#landmines? pitfalls. thing you step on that fucks you up

[gibbearish]

don’t wanna clog up the notes on your post too much so i’ll say here instead: genuinely so much appreciation and respect for you taking the time and energy to break that post down in such a clear way. I literally saw your post just after going on my own rant on the new subreddit about how frustrating and seemingly hopeless the state of this discourse is on tumblr when people are so ready to eat up all kinds of terrible misinformation with 0 evidence, and how exhausting it is that trying to point out this kind of thing often just leads to being ignored and/or harassed no matter how carefully you word your argument. like it’s ridiculous the amount of self-policing one has to do on tumblr to call out bullshit within queer circles while avoiding pitfalls that will lead to being willfully and woefully misinterpreted, which I think is part of why it sometimes genuinely takes an entire essay to say “this person is lying.” I think you did an excellent job at explaining everything while navigating an absolute minefield of discourse and I applaud the effort, courage, and skill that must have taken 👏👏 people like you genuinely make me feel sane again

yet another example of the piss on the poor website. this is precisely the opposite of what i requested. F-

[wrathbites]

The quirks are all right

Shepard's got a couple, but that's fine.  They're cool.  He's good.

Kaidan's got A Thing, too.

It's not a spare plate of food Shepard takes to the cockpit on Mondays, medbay on Wednesdays, engineering Thursdays, and throughout the ship every other day.  It's his own, nutrition gone to waste if he's forced to sit with the rest of his crew and blend in with every mouthful.

When Garrus and Tali join, he doubles the trip for the three weeks it takes to convince them to join the humans at mealtimes, and only once for Wrex, content as he is to hunker down and ignore the few brave enough to dart glances his way.

Shepard always nabs a biscuit with each plate, a biscuit he doesn't pass on.  He leaves it, instead, on the table by his cabin, paired with the weakest tea Kaidan's ever seen in his life and when he finally realises it's Shepard behind it, he calls him on it.

"It's for the ship brownies."

"The ship what?"

"Brownies.  The little critters assisting with the upkeep of the ship?"

"You mean the maintenance drones?"

"Nope, I definitely mean the brownies."

"Are you serious?"

"Deadly," Shepard replies with a sharp-toothed grin, outright laughing when Kaidan rolls his eyes, "or have you missed that I'm a vampire, Alenko?  If I exist, who's to say brownies don't?"

And that's... actually a valid point.  So much so Kaidan sets aside some credits the following day and purchases a couple boxes of loose leaf tea when they next dock at the Citadel so he can nab that offered cup and remake the fucking thing properly, before Shepard causes some grievous offense and brings the ship down around their heads.

~

"Stop!"

She freezes mid-step at the sudden crack of Shepard's voice across comms.  She expects a landmine, or wickedly sharp teeth that'd snap clean through her suit and mangle her leg beyond repair, or a pitfall she'd be stuck in for half a standard day.  A danger of some sort, hidden from Vakarian's eagle eye and Alenko's frequent area scans and Shepard's sixth sense for trouble.

What she finds instead is a ring of bright yellow mushrooms surrounding a patch of especially lush grass.

"You can't be serious," she says, hoping Shepard reads the eyeroll in her tone.

But Shepard's either oblivious or — nope, he's dead serious, planting both hands on her shoulders and redirecting her course to avoid the ring entirely.

"I don't care what planet we're on, Williams, we do not fuck with the fae."

She turns to look at him, then, a quick triple tap on her omni-tool gradually upping the transparency of her faceplate so he can see for himself the are you fucking kidding me? expression stamped firmly across her face without sacrificing her retinas to an alien sun while she's at it.  Not that she expects him to do the same, what with the imposing figure he cuts in all black armour from top to toe, and his allergy to all things sunlight.

"The fae."

"Yes."

"Alien fae."

"All the more reason to avoid them."

"But —"

"Not an argument you'll win, Williams," Alenko says as he catches up to them, a laugh bubbling away under his voice.  "He's Scottish."

"Hey!"

"What are fae?" Vakarian chimes in, and honestly?  Fuck this planet sideways to hell.

Fae!  No wonder her faith doesn't bother him!

~

Mess of any sort bothers Alenko.

He'll glance over at unwashed plates neatly stacked aside no less than twenty-seven times a minute.  He's subtle about it, just his eyes moving and shoulders going tight, but it happens.  He does it.

When he's resigned himself to another defeat at the hands of that one fucking terminal, he'll walk off the aches and pains from messing with it for so long by pacing the distance between it and medbay, down to the last sleeping pod and back up to the seating area again.  If there're any chairs left out he'll stall there, for seconds at a time, each pause growing progressively longer.

Armour carelessly dumped aside makes anyone with a lick of sense wince and frown in disapproval, but Alenko — he shuts down.  Shoulders hunched, spine curved, fingers like claws on his greaves, frozen in place.  Curling in on himself, scent gone sour and displeased, though he doesn't say anything.

There'll be a sigh for every soap sud he steps over en route to the showers, a tick in his jaw for any discarded towel, bottle, brush.

And a barely perceptible flinch for every squeal of metal on metal, or the scrape of wood over grating, when others push and pull boxes instead of lifting them.

Mess, in general?  Not Alenko's thing.  Sure, he does his best to ignore it, Shepard's watched him try his best to ignore it, but it always gets to him, without fail.  And every time it does he'll cave and correct it, washing the dishes, sweeping the floors, sorting the armour back into compartments and lockers and across repair benches, collecting all the bathing supplies into little baskets he sets opposite the shower wall, using a spare towel to mop up the trail leading back to the crew quarters, and doing inventory on every supply delivery before unpacking the boxes, every item accounted for and secured away in its proper place.

There are areas he won't touch, areas he'd be messing up rather than helping with, or overstepping boundaries,  Shepard suspects he turns a blind eye to those, for his own sanity.

Alenko has a reason, that much is clear.  He goes at his own version of maintenance like a man possessed and very little short of a direct order will redirect him from it.  Shepard doesn't know the reason, and doesn't need to know the reason.  There is one, and that's what counts, so he settles in place beside Kaidan and works in silence with him.

"It's from BAaT, y'know," he says one morning and Shepard pauses mid-sweep of the brush, clearing the way for Kaidan to mop once he's done, "the cleaning thing.  It's from BAaT."

"You don't owe me an explanation, Alenko."

"No, I know, but I don't want you thinking I'm just weird, either.  Or crazy.  It just.  It's one of the ways they tried to break us.  Make a mess and demand we clean it, biotics only or else.  They'd track mud across the floor after we'd just scrubbed it clean, have us on our hands and knees for hours, maybe deny us food and smash the plates, or remove our mattresses and leave us to sleep on bare springs or the floor.  And if we met their standards we'd do it again, and again, and again, overclock the amps, melt our brains.  Fun stuff."

"Jesus christ."

"Yeah.  It's a thing.  It's my thing.  But I don't use biotics for it.  I won't let them win now, when they didn't back then."

"Well, so long as you don't mind a helper."

"Of course not.  Hey, Shepard?"

"Hm?"

"Thanks."

"Anytime, Alenko."