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“Well,” Zaeed drawled above the hum of the cargo hold. “Don’t go around telling everybody.”
Shepard stared up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. The weathered mercenary had placed a hand-knit scarf into her arms when she arrived that day to chat, draping it across her forearms with a litany of obscenities that were as skillful as his handsome stockinette stitches. “This is beautiful,” she said with a soft exhale. She clutched the soft grey wool against her chest.
He shrugged, and then placed his hands on his hips. “My mum taught me. Figure it’s almost Christmas, and who knows when a shot will finally take me out.”
“…It’s only June, Zaeed.”
“Yeah, near enough. That a goddamn problem?”
Shepard chuckled, and then smiled as he showed her how to wear it properly. Zaeed’s accent was thicker when he was nervous, and he stood in front of her with a roughly stiff posture to hide his growing embarrassment. “You’ve got to tie the thing just so, or it falls apart,” he muttered. His hands worked quickly, wrapping her neck and shoulders very carefully with his handiwork.
“Will you teach me how to do this?” she asked him when he finished.
Zaeed hesitated for a moment, and then he crossed his arms with a faint smirk.
Kelly Chambers stood by her console a few weeks later, bored as she listened to Patel and Jackson argue on the bridge about the Citadel Consort’s extravagant fees and impressive hips with shrill voices floating throughout the CIC. She exhaled with a puff of air aimed at her forehead, idly attempting to watch her own short hair move, and then turned around to fully monitor the command deck that hummed with voices and the hushed sounds of the engines below. “Doctor Solus?” she asked, stunned when the resident salarian scientist exited the elevator nearby.
Mordin nodded at her, and tried to smile through an excess of purl stitches. “Yeoman Chambers,” he offered, polite and muffled. His armor and the entirety of his chin were hidden under the tumbling wool of a lumpy red sweater that had been knit by an obvious novice. He picked at dropped stitches with his fingers as he approached her, narrowing his eyes whenever he found a new one. “Need something?”
Kelly furrowed her eyebrows and smiled, trying to make her expression exaggerated and her voice easy to read for the alien. “Why are you wearing that?” she asked.
Mordin continued to pick, shifting his body and sinking further into the massive sweater that enveloped him. Fabric gathered at the top of his boots. “Gift from Shepard,” he said brightly, still muffled. He held out his arms to her and they were covered in knit snowflakes. “Human holiday! Not actually aware of any occurring this week.”
“Oh. Well, there aren’t,” Kelly said simply, losing her practiced expression of interest, and then she turned back to her console. “Shepard didn’t make me a sweater,” she whispered to herself despondently.
Mordin picked, watching her. He later made his way down to the engine room where Zaeed and Shepard sat on the floor in drifting piles of yarn as they knitted.
“Christ, Solus,” Zaeed said, shaking his head. “You’re wearing the damn thing inside out again.”
“Would like to make something,” he informed the pair. He sat down next to Shepard on the floor and picked up a few needles, beginning to work immediately, and then he gave Kelly a cable knit scarf the very next day.
Kelly draped it around her neck with a bright smile, elated at the gift for a holiday neither she nor Mordin were terribly certain of. Her expression was more genuine than he had ever seen before, and so Mordin began to tell people about humans and their fondness for dallying with ancient crafts; his words transforming into scuttlebutt and gossip until the clandestine knitting club in the cargo hold began to grow ever so slowly.
Zaeed glared up at Jack when she hesitated in the doorway, watching the group silently. “Come on,” he told her, waving her inside. “Just sit down and don’t argue.”
“Fine,” Jack said, leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed. “I’m gonna make a cute bikini.”
A crowd of crew members eventually surrounded Zaeed and Shepard in the evenings, each one working on their own project. People collaborated, or worked alone, or just sat; always chatting and offering assistance to one another in a space that was suddenly quite crowded with voices and companionship beneath the usual hum of cold machinery.
“I am so terrible at this,” Tali said, her fingers tangled in wool as she sat by the surveillance monitors.
Yarn was draped against Garrus’ mandibles and filled his cowl. “That makes two of us,” he replied, patting her shoulder.
Zaeed glanced over to Shepard. “Should’ve known you’d tell everybody.”
She continued to knit steadily and with uneven stitches that held together loosely, her neck still draped in the perfect scarf he had given her. “All I did was make a few sweaters,” she insisted innocently.
“Yeah, and look what happened. Never should’ve taught you a damn thing.”
“You like it.”
“I do not.”
Grunt had a red hat on his head and he stood up suddenly, silencing everyone in the small room with an abrupt roar. “I have made a hat,” he informed the group solemnly. “It is my hat, and it is the color of blood and victory.” The krogan sat back down with a loud thud, and purl stitches fell over his face. He grinned, because the hat was far too big and it was still only August on a planet he had never even been to. Zaeed shook his head, stifling a chuckle that threatened to rumble throughout his chest, and almost smiled.
The Normandy SR-2 careened through space, draped in stitches and friendship.