"Oh, yeahhh. That's the stuff..." Thane awoke to low groans from the other room. He craned his head sleepily toward the doorway, straining to hear.

A couple of sighs and breathy chuckles floated through the small gap between the door and the jamb, and Thane propped himself up on his elbows, suddenly much more awake. It sounded like—no. His siha was ill, after all. He tilted his chin up slightly, the rosy pink of his throat darkening a bit in the drell equivalent of a frown.

At Thane's insistence, Peep had been resting inside for the last few days, recovering from something humans called "sunburn." Thane had heard human skin was quite delicate, but he'd never quite believed it, given how intimately acquainted he was with his siha's. Peep herself told him a few horror stories about sunburns at one point or another; Thane'd assumed she was joking.

A faint titter lingered in the air. Thane was a logical man, and he prided himself greatly on this fact. Other than Peep's distinctly flat yet dulcet human tones, all was silent; therefore, his siha was not watching a vid. While she was undoubtedly intelligent, Thane would hardly describe his siha as a voracious patron of the literary arts, so it was unlikely that she was enjoying a book. And, no matter how much the muffled noises through the wall sought to convince him otherwise, if there was one thing of which Thane was unflinchingly certain, it was that his siha most definitely was not participating in intercourse: One, he was not with her, and, two, she could barely stand physical contact with anything in her present state, including herself.

To borrow one of Peep's quaint English turns of phrase, Thane was "stumped." Curiosity overwhelmed him. He rolled smoothly out of bed, even more so than usual. Not that Thane was ever anything less than spry, even with his disease, but there was a certain spring in his step that he could only attribute to the bone-dry heat of his current environment.

There came another gasp. "Oh, man!"

Thane approached the door quietly and eased it open. He ducked his head out, large black eyes sweeping the area before they alighted on Peep, who was at the furthest end, sitting in an oversized blue-green chair that faced a wall of enormous windows. Thane could just see the soft, dark fuzz of her strict Alliance haircut peeping up over the fat cushions, dappled with the morning sun.

Peep, Thane reflected, was truly engrossed in her task if she had not heard him. He had only ever managed to sneak up on her once; that said, the only reason Thane retained even a shred of dignity was because he knew Peep had been trained specifically to ferret out and defend against people with his particular skill set. Thane padded across the sun-warmed wood floor silently.

"Come on, just a bit more..." his siha muttered. As Thane drew nearer, he saw Peep twisting as though to reach for something. "Almost...got it..."

"Siha-" Thane started, but froze when he reached her, black eyes round in surprise. There his siha sat, reaching over one shoulder, a long, translucent strip of skin pinched between her thumb and forefinger. She was molting.

Peep let out a small squeal and turned to face him, caught off guard. She hastily flung the small peel of her dead flesh away and ducked her head down in a gesture Thane had come to realize signaled embarrassment.

"Um... Hi, baby." His siha quickly dusted off her shoulder and stood to greet him. Thane blinked, watching small flecks of her skin flutter to the ground, where a more substantial pile of skin layers lay, organized, strangely enough, by overall size and length.

"So..." Peep rocked a bit on her heels. She wore only a pair of shorts, apparently still too tender in places to tolerate the pressure of fabric. Her flesh was still quite dark, though not as much as it had been during the preceding days. There were dry, tight patches across her body, some bubbling with tiny white specks of loosening skin cells. She looked rather crispy, in all honesty, except for the streaks of newly regenerated skin she'd just uncovered, which were a tad shiny. "I think I forgot to tell you about this part."

His siha's eyes flicked nervously from his throat to his face and back again, obviously waiting for some sort of reaction. Thane knew he ought to say something, but, for once in his life, words failed him.

"I know, I know, you probably think it's weird-" she stammered, shuffling back a step. Thane stepped forward to eliminate the distance between them and raised his hand to cup Peep's hot, crackling cheek.

"On the contrary, Siha," he murmured. Thane's throat worked as he gazed at her chapped, rosy face. He let his hand slide down, pausing briefly at the juncture between his siha's neck and shoulder to graze that one sensitive spot on her throat, before finally allowing it to rest lightly on her peeling shoulder. "At times I wonder how I ever thought we were so different."

A/N: Yeah, so my headcanon is that drell molt several times a year during their youth to accommodate for growth. When they are fully grown, they no longer molt unless there is significant change in weight, or as part of the recovery process after being severely injured. So what if that's not how earth-reptiles work? The drell aren't from earth, now are they?

For anyone who cares, this Shepard is Alhena "Peep" Shepard, earthborn, sole survivor. Yes, there's a reason she's called Peep. Whether or not yall ever find out what that reason is depends entirely on whether I can scrounge up enough focus and determination to actually write a coherent fic.

In fact, I do have some ideas floating around for both Peep and a different Shepard I want to write about. If anyone is interested in betaing, drop me a line and tell me a bit about yourself and the fics you've betaed.