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

Social calls were steadily becoming more and more common in Cerastes' life, and he wasn't entirely sure what to think of it.

Either way, he found himself standing Ana's door on the top floor of her apartment building, waiting for someone to answer the buzzer. The drell had a short, fat bottle of liquor in his left hand; a purple bow had been tied around its neck by the store clerk, regardless of Cerastes' protests. In his other hand was a tall mug of coffee, already half-empty (or half-full, depending on your philosophy). If he was going to spend the majority of the evening organizing a blind quarian's holovid collection, he was at the very least going to be jacked up on four shots of espresso in the process.

Upon hearing a familiar set of footsteps behind the door, the drell straightened his posture, his frill flexing instinctively in a tell-tale sign of interest. The door slid open with a quiet hiss, revealing the quarian behind it and the penthouse beyond her.

"Good evening, Ms. Ana."

"Coming!"

It had taken several buzzes from the penthouse's VI to wake Ana'Therion, and another minute for her to stumble groggily to the door. Her mood was less than totally charitable, particularly since she'd just woken up after thirty minutes of napping on the couch. By the time she had made it to the front door, the quarian's mood had plummeted - she'd just gotten done with Taleeze, and now there was...whatever this was.

Wait, maybe it was Daia. Normally she'd have just opened the door and come in, of course, but maybe she had her hands full and couldn't do much more than press the buzzer, that'd be nice--

"Daia?"

Cerastes greeted her.

....FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

It was tonight! She'd invited him over for tonight! Son of a bitch, how had she managed to forget when Taleeze asked her to go out? Augh. No rest for the wicked. None. Not a single second of rest.

"...Come on in!" This did not stop her, of course, from putting on as friendly a tone as possible and stepping back so that the drell could enter. "It's good to hear from you again, hope your recovery's going well. Can I get you some kaffe, or...we don't have any of the human stuff, unfortunately."

Maybe he'd come at a bad time. Ana seemed a bit more... something than usual as she stepped aside and let him in, which made him think that perhaps he'd interrupted a private moment between her and her wife. The drell entered cautiously, careful to let Ana hear him as he walked by. His gait was almost completely even now; the brace would be removed in a few days, which meant his recovery would be more or less complete.

It also meant he'd be spending significantly less time on Illium. Although the planet was a boon for information brokers, the vast majority of Cerastes' clientele remained on or around Omega. Well, it wasn't like he'd have to stop talking to Ana, period, but it was probably for the best that he stopped spending so much time with a married woman.

"I've already procured my own on the way over, thank you," said the drell. His gaze swept over the apartment, taking it in, analyzing it as he always did with new environments. "You seem stressed."

Sex apparently sold far better than he could have imagined. The penthouse was gorgeous, its furnishings equal in kind, outshined only by the view of the city below. Daia must have had good taste. Cerastes stopped by the kitchen and leaned against a counter, the bottle and coffee still in his hands.

"I brought you something that might help with that before you sleep tonight, per the recommendations of a friend, but I'm unsure of whether or not you've properly recovered from our last get-together. How have you been doing?"

"I'm fine. There was a very tiny hangover for a while, but ehhhh."

Wandering into the living room, Ana paused and fussed with the furniture for a moment, pulling up a chair. Oh, this was bad, she hadn't prepared at all. At least she had all the supplies for their project, otherwise she'd really have egg on her...well, visor.

"Um. Okay, full disclosure, because this will probably come out either way. I totally forgot we were supposed to do this tonight," she confessed. "Sorry if I seem a bit out of sorts, I spent most of the afternoon out with Taleeze - you know, Taleeze from the boards - and I'm kind of worn out. Just woke up, in fact. Don't worry, give me a few minutes and I'll be back up and going."

They were going to be a long few minutes, if the heavy feeling in her head was any indicator.

"So...yeah. Welcome to my home. Uh, grab a chair or the couch or something, put your drink on a coaster, um...hang on one second, I need to get the stuff."

She did a 180 and headed over to the closet - sight or no sight, the penthouse was extremely familiar, and Ana knew its layout intimately. A moment of rummaging later, she set a large plascrete box next to the closet, and began digging out a length of RFID-compatible tape.

"Have you done this before?"

For being a blind woman, Ana'therion sure knew how to move about quickly. Cerastes ducked back out of the way as she zipped about, fussing with a pillow here, adjusting a cushion there, and just generally overthinking how much a male cared about furniture. Even though Cerastes had somewhat more refined tastes when it came to interior design, he was still a man in his core, and couldn't bring it upon himself to give a single fuck if one of the pillows wasn't fluffed to perfection.

"Ana."

Whoosh, there she went, off into the bedroom.

"Ana--"

Zzzip, back into the living room, with a heavy-looking box in her arms.

"Ms. Ana'Therion vas Nedas."

Cerastes reached out and gently grabbed the quarian by her forearms, then ushered her towards the couch. If she'd spent the day out already, he knew (well, roughly) just how tired she had to be; her muscles must have been screaming beneath the suit. He eased her down onto a cushion - ignoring any protests that might arise - and turned to face the box containing the tapes.

"Sit down and relax for a minute. I'll get started on the vids, and everything will be fine. Do you need anything? Purified water? An on-call masseuse?"

Women.

In retrospect, perhaps she had overcompensated rather dramatically for her state of being / lateness / failure to plan.

"Right. Chill. Sorry."

Setting the box down, Ana'Therion lowered herself onto the couch and allowed herself a very deep, forcibly-relaxed breath. Okay. Release the tension in those muscles, and lean back against the cushions. Excellent.

"Realistically speaking, some water would be nice. There's some canisters in the chrome ice chest in the kitchen; if you could grab one, that'd be fantastic. Uh, in the meantime, I'll send over an executable for you, it should let you tag the RFID tape with your omnitool."

A couple subvocal commands to the suit's VI opened a file transfer request with Cerastes.

"So basically, this'll be long, but fairly simple. You read off the title, and then I'll tag it with the title so my suit can interface with it and tell me what disc I'm looking at." A pause. "And don't worry about anything, uh, prurient being in there, if you've got hangups. Those are separate, we're not going through them."

"No need to apologize."

By the time Ana had started the transfer, Cerastes was already in the kitchen, busily searching for the container he'd been directed to. Upon finding it, he popped it open - carefully, resisting the urge to take the time to investigate the rest of the nooks and crannies of the penthouse - and snagged one of the canisters inside. His lips thinned slightly as he shut the box and looked over the living room once more; as an information broker, it was difficult no to notice the little details, to avoid categorizing every object as a potential foothold should the occasion arise.

With a shake of his head, Cerastes maneuvered out of the kitchen and back into the living room, where he paused by the couch to lean over and press the canister into Ana's hand. Once she'd taken hold, he flicked open his omnitool and, still standing at her side, accepted the transfer.

"Sounds simple enough. You know, I can probably have this sorted out on my own within the hour; I could just open up another window and keep tabs on each title as it goes by, assuming you give me your categorization method..." The drell raised his coffee to his lips and took a healthy swig. Oh, sweet relief. "... You never said how you've been doing, on that note, aside from tired. If you need more rest, I can come back another time, as long as it's within the week."

"I'm doing fine."

Ana was not doing fine; she was frazzled, pressed for time, and kind of frustrated. None of these things were Cerastes' fault, however, and so she did her best not to take it out on the drell. She was not entirely successful in these efforts, but then, nobody was perfect.

"And you are not being left unattended while I nap, or whatever you're proposing," the quarian snipped. "One, I don't do well with charity. Two, I'm a little more paranoid these days, I was..."

She glanced downwards. It was reflexive, really - looking in any particular direction didn't do her much good.

"Okay, this stays between us, but I got, um, attacked last month. Like, right here in the penthouse. Just waltzed in without a care for my security systems and wrecked my shit. That was how the coffee table got broken, incidentally. So you can understand why I'm a little paranoid about safety. Honestly it took a lot just to invite you over here."

Another pause.

"Well, get to it! Start reading titles!"

... Ah.

There was the rub. Cerastes listened quietly as Ana explained her assault, his brow furrowing with thought while she talked. Who would attack a blind woman? What did she have that was valuable? The drell rapped his fingers around his coffee mug, one suspect after another flicking through his mind.

No. Stop. Too fast.

Don't start with the who, start with the what. Ana'therion was, not too long ago, a fairly skilled and sought-after therapist; it is perfectly reasonable to assume an ex-patient of hers, dissatisfied with his or her life, might have come to exact revenge upon their sole source of comfort. Alaternatively, she had also been a pornstar, opening an entire venue of potential attackers - but no, they would likely have sexually attacked her, he reasoned. Not always, but more than likely. The last option he could think of was her connection to Daia, whose bank account was... ample, if the penthouse was any indication.

"You were attacked," he repeated slowly, then read a title. "'Ruminations of the Quiet Mind'. When was this, and what can you tell me about your experience?"

Cerastes' line of questioning was not one that Ana'Therion really wanted to pursue.

She had considered the possibilities of taking action (legal or otherwise) against her attacker; in fact, it had barely been an hour or two after the attack before, crumpled and quivering on the couch, the thought of retaliation had crossed her mind. It had quickly become obvious, however, that she had no real means of doing so (it wasn't like she could identify the drell, being as she couldn't see), and that even if she did it might be a bad idea.

After all, bringing it to light might encourage another attack out of revenge, and this time she doubted it would stop at a simple (if extensive) beating. The last thing Ana wanted was to fear for Daia's safety.

"It was someone who wanted information on a casual associate of mine from a few years back. But I don't really want to push it," she answered, placing a strip of the RFID tape onto the holodisc's cover and tagging it with her suit's VI. "You understand, I'm sure - please don't go digging into it, the last thing I want is to provoke some kind of retaliation."

Having finished the first disc, she set it down in a new box.

"Well, one down, and...a hundred, give or take a few, to go."

"'The Tree'."

Cerastes ran through a few names on the list, but his brow was still pinched as he ruminated on what he'd just learned. He knew plenty of people who'd have no moral objections to violence; hell, the vast majority of his clientele fell into that category. However, the problem was that all of these people were provoked somehow, and Ana was... not exactly a difficult person, to put it simply. He wondered what she wasn't telling him.

"Odd that they'd resort to violence immediately," he said, carefully laying an assumption for Ana to accept or deny. "'Falling Over Faceplates'. Obviously, my occupation results in me getting to experience a vast majority of - 'Sin'? really, that's a horrible film - characters, but the only ones that would assault someone before asking are... a special breed, and hard to find."

Red eyes flicked to the glass obscuring Ana's face, searching in vain.

"If you think my investigative techniques would even be detected, much less result in retaliation, you are direly underestimating my capabilities, Ana. 'Meteor'."

"Well, to be fair, I was reluctant. Professional confidentiality's important, even if I don't practice anymore."

Faith in Cerastes notwithstanding, this was not a road Ana wanted to go down.

"Don't get me wrong," she said, labeling another disc cover, "I'm sure you'd do fine, it's just that - Sin, really? It was an impulse buy, I'd never seen it before. Toss it - it's just that I don't want to go any deeper into it. You know? I'd like to put the whole thing behind me as quickly as possible, and I definitely don't want another drell liver-shotting me. So while I have plenty of confidence in your ability to dig around without being noticed...it's not you, it's me. Yeah?"

She tried to relax, but the subject had her tense - it was hard to sink into the cushions when the memory of a thorough, terrifying, extremely painful asskicking was fresh in her mind. Particularly since the topic of discussion held the specter of a repeat performance.

"I guess I probably seem a little out-of-date for still using physical holodiscs, huh."

"Mmf."

Cerastes chewed at the inside of his cheek for a moment, looking frustrated (thankfully, Ana couldn't tell). Being told not to investigate something wasn't exactly a commonplace experience for him, and the fact that he absolutely would not know what had happened unless he destroyed the beginnings of a (very strange) friendship was maddening. He was almost antisocial enough to throw it away altogether and prod at her anyways, but the few scraps of social graces he had left forced him to act with restraint.

"Very well, I'll leave it alone until you change your mind," he said with a light chuff. "If you think of anything, however - and a drell, too. Hn."

The only drell he knew was Shirin, who was absolutely capable of waltzing in and beating the ever-living shit out of a blind quarian, but as far as he knew, Shirin had little to no connection to Ana'therion.

Alright, time to stop. He was starting to obsess.

"'Shame for the Wicked'," he read. "I seem to recall this one having a pornographic paro -- ah, you have that edition, too." On that note, he added, "Your friend told me about the 'tango' earlier. It appears to be extremely sexual. 'Racing Leila'."

"I assume so, from the voicing. Uh, the parody's not mine, that must be Daia's. I can't stand porn parodies. Or really any of the industry's retarded efforts to 'improve' on the formula."

This was a pet cause that Ana'Therion had pontificated about more than her fair share of times, and it was very likely that she and Daia would never see eye to eye on the whole "let's put stories and special effects and literally anything other than sex in our porn" thing. There was no reason to deluge Cerastes with it, though, especially since it was kind of a moot point now.

"Ah, Taleeze, right. Just watched vids, I take it?" She stretched an RFID strip over a disc cover and tossed it into the bin. "It's not really a sexual thing - intimate, certainly, and kind of intense, but that's as far as it goes. In person, it's really quite impressive. I learned it from a guy I knew on Omega. Drell, like you. He was a professional, entered a lot of dance competitions at the big clubs like Afterlife, and since he needed a partner for most of them I tended to fill in for him."

She paused, smiling slightly at the Racing Leila case, and set it aside. Perhaps later she'd pop it in and listen to the vid; it'd been a couple years now and Ana couldn't envision it not holding up well.

"It's a good dance. Humans are weird as fuck but every once in a while they pull some good things out. Probably by accident."

"I suppose we're all a little strange."

The drell in particular, after hearing that story. The only other drell Cerastes had met in the past five years was extraordinarily keen on kneeing him in the balls; he wondered how many of their species functioned properly on a social level, because he certainly hadn't encountered any normal drell. Perhaps it was the whole "endangered species" thing that was making them so socially inept.

"In any case, you can claim all you want that the tango is merely intimate, but pressing the length of one's body against another is inherently sexual by my standards, unless you are doing so to pin the other person in combat." Speaking of weirdos... "I have never encountered a dancing drell in all my years on Omega, in any case. Angry, emotionally unstable drell, yes, but not dancing." The thought of a member of his species twirling around on a stage was absurd.

Oh, right.

"'Justice By Numbers', 'Reanimation' - cult horror, hm; ah, and 'An Idiot's Guide to Humanity'."

Ana suspected she was baited into making some kind of comment on the sexual aspect of holding an enemy down in combat. True to her nature (and her professional expertise), she withheld it. She was tired and mentally drained; if Cerastes wanted her to bite, he could languish in his unfulfilled expectations.

...Which, in and of itself, was biting in a way.

"I suppose. I guess I'm just attuned to a different gradient of 'inherently sexual kinds of behavior' than you are. Which I guess also makes sense."

Setting down another labeled holodisc, she wondered about the logistics of drell stability. "Well, I guess we're both well-versed in angry and unstable drell, in light of last month." And in light of ever, but the more of her pre-Illium life that stayed buried, the better. It was almost at the point where she could just pretend it'd never happened. "Although to be fair, I mean...maybe you guys have a totally different conception of normality from everybody else. You're kinda creepy yourself. Creeper."

Her tone softened any oomph in the words - the banter was strictly friendly.

Evidently, Ceraste wasn't interested in any biting; the man shook his head at some inner thought and flipped through a few more of the discs. Dancing had never been his forte, anyways. It all seemed like a waste of time and energy to him - if people wanted to interact and touch each other, the could just skip the middle-man and avoid hours and money spent wiggling around in clubs.

Ah. He was getting lost in his thoughts, and Ana was talking. The drell paused, pupils dilating slightly as he floated back in his subconscious memories of the past few minutes, and caught himself up with the conversation.

"Well, if I am creepy, perhaps it has its advantages. Intimidation is a useful factor in my line of work." So was keeping the torture tools sharp at all times, but Ana didn't need to know about that. It'd probably scare her. "My background has left me without a personal sense of what 'normality' is for drell, but going upon my experiences as an adult, it would appear that 'psychotic, hyper-violent tendencies accentuated by an obsession with extinction' is a species-wide trait."

Another few titles. They were making decent progress on the holovids, but Cerastes had enough presence of mind to understand that Ana'therion was tired; he wondered briefly if his company was wearing on her, or if it had just been the long day that was affecting her so. Maybe some combination of the two.

"I shouldn't be so bitter," he added. "I'll be back to Omega full-time soon enough, which means a return to the assumption that everyone I meet will shoot me if I give them the opportunity. It isn't a phenomenon that demands a grudge; it's just the way it is."

"Nah, I understand."

Pausing for a moment, Ana'Therion took the opportunity to rest her head on the couch cushions. Maybe she'd sneak some nutripaste in a few, that might go a ways towards getting her a little more energy. It'd be good to be awake when Daia got home, after all...especially if Cerastes was still there because then she might have to do some explaining. (Then again, maybe some reciprocity, even if it was based on mistaken assumptions, would be satisfying. Still, Ana banished that thought; it was perhaps overly spiteful and totally uncalled-for.)

"I lived on Omega for two years," she continued. "I get how it goes. Can't say as I approve of much of it, if any, but it was...uh, it was a really fucking bad neighborhood. Mostly got by on virtue of connections, and I guess the minimal security offered by the Blue Suns. Which turned out to be worth all of jack shit."

She would probably hold onto that grudge forever, not that it would actually affect much of anything.

"I don't know why I'm telling you this, you probably know it already. Y'know, being your job and all. But anyway, the point is you don't have to gloss over the more lawless stuff, I'm well acquainted with it."

Slightly better than Cerastes' information might've suggested, in fact.

Two years of living on Omega did grant Ana'therion some credit (as did her association with the Suns), but Cerastes remained relatively nonplussed. He fixed her with a dubious stare as he recited a few more titles, if only so that it would give him some extra time to consider his response. While he was loosely familiar with Ana's background, he wasn't about to let her in on everything he knew.

A throaty rumble sounded off beside Ana. It was almost too low for her to hear - a sound that was felt more than heard - but either way, it was clearly deadpan.

"I am certain that you leapt from rooftop to rooftop, disemboweling those that crossed you and smoking hachix with the glamorous villains of the underworld," he said with a dry chuckle. The drell reached over and, for good measure, gently patted Ana on the shoulder. He could indulge himself by rubbing it in now and then, couldn't he? "Furthermore," he dared, "I never said anything about lawlessness."

Okay, so jamming little pieces of metal into people's eyes and forcing confessions out of them wasn't exactly legal. Nor was spying on the rich, hacking financial records, owning half of the weapons he kept in the Eidolon's armory, associating with pirates and known criminals on a routine basis...

Yeah, on second thought, she totally had a bead on him.

That touched a nerve. Ana was well-versed in repartee, or at least in poker-facing her way it - again, owing to her experience - but she was rather out of practice (particularly today, owing to her situation).

Still, she took the jab with more annoyance than indignation. "Don't patronize me, Cerastes," she said wearily. "I never said I was a total badass, or a half-badass, or even you. I'm just saying, two years on Omega gave me a lot of exposure to the kind of thing that goes on there. You know? You get used to it after a while, get an idea for how to handle yourself, that kind of thing."

There was a momentary pause as she sifted through a couple cases, the tagging process forgotten for now, and then at last the quarian pushed them aside.

"...and don't give me the 'I never said anything about illegal', I know your type."

Despite her state of mind, there was a hint of a smirk in her voice there.