Notes:

Full disclosure: I haven't had an opportunity to finish Andromeda yet. If I notice any glaring inconsistencies when I'm more familiar with the game, I'll fix them as needed. (As of September 2017, I've made a few minor edits)

Regarding romantic/sexual content, my intention is not to erase or invalidate Kallo's inborn asexuality, but to explore a fluid spectrum that most salarians are never expected to navigate. I tried to keep salarian reproduction and (a)sexuality as close to canon as possible, and filled in the gaps using several biological sources. All this to say: interspecies awkwardness inevitable.

Title and poetry excerpts are from Totem Poem by Luke Davies.

In the yellow time of pollen when the fields were ablaze
we were very near bewildered by beauty.

"So... What do you think?"

Sara throws her arms wide - TADA - gifting Kallo an entire world.

It is a heartfelt mime. He gets the impression that Sara might like to wrap the planet in a bow, declare it Sur'Kesh: Mk. II, and give Kallo first dibs on his choice of continents. Luckily for everyone, Havarl already belongs to the angara, and Kallo has no taste for untamed wilderness.

Still, he is forced to admit the appeal. Even with its crazed ecology, this world is a natural prize.

Rich blue atmosphere alive with thunderclouds, hiding glimpses of a titanic gas giant in the reaches beyond. Daring swirls of pink and fuchsia and violet in the roiling skies, luscious greens and oranges and purples in the clamoring foliage below. A soft after-mist of rain filters through endless knotting ferns, leaving a smell of ozone and spent lightning. Phosphorescence falling from a dozen species of poisonous fungi. Chattering songs of birds and insects around their heads... and who knows what else lurking further in the dark.

Met with such violent beauty, Kallo makes a confused and noncommittal noise. Sara's shoulders slump.

The unlikely pair is perched awkwardly on the nose of the Tempest, where they have a first row view of the teeming jungle below. Spread out on an industrial blue tarpaulin for an impromptu picnic, they are out of doors (at Sara's insistence) - but remain well within the wingspan of the ship (at Kallo's.) Sara had seemed unnaturally eager to get her pilot out of the cockpit and onto solid ground for once, no matter how short his tether.

It is only now - amid the sharp-toothed splendor of a planet gone wild, staring into the overeager face of Sara Ryder - that Kallo realizes his error in agreeing to this meeting. Like Havarl, Kallo suspects the Pathfinder's company might be safest if enjoyed from a respectful distance. This informal outing has all the telltale signs. Twilight skies at noon, a meal taken in shared solitude, an atmosphere so romantic he can hardly breathe - though that could be the pollen.

He wants to ask, is this a date?

Instead, Kallo stares at Sara, Sara stares at Kallo, and neither says a word.

A palm-wide insect with faceted, iridescent eyes lands on Sara's head and beats its heavy wings against her hair. After a moment, the insect begins cleaning a pair of pillowy antennae with its forelimbs, snarling several of Sara's smooth, dark strands in the process.

It looks painful, but she hardly flinches. Kallo swats the insect away, offended.

"Be nice," she mopes, her gray eyes narrowing.

Kallo watches Sara's attacker buzzing weightily into the distance before responding. "That thing was going to carry you back to its nest," he grouses, an air of certain doom on his breath.

"To its hive," she corrects. Snottily.

"Whatever. It was going to carry you away to some dark place forgotten by civilization. To eat you. Slowly. Probably suck you straight through a straw."

She rolls her eyes, then gestures at the sweating landscape. "Fauna aside, don't you like it?" she whines and moves closer in her nervousness, looking as if she's holding back the urge to pitch him overboard. "I know it's not quite Sur'Kesh, but..."

He frowns at the shimmering residue of unspecified bug on his hand, then looks around helplessly for somewhere to wipe it off. Not his jumpsuit - pure and clean as bleached air - that would be a crime.

Sara sighs, offering the scuffed arm of her filthy leather jacket.

After a few short weeks in the improvised Pathfinder's care, anything factory-fresh might as well be decades old and nearing retirement. The rusty red leather of Sara's favorite jacket is already creased and covered in the muck of half a dozen foreign worlds. One more stain will merely add complexity to the patina.

Kallo wipes his hand back and forth along her proffered arm, trying for a haughty noise. It comes out endeared by mistake.

"I've always hated the jungle," he announces in a dry voice. "There's too much unpredictable wildlife." He inserts a condescending grin. "Like you."

"Whine all you want," she bites back at him. "I'm just glad to see you out of that damn chair."

Her glare softens and is slowly overtaken by a persistent, crooked smirk that she struggles to hide.

Another native insect crawls along her jacket and he flicks it away, letting his hand rest on her shoulder. Her slate blue scarf tickles his knuckles, and he wonders if she's too warm. The air is moist and thick, it feels palpably alive, like the inside of a lung.

"Sorry I'm not more... Ah. Adventurous. I appreciate you thinking of me," he says, feeling every word. More than she can know.

"Oh I'm usually thinking of you, Kallo." She croaks, voice wavering.

He lets his hand fall from her shoulder.

To break the tension, she pries open a small plastic box of provisions. Sorting through the contents and emptying some into her lap, she adds, "Laying awake all night, praying you're not about to steer my ship straight into the Scourge."

It's not a particularly graceful dodge, and Kallo isn't an idiot. "Your ship? Really, Ryder? You'll have to fight me for her."

She hands him a neat triangle of soft, pale bread: a simple human offering. Handmade, by the look of it. He takes a curious sniff, finds the smell salty-sweet, tentatively appealing.

"I didn't know what to bring," Sara stutters, looking nervous. "Picnic stuff. I'm not exactly handy with recipes. Cora said to use the cricket protein supplement. I stole some of Jaal's paste, too - it's in here somewhere. But. I panicked and made peanut butter and jelly. Um. Are salarians allergic to peanuts? Lexi said it was fine..."

She's babbling.

He takes a bite to appease her. Mild and soft and chewy. Different, and it gums up his teeth, but all things considered the mouth-feel is familiar and pleasant. He nods approvingly.

"S'good." He says, meaning it in too many ways to count.

Whatever it is, he likes what they have.

On a visit to Prodromos, she runs along the length of the ship, boots clattering across the gleaming hull. He supplies biting commentary, secretly wishing he could join her.

On the bridge, she dutifully scans orbital wreckage, then pokes him in the back of the head before heading for the galley. In retaliation, he chases her belowdecks and steals the food right off her plate.

At night, when he thinks he's the only one left awake, she wanders out of her quarters and drifts onto the bridge, sleepy and dreamlike. Asks him to dance the Tempest through an asteroid belt, chasing the flaming tail of a comet.

She leans over his chair, arms naked, enfolding him. Unfamiliar skin, dark and warm from the alien sunlight she is always walking through. Her cheek touches his face, lightly, briefly, and he feels her smiling.

Thanks for the lift, she whispers.

Wherever he brings her, she returns with tokens of an adventurer's affection.

A shard of chitinous carapace stolen from a giant beetle analog. It glitters like a slick of oil on his control panel, winking at him in the dark.

A coiling fern nicked from the Nexus hydroponics bay. It is the color of sun-dappled canopy and light as a feather. She tickles it gently between his horns and runs away before he can smack her.

A ball of snow from Voeld, fresh-packed and weeping in her hand. She shoves it down the back of his jumpsuit along with five hot fingers and an unspoken question.

He doesn't care, and she doesn't push. Here and now, just as it is, whatever they have, it's worth keeping. Even if it ends quickly, if she gives up and moves on, if biology prematurely stifles this fascination, his memory will hold these moments preserved. Rare and crystalline.

He will never forget how it feels to soar through the bright center of a new galaxy, to be the favored satellite of a burgeoning star. In her orbit, he feels weightless. Uplifted. Instead of steering the ship, he is letting her take him for a ride.

One day, that might catch up with him.

But not yet.

Irrespective of whatever Sara has planned for Kallo on Havarl, the jungle has no patience.

They don't even finish lunch before another storm rolls in. Lightning, silent at first, forking across the sky to the east. The flash reflects dazzlingly off of the Tempest's hull, blinding them both. Sara flinches and turns to look.

"Looks like our parade is about to be rained on," she says. "Still, got you out of the house for a minute, didn't I?"

"You did. Well done, Ryder."

Glancing back at him, she flashes a sad little smile. "Would you quit calling me Ryder, already?"

Another bolt of lightning splits the sky, chased by a still-distant rumble. Her face is illuminated like a beacon, smile reaching towards him through the twilight.

"Sara. You're trying to get me in trouble."

"Yeah. If we don't move, we're gonna get drenched. Maybe we'll die of space pneumonia." Her voice feigns concern, but her grin is as hungry as the jungle.

Something roots him to the spot. The same stubbornness that threw him from the Milky Way, that put him at the helm of a starship. Impulse and momentum, they've carried him this far.

"Hm. We could move. But we just sat down..." He says.

Kallo offers her his hand. She takes it.

Rather than running for cover, They wait together for the storm to arrive, watching as the clouds open up and pour a wall of solid rain out of the sky. It advances, dense as a wave. When it hits, the water slaps him like a hot shower, hard and warm and absolutely inescapable.

Sara screams, laughs, and holds his hand tighter.

In his palm, her fingers are many and small. He runs a thumb along her extra digits, smoothing the rain into her skin, wondering.

Why leave a good story half finished?

Holding hands. Of course there would be consequences.

A few days after leaving Havarl's orbit, Kallo's fingers start sticking to his control panel.

At first he worries that he's gotten sloppy during his trips to the galley. Not like him, but not impossible. No amount of scrubbing or scouring seems to rid his fingers of their new tackiness, however, and there is no sugary residue to be found.

No, it's Kallo. His own skin, turned against him. The pads of his fingers. Suddenly, inexplicably... clinging to everything he touches. He remembers Sara's unfamiliar hands in his, the temptation to melt together in an extraterrestrial monsoon with a girl from another world, and he imagines he's contracted some deadly disease.

Whatever the reason for his newly adhesive fingers, trying to navigate with his hands glued to the array is pure hell, and he hates wearing gloves.

He waits until the first sleep shift change, when no one will notice him straying from his post. Then he sprints down to med-bay and catches Doctor T'Perro as she is packing up for the evening.

He shoves his hands under her nose.

"I'm sticky." he says.

She stares. He waits until he has her undivided attention, then touches the tips of his fingers to the data-pad in her hand. When he tries to shake it off, the pad clings to him as if permanently fixed. He waves it around like a hostage.

"I'm sticky." he repeats, less confident now. "Help?"

The doctor claps her hands together and smiles from ear to ear, looking as if he's thrown a surprise party especially for her. An uncomfortable lump rises in Kallo's throat, and he swallows thickly. Oh no.

She twists and turns the data-pad, examining the points of contact.

"What a thrill!" She is practically singing. "When did this begin?"

"Today," he says, straining to feel the thrill Lexi is referring to.

While he frets, the doctor stares off into space, visibly calculating.

"Delayed onset," she mumbles, mostly to herself. "But lucky. It worked! Have you noticed any other changes?"

She throws him a look. He blinks.

It's a dirty look.

"Clever of you," she says around a crazed smile. "Romantic, even. Well done."

"What?"

"That luncheon in the rain with Ryder... I can't believe it worked!" Her voice drops an octave, tones going conspiratorial. "Oh this is exciting! I wonder if it was the humidity? Temperature shift? Something in the electrical field carried by the storm, maybe? Hard to say. Almost unheard of to see a spontaneous natural response anymore. Political couplings are all induced. Will you let me run some tests?"

She paces, then rifles through her omni-tool databanks while he gapes. "Hmm. I have some asari literature that may help, but I don't think there's ever been a clinically documented encounter with a human partner. Have you told Ryder yet?"

"What? No. What?"

"I assumed..." She goes quiet when she sees the expression of runaway confusion on his face. "I thought the two of you? I thought..."

They stare one another down.

"You grew up on Sur'Kesh, yes?" the doctor asks finally, her pace markedly slowed. "They never educated you. You were meant to be a drone for the bureaucracy."

"I'm not a drone!"

Kallo flinches and tears his hand off the data-pad. Lexi looks at her reclaimed tech, blinking slowly. Realizing her mistake, she apologizes with her whole face, then puts a soft hand on his shoulder.

"Of course. I'm sorry. I didn't mean... I quite agree. You're not a drone. You deserve the right to make an informed choice."

He wrings his hands and struggles to follow. "Doctor... Can we just fix the sticky fingers, please?"

"Nothing to fix. Your fingers are perfectly fine. Long dormant nuptial pads awakening. The first sign that you're undertaking a season. You should be able to control the grip in time, you just need some practice."

Silence.

"Undertaking a season? You mean..." He stares at his hands, scarcely breathing. "Nuptial... A mating season. But I thought..."

"Are you telling me that there is still no compulsory sexual education on Sur'Kesh?" The doctor's face darkens with annoyance. "Everyone deserves free access to the same basic information, even those who aren't chosen..." She realizes she's rambling at a social cause six-hundred years lost, and closes her mouth. More professionally, she adds, "Kallo. I was under the mistaken impression that you triggered the cycle deliberately. This must be a shock. I'm sorry."

He must look more hopeless than he realizes, because Lexi adopts a deliberate, tender expression and shows him to a chair.

"Misinformation abounds when it comes to salarian sexuality, nowhere more than on the homeworld itself. I'm sure the dalatrasses would love you to believe that reproduction is only for the genetic elite... But no. A season can happen to anyone, given the right conditions."

The conditions had been met. Exceeded.

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. Sara, her eyes bright with disbelief, turning to stare at the illuminated beasts that live in the clouds. She gasps and holds his hand. The smell of her mixing with the damp and the rain. He'll never forget.

"You're going to start experiencing some changes. But there's nothing to be afraid of."

He wishes that were true.