Work Text:
BEEP BEEP BEEP
BEEP BEEP BEEP
BEEP BEEP BEEP
"I'm fuckin' getting it, I'm getting it," Frankie groaned as she reached to hit the snooze button on an alarm clock that was not there. Instead, her hand collided with the aluminum handle of a shovel. "Hm, what the fuck?" she murmured sleepily.
"Oh, sorry, that's mine," a distinctly turian voice mumbled in her ear, warm breath blowing unruly wisps of her short hair so that they tickled against her skin.
Frankie smiled and wiped a bit of unsightly drool from her mouth.
Oh, yeah.
Dark Star Lounge was way more fun when she was on her own, she had to admit. Wearing civvies (purchased during her extended shopping trip earlier that day) definitely helped, dancing in all that armor just didn't have the same charm.
Granted, she still wasn't a good dancer without the armor on, but Frankie didn't give a rip about being good at it. She just wanted to get ripped and dance the night away. Especially after that whole embarrassing affair with Massani carrying her halfway through Zakera Ward over his shoulder like she was a very angry sack of potatoes.
Anyways, she'd already gotten halfway to her goal of getting hammered and dancing like no one was watching, the bartender had kept her supplied with some asari cocktail that tasted a little to the left of pomegranate and lime ... no lemon, but kicked like a particularly stubborn mule. Now, she just needed to find someone to start dancing with.
"The usual, please," a newly familiar, and quite relaxed voice made its drink order over the din of the pulsing dance music.
Huh, maybe there was a god, and they only answered this specific kind of prayer.
Frankie shifted, leaning her forearm against the bar and turning to catch an eyeful of the groundskeeper she'd met while running hither and yon chasing the high of spending The Illusive Man's money on dumb bullshit. He was a barefaced turian with chalky white face plates, his crest was a little darker, more of a gray appearance. "Holy shit, it's you! The gardener from earlier!" Frankie enthused, pointing at him.
The gardener's focus drew lazily over to her, his dark eyes widening in recognition. His mandibles relaxed, folding out as he offered a genuine smile. "And it's you the ... uh ... woman from earlier, who asked about the fish," he responded but seemed unsure of himself. "You're a female, right? You've got those funny bumps. Like an asari." His eyes had drifted down to her chest, which in her current outfit was far more exposed than when she first met him, only he seemed disappointingly unaffected by the appearance of her cleavage.
Frankie's hand flew to her mouth to prevent the sip of her drink she'd just taken from spraying all over the poor man as she laughed. "Yes, I'm a woman. And they're fucking called boobs, or breasts if you want to be technical, tits if you want to be crass. I prefer tits." She stuck her dry hand out for the turian to shake. "Name's Frankie."
The turian groundskeeper took her hand with a firm, but gentle, grip. "Milon."
Frankie shifted, rolling from her belly until she was facing her bed-mate. Well... it wasn't really a bed they were laying on. It was more of a nest built on the floor of a glorified garden shed using cargo blankets for cushion and warmth.
She didn't mind. Frankie had woken up in worse places than a well organized storage building. At least she remembered how she got here.
Milon fiddled with his omni-tool, squinting at the too bright light as he turned off his alarm.
"You know, I'm still not convinced that you don't just live here and the lounge," Frankie teased and tapped the flat bridge of his nose.
The turian chuckled. "I tried to take you back to my place, but you insisted on "learning" about what a horticulturist does."
"Ha." Frankie grinned. "Yeah, I can be pretty insistent."
"Yeah, I'll say."
An hour and two more drinks had somehow passed by and Frankie and Milon were still talking. First about their favorite alcoholic beverages (Milon like quarian booze, said it was incredibly strong, making Frankie very jealous that she didn't have any, or couldn't have any, anyways.) And they'd already compared pictures of their favorite flowers (with Frankie obstinately declaring that buttercups were far superior in every way la-la-la she wasn't listening to any arguments otherwise.)
"Okay, okay, there's something I've always wondered," Frankie began as she stirred her drink with a tiny, red straw.
"What's that?" Milon asked, raising his drink to his mouth.
"So, when the plants are blooming and all that pollen's in the air, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Are we just walking around, getting coated in tree cum?"
Milon sputtered and choked. Frankie slammed her open palm against his back as he fought valiantly to clear his throat. "Why would you think that?" he finally managed to ask his disbelieving question through confused laughter.
Frankie's mouth settled into a devilish grin as she finished off her drink, sucking it up through that ridiculous little straw. "What? It's how trees propagate, isn't it? It's a perfectly natural question!" She was shit a feigning innocence. She also wasn't trying very hard.
"No it isn't!" Milon rubbed his forehead and sighed. "I'm never going to be able to get that out of my head now," he complained.
Frankie gave him a spirited nudge with her elbow, nodding towards the dance floor. "I know how to take your mind off it. Let's dance!"
He shook his head rapidly back and forth, horrified. "Oh, no. No. First of all, turians don't dance. Second of all, you have those funny bumps-"
"Tits."
"Funny bumps," he continued stubbornly, "that get in the way."
"Two things," she started and raised a finger. "One: Don't lie right to my face, there's turians dancing right over there. And two: My tits do not get in the way, I'll prove it."
Milon's attempt at dissent was silenced as Frankie grabbed his arm and mercilessly pulled him to the dance floor.
As nice as it was waking up with her memories intact and after a night of fun, Shepard really needed to get back to the ship. She was probably late for something or other, no doubt Lawson would be waiting for her in the docking terminal tapping her perfectly shined boots on the deck.
Eh, maybe she would take her time getting ready to go.
Now, where had her pants run off to?
Frankie scanned the area, assessing the damage (a shattered terracotta pot on the ground, a bucket full of handheld gardening tools spilled all over a workbench) and - oh! There they were! Black leather pants hung inside out off the prongs of a very large rake there in the corner, or she thought that was them. It was quite dark in there.
She stood up to go stumble after her clothes and tripped in the tangle of blankets and spurred legs still on the ground. "Shit!" she shouted and managed to catch herself on the workbench before she went ass-over-elbow to the ground. "Mind if I get the light?"
"Be my guest, switch is over there," he pointed toward the door, at a panel she could only barely make out in the dark. "Watch for shards of that pot, I think we swept all of the pieces up into that corner, but I would hate for you to get cut up."
"Aw, thanks," Frankie cooed as she navigated over to the far wall. Blindly she reached out until her fingers brushed over the light switch. "One, two, three, let there be light!" she crowed as she hit the switch, leaving absolutely no time for anyone to prepare for the sudden bright.
Milon threw his arm over his eyes. "You're bad at giving warnings."
"Pretty good at other stuff, though," she countered. Frankie plucked her pants off of the rake, careful not to tear them with the prongs. "And I have a rockin' bod to boot, so it balances out," she added, wiggling her eyebrows up and down suggestively.
"Oh, so you're like this sober?" he teased.
Frankie snorted, "All day, every day, babe. It grows on you." She kicked the corner of a blanket over and looked around the floor. "I'm pretty sure I was wearing underwear last night. Do you remember what happened to them?"
Milon sat up and pointed sheepishly towards the workbench, where her boots lay discarded on the ground. "You stuck them in your shoe so you wouldn't forget about them."
Score one for drunk Frankie. That was brilliant of her.
"Thanks," she said and retrieved the article from deep within the boot. She'd really crammed them in there. "You know, usually my morning afters are embarrassing." Mostly because she dreaded waking up next to a stranger (but thoroughly enjoyed having sex with them on occasion,) and she made it a point to scurry away before waking up in a stranger's bed was ever even a risk.
Milon yawned, stretching his arms high above his head. "And this morning after?"
Looking up from her struggle to get into her underpants, Frankie shrugged and said, "Genuinely pleasant, relaxing?" Unhurried, despite the need to get back to her ship before the crew called a manhunt, having assumed that she'd gone AWOL or something.
"And the night before the morning after?"
The workbench collided with her ass, no, the other way around. And as she splayed her hands behind her to steady herself, she knocked over a plastic bucket full of trowels and those little hand-sized garden claws that she didn't know the name of. Mini-rakes or whatever. "Oops," she muttered, but quickly lost interest in the tools or apologizing for making mess in favor of putting her lips back on that turian gardener's strong, muscular neck.
Milon didn't even bother chastising her. He was busy with his own exploration. The way he touched her was different, but not bad, like at all. He ignored her boobs entirely, like he forgot they were there (a shame really, she would be the first to tell you that she had awesome tits.) But she'd gladly trade the clumsy drunken pawing at her chest that she was used to for the way he traced the lines of her neck and the muscles on her arms any fucking day.
And when the clothes finally came off?
Well, that patience (maddening) and that competence (also maddening) carried over to arenas that had nothing to do with gardening and everything to do with giving a woman who wouldn't shut up something good to scream about. (And it only took a little bit of directing on the front end. He was a quick study.)
Frankie couldn't quite remember when the pot fell over and shattered on the ground, probably around the time her knees were almost up around her ears. She definitely couldn't remember the last time someone had folder her up like an accordion like that.
Fucking worth whatever cramps she was going to have from her little tabletop gymnastics venture when she woke up in the morning.
Frankie offered him a wolfish grin. "Now who's looking for an ego boost?" she accused. She made the world's slowest effort to get her pants back on. "You performed with gusto and I don't regret it," she assured him cheekily.
"Oh good, I wouldn't want to be an embarrassment."
"Not even close."
The pair of them finished getting redressed, and Frankie even helped Milon clean up. Once the cargo blankets where folded up and stashed back on a high shelf, the pot shards deposited in a waste bin, and the hand tools (Milon helpfully informed her that the rake thingy was called a cultivator) put away, Frankie leaned in and gave him a little peck on the cheek. "It's been fun but I've got to go. I'll send you pics of cool plants if I see any."
"I'll hold you to it. I hear they've got beautiful flowers on Illium, since you're going that way." His eyes lit up at the prospect of exotic, non-native plant species,and he pulled up his omni-tool interface so he could add Frankie as a contact.
As Shepard left the storage shed, she called back, "Let's go dancing again soon!"
"Can we just do lunch instead?" Milon pleaded with her.
"We'll see!"
She would get him to go dancing again or her name wasn't Francine Frankie Lydia Shepard.