“I’m not sure what to do with you, Garrus.”

Garrus looks up with a start from his pile of gear to find Shepard leaning casually against a row of lockers in the Normandy’s cargo bay. He’d been so engrossed in inventorying his arsenal for Williams he hadn’t even heard Shepard come out of engineering.  

“Sir?”

Shepard eyes him from crest to talons, as though he’s a requisitions manifest that doesn’t match inventory. Despite being reasonably sized for a human – in Garrus’ experience, anyway, which isn’t exactly extensive – Shepard barely comes up to his chin. And yet somehow Garrus feels a lot like a pyjack standing next to a varren that hasn’t decided just how hungry it is.

“Well, you’re part of my crew,” Shepard muses. “But you’re not Alliance. You don’t exactly fit in my watch rotation, or know anything about Alliance protocol. Technically, I don’t have any recognized authority over you at all. If you stole this ship from me and waltzed off to hand it to the Hierarchy, you’d probably get a medal.”

“Also probably start a war.”

Alenko snorts from his spot over by the weapons’ bench, where the pistol he’d been working on now lies completely disassembled.  

Shepard waves a dismissive hand. “That’s someone else’s problem.” But then he pauses, face scrunching up in ways that faces shouldn’t be able to scrunch. “You know, it probably would be my problem, actually.”

Human faces are distressingly expressive, and Garrus hasn’t been around enough of them to really grasp what it all means. “Uh, while I appreciate the…confidence in my ability to mutiny—”

This isn’t coming out right.

“—I don’t actually have any plans to steal your ship.”

“Good. Because while I may not have authority to give you orders, I’m pretty sure the Council did just give me the authority to put you out my airlock if you don’t follow them.”  

Garrus’ mandibles twitch in alarm. It’s a joke…right? Humans like to joke. Surely that’s a universal trait. “I’m very good at calibrating weapons.”

Shepard’s eyebrow raises.

Garrus’ own brow plates shift rather desperately. “You asked what to do with me.”

“Right.” His gaze shifts over to Alenko, who contentedly continues cleaning his pistol. “Any good with mass accelerator cannons?”

“Uh, sure?”

Shepard nods towards the infantry vehicle across the cargo bay. “Then familiarize yourself with the Mako over there. Pretty sure we’re gonna get a lot of use out of it.”

Alenko groans and rolls his eyes – that one Garrus gets – while muttering something about war crimes under his breath.

“Yes, sir,” Garrus says quickly.  

There’s that laser-sharp gaze again. It’s like looking a rail gun in the face. But then Shepard’s face breaks into a grin. “Glad to have you aboard, Garrus.”

“Thank you. Sir.” Should he salute? Was that…appropriate? He’s still thinking about it when Shepard calls out to another human stepping off the elevator by engineering, and jogs away.

Garrus blinks. At the weapons’ bench, Alenko shakes his head and chuckles, like he’d seen whatever just happened a thousand times.

“Can I ask…what that was about? That conversation felt like…”

“A test?”

Garrus’ mandibles flare. “Yes.”

Alenko’s smile has softer edges than Shepard’s. “He’s feeling you out.”

“…Feeling me…out?”

“It’s, ah, a figure of speech. He’s pretty good at reading people, but he likes to test out his impressions with a little verbal sparring.”

“I can’t tell if I passed.”

Alenko’s chuckle becomes a laugh. “That usually means you did. He doesn’t often misread people, but when he does, you’ll know.”

“Why? What happens?”

Alenko shrugs, with an affable smile. “Someone usually get shot.”

~

“Do we have a deal?”

A cold, perilous silence falls over the warehouse, where every one of Helena Blake’s mercs stand with the kind of staged relaxation that just so happens to put their hands right by their sidearms.

You trust her? Alenko had asked during their stomach-turning Mako drop, in which Garrus is certain that Shepard waited until death was imminent before engaging the vertical thrusters to avoid smashing against the freezing cold rocks of Amaranthine. Alenko had been right about the war crimes.

No, but I think she’s a lesser evil I can live with, Shepard had replied.

He’d been so adamant this was a friendly exchange that he’d walked brazenly into the center of her band of mercs, who hadn’t hesitated to close in around them. Garrus clocks twelve of them to Shepard’s squad of four, including a sentry on the upper level.  Alenko hangs close to Shepard’s left flank while Williams takes the right, leaving Garrus to bring up the rear.

Relax. We’re all friends, here.

Except as soon as Blake had started talking, Alenko’s stance had gotten a little more square, even though nothing about Shepard’s posture changed. When the silence hits, Alenko’s hand drifts marginally closer to his pistol.

“You know what?” Shepard asks thoughtfully. “On second thought, you can go fuck yourself.”

Before the ‘fuck’ is even out of his mouth, Alenko’ is in his hand and he’s knocking Shepard off his feet just in time to avoid the bullet coming from the sniper’s nest. Somehow, in the blur of running, shooting and cursing that ensues, Garrus and Alenko wind up crouched behind a shipping container while Williams lays down another round of cover fire and Shepard yanks the sniper out of the rafters with a skein of dark energy.

“So,” Garrus says, catching his breath. “I take it this was a misread?”

“Oh yeah.”

Alenko checks his heat sink before his corona engulfs him in a bloom of dark energy. He actually chuckles before he gets to his feet and re-enters the fray, like this is just another routine patrol through the Presidium.

“Welcome to the squad, Garrus.”

Requested by @mallaidhsomo, inspired by @shotce‘s adorable artwork. 

~

Even when they try to celebrate something these days, it turns into something closer to desperate drinking before the end of the night. Most of the time the desperate drinking goes well into the early morning, and not, Garrus thinks, because everyone is that hell bent on getting drunk. More like they don’t want to let go of each other’s company and go to sleep, where the only company is the nightmare scenarios in everyone’s heads.

Tonight is no different, even though it’s supposed to be. Shepard didn’t want to celebrate his birthday in the first place, but once someone – Garrus’ money is on Traynor – let it slip, the entire ship latched onto it.

Which is why the lounge is currently the busiest place on the ship. Kaidan manhandles Garrus, Joker, James, Dr. Chakwas and Cortez at a rousing game of poker. Liara and Tali giggle – Garrus now has recorded proof that Liara can giggle – on the couch as they explain an Earth romance novel series to Traynor and EDI. Shepard, on the other hand, sits at the bar with hunched shoulders, swirling a shot of whiskey with a scowl. It would be more intimidating if a half-eaten slice of cake wasn’t sitting next to him and a party hat Traynor had fabricated from an omnitool wasn’t hanging around his neck.  

Garrus knows when to quit at poker, so when the hand ends he slides into the seat next to Shepard and pours himself a turian brandy.

“Did Kaidan clean you out?” Shepard asks.

“And then some,” Garrus concurs. His brow plates shift. “You’re not drunk enough yet.”

“No kidding.” He holds up the shot and clinks it against Garrus’ carapace, then kicks it back. Garrus drinks his, pours them both another one, then grabs a napkin and dabs the whiskey that’s now on his carapace.

“So why are you anti-birthday? I thought humans loved commemorating their ages.”

Shepard grimaces. “How fucking old am I, Garrus?”

Garrus blinks. “Shepard, I have no idea. I don’t have your file memorized. Ok, I may have your blood pressure memorized. And your typical heart rate, both in and out of combat. Oh, and after that incident on Korlus I got to learn all about human blood sugar. Specifically yours. But not your age.”

Shepard tilts his head. “What’s my blood pressure?”

“Now, or usually?”

“Usually.”

“One fourteen over seventy-six.”

“Well, shit.”

“Drink your whiskey.”

Shepard does, so Garrus does, and then pours them both another. Shepard’s Cerberus metabolism makes the actual ‘drunk’ part a lot harder than it used to be. Through a lot of trial and error, Garrus learned the key is rapid-fire shots and a can-do attitude. Sometimes the can-do attitude has to come from Garrus.

“Ok, so back to your weird hang up with age,” Garrus says.

Shepard finds an empty bottle of beer and starts picking at the label. From the couch, Traynor utters the phrase “that’s not how a strap on works if you’re going for realism,” and Garrus regrets having ears.

“I should be turning 30,” Shepard says, so quietly Garrus almost misses it trying to tune out Traynor. “Thirty’s a big deal for humans. I guess.” He goes back to swirling his whiskey, holding the shot glass up to his eyeline and examining it closely before kicking it back.  

“Ah,” Garrus says wisely. It isn’t hard for him to get drunk, something he always forgets when he starts matching shots with Shepard. “But then you died.”

“Yeah. So how old am I? Am I thirty? Or am I thirty-two? I missed two fucking years of my life, Garrus. Those years were mine. I wanted them.” He turns his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the poker game going on behind them. Or more likely, the biotic major who is kicking everyone’s ass at the poker game.

“Two years of birthday sex would be a shitty thing to miss out on,” Garrus says with a solemn nod.

That earns him a snicker. “Something like that. I’ll be honest, I feel more robbed of the cuddling than the sex. I mean, don’t get me wrong he’s—”

“Shepard, I am gonna stop you right there, because I am not drunk enough to hear about the intimate details of your sex life and I am positive that all of your crewmates on the couch are now listening to every word you say.”

“We are not,” Tali huffs.

Garrus flicks a mandible.

Shepard shrugs, unconcerned.  “The cuddling is fucking stellar.” He shoots the whiskey, slamming the empty glass back on the table.

“I know. So you’ve said.”

Shepard probably doesn’t realize just how much he’s talked about Alenko’s snuggling superpowers. It took Garrus awhile to figure out how spoons factored into it, but eventually he got there. It was a lot less…weird than he’d been picturing. Humans are so endlessly bendy.

“I just…don’t particularly enjoy celebrating the reminder that I’m never getting those two years back.”

Garrus’ mandibles quiver. “Well, you weren’t supposed to come back at all. Dying is pretty permanent for everyone who’s not you. Why not celebrate the fact that when you stop brooding and Alenko gets tired of taking Vega’s money, you’re going to go back up to your cabin and be the little spoon you were born to be?”

Shepard tilts his head. “You might have a point there.”

“Hang on, the universe just provided me with some rather cosmic timing.” Garrus gets unsteadily to his feet, walks unsteadily to the couch and unsteadily leans Tali forward so he can grab a small parcel he’d stuffed behind the cushion.

“Hey,” Tali protests.

“You’re beautiful and I’ll make that up to you,” he informs her before shuffling back to the bar with the package. He clears his throat loud enough for the poker table to hear. He and Alenko had created a code word for this, but fuck if he remembers what it is. Thankfully, Alenko isn’t nearly as dense as Shepard, and figures it out. He lays his cards on the table, gets to his feet, and heads to the bar, pausing to grab another hidden parcel.

“Happy birthday,” Garrus says, handing him the gift. The packaging is just a zipped duffle bag. Garrus figured that having the idea was more important than figuring out how to make taped paper look special.  

Shepard narrows his eyes. “You got me a birthday present.”

Alenko leans a nonchalant elbow on the bar, beer in hand. Shepard, as predicted, hasn’t noticed his costume change.

“Yeah,” Garrus says. “Because I don’t give a damn how old you are. I’m just glad you’re not dead.”

Shepard unzips the bag and pulls out a hoodie. It’s a pullover, just like the one Kaidan now wears, with the word “little” emblazoned on the front, over the silhouette of a spoon.

Shepard blinks at it, brow knitting in confusion, until he looks up and notices Kaidan wearing its twin. Only his says “Big” over the spoon.

The confusion melts into a grin that crinkles the corners of his eyes. He laughs, and looks back at Garrus. “You are such an asshole.”

Garrus holds up his glass. “I learn from the best.”

Kaidan slips the birthday hat still dangling from Shepard’s neck off so he can put the hoodie on. Garrus half expects both of them to bail for the privacy of Shepard’s cabin to practice what their hoodies preach, but the desire for shared company affects Shepard as much as it affects the rest of them. He abandons the bar and switches to the couch, bringing Kaidan with him. Liara moves over to give them room. When they sit, Kaidan draws Shepard into his arms and traps him close.

“To spooning,” Traynor declares, holding up a glass of wine.

“We should add that to our Forbidden Ops story,” Liara says, sipping her martini.

“Way ahead of you,” Tali says.

Shepard smiles, settling deeper into Kaidan’s arms.

Savior of the Galaxy, and Kaidan Alenko’s little spoon. Garrus shakes his head. He has the weirdest fucking friends.

Ao3

Unlike most of the soirees Garrus has been to lately, the food is actually good. The Citadel’s superior supply lines aside, maybe it’s a good sign that all the times he’s stuffed himself into dress robes to put on a show for diplomats and, as Shepard likes to describe it, ‘bludgeon his way through bureaucracy,’ is actually accomplishing something.

Some days, putting a galaxy back together feels a lot harder than saving it in the first place.

Tonight’s party, thrown by the volus as a welcome mat for what is sure to be three days of grueling negotiations over how to prioritize who gets the new – and extremely limited – soil reclamation technology developed by the salarians, is actually more tolerable than most, if only for the company. The humans tapped Shepard to be the figurehead of their delegation. When Garrus asked him about humanity’s position on who deserved the higher share of devices fine-tuned to isolate and neutralize contaminants left behind by reaper corpses, he’d just laughed.

“Did you even know what this whole conference was about?” Garrus asks, handing him a fresh whiskey and Alenko a beer. The key to these events is to hit the bar hard and fast while the stocks hold out, and right now there is a lot of turian brandy. He’s not getting enough credit for juggling three drinks through a crowd without an incident.

“I think Ambassador Cartwright was trying to explain it to me, but I wasn’t paying attention,” Shepard replies, taking a sip of his drink. The band is loud – most everything at these receptions are a little over the top, as if they can force the galaxy back together if they’re cheerful enough – but the elcor singing backup vocals is surprisingly good.

Alenko snorts, but before he can elaborate on his disdain, another uniformed human puts a hand on Shepard’s arm and asks to speak with him about the keynote address he’s supposed to give in the morning and probably plans to make up as he goes.

Shepard gives Alenko a save me look before allowing himself to be towed to a quieter corner of the Silver Coast Casino, which doesn’t really exist.

“He wasn’t listening because he was thinking about all the ways he could incapacitate the guy,” Alenko says, never one to let a good dig go, even if the recipient is no longer within ear shot.

“Of course he was,” Garrus replies, tugging on his sleeve. He’s not sold the yellow stripes were a good choice, here. “That’s why I’ve learned not to stand near windows around him.”

A puzzled look passes briefly across Alenko’s face before he laughs it off. “Yeah. Exactly.”

Garrus flicks a mandible. Jack had brought up Shepard’s one-size-fits-all tactic of booting uncooperative mercs out skyscraper windows every chance she got on the Normandy. It hadn’t exactly been funny at the time, but then again, nothing was, and when there’s nothing good to laugh at you stretch the boundaries of what’s funny until something qualifies. Dark, maybe, but it had been a running joke for so long it had just become part of Shepard’s zeitgeist. Sure Alenko hadn’t been there, but it’s hard to believe that no one had told him that particular story. Especially Shepard. They talked about everything. As Shepard liked to confess, repeatedly and insistently, when he was drunk.

Hm.

Read the rest on Ao3

Prompt from the Big Place discord server: Write a short fic with the words ‘terror,’ 'ghost,’ and 'haunt.’

Kaidan finds Shepard in the barn in front of Echo’s stall, surrounded by black fabric, wire, scraps of wood, and most worrisome, a can of black paint. A pumpkin sits on a haybale right outside the stall door. Echo sticks her head out the open window, supervising the whole thing.

“Do I even want to know?”

Shepard holds out an arm’s length of fabric, deep in thought. “I had an idea.”

“I can see that. Hence my concern.”

“They’re doing that ghost thing in town next week.” He waves the fabric like a bat. Echo throws her head up and snorts.

“The Halloween parade, yes.”

“I had an idea.”

That much is apparent. Kaidan rubs Echo’s forehead. She promptly uses him as a scratching post. “I am very afraid to ask what that has to do with the horse.”

“Gonna ride her without a head.”

Kaidan parses this for a moment before arriving at the intended interpretation of that sentence. “You want to be the headless horseman.”

“Yup.”

Kaidan looks at the impromptu craft pile, then looks at Echo, who tries to lip at the pumpkin perched just out of reach.

“Doesn’t the headless horseman have a black horse?”

Shepard pauses what he’s doing and examines the very much not black Echo with a critical eye. “Yeah, you might be right about that. Do you think fence paint is safe for horses?”

“No.”

Kaidan picks the can up and puts it away, just to be safe.

“Then I guess in this case, the headless horseman rides a red horse.” Shepard wraps the black fabric around himself with a flourish and waggles an eyebrow. “I need a cape. And a way to hide my head.”

Kaidan rubs his forehead with his fingers. “Unbelievably, my mother has done this before, and might still have the rig somewhere in the hay loft.”

Shepard grins the kind of grin that used to be reserved for the Mako. “Gonna haunt the shit out of that parade.”

Well. The tiny town of Summerland is about to get a face full of Sam Shepard.

Or…something like that.

~

The air is brisk on the 31st, but the skies are clear, and a larger crowd than usual turns out for the occasion, perhaps in no small part because the moment Shepard expressed interest in participating, they made him the grandmaster of the whole thing. 

The parade itself is simple but constructed with love. Locals, several who Kaidan recognizes, put the finishing touches on homemade floats and costumes. More than a few kids who have crept “backstage” to catch a glimpse of their hero wear hand crafted N7 armor.

Shepard sits tall in his saddle, an admittedly impressive black cloak draped around his black breeches. Kaidan wonders if he even noticed that his mother stole it and stitched an N7 on the back. The black shirt he’s got on underneath will be on the floor as soon as Kaidan gets his hands on it, but that’s for later, when they aren’t in the middle of downtown, surrounded by families and kids in costume.

For now, he holds a rein while Shepard makes his final adjustments. 

“Well, how do we look?”

Echo, stomps a bored foot and swishes her tail, ears hanging lazily to the side. The ornate black bridle and hefty black breastplate would look pretty intimidating if not for the clump of grass hanging out of her mouth. Kaidan reaches in to tug it out, and is rewarded with a smudge of green slobber.

“Like a terror of the night.”

“To hell we ride.” Shepard settles the headless rigging over his actual head.

“Can you see anything?”

“It’ll be fine,” he says, voice muffled.

Echo snorts and attempts to root for a carrot in Kaidan’s back pocket.

With Shepard, it sure will be something.

Further down the street, an emcee announces their heralded haunted guest. The agreement had been that Shepard would parade at a brisk trot. Instead, he urges Echo into a gallop with a whoop. Together they streak down the road, a red comet with a black horseman, to the delighted roar of the crowd. 

Prompt in the Big Place discord server: write a scene using the words survivor, cluster, and friend.

Instead of a scene it turned into a 2k fic, whatchagonnado.

In which Kaidan and Kara Pendergrass have a very ace conversation.

~

It’s late morning before Kara stumbles out the screen door, blinking into the sunlight, to find Alenko swaying lazily back and forth in the porch swing. A smile touches his face as the voices of Shepard and Aslany carry up the hill from the barn, followed by the whinny of a horse.

Kara sits heavily on the swing beside him, disrupting his moment of quiet contemplation, but she makes up for it by handing him a coffee thermos. “I threw out Shepard’s shit and made this.”

“Thanks,” Alenko says, flashing her a grin. He smiles a lot more these days. They all do, really. Even Aslany.

Alenko takes a long, grateful sip from the thermos. No matter how much you love a guy like Shepard, you can’t love his coffee.

“Think the real survivors of the reapers were everyone who had to drink his bullshit,” she remarks, pushing her foot off the ground to start the swing again and tucking her leg underneath her.

“Yeah, maybe,” Alenko says with a chuckle. He always indulges her stupid jokes.

They sit in comfortable silence. The wind makes the trees wave. The orchard is a lot…friendlier in the summer. The leaves and the blooms and the sun and the warmth make it feel a lot different than that cold winter where reaper cannibals and husks crept in the woods.

Now there’s just deer.

“Surprised he got her in the barn,” Kara says, nodding down the hill. After that string of terrible nights sleeping on haybales and keeping a sniper’s perch in the loft, staring at the clusters of trees and waiting for nightmares to emerge, Aslany had sworn she’d never come here again. But here they are.

“You know Shepard,” Alenko says, lost in thought now. “He’s hard to say no to.”

“She trusts him.”

Alenko gives her the look he gives when he’s putting some pieces together she’s not gonna like. “She trusts you, too.”

Kara shakes her head and draws her feet up onto the swing, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees. “But she doesn’t think she has to protect him. Me? She has to protect me.”

“We all protect each other. Always have.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just…different with her.” She scowls in frustration. She’s never been good at explaining things. “I can’t take care of her the way she takes care of me. It’s not just a squad thing.”

“Kara, we haven’t been ‘just squad’ in a very long time. Any of us.”

She snerks. “You mean since you started getting naked with one of the squad?”

A flush creeps up the back of his neck. It’s so easy to poke at him sometimes she can’t help herself. “You know what I mean.”

She does, sometimes. But other times…she doesn’t get it at all. She spends about as much time with Aslany as Alenko does with Shepard. If she didn’t have Aslany to spend all her time with and talk her ear off over bad Chinese food that Aslany loves for some reason, she probably wouldn’t spend her time with anyone.

And living alone sounds…well, she’d rather not think about living alone. Too many monsters in her head. Aslany’s, too, based on some of the nights they’ve spent sitting in front of the holoscreen at three in the morning, watching one of Shepard’s stupid B movies and not talking about what happens when they fall asleep.  

Friend doesn’t feel like the right word, which is why she’s always fallen back on squad. But they have no orders to follow anymore, and the only fighting they do these days are chicken fights in the lake. She’s never had a sister, and Aslany shuts down whenever the word ‘sister’ gets thrown around, so that one’s out.

They’ve never fucked. It’s never come up. But it didn’t come up for Shepard and Alenko for a long time before they finally did, and despite all the details Beaudoin shared on the ‘Yang, she doesn’t actually understand how these things work.

She blows a puff of air out the side of her mouth. “When did you know you wanted to fuck him?”

Alenko chokes on his coffee. She pats him patiently on the back until he stops.

Keep reading

Prompt from the Big Place discord server: Create a ficlet using the words monstrous, complain, and cream.

~

Kaidan arches an eyebrow. It’s his right eyebrow. The one Shepard has declared to be especially judgmental.

“What you’re doing to that pie right now is monstrous.”

Summer day. Gorgeous weather, to the point Shepard even has yet to complain about a bug. A picnic on the picnic table behind the house, complete with a homemade pie straight from Alma’s kitchen. With cherries that Kaidan had picked – himself – just yesterday.

Shepard meets his gaze. The wounded look is a farce. The gleam of delightful spite in his eyes is impossible to hide.

“You give me pie, then complain how I eat it.”

“Monstrous.”

Shepard casually reaches for the can of whipped cream – Kaidan was sure that he’d thrown out the last can, this is a new can of heresy – and sprays another glob without breaking eye contact. Then he takes an oversized bite and shoves it in his mouth, chewing theatrically.

“Delicious.”

“This is farm country. We eat real cream out here.” Kaidan gestures around him, as though a cow might magically appear and help him make his point.

Shepard continues chewing. Emphatically. Then swirls his fork in another puff of betrayal and licks it off the tines, eyebrow waggling. Kaidan gives him a pained look.   

“You know that’s hardly better than just putting shaving cream on it, right? It’s on par with putting ketchup on spaghetti. Even you wouldn’t stoop that low.”

Shepard cocks his head. “Only because I never had the idea.”

“Why do you do this to me?”

“Because the face you make is worth the whipped cream that’s about to be all over my face.”

Kaidan eyes the can in the center of the table. Shepard grins.

Kaidan lunges.

One day, Shepard will be quick enough to stop him. In the meantime he opts for running, laughter high and melodious, as Kaidan gives chase. Once he’s in range, Kaidan tackles him to the ground and lays his thumb on the sprayer, not letting up until the can is empty.

“See?” Shepard says through white lips, blinking gobs out of his eyelashes. “Worth it.”

Kaidan kisses him. Fuck, that fake whipped cream is a crime.

“Yeah,” Kaidan says with a grin. “Worth it.”

@katerinaalianovamindin asked about Kaidan’s response to Sam’s Lazarus scarring. So I wrote a thing, loosely inspired by this stunning art of Daggertongue’s Amara Shepard.

~

“It’s like starlight,” Kaidan says, running gentle fingers down the scars crosshatching Shepard’s ribs. In the dark of his cabin, they gleam with pale light.  

Shepard scoffs. “Hardly. Lawson said it was a side effect of the biosynthetic fusion.”

“Fusion, huh. What do you think makes stars shine?”

“If you give me a lecture about physics and nuclear fusion, I’ll dunk your head in the fish tank.”

Kaidan cranes his neck to look over at the tank, where a jellyfish bobs in the corner and a sunfish darts through some seaweed. “You really think you could fit my head in that gap.”

“We could find out.”

“I think you’re trying to distract me from complimenting your starlight.”

“That’s because it’s not starlight. I’m more like Frankenstein’s night light.”

Kaidan lays his head on Shepard’s chest, fingers resuming their exploration. The scarring runs down most of Shepard’s left side. Ribs. Thigh. Hidden against the sheets, there’s a small rift across his right scapula, too, like a constellation etched right into his skin.

“It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

Shepard shrugs the shoulder not trapped under Kaidan’s head. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I just…”

Kaidan waits for him to put his thoughts together, prodding gently when he gets too stuck in his head to actually get them out.

“Just what?”

“They aren’t mine,” he says finally. “They’re Cerberus’ scars. I didn’t get a say in it. The old me didn’t cut it, so they had to cook up something better in a lab. You think I’m joking but Frankenstein’s monster isn’t that far-fetched.”

“The new you is still the old you. And Cerberus thought you were so instrumental to the survival of humanity that they performed an actual act of god to bring you back.”

“Never believed in god.”

“No. You believe in the stars. You were born in them. Hell, you were born in the very star I used to look at through a telescope when I was a kid.”

“Died in them, too.”

“You are really hard to compliment sometimes, you know that?”

Shepard huffs. “Sorry. This past year…really sucked.”

“I know,” Kaidan says quietly, trying not to think about the last three. But those two years will never exist for Shepard, and right now, pointing that out will only hurt them both.     

Instead, Kaidan traces the fractured skin along Shepard’s cheek with his lips. “The creation of stars is violent, destructive, even terrible,” he murmurs between kisses. “But that doesn’t make the star itself any less beautiful.”

Shepard gazes at him, running tender fingers in Kaidan’s hair. “How do you do that? How do you always find the good in something?”

Because it’s you.

“All the years I’ve known you, I’ve always seen this.” Kaidan caresses the gleam over Shepard’s ribs with feather-light fingers. Shepard jumps – Cerberus didn’t change the spots where he’s ticklish – and then tugs Kaidan closer to him. “You’ve always been a star in the sky I thought I could never reach. But then you chose me. And after I lost you…you came back to me.”

“Your very own glowstick,” Shepard says, lopsided smile on his face.

Kaidan swirls the gravity well. Shepard’s biotic field hums in response. “You’ve always been a glowstick. Brighter than anything Cerberus could ever do to you.”

Shepard’s corona kindles, like a swish of silk under Kaidan’s skin. “Yeah, but I can turn that off. These?” He cups the marks on his own chin with his fingers. “Not so much.”

“Just means I can find you whenever you get lost in the dark.” Kaidan wraps an arm around Shepard and buries his nose against his neck. “You’re no one’s monster. You’re mine. And I love you.”

Shepard exhales, content. “There are perks to resurrection, I guess. Like getting to hear you say that again.”

“I love you,” Kaidan repeats.

“Mmmm.”

“You do make a good nightlight, though.”

Shepard snickers and rolls them over, pinning Kaidan to the mattress. Kaidan gazes up at him, reveling in the whisper of his biotic field.

You have no idea how beautiful you are, Kaidan thinks. You never have.  

He strokes Shepards cheek, where the light breaks through. “I don’t care what made you. Cerberus. God. The fusion of stars. You’re here. In my arms. To hell with the rest.”

“The way you say it almost makes me believe it.”  

Kaidan pulls Shepard down to him and whispers in his ear. “C’mere and I’ll prove it.”

Shepard sighs against him, warm, solid, real, with a heart beating strong and steady under Kaidan’s palm.  Mine, Kaidan thinks. The light and the dark, the broken and beautiful. He wants all of it, wherever it leads.

He strokes the scars that Cerberus gave them with reverent fingers, and Shepard arcs into the touch.     

In response to the question, “How does your character deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?” from The Big Place discord server.

~

“Boss, what the hell are you doing?”

Shepard looks up halfway through an awkward squat against the front rail of the treadmill, face contorted in a grimace that Kara has to stuff a fist in her mouth to keep from laughing at.

“Itch,” he replies, grimacing even harder and twisting his spine to get a different angle.

“So you’re trying to scratch it with a smooth pole.”

“I can’t reach it,” he grumps.

She tilts her head, tapping a finger on her chin. “What if we stuck one of those scrubby things they use to clean the converter thingamajig? You know, the thing with the spiky bits that are pokey but not too pokey?”

“You’re an engineer, right? You know what the thingamajig is, right?”

“I’m an explosives engineer.” She mimics an explosion with her fingers.

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“Do you want me to get the scrubby thing or not?”

“Yes, get the scrubby thing. I’m dying.”

Ten minutes later she’s retaping the scrubby thing to the pole, using a stronger adhesive this time so it doesn’t fall off the moment he starts going to town on it, when Alenko walks in, towel thrown over his shoulder. He come to an abrupt halt at sight of the two of them crouched in front of the treadmill.

“Put it up a little higher.”

“What, can’t squat that low?”

“Of course I can squat that low, doesn’t mean I want to.”

“I thought pain let you know you weren’t dead yet.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Alenko asks.

“He has an itch,” Kara replies.

Alenko stares at Kara. Stares at Shepard. Then exhales wearily and holds out a hand to pull Shepard to his feet. Without a word, he whirls him around and starts raking his fingernails up and down Shepard’s spine.

“Fuck,” Shepard sighs, shoulders slumping in relief. He wiggles his back around to move Alenko’s fingers to the right spot, groaning like something out of a porno.

When the itch is finally sated, Alenko resumes his course towards the training mat and starts his  warm ups. Both Shepard and Kara watch him, pensively.

“Why didn’t we think of that?” Kara asks.

“I mean, a custom back scratcher is still a good idea.”

“Right? Oooooooh. Hang on. I have an idea.”

“You thinking Stabby?”

“Definitely. I’ll go get ‘im.”