[Nos Astra, Illium] Do You Like Huey Lewis and the News?

Something about the conversation was beginning to make Ana twitch under the helmet.

She was agitated before she could articulate what was specifically agitating her, but it quickly clarified itself. Casual attachments? How did sleeping around (which, Ana thought, was exactly what 'casual attachments' entailed) not compromise your relationship?

Maybe it really is just an asari thing. Maybe I'm out of touch. Pathologically.

Rarely had she felt quite so alone.

"Um...oh, right, drell." The flick at the side of her helmet had jarred her attention back to the conversation. "To actually answer your question in a non-smartassed way, no, I don't run into many of you here. There's Iryana, I guess, but that's all I can really think of." Well, and her attacker from last month. "Not surprising, being as you guys are pretty rare."

Ana was faintly aware that she probably sounded a bit more subdued now, and eventually gave up altogether on labeling any more discs.

Ana's voice had changed.

Not in the typical, pubsecent way, but her tone had adopted a frequency that Cerastes had heard only once before, when she was drunk, leaning against him and telling him about her marital problems. The drell glanced towards her, not trying to focus too much on the quarian - it might bother her wife - and wondered if Ana had mustered up the strength to confront Daia yet.

Given the sudden shift in Ana's demeanor, he suspected she hadn't.

"No elaboration necessary," he said at length. "The answer is always the same. Sometimes, it makes for a good conversation-starter, but I suppose that isn't the case today."

Evidently, there was more than one lonely soul in the room.

"I'll be returning to Omega for a a few more jobs soon. I've got the rest of the evening, in the meantime, but maybe we can meet up again before then, or when I inevitably get called back to this--" don't call it a shithole "--planet for more 'private' clients." He was talking mostly to Ana. Daia he'd just met, and he wasn't entirely certain where they stood, but he managed to look to both of the women when he spoke. No reason to be rude. "There's a certain dichotomy that exists between my clientele on Omega and the holdings I have here that makes for a refreshing change of pace."

He glanced to the RFIDs, just to have something to focus on.

Daia noticed the change in Ana, and for a moment put it down to concern for Skylar - she knew Taleeze wouldn't do anything to upset Sky if she could possibly help it, but Ana had only really started getting to know her this very day, and Skylar was a close friend of hers, it was natural to be concerned... - before an alternate theory presented itself.

Oh... yes, I see, she thought, replaying her own words in her head. Her heart broke a little at the reminder of the gnawing, unspoken sore in their otherwise (given the circumstances) happy relationship, but even so, she knew this wasn't the time. She wanted to say something so soothe Ana, to- but not in front of Cerastes, not such a private thing... but to say nothing, at a time like this, would Ana think...? Goddess, she needed to get her head straightened out - her confusion only served to reiterate the need for a Matriarch's counsel before she raised the issue with Ana, before she could hope to try to resolve it, rather than make things worse. The delay was painful - moreso because she should have done this already, months ago - but her mistakes were what they were, and couldn't be undone. She could only ask forgiveness, when time came, and for now pray that the tender way she rested against Ana was a balm, of sorts, for the pain she was causing.

"We had a drell at the Oasis - the escort agency," she clarified, although there was half a chance Cerastes had read up on that, too, "- before the war. He headed home when it started, though, before travel was cut off here. He got a post doing astro surveillance for the Primacy," whether that was an accurate reflection of what he had actually wound up doing, she had no idea - it was what he had said, anyway, so if it was a cover for anything more risky, he had his reasons, "and he's involved in planetary survey now."

Her contribution to the subject of drell given, she fell silent as Cerastes talked about his travelling, and the contrast. She had a similar view - though not so much back-and-forth - from her own move from working on Omega to Illium, but she left it to Ana to reply. He was her friend - though she hoped she wouldn't prove to be an impediment to their enjoying each other's company - and perhaps a moment of her physical presence, but no verbal interruption to drag her thoughts back to where they had gone just now, would help.

Of course they'd managed to pick it up. Ana was apparently no elcor when it came to staying seemingly-neutral.

"Right," she said, rising somewhat abruptly - it was better than letting the frustration build to its inevitable, alienating conclusion. "Well, I need to sleep pretty soon, and as Cerastes just mentioned he's got business tomorrow and a trip ahead of him, so it's probably about that time I turn in. I'm glad you two got a chance to meet; it's not often I make friends these days, so I like to make sure Daia knows I'm not a total recluse." There was a brief kerfluffle as she basically strong-armed the drell off the couch and began nudging him towards the door. Strength fueled by agitation was the best strength. "I'm just going to make sure Cerastes gets to his skycar all right, we'll be right back."

It was remarkable how quickly she was able to hustle Cerastes out the front door. Her mind was racing with frustrations and possibilities and what have you, and perhaps it was this annoyance that led to the quick exit. By the time they were out the door, though, Ana had made up her mind to do something that was both extremely drastic and probably rather short-sighted.

"I can't keep doing this," she breathed, pressing a button so the door hissed shut behind them. "I am in dire fucking straits here, Cerastes. If I can't even pretend things are perfect, then I'm slipping even further than I thought."

She took a breath. Time to take the plunge. Well, the preliminary plunge; it would be a while before anything permanent happened.

"All right. I'm hiring you, if you're interested. I need you to search for facilities within about a four-cluster radius that offer dermal regen - and that includes partial treatments - at prices below what I'll be sending you. Probably along the lines of..." Ana paused to think. She needed to keep enough to manage rent and expenses for at least a month before the pay cycle started helping her cover all the basics, so if that was all she'd leave in her savings, that meant she could spend about... "...probably around eighty-five to ninety thousand. Uh, I would prefer above-ground type facilities, if possible. Don't be so focused on saving credits that you send me to a backstreet unlicensed surgeon or something."

Having lived on Omega for a few years, Ana had seen the ill effects of that kind of decision. In detail.

"Does that sound acceptable?"

For a quarian of both disability and small stature, Ana was surprisingly strong. Cerastes scarcely had an opportunity to look over his shoulder and call, "a pleasure--" to Daia before the door to the penthouse slid shut behind him, blocking the equally-astonished asari from view. Baffled, Cerastes glanced to Ana and began to protest, but she was ever-insistent in moving the two of them along.

For a moment, he was reminded of Suri'neyvi, of the way she'd pushed him so easily through the window of a hotel. His pupils seized at the thought, leg near-crippling, but he managed to catch himself at the last moment and lean his weight against the wall of the corridor instead. Okay, breathe. In, out, in, out. This is Ana'therion, here; she's of no risk to you.

"Ana--"

She cut him off. She was too strong-willed, as always.

Obediently, Cerastes listened to Ana's plea. He digested her words slowly as they came, carefully contemplating the meaning and consequence between every syllable she uttered to him in that long, lonely corridor. This was a side of Ana he hadn't seen yet; he wondered if her mannerisms always became this drastic when she was distressed. Cerastes glanced to the side, his frill shifting subconsciously as she went on. It was a good thing that the corridor was empty.

Ana needed to recover, and she needed it now - not of her own volition, but of some external desperation. A pair of red eyes focused on her in the dim light of the corridor, their attention followed by a brush of his hand against her upper arm. He was trying to comfort her, even if he knew in the heart of him that the gesture was futile. If she was this upset, his half-hearted efforts would be of more annoyance than aid. He pulled his hand back.

"Ms. Ana," began the drell anew. "It sounds perfectly acceptable. Your proposal is just... sudden. I recall," what a moronic phrase, "you mentioning to me before that you were interested in surgery, but it seemed to me like you were planning that in the long-term at the time."

A pause ensued, in which he straightened out his shirt and flattened the cloth over the stealth suit beneath. He shouldn't even have been out in the hallway for this long with her; the old paranoia was settling in.

"Are you ready for this?"

Ana'Therion did not, in fact, always become this drastic when she was agitated, but these were circumstances where her insistence on dignity above all had been slowly worn down over the last year or two. They were now thoroughly into 'ain't too proud to beg threaten with a horrible fate' territory.

"Cerastes, it's not your job to find out if your clients are ready for information," she hissed. "I'm advancing my timetable. That's no pressure on you to operate faster, it's just that I'm getting in ahead of my expected time. You go ahead and find me something at least slightly reputable - I'm serious about that, for the record, make sure it's not some kind of shady organ-trafficking front - and I'll pay you according to your standard--"

She trailed off for a second.

Oh, damn. Payment. Information didn't come cheap, and if most of it was going to go into the procedure...hrm. Maybe she could leech off Daia for the rest of the pay cycle, in order to make sure she could afford her day-to-day expenses. (The medication, in particular, was exorbitantly expensive, and needed considerable planning for in her budget.) So that was another problem. She could see if Cerastes had an installment-based payment plan or something, or if...

.......................................Wait.

If Ana still had her eyes, they would've narrowed thoughtfully as she focused on the drell.

"...right, compensation. Hm. Cerastes, I think we've had enough conversations to know that we have some common interests. Yes?"

Son of a bitch, she was right. Cerastes let out a frusrated sigh through his nose, his eyes rolling off to the side while Ana lectured him. He'd had social contacts utilize him before on plenty of occasions, but they usually weren't so strong-armed about it. Then again, in this scenario, his client actually knew exactly what she wanted, and he wasn't going to have to get his hands dirty in the process.

... not that that was always a downside. A little bloodshed now and then never did any harm, except to the person who lost it.

"What sort of broker do you think I am, Ms. Ana?" came his initial retort. "You've clarified to me what your parameters are for this contract: I will absolutely not be sending you to anything of a lesser caliber than what you specified. The assumption that I'm --"

Ana intrrupted him again. The drell glowered at her harmlessly and folded his arms across his chest as he listened.

And listened, and

wait a minute.

Wait.

WHAT?



... Did she just proposition him?

There was no way. Well, actually, given her prior profession, there absolutely was. A long silence ensued, broken only when Cerastes cleared his throat. What was he supposed to say to her? A fool could have seen how attracted he was to her, but the circumstances of the opportunity to act on said attraction were less than favorable. Not that he had any compunctions against prostitutes, that is.

He had to say something. Unfortunately, two very different ends of Cerastes' being were arguing against each other, and as such, all he came up with was a stern declaration of:

"Ana."

Ana's embarrassment was both immediate and prodigious.

"Okay, that...that was...sorry." The rush of blood to her cheeks hurt like hell, but she barely noticed it over how tremendously undignified she'd just been. Her shoulders slumped. "A shot in the dark, not well thought out, that's all. Forget I said it."

She really should've been beyond this kind of thing by now. Apparently she wasn't as well-versed at reading people as she'd once been - originally, Ana'd had the drell pegged as someone who didn't get any particularly often. He was...certainly awkward, and although the doubly-exotic combination of 'drell' and 'white-scaled' probably attracted its fair share of attention, that awkwardness was probably enough to dispel any interest that wasn't paid for.

Or so she'd (rather unkindly) assumed. A mistake, and one that had probably damaged her considerably in his estimation.

"All right. How much, then? I need to know so I can calculate my budget for the actual procedure."

"No, it isn't that --"

Well, that had pretty immediately resulted in a massive and very visible blow to Ana's ego. There was a window nearby, wasn't there? He could go jump out of it. Break the glass, leap out, and splat: done.

The broker reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose out of frustration. Several very conflicting factors were at play, here. First of all, he respected Ana'therion - she was intelligent, easy to talk to (even for him), and the only source of casual company he had outside of work. Next, there was the fact that he didn't want to ruin any chances of interacting with her outside of the professional realm again, and finally, her wife was just one room over. Combined, it all added up to a very difficult situation.

Fuck it.

In a bold attempt to restore Ana's self-confidence, Cerastes - knowing full well Daia could step through that goddamned doorway and create a million opportunities for blackmail - slid an arm about the quarian's waist and tugged her against him him. He could have kissed her, if he was a movie star and she wasn't a quarian, but, well, that was out of the question for so many reasons. Instead, he simply mimicked gestures he'd seen before and brushed his forehead against her faceplate while his fingers pressed against her envirosuit.

This was completely idiotic. He went through with it, anyways.

"It absolutely is not that," he continued. His hand lingered on her lower back, then dropped away entirely. Don't push it. "It just isn't my intention to make you feel like you need to put yourself in a compromising position in order to get what you want. If you're prepared to go through with this, we can find a way to do it that neither sacrifices your dignity nor your ability to survive financially."

If that goddamned door opened, he'd never be able to show his face on Illium again.

Yeah, this had gone from tense to pathetic to creepy in the span of roughly a minute.

"Get off!"

Cerastes was her friend, and so Ana'Therion didn't utilize any of the more unpleasant options available to her - most of which he'd already suffered at the hands of their mutually-acquainted snake in the grass. She opted instead for pushing frantically at him and backing up, hastily enough that she nearly tripped.

"Okay," she said once they were disentangled, "first of all, you don't get to say no and then do that. You can't eat your cake and still have it, like the humans say. Secondly, if you forget me debasing myself like that in a moment of weakness, I'll forget that attempted moment of suavity. Hopefully that's acceptable."

The conversation had gone to all kinds of unpleasant places. It was her fault, of course, since none of this would've happened if she hadn't fired the first figurative shot, but that didn't stop her from being agitated about it - quite the opposite.

"All right. What are you suggesting, then?"

It would have been better if she'd just slapped him. Physical violence was something Cerastes was used to at this point in his life, particularly since he'd started working with Shirin Vedral. An assault would have been easier to process for him, and, honestly, would have made him feel better about the whole scenario for the myriad amount of times he'd run over it in the future.

This, though. Hrgh. He'd succeeded in his goal of taking on the blow to the ego, thus lessening any shame Ana would have felt, but he probably could have done the same with a much less dramatic action. Now, even though he was fairly certain he'd taken away some of the indignity Ana had experienced moments before, he'd also made himself look like some sort of predator.

Great. This was why he didn't bother dating anymore.

"Sorry," he said. The word tasted bitter on his tongue. "That was a bad decision on my part."

She probably wouldn't want to talk to him again after this.

"Give me a few hours, and I'll come up with some sort of plan that we can follow. As long as I don't get distracted by my primary client at present," a band of pirates, "I should be able to get this done for you in a reasonable timeframe with minimal effort." He looked to her faceplate, then at the ceiling, letting the back of his head thunk against the wall. "I'm not... Nevermind. Saying anything will just make this more uncomfortable."

As if that were possible. He let his eyes drift shut as his mind worked away.

Ana was well aware that their current situation was partly her doing, but that didn't absolve Cerastes of being a creep. People controlled how they reacted to stimuli, regardless of what those stimuli were. While she didn't necessarily want to break everything off altogether, she definitely intended to break off any in-person contact for a while.

See, this was what happened when you started reaching beyond your means. She silently resolved not to repeat any of the past few days' 'social engagements', not for a long, long time.

"It's partially my fault," she admitted. Maybe that'd calm him down slightly, he sounded flustered. Unsurprising, if he was as awkward as she'd originally judged. "Anyway, yeah. That sounds fine. Go out and fine something and get in touch with me when you get the chance, just make sure you let me know how much you're charging before you give me any information. I'm not going to be in debt."

A frustrated sigh escaped her.

"I have to get back inside, Daia's going to wonder about me. Thanks for your help with the discs."

Yeeeeaaaahhh, okay. He'd totally fucked this up. Even he, with all his inabilities, was aware of just how threatening he must have come off to Ana, and there was nothing he could do to mend it. She'd never be comfortable with him again, and it was his fault.

With that, he nodded quietly, then pushed himself off of the wall and moved generously out of any personal bubble Ana had put up. This was likely it for their friendship, as far as he knew. She'd established a firm wall between them over the past few minutes, and he certainly wasn't going to go out of his way to try and contact her again if it'd result in further discomfort.

"Of course," he said. "I'll be in touch. Have a good evening, Ms. Therion."

Without another word, the drell started off down the hall and activated his stealth suit, then flickered out of sight without a trace.

Ana listened until Cerastes' footsteps faded into the distance, and then relaxed a little.

It wasn't his fault, probably - he didn't really seem like the predator type, just goony and kind of maladjusted - but as someone much smaller (and disabled, at that), the quarian could hardly be blamed for reacting strongly to what'd happened. Still, desperation had caused her to miscalculate with the offer, and now she'd almost certainly damaged their friendship in the process.

What a miserable way to cap off the day. Sometimes, Ana thought, she couldn't do anything right.

Still, at least Daia was home, and even if she'd managed to partially blow that with her inability to hide her reactions, just being in her bondmate's presence was comforting. Locking the door behind her, Ana wound her way back into the living room and located the couch. Daia was still reclining on it, and so Ana stretched out on the other end, resting her head in the asari's lap. Letting out a slow, measured sigh, she let herself relax at last.

"...Everything's going to be all right," she said, almost on impulse.

It was, if she had anything to say about it.



end