the corded muscles in her neck shifting around vigorous, greedy swallows, and his eyes get stuck in the dewy valley between her collarbones.

Sympathetically, he clears his throat.

"So. Before? Alec Ryder really listened to… that?

She wipes her mouth and puts down the empty glass.

"I guess." Meaning she doesn't know. She tries to cover. "Dad likes weird stuff. Dad's weird." A terrible pause, as the realization hits her. "Dad…was…"

"I'm sorry, Ryder. I mean- I should have said something earlier. I'm terribly sorry about your father."

She looks away, deflecting his gaze. "We weren't close."

"Does that make it easier?"

"No. I guess not." Hesitant to talk about her own pain, she shrugs with one shoulder and quickly changes the subject. "What about you? Did anyone come with you? Any of your family?"

"No." He laughs thinly. "I was never particularly close to my genetic relatives. That's probably for the best. Salarian families are… complicated."

"Sounds like there's a story there."

"Maybe, and a million more just like it. How well-versed are you in haplodiploid family trees?"

She makes a face.

"Exactly how I feel. Some people turn cataloging their relatives into a passion project, but it never mattered much to me. I met my mother once, during a scholarship evaluation. She was… not impressed."

"And… you really didn't have any father at all?"

"You skipped the salarian chapter in xeno-biology, didn't you?" He gives her a sarcastic look and she rolls her eyes, laughing. "Don't worry, everybody does. It's true - only girls have the complete genome, and they get whisked off to live with their mothers. The rest of us make do without parents."

"That's…" She pauses. "That sounds so lonely."

"Oh no. Never lonely. I grew up in a clutch of twenty-six. I was drowning in brothers."

"Is that a literal expression?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like… um… oh God I'm about to ask a stupid question." she moves closer, turns a deep shade of crimson-purple, and whispers, "Kallo… were you ever… a tadpole?"

He stares at her long enough to study every inch of her terrified face. Long enough to catch every humiliated twitch of muscle.

Feeling airborne, as if Ryder has just depressurized the cabin, he fractures clear down the middle and begins to laugh. He laughs high and loud and for such a long time he thinks he might die.

"I'm so sorry!" she says, her voice muffled by her own hands. "That was so rude!"

Still laughing, his breath coming in waves, Kallo peels Ryder's fingers from her face. Gathering her small hands in his, he claps one palm over her knuckles as patronizingly as he can, thus acknowledging the stupidness of her question. So, so stupid.

"Yes," he sighs. "I was a tadpole. But I remember about as much of that stage of my life as you do. You were a tadpole too, you know. Or… something. Humans have to do everything so internally. And with so much extra gore."

He makes a confused, all-encompassing gesture toward her stomach.

"Fair." She laughs. "You know…" Looking at their tangled hands, she tightens her grip. "Maybe this is a stupid thing to whine about, but ever since we lost Dad, everybody has been so professional… so distant. And with Scott gone…"

He squeezes. "Your brother will pull through."

"Yeah. He… I went to check on him before we left the Nexus. I sat there like a stupid little kid, just holding his hand." She laughs weakly, and it sounds wet. "It felt good, you know? Just to sit with him. Like this."

Her hands turn and flex, four curious fingers adjusting to the breadth of Kallo's palms, to the span between his fingers.

Quietly, like a sigh of relief, she says, "Thank you for being so kind to me. I'm sorry about all the chaos."

Up close, he can see the dried tracks where her tears have been hastily wiped away, can see one last ghost lingering on her jaw: a little circle, white and dry. He thinks of wiping it for her, but knows that would be rude, entirely too intimate.

Instead, he tries words, but they won't quite fit in his mouth. "Ryder, you don't have to-"

"Sara. Please. It's… right now, can I just be Sara?"

"Alright, Sara. Hey. You missed a spot."

He raises one hand and scrubs the stubborn salt-crust from her jaw.

sara backlit by a storm
her skin glittering with mist

her body, her face, the air between them; too close
charged with some alien current, he stares at her mouth

the first crack of lighting through the seething blue
the smell of her mixing with the damp and the rain

he'll never forget

for a long, long time, they kiss

Hot, wet. Sparks and spit in his mouth. Under his tongue, a nondescript flavor that Kallo's brain labels bland but nonetheless forces every molecule of his body into perfect alignment. A crystal lattice, tense and vital, climbing for stars, for glory, for Sara. Together with honest intentions; no reason to stop, no reason to be afraid. Winded and glowing red, like she's run into his arms from some other dimension, Sara reaches for him again and again. She wraps her courageous arms around him and won't let go.

here, now, he needs more

Her fingers everywhere: his back, his neck, his face. Racing down his arms to secure his hands as he roams and robs in turn. Thick, delicious sensations rush through his brain, captured specimens exquisitely crystallized, lingering forever. A sugared fury tingles down his throat. The hunger settles behind his eyes, burns deep in his arteries. He wants to devour her; an alien delicacy offered fearlessly, generously. Her breath commingling with his. A haze, a fog, a cloud of gorgeous steam. Her teeth, smooth and sharp on his lip. Her tongue painting the top of his mouth.

he pushes her down into the bed

Her hips rising into his palm. The staccato of her ribs jumping beneath the pads of his fingers. The bold surge of her body, uncontrollable as a lunar tide. Her heavy calf along his thigh, dragging him down. The bed beneath them, sheets perfumed contrarily, a duet in sweat and soap, muffling the frenetic alto of her moans. He answers, over and over. Sounds he's never made before. A brand new repertoire.

he discovers the rest of her

Her shirt, lifting away. Her shorts soon after. Those sky-blue underwear making their glorious, sunlit return. The swell of her breasts, strange and soft beneath his hands as he memorizes their foreign curvature. The taste of her skin, the hidden flavor of her forbidden territories. The raw, musk-white smell of her chest invading his lungs like heavy incense, smothering yet divine.

she begs for his hands

Under that blue fabric, that wide-open eternity that calls to him from a dream, he finds a new frontier. Her heat and humidity, his season unleashed. His fingers grow slick with his own excitement, but she is already wet.

what do I do

She shows him. Slow at first… then faster. Light and skittish, their tremulous prelude… and then once more, with feeling. Her head falling back, the long, thrilled stretch of her neck. Her cries rising in pitch, doubling and tripling in time. Her thighs trembling. Her breath catching.

like that, like that

His hands grabbing all he can take, his fingers sliding inside her. The heat and pressure of her body, enfolding him. A collapsing supernova. A glorious riptide. Her hips rolling and rising like the sea, drowning him.

yes

He dives into the breach with both eyes open, mouth on hers, wide and hungry. Together, they tremble and gasp. Together, they drink the foam and breathe the salt.

yes

She rises and breaks. Her breath fills his lungs, an astonished wind blowing him to some undiscovered horizon.

yes

Beautifully, she disintegrates.