Chapter 1

Naala’Tidall perched on the ratty but extremely comfortable couch that had been her bed for the past month or so, knees drawn up to her chest and hands folded below her jaw. If it weren’t for the mask she probably would have been biting her nails. She was staring intently at the television screen across from her, which was displaying a bootleg stream of a fight that was currently taking place deep in the bowels of Omega, several dozen levels below. Naala wasn’t exactly a prizefighting enthusiast under normal circumstances, and she had never gambled in her life, but she was watching this fight as though she had a million credits riding on it because the human male currently getting his face pounded into the mat by a large Turian was the owner of the couch, and Naala had a major crush on him.

It was the second round, and the human had been getting the worst of it from the beginning. The Turian was taller, had a longer reach, and the boney plates that covered his body acted like natural armor. Normally a fight like this would never be organized. It was just too unfair. But this was Omega, and you could get any entertainment you wanted here, for the right price. And the crowd was getting their money’s worth tonight. The human fighter hadn’t been getting in much in the way of blows, but despite the tremendous beating he was receiving he simply refused to stay down. Time and time again he had been slammed into the chain-link walls of the octagon or sent toppling to the mat, only to rise to his feet, wipe the blood and sweat from his face, and taunt his opponent into hitting him again. The crowd had been overwhelmingly against him at first, but each time he took a hit that would have killed a lesser man and got back up with a grin on his face, more and more of them had started to cheer.

What the crowd didn’t know, but Naala did, was that the human was holding back. They all assumed that this fight was simply going exactly the way you would expect a bareknuckle fight between a human and a Turian to go. But they hadn’t seen that human kill five armed Batarians with his bare hands. Naala had. Granted, the human had made heavy use of biotics in that fight, which the suppression collar that had been clamped around his neck as he entered the ring wouldn’t allow. But the Quarian girl could tell from his movements that he was pulling his punches, taking blows he could have easily dodged and deliberately striking the Turian where he knew the alien’s plates would protect him. He was dragging out the fight on purpose, and setting himself up as the underdog. As he was flung bodily into one of the posts by a particularly savage body blow, the bell rung to mark the end of the second round, and the ref moved to separate them. The Turian looked confident but frustrated, while the human’s face had curled into a smug smile.

“Hey ref!” the human yelled as he leaned back against the chain-link, loud enough for the microphones to pick up his voice “what are the odds looking like?”

“Seven-one on you” growled the referee, a heavily scarred Krogan who had clearly done plenty of time in the ring himself.

“Starting to look a little too good” the human chuckled, spitting a wet glob of bloody phlegm onto the mat and cracking his jaw “they were eight-one last round.”

He hauled himself upright, popped his knuckles, and suddenly seemed much nimbler on his feet than he had before.

“I guess it’s time to start taking this seriously.” He quipped, grinning savagely at his opponent, who simply laughed as they squared up.

“You can take a beating, human, I’ll give you that. But this round you’re going down.”

“Think so, bird boy? I’ll bet you or anyone else in this shit-shack five thousand credits right here that I can pin you in less than a minute.” The human pronounced, making sure everyone in the arena could hear him.

The crowd roared with a mixture of laughter, jeers and the occasional cheer. The Turian scowled, but the bell rung again before he could respond, and both fighters charged. The Turian swung at the human with a powerful haymaker, but the human ducked under it and surged in. Where before he had stayed back, apparently kept at bay by the alien’s superior reach, now he was on the attack, getting in close where the Turian’s longer arms were a disadvantage. His movements, sluggish before, were now lightning fast as he pounded on the Turian with a flurry of swift jabs to the sides and gut. He wasn’t striking plates now, this time every blow landed in a place where the alien was protected only by bare hide.

The Turian grunted and buckled under the assault, momentarily stunned. As he recovered from his initial shock and moved to grapple, the human slipped away as quickly as he had advanced, juking around the Turian and swinging his leg up and then around and down in a vicious hammer kick that drove the heel of his tall ring boot deep into the Turian’s right kidney (or at least, where his right kidney would be if Turians had kidneys). As his opponent staggered forward, the human recovered and shifted, sending his other foot into the Turian’s left non-kidney in a swift straight kick. The Turian stumbled and fell forward, but before he could recover the human had leapt into the air and came hurtling down on top of him with a rib-crushing elbow drop that plowed the alien face first into the mat. In less than a second, he had the Turian in a headlock, using his opponent’s own head spines for leverage to twist his neck.

“Now kiss my hand and say you’re a little bitch!” The human cackled, stomping down on the back of the Turian’s digitigrade leg with his heel as the alien struggled to get out from under him.

The Turian roared with pain and anger, but all he could do was thrash about fruitlessly as the referee began the count.

“And the winner is Ricky Rasputin, by submission!” the Krogan bellowed as the bell rang for the final time.

The crowd exploded in a chorus of boos and cheers as Ricky climbed to his feet and threw out his arms wide, circling the ring and howling like a madman. Naala shut off the TV and sighed with relief. It was strange, she hadn’t had any doubt that he would win, but seeing him beaten like that had sent her heart into her throat.

About half an hour later she heard the locks on the door of the apartment cycling and the human stumbled in, making a beeline for the fridge and digging a massive icepack out of the freezer compartment. They called him “Ricky Rasputin” in the ring, but his real name (or at least, the name he had given her) was Ricky Nikto. He was tall for his species and powerfully built, with limbs like tree trunks and a broad chest that rippled with muscles. His dark hair was buzzed very short, and pale grey eyes with deep bags under them stared tiredly out from below a heavy brow. He was still in his ring attire; tall laced boots that extended halfway up his calves, fingerless gloves that weren’t padded like boxing gloves but served more to reinforce his wrists, and loose, baggy trunks. The strange part was that under all of it he was wearing a skin-tight bodysuit which covered every inch of flesh below his neck apart from his hands. Naala had seen some of the other human fighters wear shirts made of a similar material in addition to their trunks, but never a full body suit. Come to think of it, she reflected, she had never seen him show any skin that wasn’t on his face or hands before.

The reason became apparent as he unzipped the front of the suit and peeled it off his arms and shoulders, letting it flop open and hang down over the waist of his trunks. Naala couldn’t help gasping at the sight of his back. Huge, gnarled scars ran up the length of his spine and down the backs of his arms. Indeed, now that she knew to look for it, she could see the ridges of similar scars going down the backs of his legs as well, through the suit. These weren’t fight scars, she could tell that immediately. They were too precise, too regular. More like the aftermath of surgery performed by a doctor who was a master at cutting but had no idea how to close wounds properly, or just didn’t give a shit. There were other scars too, hexagons and ovals in an inscrutable pattern that was mirrored on either side of his horribly disfigured spine. Was this how he had gotten his biotic abilities? Naala knew that humans, like most species, needed implants to use biotics, but she found it hard to believe that the process could be so crude.

“Ah shit, you’re still awake?” Ricky said as he turned his head at the sound of Naala’s gasp and noticed her staring at him.

“Of course!” Said Naala, feeling both embarrassed and vaguely indignant at the same time. “You were fighting, I couldn’t go to sleep until I knew you hadn’t gotten hurt.”

“Ya shouldn’t worry so much.” He grunted, slapping the icepack against a large bruise on his shoulder. “I’ve survived a lot worse.”

“I can’t help it.” She said, pouting behind her mask. “Seeing you get beat up like that freaks me out.”

“Don’t watch then.” Ricky said, somewhat flippantly, as he fished around in the fridge for a beer.

“But not watching freaks me out more.” Naala crossed her arms.

Ricky sighed, and set the ice pack down on the counter in order to open the beer.

“Come here, let me help you with that.” She said, beckoning towards the couch.

He rolled his eyes but obeyed, tossing the ice pack to her and sinking down into the couch beside her before raising the beer and taking a long pull. Naala began to gently rub his battered body with the ice, inching closer until her thigh was almost touching his as he leaned forward to let her get at his back. She wanted to ask him about the scars, but was afraid it would be a sensitive subject.

“Ah that’s the spot. Keep it there for a minute.” Ricky groaned appreciatively, taking another sip of his beer and turning the TV back on with his omnitool.

He had turned it back to the movie they’d been watching the night before, some classic human crime drama. When he’d first agreed to let her stay here and they had started hanging out, Naala had been afraid that he would be weirded out by her interest in pre-contact human media. That he would think it was geeky or creepy or something. But if anything, he’d been grateful that she was interested in watching the same stuff as him. Ricky never watched the news as a rule, and he seemed to actively detest anything that came out of Council space. So, they watched old movies and TV from Earth together, which was fun because even if she’d seen something before, he was able to explain all kinds of context to her that she had missed. He acted grumpy when she plied him with questions about human culture, but she suspected that he secretly liked talking about it. Ricky was like that about a lot of things. In many ways he spent more time hiding behind a mask than she did; whether it was the brash and snarky persona he put on in the ring or the indifferent, gruff one he used around her, he seemed incapable of just being himself. But sometimes he let the mask slip and she was able to get a glimpse of the real Ricky. She really liked it when that happened.

Eventually the ice pack had melted completely, turning into a floppy bag of gel, and Ricky was leaning back into the saggy embrace of the old couch with a second beer in one hand and a slowly smoldering cigarette dangling from his lips. With a bit of patience and subtlety, Naala had managed to sneak close to him and end up leaning against the great bulk of his torso with her head resting on his chest, while his right arm had found itself draped over her slender shoulders. Despite her tiredness, Naala was excited. She had been contriving to frequently brush and lean against him in such a way as to make it look unintentional for a week now, emboldened more and more each time she got away with it. But this was the first time he had actually reciprocated. He did like to spread his arms out on the back of the couch, but he had never let one slide down to rest on her before. It was heavy and warm, and it made her whole body tingle with anticipation. If only there was some way she could coax him into moving his forearm just slightly and letting one of those big five-fingered hands rest on her flank...

Ricky yawned loudly and stretched, lifting his arm off of her. Behind her mask, she scowled in frustration. She had been really enjoying that. But then the arm came right back down onto her shoulders, and this time it seemed to be wrapped around her just a bit more, instead of merely resting there. Her heart beat a little bit faster. Was he doing the same thing she was? Or was he just tired and her body was simply a more convenient arm rest than the back of the couch? If only she could know for sure. But she didn’t dare ask.

“Fuck I’m exhausted.” He mumbled, yawning again. “You’re probably tired too. I should really go lie down on my bed instead of hogging yours like this.”

Naala steeled herself, it was now or never. Either she got shot down in flames here, or she would spend the next few days cursing herself for not trying. Or maybe, just maybe...

“It’s alright, you don’t need to get up.” She murmured, doing her best to sound tired and indifferent instead of eager. “I don’t mind sharing the couch. You must be really sore and tired after the fight.”

No going back now, she thought, bracing for rejection.

“You sure?” Ricky asked. “There’s not a lot of room.”

“I don’t take up much space.” She said, feeling victory almost within her grasp. “A-as long as you don’t care about me leaning on you a little.”

“That’s fine. Just watch the bruises.” He assented, without a hint of apprehension.

“Of course! Here, let me get the blanket.” Naala said, her heart pounding, and reluctantly extracted herself from under his arm to get up and grab some bedding from behind the couch.

When she came back around to the front of it, Ricky was already lying down on his side, sinking into the crack between the seat and the back of the couch. Forcing herself to stop trembling, Naala laid down next to him and pulled the blanket over them both before carefully, tentatively inching closer until her chest was actually touching his. He shifted a little, and before she knew it the inside of her left thigh was touching the inside of his right and she practically jumped out of her suit in excitement. This caused her to teeter and almost fall off the couch but suddenly strong, gentle arms were wrapping around her and pulling her back onto the couch and into a wonderfully warm embrace. Then she was hugging him too, squishing her breasts into his chest and nestling the domed visor of her helmet into the crook of his neck.

“Sorry.” He said breathlessly, and loosened his arms a bit, much to Naala’s chagrin. “You were about to fall off.”

She peeled her head away from his neck and looked up to find that his cheeks were flushed and he had an embarrassed look on his face that she found indescribably cute. She practically fainted right then and there. This was going perfectly!

“N-no, it’s fine! Thanks for catching me!” Her mouth was dry and she almost stumbled over the words. “M-maybe you’d better keep holding me, so I don’t fall off again.”

He tightened his arms again, and she sighed in silent bliss as one of those broad, strong hands found itself wrapped around her flank right at the perfect place where the inward slope of her wide Quarian hips met the outward slope of her narrow ribcage. It was all she could do not to moan out loud. If only she could actually feel those fingers on her bare skin! She cursed the stupid suit that reduced his touch to a dull suggestion of sensation and the stupid helmet that kept her face forever inches away from sinking into his chest. She was happier right now than she had been in years and yet she wanted to cry because this was the closest she could ever get to her crush, and it wasn’t enough.

“I hope my dumb helmet isn’t too hard.” She said, fighting back the confusing tangle of joy and sadness welling up inside her.

“Naaah it’s fine.” Ricky murmured sleepily. “Your hood is very soft.”

She found herself blushing so hard she thought her cheeks might catch fire, and opened her mouth to say something but before she could find the words he was snoring, his chest rising and falling against hers. She clung to him and fought desperately to stay awake and enjoy every second of this. She lost.

It was still early when Ricky woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and feeling like a warmed-over corpse. This was normal. He would have been more shocked to have woken up with no pain. Naala was still asleep, and still in his arms. He sighed, and just lay there for a few minutes, fighting back the feelings of guilt and embarrassment and self-loathing that washed over him like cold sewage. God he’d been an idiot. “Accidentally” putting his arm around her while watching TV? So fucking corny. And what was he doing falling for a Quarian, anyway? Must be just punishing himself subconsciously again. And yet, it had been amazing. Despite having had the crap beaten out of him hours before, this was the best sleep he’d gotten in a long, long time. Naala was so sweet, and cuddling with her had done something he had thought was impossible. It had kept the nightmares away.

Ricky was something of an expert when it came to nightmares. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept without having one. You would think you’d get used to it after a while, but he never did. There were three major recurring ones, the eternally popular summer blockbusters that rotated alongside a dozen or so low budget B nightmares in the run-down theater of his mind. Then there were the inevitable sequels and reboots that mixed together elements of the older, more popular nightmares every now and again. This had actually been his biggest fear about sleeping next to Naala. That he’d wake up in the middle of the night screaming and drenched in cold sweat, as he was wont to do, and scare her out of her wits. This was why he had installed a sound-jamming system in his room as soon as possible after it had become apparent that Naala was going to be staying for a while. But it hadn’t happened. He had actually slept peacefully, for the first time in years.

Being extremely careful not to wake her up, Ricky managed to detangle himself from Naala and stumbled into the bathroom. He stripped off his filthy ring gear, brushed his teeth, gave himself a quick shave, and sat down on the toilet to nurse his aching head. He was going to jack off (he had woken up harder than the hull of a dreadnought) but he found himself thinking about Naala, with those gorgeous thick thighs and those plump breasts packed tight into her suit. This just made him feel more guilty, so he settled for a shower instead. He ran it hot, and stayed in way too long. Hot water was one of only two things he had discovered that would soothe the constant pain in his back and limbs that had been with him since Noveria. The other thing was holding Naala.

Clean in body, if not in mind, he wrapped himself in a towel and went into his room to get dressed. Thankfully he had something to do today which would hopefully take his mind off his oafish behavior last night. He’d gotten a tip from a Krogan merc he’d managed to get on somewhat friendly terms with (by challenging him to a headbutting contest and not dying) that one of the names on his list had gotten off a ship from Illium two days ago. He’d need to confirm it himself though, before he did anything. Fucking squids all looked the same and they weren’t too creative when it came to names either. But he would recognize this one anywhere. That face was burned into his brain.

Ricky shed the towel and proceeded to strap on his serious gear. Skin-tight bodysuit, aramid-reinforced combat pants, armored vest with integrated hood, and a pair of reinforced gauntlets and tall boots that looked like modified versions of his ring attire. With a helmet he might almost pass for a Quarian at a distance thanks to the hood, if you didn’t look too hard at his legs and hands. The gloves and boots, as well as the pads on his knees and elbows, had all been custom made for him. The toes, heels, knuckles, forearms and joints were reinforced with heavy duty armor plates capped with clusters of blocky steel studs. Ricky’s fighting style, a modified and mostly self-taught form of muay thai, was focused on delivering powerful strikes with the aforementioned areas. He’d demonstrated a bit of it on the Turian the previous evening, but that was just the non-lethal sport version he used to make money. The real thing incorporated his biotics and could break an armored man’s spine with a single kick.

Fully dressed, he grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes from his dresser and slid it into a pouch on his vest, then added a few grenades to the other pouches for good measure. He didn’t bother with a gun, or even a knife. His fists and his biotics were all he had ever needed, but grenades were always useful to have. Other weapons were just redundant weight. Lesser biotics relied on them to keep the enemy at bay during cooldowns, but that wasn’t a problem for him thanks to his unique implants and genetic modifications. Even if he had a gun, it wouldn’t do him much good anyway. He’d always been a terrible shot. With any luck though, this particular outing wouldn’t involve any combat. Still, you could never be too careful, especially on Omega. The station was always dangerous, and Ricky had pissed off quite a few unpleasant characters during his time here.

As he tiptoed quietly out of the apartment, Ricky stopped to glance at Naala. She was still sleeping, looking a bit forlorn and clutching a wadded-up bit of blanket in her arms where he had been just half an hour ago. Now that he thought about it, she had seemed all too eager to go along with his awkward, half-baked cuddling scheme. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one who had gotten a crush during the month or so that they’d been living together in the apartment. He had saved her from a truly awful fate, as he knew all too well. That could certainly cause someone to develop affectionate feelings, at least according to movies. Of course, it had been unintentional; Ricky was no hero, he’d just wanted those Batarians dead for his own reasons. But she didn’t know that. Or maybe he was just being stupid, concocting a silly story in his head based on movie bullshit and false hope.

“Idiot.” He muttered to himself under his breath, then stepped out into the dingy corridors of the station and disappeared amongst the crowd of other losers and criminals.

When Naala regained consciousness, she was alone and holding nothing but a blanket. At first, she thought that she must have imagined the previous night, which made her feel immensely sad. But she was lying on the wrong side of the couch, and there was an impression in the cushion next to her that was still slightly warm from Ricky’s body. She almost cheered out loud, but the human might still be in the apartment so she restricted herself to wiggling excitedly, clutching the blanket tight to her chest and grinning like an idiot behind her mask. She had done it! She had actually slept next to Ricky! He’d even hugged her! She replayed the experience in her head and focused on committing every last detail to memory. The warmth of his body through her suit. Those strong arms holding her tight. Her soft inner thigh rubbing against his muscular one. His many-fingered hand cradling her narrow waist. Just thinking about it was enough to make her wet.

Eventually she got up, and looked around the apartment to see if Ricky was still there. There was no sign of him, and when she peeked nervously into his room his armor was gone. He must be out on one of those mysterious errands that he refused to talk about. They had met when he was on precisely that sort of business, but she still didn’t fully understand what he had been up to. At first, she had thought that maybe he was some kind of vigilante trying to clean up Omega, like the superheroes in some of the human movies she had watched. But he didn’t like those kinds of films, and when a Turian had come by to try and recruit him for some sort of vigilante gang a few days ago Ricky had told him to go fuck himself. Actually, he’d said it much less politely than that. So, it was still a mystery.

With Ricky gone, and nothing else to do, Naala decided to take a shower. Her suit normally did a pretty decent job of wicking away and filtering out sweat and keeping her relatively comfortable, but it had been acting up lately and especially after getting so hot and bothered last night she was feeling sticky and gross. When she’d moved in, Ricky had gone to surprising effort to make her comfortable, with the frequent insistence that it really wasn’t about her and he’d been planning to do it all anyway, of course. He had purchased a multispectral disinfection unit for the bathroom, installed a complex air filtration system for its vents, replaced the door with an airtight bulkhead from a wrecked ship, and gone over every single crack, gap and joint in the small room with a caulking gun and a microscope until it was practically an industrial clean room. This meant that there was a safe place for Naala to remove her suit and tend to her personal hygiene every now and then, or even eat solid food.

Naala stepped inside, sealed the door, and turned on the disinfection unit. A few minutes later, it dinged to let her know the room was clean, and she could finally get out of the damned suit. She unbuckled the various belts, then removed her hood and undid the system of traditional wraps that attached its tails to her body. Next, she unplugged the tangle of cables and hoses that went to the back of her helmet, and removed it. The recently sterilized air tasted of ozone, but it was better than stale suit air. Finally, she removed the collar bands and unzipped the suit itself, gasping with relief as she stripped it off her chest and could finally breath properly again.

For most of her life, Naala had lived on borderline starvation rations. Food was scarce and precious on the Migrant Fleet, and during the first days of her pilgrimage, before she had met Ricky, she had been so strapped for cash that she could barely afford to eat anything at all. But that had all changed when she’d started living here. Ricky bought lots of dextro food. Turian stuff, mostly, all in antiseptic packaging. Whenever she protested that she didn’t really need that much and that he was under no obligation to support her like this, he would always say he was just stocking up in case he forgot to go to the store the next week. But he always remembered, and even though she never asked for things (it was his money after all, ) he seemed to notice which ones she liked the most and bought more of them. One night they’d watched a movie set during a time period on Earth when it was fashionable for young people to wear leather jackets and go to brightly colored cafes to drink tall glasses of some sort of sugary frozen drink called a “malted milkshake.” Naala had mentioned that it looked good without thinking, and the next day she’d found a case in the freezer full of sealed drink pouches that contained a Turian attempt to recreate the beverage. She had promptly become hopelessly addicted to it.

The consequence of this was that her suit, tailored to fit a rail-thin version of Naala that had lived on a bare subsistence diet, was now a couple sizes too small. Her thighs and butt had gotten very thick and soft, and while she still had the trademark Quarian wasp-waist, she had developed a slightly plump tummy that made her super embarrassed. This was inconvenient, but worst of all was her chest. It seemed to her as though half of the extra weight she’d put on had gone to her tits, which were now bigger than those of most of the Asari she’d seen on this station, when her suit was off and they could expand to their full volume. The problem was putting it back on. Stuffing those heavy breasts back into the small chest of her suit was a difficult task on its own, but once it was accomplished it made the suit uncomfortably tight in the extreme and restricted her breathing. She lived in constant fear that they would burst a seam on the garment and spill out at some inopportune moment, in which case she’d die of embarrassment long before any infection killed her. The one redeeming factor about the whole situation was that she’d heard many human males found this sort of thing attractive, and with any luck Ricky was one of them.

Having fully extricated herself from the suit, Naala took a few moments to breathe and enjoy the lack of confinement while the shower heated up. The (somewhat) open air felt good on her soft, porcelain-white skin as she massaged the faint pressure marks on her thighs and belly where the belts, straps and elastic parts of the suit had dug into her flesh. Her breasts were sore and aching from being constricted, and she wanted to rub them too. But the last time she’d done that one thing had led to another, and she’d almost jumped out of her skin when Ricky knocked on the door wanting to know what all the noise was about and if she’d hurt herself or something. She shuddered at that memory; it made her feel like she was going to die of shame every time she thought about it. The shower was starting to steam now, but as she stood up to get inside, she noticed a pile of something lying on the floor.