Chapter Text
Some stars turned white right before they died.
By then, the star’s outer layers would have shed, fizzling and swirling into a cloud of gas, the star itself shrunken into a speck of its former glory. With no fuel left to burn, no light left to shine, the then white dwarf spends the rest of its withering life pouring out its soul into the cold black of nothing, until it died alone in silence, and a hollow carcass remained.
Stars with a larger mass died more dramatic, violent deaths, exploding into a supernova. Once through the Omega-4 relay, the crew of the SSV Normandy SR-2 would likely die violent deaths, leaving behind a scorching blaze of fire. However, to the rest of the universe, like a white dwarf star, their existence would fade into the black. They would die alone, in silence, their great sacrifice never known, never appreciated.
Tali always had a lingering fear that she would die the death of a white dwarf star, pouring out the heat of her passion, her soul into a collectivist society that gave her nothing in return, dying in that environmental suit, touchless, loveless, alone, in silence, leaving behind an empty, shriveled up corpse. The thought of spending years upon years, decades upon decades without any sort of touch, without any sort of love, growing old like that, made Tali shiver in fear.
By age thirteen, when Tali got her first suit, that horrifying vision became her destiny. Mordin’s treatment didn’t exist back then. The closest a quarian could get to actual intimacy was breathing another person’s air. With artificial insemination, child rearing became possible without ever leaving the suit. No matter what Tali did, no matter what her people did, no amount of antibiotics would ever allow escape from her technological tomb.
Not even reclaiming the homeworld would change much. Generations of gene therapy would be required to re-adapt the immune system. Quarian culture would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. Again. Even if allowed to step on the ground her ancestors walked on, Tali would never live to see the day where a quarian could watch a sunset without their mask. Tali would, at most, be nothing more than a stepping stone towards that penultimate dream. Her fate was sealed centuries before the day she was born.
However, within the walls of the Normandy’s elevator, Tali pressed a button on her omni-tool, and fought against the fate of the fleet-era quarian. Liquid flowed through the tubes of her suit and into her body. Tali clenched, clutching purple fabric on the opposite sides of her torso, guiding herself through the burning pain like her mother did eleven years ago: one last parting hug before Tali was locked away forever. It felt like lava scorching through her veins, and Tali relished in the sensation. One step closer towards freedom, towards skin against skin.
Once the burning sensation faded, Tali received a message on her omni-tool. The subject was blank, its sender listed as hexadecimal nonsense. The body, however, was written in Japanese. Tali instantly knew who the sender was. Her translator got to work, decrypting the message.
Do your best! You got this! I believe in you!
Tali took a quick look around, wondering if Kasumi was in the elevator with her. That wasn’t much like her, though. Kasumi usually preferred sneaking from above, giving her the greatest field of vision. There was nothing to hang off of in the elevator, nothing to cling onto. Tali couldn’t help but smile anyhow. While the almost omniscient-like presence of Kasumi annoyed most, for Tali it became comforting—like a friend was watching over her. That message of encouragement didn’t come from Kasumi Goto. Rather, the woman who hid beneath the shadow of the hood. A woman whom only Tali knew existed.
A sharp beep interrupted Tali’s thoughts. Deck one, her destination. With one deep breath, Tali strolled past the elevator doors. Next to the locked door ahead, Tali pressed the new second button above the intercom. Bright blue light rained down from above and slowly swept the room, killing every microbe and potential contaminant in sight.
Low heavy hums surrounded her ears, vibrations more potent in her helmet. It was that same hum as the SR-1’s decontamination unit… by design. Old times floated into her mind, standing in that tight space that separated her and the outside world. The tension that built, waiting for the doors to open, uncertainty in the nerves of the dangers outside, if their current mission would be their last. The threat of a reaction nagged at the back of Tali’s mind. She bounced on her toes like she always used to do back then, an old pilgrim’s habit to shake off the nerves.
Whenever Tali stood in that tiny space, she would stare at Shepard. Human N7s had done it all, seen it all; Tali sensed that in his eyes, calm and unafraid. Deep down, his stoic presence always calmed her, let her know everything was going to be alright. Tali clung onto that mantra. As long as Shepard was there with her, everything would turn out all right.
The hum subsided, followed by a VI making an announcement.
“All contaminants eliminated,” it proclaimed as the door lock turned green. “Welcome home, Tali’Zorah.”
Shepard’s personal touch. Hearing that little phrase every day after a grueling mission, or a long shift in engineering, always made Tali warm and fuzzy all over. He really knew how to make a quarian girl happy.
The door swept open and Tali walked inside, taking a cursory look around. Fans whooshing, filters humming, air-tight panelling. All the cabin’s modifications made her think of all the hours spent, building it all… with him, picking out installation points, designing, testing. Shepard’s skill and knowledge surprised Tali. Watching him on the battlefield made her forget that Shepard was brought up as an engineer, just like her. There was a reason he could keep up with her in conversation, that they hit it off so fast.
A quarian and a human. They were supposed to be different, so radically different. Shepard’s modified cabin was supposed to be one big shrine dedicated to the giant gap between them. Instead, it became the first thing in existence designed and constructed by both a quarian and a human. How fitting that it would be something that helped bridge the gap between both species.
A small smile slipped on Tali’s face. She missed the moments in making it possible: the collaborating, the frustrations of each test’s failure, long nights spent redesigning, rebuilding, the euphoria when everything ran perfectly, even the petty arguments over the differences in each species’s engineering practices.
Tali’s favorite part, though, was a moment that most wouldn’t pay attention to. Whenever a filter near the ceiling needed installing or fixing, Tali would sit on Shepard’s shoulders, using him as a ladder to reach. Tali would tense whenever she tripped a wire, curse when she made some minor mistake she shouldn’t have made. Shepard rubbed just above her knee, and that would calm her down. Sometimes, Tali thought about how his hands must’ve felt like without the suit. Burly fingers pressing against skin, sliding, caressing; it made air in Tali’s helmet heavy thinking about it.
She turned to her right, and there he was, her human boyfriend standing by the hamster cage. Probably checking in on the lovely couple inside. Couple , and not just one hamster, because Tali thought that Mr. Nibbles would be all lonely cooped up alone in his cage. Tali walked towards Shepard, gloved fingers grazing down his forearm to get his attention, before locking themselves in between his fingers.
“They’re finally asleep,” Shepard said.
“They’re so cute together,” Tali responded, musing at Mr. and Mrs. Nibbles (the latter Tali named) snuggled up together on their little hamster wheel.
“I’ll admit, they do. Turns out you were right. They really fell in love.”
“Told you.” She made a teasing face at him, even though obscured by the mask.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll have your five-hundred credits ready tomorrow.”
“Good,” Tali said, tilting her helmet up, triumphant in her first foray into gambling. “And I’m gonna make it an extra hundred for each baby they make.”
“You’re gonna run my pockets dry, woman.”
With a stupid grin on her face, Tali looked back at her winning couple. Her eyes lingered on their fur. They must feel fuzzy, very fuzzy. If only she could pet them without that damn nanofiber in the way. Then, her mind lingered on their snuggling. Their small bodies pressed up together, fur against fur, Tali’s spirits sank a bit.
Every time Tali snuggled up and cuddled with her human boyfriend, those inevitable what-ifs always wormed their way into her mind. Sometimes, Tali would turn on her nerve-stim to silence the questions, but they resounded louder. It wasn’t enough; something was always missing, a core component that software could never replicate. Every scoot closer, every arm wrapped, was met with the rustle of cloth, the groaning of nanofiber stretching. The suit always butted in between, reminding Tali of her limits as a person. Her once musing look turned wistful. Even tiny Earth hamsters could enjoy the warmth of another, experience life in ways Tali was never supposed to.
“What’s wrong?” Shepard asked in a whisper.
“Nothing,” she said in a reflex. “I…” She looked down at her hand holding Shepard’s, not realizing how tightly she held him. Tali lifted her hand up, thumb looping around the back of his hand. Skin folded and bundled together in reaction to her movements. Another heavy breath in her helmet. “I’ve been thinking…”
There was a want trapped inside of her, thumping in her chest, begging to fly free. Barriers of fear tightened, fortified by the threat of a reaction, the potential look of disgust when he saw… Tali’s face clenched, putting a hard stop to those thoughts before they got the chance to fester.
Not now.
“I’ve been wanting to…” Another attempt. Another bash against a wall. The end of that sentence was nestled in there somewhere, within the muck of a million thoughts. Tali couldn’t reach the other side, smothered and suppressed every time. That same struggle as those exercises from her guidebook on human relationships, from the chapter on ‘assertiveness’. It was so simple, yet so difficult. Why couldn’t she form a sentence using the word ‘want’?!
Perhaps because the kelish word for ‘want’ was considered rude, even in colloquial contexts, carrying the same connotation as greed. However, Tali wasn’t dating a quarian. She had to stop opting for roundabout phrases like ‘I can’t’ or ‘I have to’ or ‘kind of’. According to her guidebook, being direct about one’s wants fostered closeness and intimacy. Ambiguity could lead to unnecessary conflict. Conflict was the last thing Tali wanted.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath in. No soft verbs, no absolutes. Direct, unabashed, straight from the heart.
“I want to be with you, without the mask, without the suit. I want you to be with…” Fear struck, freezing Tali in her tracks. Warnings of consequences flashed in her head, reminding her of what laid beneath the suit. All of it stung; some part of her wanted to stop, to leave things as they were, but Tali had to take this chance. She had to believe, trust. “I want you to be with me .” That last word stung, like pulling a nerve from the roots.
The question hung in the air, glowing eyes pleading.
“You sure?” He asked.
“I’m fine.” She answered that real question underneath, ‘Are you okay?’. “No side effects, no fever. Took a dose before I came up here.”
A wry smile slivered on his face. “Oh, so that’s why you’re up here.”
Tali’s eyes popped open, her heart launching out of her chest. “What?! No! I wasn’t…” Tali tilted her head down, rubbing at the back of her hood, realizing her social faux pas. “Oh, keelah, that sounded awful. Look, I’m not using you for your body, I promise. It’s just…”
“Hey, hey, it’s alright, I know.” The wry smile on his face faded. His hand trailed down the length of her forearm with a slow, wistful pace. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while too, being with you. ”
“This is our only chance before… you know.”
“You’re right.”
“If these are our final moments together, then I want to spend them with you. Not as a quarian, but as a woman. A free woman.”
“I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”
Tali beamed upon hearing those words. She couldn’t wait for him to see how much he made her smile. The thought of which gave Tali an extra ounce of energy.
She pulled his hand, walking towards the bed. “Come on.”
He caught on, and let Tali lead him to the bed. The brunt thuds of her boots against the ground grew more profound with every step, her body realizing what Tali was going to do. HUD readings flared warnings, flashes of technical quicksand to slow her movements. She narrowed her eyes, annoyed. Tali wouldn’t hear it. She trudged on, desire guiding her through the mental muck.
After what seemed like an eternity, Tali finally sat on the bed. The mattress shifted as Shepard took his seat next to her. Tali peered down at her gloved hands. The keys of her liberation, right in front of her. All Tali had to do was reach, and she could lavish in luxuries that every other race took for granted. Hardpoints in her mind rose, defenses triggered, giving Tali one last chance to surrender—to turn back. Her hands trembled, fearing the million ways Shepard would perceive what laid beneath.
Pictures of unmasked quarians on the extranet were only of the ancestors, before the geth, before the war. Tali looked nothing like them. Exile changed her people, changed her. The thought of him gazing at a body tainted, ruined, Shepard didn’t deserve that in his life.
Tali thought about warning Shepard about her appearance; it was only fair for him to know ahead of time. Fear kept her blabbermouth shut. Tali couldn’t even bear the look of disgust on his face from mere description alone, ruin the closest thing she had to love. Not now, not when she was so close.
To her left was that same smile Shepard always gave her: warm, honest, forgiving, loving. Her stomach churned at the silence of her decision, lying by omission. It wasn’t fair to him; he didn’t deserve that. A man like Shepard didn’t deserve to be with a… thing that lacked substance. Unmasking was a bad idea. Tali should just keep things as they were, where she was safe.
Fingers pressed against nanofiber, dissolving the muck in Tali’s mind. She didn’t realize he was rubbing above her knee the entire time, almost as if telling her to relax. Pressure, weight, Tali’s mind hyper-focused on the implication of sensation.
Deep-seated yearning from the past eleven years rose to strike back against fear, to give Tali a reason to fight. The days spent cocooned alone in her sleeping pod, its droning static buzzing that greeted her day after day, fertilizing visions of affection that Tali would never have; the retching aching of every emaciated nerve thereafter, the soul’s song of longing. All of it had a chance of ending forever; Tali just had to reach.
Sometimes, Tali saw Shepard confronted on decisions he made, some of them unpopular, controversial. Whenever that question came, ‘why?’, Shepard always had one answer.
I won’t let fear compromise who I am.
Tali went for it.
Her arm rose to her mask. Hardpoints fired, weapons free. Trembles of her hand escalated to shaking. Despite the anxiety, Tali forced her hand up through the quagmire. Like her father told her, nothing came easy. If Tali wanted something, she had to work for it. Months now Tali’s body acted against her, rejected her pleas for freedom. No longer would she be a slave to its whims.
Her heart bashed against bone. Ferocious beating made Tali sense cracks expand with every crash. Any moment it felt like her heart would launch like a bullet from a barrel of a gun. However, freedom was not what the heart sought. As an agent of Tali’s subconscious, the warden who fought to keep her locked away, the heart yearned for simple acknowledgement, for Tali to heed a single plea.
Stop!
Tali’s body begged for her to stop.
Images played forth in her head, that caustic look of disgust on his face casting his final verdict. Death. Tali was sentenced to death. A physical death by open air exposure, an emotional death by brutal rejection. The death of her very first relationship. Her eyes stung, face clenching. Tali tried with all her might to push those thoughts away, to shove that internal warden back into the wretched crevice where it came from.
A string of kelish glyphs flashed on Tali visor, beeps blaring in her helmet with a rapid duple meter, warning of high stress levels. Calming agents flowed through tubes, enveloping Tali in a refreshing coolness. Trembling subdued, replaced by a sensation: invisible fingers running up and down her back. Tali recognized the touch: false, mechanical, incomplete, with the way her mind numbed to the simulated touch of fingers like a burnt out electrical circuit.
Her nerve-stim program. It ran automatically once Tali’s suit detected high cortisol levels. Soothing caresses down the back, invisible hands holding hers, scripts that Tali created. Although meant to calm her, trick her into thinking someone was there for her, the phantom sensation made Tali shiver in disgust, reminding her of her addiction to synthetic touch.
Every single night, before Tali went to sleep, phantom arms wrapped around her, with fingers running up and down her back like now. Throughout the years, three fingers became five. It was the only way Tali could fall asleep, the only way she could pretend, the only way she could grieve.
Every single morning, the approximation of lips pressed against Tali’s, waking her up. That was her alarm. Tali wouldn’t wake without it. Phantom arms still held her tight. She liked to pretend that Shepard was there, laying with her, cuddling with her.
Before Tali headed off to a shift or a mission, a parting hug always wished her a wonderful day, a safe trip to and back. The hug was always longer than she intended it to be, always cranked up to max settings. The lingering tingling gave Tali something to look forward to, gave her the power to trudge through. At day’s end, a second tight squeeze of a hug welcomed her back, as if someone actually missed her. Day after day, the cycle repeated.
Tali refused to live like that, relying on synthetic touch to fill a constantly expanding void. She refused to die in the way fleet-era quarians died: touchless, loveless. The thought still made her stomach churn. Nerves flared for a split-second, a sense of urgency forcing her hand up again.
The warden wouldn’t tolerate that act of defiance.
Random switches flipped in her brain. With its warnings ignored, approaching ever closer to complete annihilation, the warden in her mind grew desperate to stop its host from committing suicide. It needed to gain back sovereignty over Tali’s body, ensure her safety at any cost.
Terror struck, constricting Tali, suffocating her as if someone strangled her, crushing her wind pipes. Tali struggled to breathe. Sharp pins of a thousand needles dug into every inch of her skin and skittered around in her flesh like tiny rachni spiders. Her jaw shook, teeth chattering. Adrenaline flowed through her body, with nowhere to go.
Tali saw her dream, dangling from a branch of a tree, gleaning in the light. So maddingly, tantalizingly close. Just a few more inches. Just beyond her fingertips.
She froze.
Her hand froze.
Tali ordered her brain to move her hand up again. However, the synapses of Tali’s demands withered into oblivion.
“Are you okay?” Shepard asked, in a voice blotted out from the world. “Wanna take a breather? I have the Normandy model ready at the table. We could finish that up, distract ourselves for a bit.” Shepard’s voice muffled and died in the muck of her mind.
Right when she was on the precipice of climbing herself out of this decrepit pit, Tali fell. Again. As Tali spiraled and twirled down into the bottomless depths, she felt the all too familiar, over-encompassing mass pull her back down where she belonged: in her suit, forever isolated in an impenetrable darkness that no ray of light could ever reach. She could only watch the light that guaranteed her salvation from the gallows of loneliness was swallowed whole by shadow.
Then everything stopped.
Something caught her. Needles now pinpointed on her wrist. Five human fingers held Tali’s wrist with a firm grip, guiding her hand back upward.
It was him.
The calm demeanor on Shepard’s face told Tali that she wasn’t alone in her fight against her internal tormentors. She had people in her corner; she had him.
Her heart slowed, muscles calmed, needles fizzled into noise. Tali regained control of her senses. The warden in her mind, her subconscious, now outnumbered by a third party out of its control, realizing it now fought a losing battle, stood silent and accepted whatever fate might befall it and its host.
When metallic ridges at last filled Tali’s fingers, Shepard relaxed his grip and let go. That was it. The difficult first act now over, all Tali had to do was press and pull. Eyes shut, and a seething hiss of decompression flooded her ears. Sharp cold seeped through the expanding gap, flooding her now bare face, making Tali shiver. The threat of a reaction lingered in the cold. Tali sensed it, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.
One deep inhale swept those fears away, the deepest inhale in eleven years. Chills raced down her body, down her throat, through her chest, and into her lungs. Crisp, clear, although clean and filtered, there was something organic about it, taking in the air through her nose alone. One deep breath out, the longest exhale in eleven years. Within the warm air blowing out of her mouth and brushing her lips, Tali felt at least some muck expel out of her.
Some of it. Other voices still clung to life; their existence depended on his reaction, his final verdict. The warden survived the fallout, keeping her eyes shut, not wanting Tali to see what her acts of bravery had wrought. She pried them open against its will. Everything was slightly sharper, without specs of dust or dried out residue her mask collected. The first thing Tali did, flare on her omni-tool, and shut her nerve-stim off. Then, Tali turned to him, pulling against muscle that tried to reign her in.
She scoured his face for any sign of disgust, hyper-focusing on the tiniest movement, any scrunching, wrinkling. Blue eyes moved around, explored. His face was fixed in a state of wonder, lips parted slightly open, frozen beyond words. Anxiety flickered back in a second wind, freezing Tali in place, vulnerable, naked, powerless as if she were back on trial, awaiting judgement.
One blink, two blinks, Shepard’s face remained the same. Tali couldn’t bear thinking about what was going on in her lover’s mind right now, what he thought of the tubes connected to her nostrils, of the pale, desaturated skin quarians were never supposed to have, stripped of the markings that her ancestors wore with pride. Three hundred years without the sun siphoned the life of both skin and stripe generation by generation until there was none to take anymore. A hollowed husk of a quarian was all Tali offered him, and it made her sick.
A human hand reached for her. Fingertips grazed her cheek before Tali had a chance to react. Sharp needles stabbed again. She jerked to the left, gasping at the sudden sensation. Wonder on Shepard’s face turned to shock, then twisted into worry, confusion, his lone hand hanging in the air.
Rejection.
She rejected him.
The warden fed on her immediate failure, unleashed the mimicry of a million thoughts, chastising her, telling her she should’ve stayed in her place, back in that suit, where it was safe. Tali sensed it, her first relationship withering and rotting, dying. All because she overstepped her bounds, to go beyond the limits nature set for her. Instinct clicked, Tali rushed to salvage.
“I’m sorry. I just… I wasn’t ready for…”
You were never supposed to be ready for this…
Tali grabbed Shepard’s hands, squeezing them. “I wasn’t rejecting you, I promise! I want this! I want you! ”
“Shhhh…” Shepard hushed, placing a finger on Tali’s lips. Her face tensed, suppressing a yelp, enduring a lesser wave of needles. They faded within the next few seconds of silence. Tali relaxed her grip, letting herself lull in the feeling of human skin on her lips. Worry and fear melted into that warm smile he always wore. “After everything,” he continued. “I’m just happy to finally meet you.”
Cheeks flared, but Tali didn’t care. Whenever the pearly whites of his teeth flared, she couldn’t help but smile along with him. One playful human finger poked at the edge of her mouth. A surprised squeak ran out of her mouth, another jolt racing down at his touch.
“I had no idea quarians had dimples,” Shepard said.
“Huh?” Tali stared at him, dumbfounded.
“The little divots at the sides of your mouth when you smile. They’re called dimples. They suit you, compliments the real pretty smile you got.”
Did he just…
Did he just say…
Hazy fog clouded Tali’s mind; words were unreachable. She didn’t know how to respond. Everything faded into a blur. Tali left the world for a fleeting moment. She was going to crumple any second, melt onto the floor. To hear them say that about her… the real her…
Tali rushed forward and mashed her lips against her lover’s, leaping into the far beyond. A cavalcade of novel sensation rushed her all at once, and Tali drowned herself in it all. The soft caress of his lips, the way bristles of stubble tickled her skin, how the heady scent of fruity bath soap mingled perfectly with his natural scent, the sound their mouths made with every kiss… the sound, the richness , the heaviness that reverberated through the air. Perfection wasn’t even the word for it. Sensation had an opulence that transcended all known labels, turned her surroundings into phantoms, floating and fading around, melting into colors she couldn’t comprehend. It made neurons blaze, stars explode. The universe died and arose again, reborn and alive, Tali’s fate was rewritten before her eyes.
After watching Shalei and Bellicus kiss on the balcony for the first time, a curious fourteen-year-old Tali broke her suit’s parental controls and conjured a similar sensation. However, those luscious elements were never there back then. Tali never thought to include them, she didn’t know they existed. Back then, Tali didn’t know what a real kiss was like, that there was more to it than just skin on skin. She didn’t know there was a rhythm to follow, that a kiss was a synchronized dance.
Tali didn’t know what she was doing. Tingles of desire flared within made her tremble. They rushed up and down and around like fire ants. She couldn’t handle the behemoth of sensation, it was going to eat her alive. Her lips flew in haphazard motions. Hands roamed randomly. Sloppy, artless, inexperienced, not knowing where to go. Sensation swirled within in a violent vortex. Tali reached for Shepard for any semblance of refuge, but her lips always lagged a step behind, or paced a step ahead. Delays and false starts, Tali stumbled and fell on every step.
Pressure on her wrists put a stop to her scrambling hands and to everything else thereafter. Tali opened her eyes and parted her lips. He took hold of her wrists, that warm smile gone, probably swept away, or eaten alive.
Shepard didn’t enjoy that, he didn’t like it.
He hated it.
An opening. Fear took the chance to launch back up through the split-second crack and relay a vision: clicks and hisses, back into the hole, back into the dark. Millions of apologies rose into the forefront, begging to fly free, to salvage the situation.
Right as her mouth opened, “Relax,” Shepard whispered. “Follow my lead.”
Apologies evaporated into thin air, erased in four words. All Tali could do was nod her head.
“Okay.”
“Let’s get this out of the way first.” Shepard dislodged a breathing tube from her nose.
“I… I completely forgot about that.” She watched him message the area above his lip. A slight dent mark laid there. Her eyes widened. “Keelah, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking and I—”
He squeezed her hands. “ Relax .”
Tali bit her tongue, huffing through her nose into the free air. A deep breath into her nose, eyes closed, and Tali leaned forward for a second try. Muscles tensed, her body expecting another lightning storm. Tali clung to his hands for guidance, safety.
Tali’s second kiss. This time, she tried to be more graceful with her lips, taking great care in following Shepard’s rhythms. She didn’t want to mess this up for him again, make the moment all about her. However, once those bristles brushed her skin once more, his sweet fresh scent trickled in her nose, those luscious, lavish sounds swept her ear, Tali couldn’t help but lose herself yet again. She let out a small, shuddering moan against his lips without realizing. In response, Shepard released a low, deep moan. The shameless want contained within, the vibration of her lips at the heaviness of his voice, made Tali melt.
Desire took over. Three fingers clung at the sides of his shirt, tugging Shepard closer. Pulses built up in her chest, light breaths through her nose turned to heavy puffs. She leaned closer and closer, pressing harder and harder, seeking an extra ounce of him, to drown herself further in his plush lips, in his deep moans.
Weight shifted, Tali fell on top of him in a muffled thud and rustle of bedsheets. Her hands traveled up to his shoulders and tugged. No way she was stopping. Her hips pressed down on him, shifted from side to side as a slippery feeling conjured in between her legs. She let out a deep moan into his mouth, heat building up everywhere.
Suddenly, her boyfriend’s lips parted, a wet tongue licked her top lip, an invitation. Tali was more than happy to oblige. She parted her own lips to accept, and their tongues met for the very first time. They swirled around in slow motions, getting acquainted with the other’s presence, texture, taste. His tongue was thicker than hers, wider, but shorter. Tali quickly fell in love with the top of his tongue, sliding the bottom of her own tongue across, savoring the rougher texture of his taste buds.
Something pressed in between Tali’s legs. She knew what it was, and it made the slippery feeling worse, but pretended not to notice. Right now, she wanted to relish in the wet thickness of his tongue. Strong, human hands roamed down her back, pulling at nanofiber, tugging at clasps, sending her a message. Quivered moans released into his mouth. Tali knew what he wanted, and it made her press her hips further against him to tease him a bit more. Her tongue swirled faster, the swelling pressing further and further. His hands traveled further down to her thighs, sliding up and down nanofiber, taking in the weight in until they slid up, fingers sinking, grabbing, taking every possible ounce with shameless greed, of her plump, supple ass.
Tali swept her head up, breaking the kiss and let out a long, rough, shuddering groan that vibrated out of her. Her head slumped back down to him. They stared at each other for a few seconds, ragged breaths filling the air, hearts pounding, processing what had just happened. Lava coated Tali’s cheeks as she realized what she just did, the situation that she led them down. She wanted to apologize for making things more heated than he probably intended, for letting out such a disgraceful moan. But something else lingered in the periphery, calling from beyond with the pounding of her chest and sweltering heat that needed to be released. Tali tugged his shirt and pressed her hips down on him in emphasis.
“I want to feel you,” she breathed out, more sultry than she thought she was capable of.
“Yeah?” It took every fiber of Tali’s being to hold herself under the salacious tone of that question.
“Mhm,” she nodded, keeping up the lust in her voice.
Tali rose and released her hip’s hold of him, giving Shepard space to move. She sat there unabashed, watching her dashing commander take off his shirt. Glowing eyes stared in awe as his arms rose, revealing muscles that stretched and rippled in motion. Tali couldn’t help but give out a long, drawn out breath at the sight. She regretted not ripping off the shirt herself and letting her hands play. However, within the blinding haze of lust, something lurked in the periphery, brewing, invading, tainting the moment.
Shame.
Shepard offered Tali strength and power, the magnificence of his sculpted body. What did Tali offer him in return beneath nanofiber and satin? The simple answer was her hips, but Tali caught her breathing tubes, dangling free in the air, dangling reminders of everything else. Sudden waves of gravity slumped her shoulders down. Fingers fiddled with a buckle below her chest. The brewing shame spread like a viral infection, making her chest tense with newfound apprehension.
“What’s up?” Shepard asked, setting his shirt aside.
“It’s nothing, just can’t help but stare,” Tali responded, feigning a sultry tone with a hollow smile, hoping to rile things back up again.
His eyes traced to her fingers, still fiddling with the same buckle. Her attempt failed.
“Want me to look away?”
Sometimes Tali loathed his astuteness. ‘Yes’ was not an option. She wanted to maintain the heat of the moment, have him sit back, watch and enjoy her as she did him. However, fear still lingered, hanging on to life after the first onslaught. One strike wasn’t enough. Her face was only the beginning, the first battle in Tali’s grueling war. The rest of her body had yet to be seen, judged.
Tali averted her gaze downward and gave the tiniest, most shameful nod of her life. It made acid burn in her gut. Tali didn’t dare look up. Trusting him to look away, she turned to the edge of the bed, back facing him, and began the long, arduous process of unshackling.
For humans, unshackling from clothing often took seconds. Shepard never had to think about open air exposure. One sweeping motion and he was free. For a quarian, though, freedom took time, effort, a series of actions that had to be performed in a certain order, millions of miniscule decisions that had to be thought of and approved. Plenty of time for fear to fester, shame to blossom.
Face exposed, Tali already leaped beyond the limits of an average quarian. She already discovered what it was like to touch, to kiss another. The moment was incredible, unforgettable, beyond her wildest dreams. Tali could put her mask back on and leave with memories that would stick for life. Yet an urge lingered that overpowered everything else: an aching in her chest, in her nerves, in her soul that never went away, only hungered for more. A single touch, a single kiss, was too much, yet would never be enough. Tali wanted more, needed more.
Three fingers unlatched the clips of her hood and took it off. Rustle and bustle, Tali let it fall and watched it crumple on the floor. Reaching behind, neckpiece in hand, shining gloriously in the light, Tali flung it with a flick of the wrist. A devious smile emerged in the disgraceful clangs of her neckpiece rolling on the ground, spitting on the image of the woman she was raised to be. She did the same with her boots, taking more power in the hard, tumbling thuds, the flailing clangs of unlatched belts, the rustle in making cloth rumple.
The undersuit was all that remained. A one-piece, all Tali had to do was latch and pull. Nanofiber slid clean across the surface of her scalp. Within an instant, Tali sank.
Reality…
Shame billowed in the cold, nipping her naked head. Memories played. Clump after clump of hair falling on the cold, sterile floor of the Rayya, the sins of the ancestors piling on top of each other in one horrid mass. A razor to rake the fields, a solvent to desecrate the soil. Tali was thirteen years old back then. The days of her mother styling her hair in those regal styles of old were gone forever.
Thirteen was the age of sacrifice, the first in many cold lessons in life, a reminder of the liberties the geth stole from the quarian people. The environmental suit wasn’t an infinite pool of memory or space. Functions had to be written to maintain regrowing hair, hair that would only snick and snag in the undersuit. Functions required memory, memory required processing power, processing power required resources. Why waste resources maintaining something that would never see that light of day again, that had no real purpose? Memory had to be allocated for core functions and subroutines that guaranteed survival over everything else, even it meant making sacrifices.
Stuck to her temples were electrode pads, designed to monitor brain activity. Tali peeled them off with the utmost care. Adhesive pulled and stretched at nerves. Skin burned. Tali winced at the pain, ducking her head below her shoulders. She just wanted to rip the damn things off, but it would make the burning worse. Tali had to go slow. Second after agonizing second, her body foresaw a reaction again, bubbling and welting all over. A leech stuck to her body, finally peeled off in ways that were never meant to be. When Tali was done, pads dangled on wires alongside her breathing tube. They teetered in the air, rubbing the sickly nature of Tali’s existence in her face.
Venom riled up inside, but Tali kept it down. Eyes were on her. He was watching, even though she told him not to. Yet, she peeled down anyway, fighting off the tar bubbling in her gut, want powering her through. Some minute part of her still believed, trusted.
The ancestors once had healthy, vibrant bronze skin that glowed under the sun, a vigor in their markings that represented the glory of the quarian people. Her black undersuit gave way to white everywhere. Pale, empty, desaturated, lifeless, soulless, barren, insipid, impoverished, pillaged of color, stripped of life. White arms, white hands, white torso, white legs, white feet, white bald head. White-hot anger boiled in her veins, telling her to rip and tear plastic tubes that coiled around white. Electrode pads, white. Her pupils, white. Clean rooms, white. Canisters of nutrient paste, also white. White white white white white. Tali’Zorah was a fucking ghost of a quarian and everything about her was white.
Stars also turned white right before they died…
Tali always romanticized unsuiting as this great liberation. Once she was out of the suit, everything would be better. She never imagined it would become so… pathetic, humiliating. The undersuit stayed in her hand. Against her better judgment, Tali slowly turned her head around, again, pulling against a force that demand she stay still. His face was plain, expressionless. Once again, blue eyes moved about, roaming, taking in, judging . Tali couldn’t read him, and that terrified her. Back to square one, right back to where she was ten minutes ago.
“Quarians aren’t supposed to look like this,” Tali said, her head turned back away. Those words flew from her mouth to cushion the inevitable.
“What do you mean?” Shepard asked.
Tali looked at her nude body once more.
That my body is disgusting…
“Our exile from the homeworld… changed us. Our skin wasn’t this pale, this… empty. We used to have markings on our bodies. Our heads… used to be covered in fur, just like you humans.”
“I thought only your immune systems were affected.”
“Our immune systems were only the beginning.” Tali’s voice rose, clenching her undersuit tight. She swallowed before continuing. “The Servant’s Curse is what… this is called.”
“This as in…”
“The skin disease I was born with. It’s become… more common over the years. No one knows what specifically caused it, but everyone knows why it’s there. We look… I look nothing like the ancestors that lived on the homeworld.”
The bed shifted. He crawled closer to her, but kept a few paces away. “Tali, I don’t care what a quarian is supposed to look like.”
She wished those words did something, yet the shame only grew. “The only few times I ever get to step into a clean room, free myself from this fucking thing.” She held up her undersuit for him to see with an unexpected flippancy. “The very few times I even get to look at myself, I’m still reminded of everything we lost, everything the geth took from my people, as if this damn suit wasn’t enough!” Tali threw her undersuit across the room with all her might, knocking over a model ship that sat on the coffee table in front of her. It shattered on the floor, broken pieces flying, clattering, then resting with the remainders of her suit. Flames of anger simmered off into flickering embers, the air of despondency permeating in the aftermath.
“It never ends,” Tali whimpered, voice drained of life. “Our homeworld wasn’t enough, our colonies weren’t enough, our way of life wasn’t enough. The geth also had to take our identity.”
“Tali, I…” The words died in his mouth. Tali knew Shepard wanted to say something to make things better. But the human sweet-talker had his silver tongue cut.
Shame corroded in her gut like poison. What was supposed to be a romantic moment turned sour, ruined, tainted. All because Tali got greedy, overstepped her bounds. The floor was a mess. Cloth, nanofiber and tubes strewn about. Among the steel grave rested the pieces of…
… the old Normandy.
Both she and Shepard spent the last few days building the toy model together, something to distract them from the inevitable. Those nights were relaxing, full of banter, laughter. They were almost done, just a few pieces left. But to look at the shining silver crack into a carcass, just like its older sister, all because Tali threw a little hissy fit, it made acid swirl about deep inside.
If only she had just stayed in that suit, stayed in her place…
“Sorry,” Tali muttered, staring at the broken pieces on the floor. “I shouldn’t have… I never wanted it to be like this. I thought I could do this, thought I was ready. You deserve so much better.” Tali got up from the bed.
“Where are you going?” Shepard asked. She heard the strain in his voice, the worry. It made everything worse.
“Engineering.” Her back still faced him. Tali couldn’t look at him in the eye anymore. “I have to make preparations before we hit the Collector homeworld.”
She walked towards the scattered pieces of her suit and began to put them back on again. Footsteps stormed behind her.
“Tali!” A hand clasped her wrist. Nerves flared, spinning her around. His face, intense for a fleeting moment, softened into a somber expression. Tali’s heart sank at the sight. “I don’t have any words that’ll make you feel better. It just… hurts, you know? For you to have to live like that. I don’t completely understand what it’s like, but it still hurts to see you suffer.” His grip lightened. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. You can leave and we’ll pretend none of this ever happened. But, it’ll mean the world to me if you stayed. Because even if you don’t love yourself, I still love you. Suit or no suit, that’ll never change. It’s up to you.”
The glint of sincerity in his eyes, the somber honesty in his voice; those were the reasons she couldn’t face him. Tali didn’t want to see how much she hurt him. Her head tilted down, shame swirling.
She was about to do the very thing she feared he’d do: leave him. Tali was about to inflict the same scar that she was so afraid of getting herself. It wasn’t fair to him. It also wasn’t fair that some part of Tali struggled to believe what he said to her. Something welled up inside. Anger at herself, sadness at the fact that things didn’t go the way she dreamed, a mixture of both, Tali couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, she wrangled it down.
Tali lifted her head, locked eyes with him, faced him as a woman, and took his hand.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll stay. I promise.”
He placed a second hand on hers, caressing it. The warmth of his touch made everything fuzzy. A slight smile snuck on his face along with a small sigh, relief. Tali made the right choice. To have him right here, right now, bare hands holding the other, with all that crap set away, her cheeks couldn’t help but tug at the edges of her mouth. Once again, a finger poked a divot to the side.
“There’s that cute smile,” Shepard said.
Tali’s cheeks pulled further, her pearly whites flashing, dimples flaring. She had that urge, to put her hands up to her face and hide. Tali held back. She didn’t want to ruin the moment again, a tiny moment Tali would cherish for the rest of her days: showing the love of her life how much he made her smile. They stood together in silence for a minute, relishing in the presence of each other under the low rumble of the Normandy traversing the void of space.
“Hey, Tali.”
“Yeah?”
“You said you didn’t have any markings, right?”
“No, I wasn’t born with them.”
His eyes darted around. “Then what are all those dots and stripes all over your body?”
“Wait, what?” Tali did a once over on her body. No dots, no stripes. Only pure white. “I don’t… have anything.”
“Yeah, you do.” Tali’s mind blanked again, not having the faintest clue how to respond. “Want me to show you where they are?”
“Yeah, show me if you’re so certain.”
His hand rose and fingertips, learning their lesson from last time, feathered her cheek with a delicate, experimental touch. Nerves sparked, drinking from his fingertips, pulling them closer. Tali gave him a silent nod, telling him it was okay. Fingertips planted further, slowly grazed down her skin, and left a trail of warmth. She let out a light, quivering breath from the delicate sensation.
“You know, I love a woman with freckles.”
Tali stared at him, dumbfounded. “Fre… freckles? I’ve never heard the word before.”
“That’s what we call the little dots spread all over your cheek. They’re the cutest thing.” Where Shepard saw dots, Tali felt fire. Words disappeared, her mind unable to form a coherent thought, attempting to comprehend what was happening.
Human fingers lingered to her jaw and ran along its smooth, round contour. He took his time, those loving eyes of his telling everything. He was exploring, enjoying. Fingers brushed up the other cheek and around to the bottom of her forehead. “There’s also a crown of little wisps there too,” Shepard pointed out. “Like tiny brushstrokes that bleed in and out of your skin.”
Shepard continued down her slender neck, deft fingers invoking a light quivered gasp. A sensitive spot. The sly smirk on his face told Tali that he would note that for later. The implications made her tremble.
From the pit of her neck, he grazed down the middle of her chest. The care they took, the slow, steady pace they went, loving, appreciating, the tiny tingling taps of nerves dancing around. Words couldn’t describe it, the feeling always a degree beyond her reach, yet it was a feeling Tali would treasure for the rest of her life.
Filtered cabin air grew muggy, humid. Tali’s heavy breaths filled the room. Shepard’s fingers slowly slid closer and closer to her breasts. Nerves below perked up. They grew antsy, anticipating. He curved around, sliding diagonally down the top of one breast, and trailing up the other. A cluster of wisps rained down from there, according to Shepard. His fingers trailed up, leaving Tali disappointed he didn’t experiment with the soft plushiness below.
He ran across her collarbone at an agonizingly slow pace. More trembling, more quivered breaths. Another sensitive spot. Tali both loved and hated how Shepard could wind her up in an instant with those strong, heavy hands, make her breath tense, her heart race. Some part of her thought he was lying about the stripes, or wisps, whatever he called them, using it as an affront to touch her. He could’ve just asked. Tali would’ve let him.
His palm planted on her shoulder. Warmth blanketed under the supple flesh. He ran down, curving around the bottom as a second hand joined in the fray, putting her mind in a haze. Because one hand wasn’t enough for him, apparently. It certainly wasn’t for Tali. Her heart couldn’t help but bloom at the show of want, the feeling of his delicate, loving touch.
“They’re really beautiful here,” Shepard muttered as if the words flew on their own. Tali swallowed to contain herself.
“W-what do you see?” Tali asked, forcing the question out.
“Those little wisps. They grow bigger as they go down your arm. And then there’s little families of freckles that follow them, like a school of fish.” Tali looked at the fish tank to her left. A cluster of fish floated up to catch the food floating down from above. Others swam about, minding their own business, ignorant of the horrors outside, in peace.
Shepard breathed out a chuckle. “Yeah, like them. There’s a natural beauty to it all, like as if nature painted you with its own vision. I think they make you beautiful.” His face turned somber, and it hit Tali harder than she expected. “It’s a damn shame you can’t see it.”
Tali and Shepard saw the world in completely different ways, at different wavelengths. What Tali didn’t realize was that she was born with the same markings that her ancestors had. However, for some unknown reason, they became invisible under ultraviolet light, but not under the human eye. As a quarian, Tali saw into the UV spectrum. All she saw was the pale white skin underneath, the stripping of ancestral glory, of one’s identity as a person. With her bare eyes, Tali literally couldn’t look at herself in the same way Shepard saw her.
Taking Tali’s hand in his, Shepard leaned his head towards her shoulder, and planted a kiss. Tali shuddered at the sensation. His eyes fluttered up to gage her reaction, then he planted another kiss further down. And another, and another. Kiss after kiss trailed down her bare arm, sounds of his affection trickling in her ear. The way his lips caressed her skin when he started another deeper kiss, those sounds he made, those unabashed ‘chu’s, it was like each kiss down her arm sent a message, an attempt to get Tali to see herself in the way Shepard saw her, as if he told her, I want you to believe me, I want you to feel just how beautiful you are.
A wave welled up in chest and forced its way up. The world swirled and blurred. Muscles clenched. Tali shut her eyes, stinging and wet. She swallowed, forcing the wave back down. Tali reopened her eyes, locking eyes with her lover for a second, before he planted one last kiss on the top of her trembling hand.
He gave her another smile, one that Tali knew was meant to calm her, let her know everything was alright. All it did was build power towards a second wave already festering within. Her defenses already weakened against the first wave. Tali knew she couldn’t hold back another surge. One thing was on her mind right now. She wanted something, someone, to hold. She wanted to be submerged in another’s warmth.
“John,” Tali whispered, barely sneaking it out.
“Yeah?”
“I… have a favor to ask you.”
“Anything.”
Tali leapt into the arms of the man she loved, wrapping him around her own arms with as much strength as she could muster, oozing as much warmth as possible. Shepard teetered back, planting one foot behind to hold balance.
“Hold me,” Tali whispered in his ear. “Hold me tight. Please .”
Shepard did as he was told. Strong human arms wrapped around her back, pulling her in. The low rumbling of the cabin faded away. Warmth melted her everything, swallowed every fibre of her being. Alien muscle contracting, squeezing her just a bit tighter, how their chests melded, his hands moving, rubbing her back with an organic depth that software always lacked. Something awoke in Tali, neural pathways long abandoned, decayed and broken down, flooded with life for the first time in eleven years.
Tali’s head sank into her lover’s neck, hiding. She felt it again, the violent stream surging up. Every muscle in her face contracted on instinct, holding back the surging river with all her might. However, cut off smothered shrieks and cries snuck through. Cracks formed in the foundation, expanded with every passing second. Tali couldn’t hold for long. She squeezed him with an extra ounce of tightness, the last ounce of strength Tali had left.
“I’m sorry,” she squealed out. Tali was going to break down in front of him, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“It’s okay,” Shepard whispered into her ear. Heavy breaths shook her ear. Tali could tell, some part of him shook, some part of him needed this too. “There’s something I need you to hear, okay? I’m gonna tell you this a second time, and I’m gonna keep saying it again and again for as long as I have to.”
“Un.” She nodded into his neck. No more power left for words.
“I love you, Tali’Zorah vas Normandy. Even if you hate the way you look, even if you hate yourself, I will still always love you. Now do me a favor: Don’t ever forget that. No matter what happens.”
He never told her that ‘I love you’ before, at least when Tali was in the suit. She didn’t need him to. Tali already knew. Shepard was a man who expressed his love through action. From standing up for her when no one else would—when the people closest to her abandoned her. Every smile shone through her trips and stumbles, every suited hug and cuddle, each display of patience, every second he spent building fans and filters with her, every single second spent with her.
Tali always thought she never needed Shepard to say it. But to hear those words spoken in her bare ear, raw and unfiltered through audio modulators, with her full real name, when she was out of the suit, when he saw everything, every part of her…
Tali’s face contorted, her mouth grimaced open, and the dam shattered. Tali wailed with every ounce of newfound force in her body. Vocal chords shook, burned. Stressed to max capacity, any second they would fry to death. Her face became wet, his neck became wet. Everything was wet. Tali continued her cobra-like hold, clutching him as if she would die if she let go. His hand continued its soft motions, up and down her back, egging her on, getting every last bit of long suppressed pain out of her.
Tali was right back in that damn pod, with nothing but sterile beige walls, clumps of wires and a lifeless haze making up the outside world. She could hear that droning buzz, feel it vibrate through her body, overpowering the constant rumbling of engines, the wheezing of overworked air filters. Right back into that very moment where it truly sunk in for Tali, that she would die in that suit, spend the rest of her years touchless, loveless, grow old and decay alone, die the death of a white dwarf star. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing Tali could do about it.
Violent wails cracked in the air, the thoughts that festered within the finality of her fate running through one last time. Thoughts that offered a way out from that agonizing life, a permanent way out, a way to thwart fate once and for all. Those same thoughts that also brought shame, always making Tali feel cold everywhere.
Tali never told a single soul that she thought about killing herself.
She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Tali had a duty to her people, to her crew. She was the daughter of Admiral Rael’Zorah; appearances had to be kept. Tali shoved those demons down into the deepest, darkest crevice she could find. No one could ever know, no one could ever suspect, not even the tiniest morsel of that poison could reach anyone. If word got out that Rael’Zorah raised such a weak daughter, a selfish daughter, the Zorah name would be tarnished, her father’s reputation ruined.
Besides, Tali never wanted to die. She just wanted the loneliness to end, to know what it was like to be held by someone, to be wanted for once in her life, to be truly loved. Back then, there was no one, nor would there ever be anyone. No treatment existed that allowed Tali to escape. All Tali had was pretend. The thought was there, let the body bubble and welt, as long as her final moments were filled with euphoria. On those nights, where everything struck at once, spawning the darkest thoughts that frolicked through her mind, Tali wanted to reach for someone. Instead, she wept alone in silence.
The feeling of being in the arms of the man she loved so dearly, naked skin held and caressed with a love Tali was never supposed to have, coupled with the feeling of holding someone for the very first time, sweet warmth sinking into the pores of her naked skin, nerves alit with a second life, it forced everything out. This wasn’t just crying, this was an exorcism. Eleven years’ worth of built up pain and loneliness, sorrow and starvation, all suppressed and hidden, expelled from her body, the essence of her being cleansed.
Time ceased to exist, fading into the periphery. Tali bawled and bawled and bawled in Shepard’s arms, until every last bit was purged out of her. When her energy finally waned, the violent wails petered out into fading whimpers and sniffles, Tali slumped in Shepard’s arms, head drooping down on his neck, spent and exhausted.
Elements of the world returned. The low rumbling snuck back into her ear, tumbling down her body. Patient, forgiving human hands still rubbed up and down her back in their slow, soothing motions. She took a moment to appreciate the silent aftermath, the stillness that came when the rain finally stopped and rays of sun poked through black storm clouds.
“How are you holding up?” Shepard whispered, soft and delicate.
Tali didn’t know what to feel. Her eyelids were puffy, eyes stung whenever she blinked, her arms were weak, her chest was wheezy, her legs were wobbly, with the strength of puddy. Tali was now both physically and emotionally naked. Her body, mind, soul, joy, anger, sorrow, all now exposed to the man she loved, and there was peace from that. It was the ugliest, most gruesome cry Tali ever had, and it was the best damn cry she ever had.
“I’m sorry for putting you through all that,” Tali said, her voice weak and weary.
“Don’t apologize for feeling,” Shepard responded.
“It’s just… our night wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“And that’s okay. Wanna know why?”
“Why?”
“Because a part of being alive is to feel intensely. That’s how I know that I’m still myself, and that’s how I know that this is real.”
Something about the way he said that, what those words meant, it made everything… lighter, as if nothing else mattered anymore. One soft peck of his lips on her forehead, and Tali grinned like a buffoon. She spent her days simulating the feeling, dreaming of the intimacy that came with it. Tali figured out exactly why her nerves wised up to her suit’s little trick. The suit couldn’t emulate the gleeful grin on her lover’s face, nor the warmth that swallowed her, nor the acceptance he showed her. The suit can’t emulate genuine affection, the love from another.
Tali drooped her head on his neck, nuzzling with the little nub she had for a nose. She wanted to carry this moment as long as she could, etch the feeling into her memory.
“Hey,” Tali breathed into his neck.
“What’s up?”
“Can we stay like this for a while?”
“For as long as you want.”