Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

A week after Aethyta and Dr. Chakwas cracked the cure for indoctrination, Kaidan began reading Shepard Fifth Business.

“Is it going to be strange, reading these books out of order like this?” Shepard leaned his head back on the pillow, eyes tracking Kaidan’s tread as the other man tidied up the little hospital room and grabbed the data-pad from the couch.

“If I remember right,” Kaidan chuckled, smoothing the blanket over Shepard’s feet before taking his usual seat in the plush chair he had dragged right to the head of Shepard’s bed. “You were the one who wanted me to read you the last book in the trilogy without reading either of the other two.”

“You know me,” Shepard grinned. “Always jumping into the middle of things.”

“I’ve got some experience with your gift for timing, that’s for sure.”

The therapy Dr. Chakwas and her team had developed involved treatment every other day, usually after Shepard’s daily PT—Chakwas had even joked that some physical exhaustion could help the process along. That had made Shepard grin and Kaidan roll his eyes: Ben had already been pushing too hard when the physical therapist wasn’t watching.

“There’s a lot of life to live,” Shepard bit his lip, smoothing his fingers over the hospital linens: hardcoding. “I like coming in at the right moment.”

Kaidan unbuttoned the top-most button of his shirt and settled in.

“To answer your question, I think you’ll be fine.” He looked up and noticed Ben’s bright smile, returned it in kind. “Uhh, heh.” He scooched the chair a few inches closer to the bed. “They all stand alone. I think so, anyway.”

“So there isn’t one continuing story?”

“Well,” Kaidan shrugged. “There is, I guess. And some of the characters carry over.”

The gene-therapy involved in ridding Shepard’s mind of the last traces of indoctrination would take a year or two to complete its work. But, Chakwas had assured him that after a few months he would likely be free of symptoms, and the remaining genetic modifications would essentially be repairing the deepest damage. Meanwhile, the sonic therapy Chakwas’ team had developed gave Shepard just over 48 hours free of symptoms.

“So you remember Dunstan Ramsey?” Kaidan asked. “The older character from World of Wonders?”

“Old man. False leg. Writes about saints.” Shepard nodded.

“Good memory,” Kaidan smirked. “This book is all narrated by him. It starts when he’s just a child and talks about how he started getting interested in saints and stuff. Talks about how he fought in the war. Met the magician. Developed his little rivalry with his childhood friend.”

“Okay then,” Shepard narrowed his eyes. “So a lot like World of Wonders? But with Dunstan’s life-story, not Magnus’?”

“Yeah,” Kaidan scratched the back of his neck. “Well, all three books are a different person’s life-story, yeah. But they’ve each kinda got… y’know, a different flavor.”

According to Miranda, only about two dozen hospitals across the galaxy were still able to host the sort of equipment required to administer the indoctrination cure. The Reapers had, for the most part, only indoctrinated those in high profile positions: politicians, ambassadors, celebrities, community leaders. While many such leaders had been very apparently indoctrinated in the eyes of their people, many were more subtle agents for the Reapers, and the horrific symptoms they suffered once the Reapers were destroyed were largely covered up by those invested in maintaining their legacy. Trying to get an accounting of exactly how many eminent figures in the galactic community needed treatment had been difficult.

“Are all the characters in all three books?” Shepard quirked an eyebrow.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Kaidan touched the data-pad, displaying the first chapter of Fifth Business.

“Just the same story from another angle, then?”

“Not exactly, there’s not a lot of overlap. And by the end of each book, we move a little further ahead in time.”

Shepard thought for a moment, then shrugged.

“I guess I’ll figure it out as we go. Go ahead.” He settled back into the bed and closed his eyes. Kaidan watched him relax for a lingering moment, then began to read.

When Shepard had been brought into the hospital’s imaging center for the first round of treatment, the air had been electric with the mingled anxiousness and anxiety of the doctors—more than a dozen packed into the room. Genius salarian geneticists, an asari neurotherapy specialist or two, a few volus imaging experts: only Doctor Chakwas, keeping a tight rein on her team’s fretfulness, kept the room calm as Shepard had slipped into the modified deep-imaging scanner. Before the process began, Kaidan had leaned in and stroked Shepard’s face, kissed him on the lips.

Only a few pages into Fifth Business and Shepard stopped Kaidan’s narrative.

“Wait, this is the story of Magnus’ mother!”

“Well, yeah,” Kaidan blinked. “They mention this scene in later books.”

“So it’s his story then? Magnus?”

“No, not completely. I mean, yes, it is. But no more than it’s Dunstan’s.” Kaidan laughed, “I guess I always viewed it as Dunstan’s story, even though he’s barely in the other two books.”

“You read this one first though, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Kaidan scratched at his chin. “Guess it got my perspective skewed.”

“I guess that’s what I get for jumping into the middle of the story, isn’t it?” Shepard stroked the soft hairs on the back of Kaidan’s forearm, leaned on his bed. “Especially when it’s all told after the fact, on top of everything.”

“This whole story is told after the fact, most of the next book too. So is World of Wonders, like you saw. So I guess there’s some room for interpretation.” Kaidan laughed.

Seeing Kaidan laugh made Shepard laugh.

Chakwas’ team had cheered yesterday when, days after starting treatment, Shepard had reported a phenomenal decrease in his attacks. Kaidan had even voiced his surprise at the speed with which Shepard was taking to the treatment—having seen him almost every moment of his hospitalization, Miranda had warned him that noticing results would be most difficult for him, being so close to the gradual change. As much as the doctors warned Shepard, they warned Kaidan: there would be good days and bad days. First they had told him that he should not become discouraged by bad days. Then they warned that he shouldn’t get his hopes too high when Shepard did better than any of the estimates had predicted. ‘Shepard’s was always a story of bucking the odds’ they had said, both times—even those that knew how Shepard had clawed his way through his physical therapy, learning to walk again, organs learning to perform their functions again.

They spoke of him in the past tense, as if his story ended on the Citadel in the explosion that rid the galaxy of the Reapers. As if they couldn’t believe he was really on their operating table, healing his mind of the last vestiges of the Illusive Man and Harbinger. In private, Miranda confided that she and Jacob Taylor had taken a while to remember to discuss Shepard in the present tense for several days when they first came aboard the SR-2.  Like a figure in a story-book they already knew the ending too: valiant Shepard, surrounded by loyal friends, doing what he believed in. Gone.

“I’m sorry to make you read it out of order,” Shepard beamed, “But I guess, the position we were in, needed to skip to the end of the story if I wanted to be sure I’d see it at all.” He squeezed Kaidan’s hand. “I don’t mind starting off at beginning again at all.”

Kaidan winked, dark eyes shining.

“It’ll all come back around, don’t worry.”

++

It was like a rumbling that was coming from within the plates of his skull, deep and extreme.

The sound was like water in the ears, the pressure of sinking deeper into the ocean serving as a hum against which you could hear your heart beat and any muffled clacks made under the waves. The particular frequency, properly applied, disrupted the pathways laid by the Reaper indoctrination field.

Shepard lay with his head inside the modified imaging alcove, and yet he was also on the Citadel. Exploring the Wards in armor with Kaidan and Ashley behind him, the piercing fullness of the Prothean beacon still pushing out from the inside of his mind.

There was grass under his feet—rushes on the shore—no, the floor of the Citadel Council Chamber’s Atrium. Saren loomed above him, a Brute before the universe had a name for them. Sovereign’s voice pouring into his mind, whispers crowding around the Prothean data like salt in a wound. No, not in the atrium after all—a park in Vancouver. Kaidan’s city. On his weekly release to walk the park he could normally only see from his house-arrest apartment. The boy he sometimes saw playing down here wasn’t here today. There had been mutterings in the hall when the guard replaced James, rumors that Shepard had been resurrected from the dead and brainwashed as a Cerberus sleeper agent, all of it Shepard heard with his improved hearing…

Cries in the distance he could just barely hear… There was water swirling around his legs. Up to his waist in the Mediterranean, a shirtless boy on the shore yelling at him “I can’t swim! Wait! Come back! Stop staying under for so long, how long can you hold your breath?!” But no, the water was freezing, this wasn’t the Mediterranean… it was Despoina. Leviathan enthrallment pressing against him, addicting him to control with a simple first command: “Breathe.” Warmth again: he was soaking in a hot tub, Kaidan’s eyes golden in the blue light.

He couldn’t breathe. Stars shining without the intermediary glimmer of atmosphere, he was standing on a curtain of stars. No, floating, drifting without air. That wasn’t right either, his feet were planted, the stars were outside the window. The Catalyst was at his side. The Catalyst was in his mind. It found his wobbling legs and pushed him to rise, pushed him to choose… He found his balance, the galaxy of stars out the window, Kaidan’s reflection on the glass. “People dancing in the streets, hugging and crying!”

Tears ran from his eyes. No, they were drops of rain, watching Kaidan rush to him as he stumbled out of his diving mech. Bright lights in real tears, his body pushing against the feeling of the Illusive Man’s hand wrapped around his mind. The lights of the Citadel—the Citadel again!—framing Anderson, making the dark blood seeping from his stomach crimson. Bright light at his back, now. Kaidan’s face glowing, every fleck of blood on his face black. “I love you, too.”

And the machine thrummed, then stopped.

When the sliding bed on the imager carried him out of the enclosed tube, there was Kaidan, sitting at his side, reading on a data-pad. He grinned and helped Shepard sit up.

“You look paler than usual, Ben. Same images as last time?” Kaidan helped him back down to his room. Shepard was silent the whole time. “I thought the process wasn’t supposed to have any… adverse side-effects…” Kaidan said cautiously, once he’d helped Shepard back into bed.

“I don’t think it does,” Shepard smiled, still deep in thought. “It wasn’t bad, wasn’t very different than it usually is.”

“You just seem quieter than usual.”

“Just thinking.”

“Alright.”

“Kaidan,” Shepard asked softly. “What was it like when Aethyta finally found the cure in your head?”

Kaidan looked startled for a moment, then set his data-pad down on the bedside table.

“Umm, we’d been working at it for a while.” He kept his hands busy, fiddling with the pitcher of water on the table, moving the vase of flowers Liara had sent. “I don’t really know that I can describe it, you know?”

“Yeah,” Shepard nodded. “The visions I had of the Reapers when Liara was helping me interpret the Codex always left me a little off balance. Flashes of images, that sort of thing.”

“There was this sort of darkness… like a calm… ocean, or something, at night. And there was all this light, like it was hiding. And Aethyta, she was always trying to find something.” Kaidan let his hand slip from the table, squeezed against his closed fist until his knuckles popped. “…I didn’t know which was down which way was up, I couldn’t see Aethyta, couldn’t see anything. Just felt like I was spinning… out in space or… pulled under an eddy, y’know? Not that I’ve ever been pulled under an eddy but—“

“Kaidan,” Shepard interrupted, gave him a soft smile. “I get it. What then?”

Kaidan returned the smile, stopped wringing his hands.

“I felt pretty sick, I was trying to focus. I heard Aethyta telling me to focus. It was like there was this golden… kinda ball of light. I couldn’t focus on it, it was too bright, it just whited everything out when I tried. But then… it was like I saw a reflection of it. Like the sun set on the water, sorta: almost too bright, but…” He shrugged, shook his head. “Next thing I know, Aethyta’s whooping and hollering, slapping me on the back, going ‘That’s it, kid! We did it, kid!’” He looked up sheepishly at Shepard.

Shepard tangled his fingers in Kaidan’s.

“Thank you.”

Shepard’s hands were as cold as Kaidan’s were warm. Kaidan raised them to his lips and kissed the rippling scars wrapped around Shepard’s knuckles.

“And then,” brown eyes met Shepard’s. Kaidan chuckled, a warm puff against Ben’s palm. “I, uh, got a pretty bad migraine.”

Shepard’s brows furrowed immediately, he touched Kaidan’s face.

“You what?”

“Nah, it’s nothing bad. The interference turned on whatever the cure was Leviathan put in my head. Just came on kinda strong. It really knocked me out.” He leaned his head into Shepard’s touch. “It’s frustrating, actually.”

“How come? Is your head still hurting?”

“Not that, no, it isn’t.” Kaidan closed his eyes, let out an easy breath when Shepard’s thumb traced the starry vein of gray at his temple. “An alien inside my head. Some cosmic switch flipping on? It… it’s one of those moments, y’know? The kind you tell your grandchildren about: the moment we found a cure. It’s Newton and the apple, right?” He hummed, fingers combing through his hair. “…the minute I knew… that I could help you.”

Shepard sat up straight, scooting himself closer to the edge of the bed. He waved off Kaidan’s bleary-eyed attempt to help him reposition, then softly pulled Kaidan’s head down to lay against his chest.

“You’ve helped me every single day since I met you, Kaidan. I wouldn’t be where I am—wouldn’t be who I am—without you in my life.”

“It was the first time I felt...” Kaidan swallowed. He had come forward to the edge of his seat to lean onto Shepard’s body. “First time I felt like maybe I knew where this was going.”

“This? Us?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he turned his ear to Shepard’s steady heartbeat and closed his eyes. “I told you back at Apollo’s I knew what I wanted. That I was sure. I’ve never doubted that for a second. But when Aethyta… pulled that cure out of my head, I felt like ‘Okay, Kaidan. No more fighting. He doesn’t have to fight anymore. We don’t have to… to fight anymore.’ Felt like the first time I knew we’d make it. Like we were finally allowed.” His eyes rolled beneath his lids. “Or I should have felt that way. It should have been a big moment.”

“Instead: headache, huh?”

Kaidan huffed a laugh.

“Yeah. Exactly. Like a skate to the face. Could barely see straight, much less make any grand observations about what was going on around me. I woke up a couple hours later. Aethyta was already meeting with the doctors, by then.”

Shepard’s hands played over the strong planes of Kaidan’s jaw, rough fingers against the rough stubble: hardcoding. But he said nothing for a long time.

“I don’t remember the name of the man who raised me, when I was very young,” he began at last, “Of all the things I remember from my time on the street, I hardly remember him at all. I know what he tried to make of me, and hearing you talk about your dad, I know all the things he wasn’t. Thinking about him doesn’t make me feel anything, at all. I don’t even remember him enough to know whether I want to be the exact opposite of everything he was, or how much like him I became.” He pressed a kiss into Kaidan’s hair. “I’m glad you know how finding that cure made you feel. Those big moments are great, when you can get them. But none of that matters right now. We’re together. It brought us back together.”

Kaidan breathed deeply, lifting his head. His kissed Shepard, lips lingering until his breathing became heavy.

“I guess we’ll make this moment important, then.”

++

“God is subtle, but he is not cruel.” – Fifth Business

Shepard limped into his room balanced on Kaidan’s shoulder.

“Dammit, Shepard!” Kaidan grimaced, more of Shepard’s weight on him with every step. “Why’d you have to go and do a stupid thing like that?”

“Was feeling good—no, no, no: bed. Right to the bed,” Shepard spat the words out between winces, hand already reaching for the unruly bed by the window.

“I swear, it’s like you don’t even want to get better!” Kaidan just barely held Shepard up by holding fast to the fabric of his hoodie when the other man’s legs gave out.

“Thought I was better!”

“S’posed to be a tactical genius, Shepard.”

“Everyone makes mistakes?” Shepard panted, regaining his footing.

“And then,” Kaidan was breathing heavy by now as well, steeling himself for the last few steps to the edge of the bed. “’Oh no, doc, I don’t need a wheelchair! I’m Commander Shepard, I can make it back to my room by myself!’”

“It didn’t hurt this bad until I got to the lift!” Shepard leaned all his weight on Kaidan, who hoisted him forward and against the bed. With a little help, Kaidan pushed his legs up and onto the mattress.

“Nerve damage never does, you ass!”

Shepard wriggled up to lay his head on the pillow, eyes closed and panting, but a relieved smile on his lips.

“Well,” Shepard opened one eye, “At least you were there to catch me.”

“’At least’ hardly,” Kaidan scoffed, pulling off one of Shepard’s shoes and making quick work with the laces on the other. “I’m an old pro at dragging your ass out of your dumb decisions.”

“I love you,” Shepard gave him a wink.

“Yeah,” Kaidan huffed through a grin. “You better.”

Shepard managed to grimace through removing his hoodie and his shoes, slipping out of his pants, adjusting the bed so it sat him upright. Meanwhile, by the time the deep ‘V’ of sweat soaked into the front of his white t-shirt had dried, Kaidan had just begun to taper off his reproach.

“Finally get all those damn nanites inside you working to put you together and you have to rush ahead in therapy.”

“What better place to screw-up than a hospital?” Shepard smiled, testing the strain in his back.

“A biotic charge?” Kaidan shook his head one last time, tugging the sheet over Shepard’s toes before plopping back into the plush bed-side chair. “What were you thinking?”

“That I wanted to get to the end of the track faster.” Shepard shrugged. “Just you wait, by this time tomorrow I’ll be better than ever.”

“My miracle man.”

Kaidan twisted himself in his seat till his legs were draped over one upholstered arm. Brushing an errant lock of hair off his forehead, he inhaled and exhaled a deep breath. A further sigh signaled he had let the issue drop.

“You comfortable, at least?”

Shepard laughed.

“Yeah, doesn’t hurt long as I have support.” Shepard reached behind himself to adjust a pillow resting across his shoulders. “Not sure how much I like spending the rest of the day in bed, but that’s what I get.”

“You never used to mind spending the day in bed,” Kaidan quirked an eyebrow, “At least not during shore leave…”

Shepard’s eyes got wide, pressing his lips together.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind it so much if my bedrest came with certain… amenities.”

Kaidan laughed when Shepard laughed, but watched Shepard’s lips more closely than he had been.

“Worst part is,” Shepard scratched at the stubble on his face, grimacing at the feeling. “I was going to shave my face today, this is starting to get a little long for me.” He cast a sly look at Kaidan, “Could you… get me the basin, a razor?”

Kaidan almost rolled his eyes, but reserved all his incredulity for a straight glare, one brow raised.

“Seriously? Now?”

Shepard scratched at his face all the more ardently.

“Just… ugh.”

This time, Kaidan did roll his eyes, but in a few moments had collected a razor and a basin that Nurse Lakely—and later, Kaidan—had used while Shepard was still bedridden to keep his face shaved. Since that time, most of the scars on his face had faded, except for a few bright orange gashes on either cheek, so the need to stay so clean-shaven had diminished as well.

“Hang on,” Shepard said when Kaidan moved to place the basin of water next to him on the bed. He slid his arms into his shirt with a grimace. “I want to get this shirt off, it’s sweaty and starting to get cold.” Kaidan gulped and helped him pull the shirt off the rest of the way, eyes lingering on Shepard’s chest before handing him the razor, the soap, and a towel.

When Kaidan grinned to himself and turned back toward the window, Shepard spent a lingering moment staring at his ass in the sweatpants he’d worn to Shepard’s PT that morning. Morning light was streaming through the large window, and Kaidan stretched while he looked out, arms raised and tilting to one side. Shepard worked up a lather. Kaidan tilted to the other side, exhaling into the stretch.

He looked over his shoulder, and Shepard was watching, haphazardly smearing the shaving soap onto his face. Kaidan bit his lip with a smile.

“Yeah…” he cleared his throat. “Pretty sweaty.”

He brushed one finger over his upper lip, strolled casually over to the coat rack by the door to remove his hoodie, hang it on a hook. He locked the door. Shepard dipped the razor into the warm water, face full of white foam while Kaidan crossed the room back to the window.

“Uh,” Shepard swallowed. “Have you gotten that anomaly checked out again? Whatever Leviathan talked about with your head?”

The seemed to startle Kaidan out of a stupor and he cleared his throat.

“Wha? Oh. Umm.” He rubbed his hands on the flank of his sweats. “No. It’s not anything, for now.”

Shepard watched his hands, but then looked back up with a blink, brows furrowed.

“I guess I’m worried about you a little bit.” He felt for one scar with his thumb, placed the blade of the razor just beneath it, scraped a careful patch down to his jaw.

Kaidan smiled, bit his lip again.

“Yeah, I…” he shook his head. “I’m not thinking about it right now. It might not ever be anything. We know it’s not,” he winced when Shepard winced, almost digging into his face with the razor, “a control thing or anything. Doc says it’s probably been there since before I met Leviathan.”

“You’ve been thinking about me, I know.” Shepard winced again, pressed a finger to a clear patch of skin and the inspected the tip for blood. Satisfied, he traced the razor up his neck, pulling his skin taut. “I worry about you, too. Just because I’m an idiot, trying to charge before I figure out how to run, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t… get the help you need.”

“Ben,” Kaidan stepped close to the bed, hand reaching for Shepard’s chest before he let it down on the bed sheet instead. “We’ve got plenty of time. We’re going to do plenty of worrying about each other.” He pressed even closer, Shepard stopped his razor mid-stroke. Kaidan sighed, his smile was warm when he touched Shepard’s chest. “Whatever is going on or isn’t going on, I’m going to take it one day at a time. Okay?”

“…okay.” Shepard couldn’t take his eyes away as he began shaving again. He didn’t even feel it when a trickle of red appeared beneath a tiny scar on his chin, becoming creamy pink as it dripped down into the excess of foam on his neck.

Kaidan laughed.

“Shepard, you’re gonna slash your face up even more! Here,” He held out his hand, and though he rolled his eyes, Ben gave him the razor. “I’ve gotten pretty used to this.” He swirled the razor around the water while he staunched the bleeding with the towel.

“I feel bad having you do this,” Shepard said, Kaidan’s face now pushed very close to his, resuming in more precise strokes. “If I thought I was this bad without a mirror I would’ve saved it for another day.”

“I think,” Kaidan tilted Shepard’s head to one side, getting foam on his fingers, “you knew exactly what you were doing.”

“Hey!” Ben chuckled, turned his face back in protest. Kaidan was ready, brushing the foam on his thumb onto the tip of Ben’s nose.

“Might as well fess up,” he teased. When his thumb lingered for a moment, Shepard tipped his head back, pressed his lips to the pad of Kaidan’s thumb, took it into his mouth.

“Bleh!” he exclaimed. “Soap!” That made Kaidan laugh. “That was way hotter when you did it with hot sauce.”

“Commander,” Kaidan leaned closer, pressing his body into the edge of the mattress. Shepard’s chest heaved with a deep breath when Kaidan’s eyes locked with his, the rough feel of the blade slowly scraping down his face. “Are you flirting with me?”

“If you have to ask…” Shepard grinned. Kaidan stood back, bit his lip for a moment, then moved the basin off the bed.

“I, uh,” he was chuckling so much he almost couldn’t spit it out. “There’s a couple spots I can’t reach from this angle…” He put the handle of the razor between his teeth, then hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants. He slid the baggy sweat pants down his legs, and Shepard watched them go, then became fixated on Kaidan’s underwear.

Shepard tried to sit up, but grunted as his aching body pulled him back to the mass of pillows keeping him upright. Kaidan tutted him, a glimmer in his eye.  He brandished the razor again.

“Just sit still,” he growled, voice low. In another moment, he had lifted one leg up onto the bed, then climbed the rest of the way up, straddling Shepard’s waist, just barely squeezing Ben between his thighs. “I’ll be so gentle…”

Ben’s eyes were wide when Kaidan leaned close, carefully removed what remained of the shaving foam. He was breathing in short bursts, and though his body protested the effort, he pushed his hips up, and Kaidan was hard, leaning against his stomach. His hand were on Kaidan’s hips, now.

Kaidan smiled, mouth so close to Ben’s they were sharing the same breath. He felt Kaidan’s tongue against his lips first, then they pressed together, a deep, hungry kiss that made Shepard moan.

His hands were sliding up beneath Kaidan’s shirt, quivering when Kaidan’s chest heaved, his lover pushing down against his body. Kaidan let the razor clink into the basin, eyes shut tight while he sucked gently on Ben’s lip.

By the time Ben was running his tongue along the sweat-dotted pulse point on Kaidan’s throat, he was grinding himself against Shepard’s bare body. Ben breathed hard against the wet flesh, hands clawing at Kaidan’s ass, pulling him up. Almost reluctantly, Kaidan rose up, and Shepard’s hands on his ass pulled his crotch to Ben’s face.

Fingers through Ben’s hair, the warmth of a wet tongue soaking through the cotton constraining his cock, Kaidan let his head fall back. And Ben, pulling down Kaidan’s underwear with one hand, drank in the sight of his lover in the morning light, rigid and loose with pleasure. He curled his tongue around the head before letting his lips kiss down to Kaidan’s base, leaving a wet trail. Shepard bent forward, grimacing for a moment as he tweaked his hip…

Kaidan gasped, hunched forward when Shepard took all of him into his mouth, the pressure squeezing on Kaidan’s ass making it plain Shepard meant to swallow him to the base. For a few quivering moments, he thrust carefully into Ben’s throat, before a deep chuckle against the head of his cock filled him with heat, made him thrust harder.

 Ben was looking up at him when he looked down, stretched lips shining and a glimmer in his eye. That did it, and Kaidan leaned forward, fucking Shepard’s mouth down so that his head was pressed hard into the stack of pillows.

When his breaths shortened, sighing Ben’s name with each tenuous exhale, Kaidan pulled back with a shudder. He leaned down at plunged his tongue into Shepard’s mouth. As he sucked on Shepard’s tongue as lovingly as Ben had just sucked his cock, he reached behind him.

His hand slid into Ben’s underwear, found him soft. Ben pulled away from the kiss with a sheepish chuckle.

“I, uh, I guess that some parts of me are… still recovering.” He tried to avert his eyes, but looked up when Kaidan smirked.

“Mmm, I said we have plenty of time, didn’t I?” Kaidan grinned, languidly let his body sit back.

“Hey,” Ben swallowed, licked his lips. “Get back up here!”

Kaidan shook his head slowly. He sat back, dripping against Shepard’s bare stomach, let his ass rest on Shepard’s lap.

“I think I just want to look at you a while,” he breathed, twisting and rocking his hips so that Ben’s eyes closed and his pulse quickened. His fingers dug into Kaidan’s thighs.

It wasn’t long, though, before Kaidan had to bend back down to kiss Shepard again, tucking himself back into the waistband of his briefs. Ben’s arms locked around him with a new strength, as if just trying to get as much contact as possible. And Kaidan consented, slowly lying down prone, half on top of Shepard, half on the bed. Ben pulled away, touching Kaidan’s face.

“I missed this. I missed you.”

“Yeah,” Kaidan breathed, the grin still on his lips. He reached up with the towel, then, and wiped the Shepard’s face clean.

“I feel good today, Kaidan,” Shepard muttered against his lips when Kaidan pulled him close, tight. “I know tomorrow I might feel worse, and next week I might feel good again, on and on. But I don’t want to miss anything, anymore. Not with you…”

Kaidan smiled, but it was kind, understanding.

“I’m so excited, Ben.” He leaned into the touch when Shepard ran his fingers through Kaidan’s hair, a fingertip against Kaidan’s amp port and the place Leviathan had touched. “And wherever we end, that’s our happy ending. Same as before.”

“Not quite the same as before,” Shepard grinned. “So much more time. So much more.”

++

Shepard hardly seemed as if he needed to remain at the hospital any longer, and it was only as a favor to a worried Admiral Hackett that he remained, and soon, Miranda’s confidence in her work would lead her to insist he be released.

But meanwhile, Shepard and Kaidan had continued to read together. The weather was fine—both men only needed a hoodie—and they sat against the memorial tree in front of the hospital, Shepard with his eyes closed, dozing in Kaidan’s arms while the other man read.

“You have paid such a price, and you look like a man full of secrets--grim-mouthed and buttoned-up and hard-eyed and cruel, because you are cruel to yourself. It has done you good to tell what you know; you look much more human already. A little shaky this morning because you are so unused to being without the pressure of all your secrets, but you will feel better quite soon.”

Kaidan let out a little huff, and Shepard stirred.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” Kaidan smiled. “My dad used to call me a ‘hard-eyed kid.’ Mostly as a, y’know, a term-of-endearment type thing. But I think maybe a little seriously, too.”

“He worried about you.”

“Did he ever,” Kaidan laughed. “Y’know, I think when I read this book the first time, when I was a kid, I thought the author must’ve gotten that phrase from my dad? Or like it was just this thing everybody said or something.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe it’s because he was always rushing to defend me when the teachers at my schools were getting weird about my biotics, but he was always larger than life, to me. Yeah. Just like everybody and me were co-stars in his vid.”

“Come on!” Shepard guffawed.

“I mean, sure. Everybody sorta sees themselves as the star in their life, right? You build up this image of your father in your mind. My dad, heh,” Kaidan hid his blush and the smile on his face in the fabric of the hood. “He sure as hell never made ‘major’ with the Alliance. But when it’s your dad—I mean, long as you don’t hate him, right?—there’s always something you’re trying to live up to. Being as kind as him or being as warm. As strong. Hell, living to be as old, at least, I don’t know.”

“What do you think about that now?” Ben turned Kaidan’s hand over in his, ran his thumb over the clean white scar across Kaidan’s palm. “How do you learn to measure up?”

“I guess you never do,” Kaidan swallowed and laughed. “It’s a good way to feel like you’re the bit-player in a great man’s life. At least it was for me. Some dads… really try to make their kids into window dressing, don’t they? But my dad never did. Then one day he’s gone and you realize that…”

“He was the supporting cast all along?” Shepard smirked.

“Ha! I guess there’s no way around it.” His fingers twitched in Shepard’s hand, Ben’s thumb tickling his palm. “Suddenly you don’t have a dad anymore, you’ve got a myth.”

“A myth, yeah.” Ben kissed and closed Kaidan’s hand around his.

“When I lost you, it killed me: that feeling that, every day, I was gonna lose a little bit more of the details about Ben Shepard. I’d have my stories about our time together,” he shook his head with a smirk, “But pretty soon all those stories have some kinda ‘point’. ‘Shepard was a good man,’ ‘Shepard cared about his crew,’ ‘Shepard was a looker,’” he winked. “And people start forgetting the particulars and just remember the ‘points’. And that’s good. All that’s true. But people are more than that.”

“Mm,” Ben hummed. “Even harder to live up to a legend, then?”

“No, no.” Kaidan shook his head, arched his back until his back made a popping sound, he was yawning when he let his body relax. “I mean, ‘Legendary First Human Spectre Commander Shepard’ is an inspiration to everyone. Ben Shepard is an inspiration to me.”

“…oh.” Ben’s face broke into a wide grin.

“If… I dunno. If Allers wanted to write the story of my life, you could gloss over my dad or write him out totally and it wouldn’t affect the narrative too much. Sure, everybody knows your dad has a big impact     on your life, right? But the particulars don’t matter too much to people. I’m not really saying this the way I want to, hmm… Everybody knows who King Arthur is—broad strokes, anyway—but that doesn’t matter much in the day to day, y’know?”

“Plenty of interpretations on King Arthur, too.”

“Yeah, easy to shuffle around the details and save the big picture. Sucks seeing someone you love so much become so simplified, no matter how ‘amazing’ that simple version is.” He nodded to himself, drew the edges of the hood around his face. “…I wish I could talk to my dad, still.”

“You’re always going to miss him, and you’re always going to love him.” Ben squeezed Kaidan’s hand. “I know that saying that is… a little like what you were saying. It sounds ‘too simple’, but love’s a little like that. Too complicated. So we make it too simple.”

Kaidan swallowed hard, nodded his head. When his face broke out into a little smile, Ben mirrored it.

“It, uh, it helped to get to hear from Anderson one last time…” He looked down at the scar in his palm. “Even if he wasn’t talking… to me, exactly.”

“…In the Echo Shard?”

“Mhm.” Kaidan licked his lips. “Just glad to know someone was with him, in the end. Glad I got to… to be there, sort of.” He rolled his eyes behind closed lids and huffed. “I dunno.”

“I didn’t know that you were close with Anderson,” Shepard said softly.

“Oh, I, uh, I guess I wasn’t. Not like you, I guess. But after the Normandy went down, he would show up at my apartment. First time was a few days after the wake. We talked… we talked a little about you, actually. Maybe a lot about you.” Kaidan rubbed his knuckles over one of his eyes, “Everybody was taking the crash pretty hard. Anderson was the only one who seemed to really understand: the fact that just a few weeks earlier, we had been on top of the world, beat Saren. Saved the Council. Saved the galaxy. Now we were all… survivors.”

Kaidan looked up, the sun streaming through the branches and down on the ruined campus grounds around them. The sounds of demolition and construction outside were muted by the distance, instead offering a quiet tableau of churning change. The layers of the war-torn London pulverized and erased and rolled over, with the two lovers watching from far away.

“I guess Anderson knew something about that, after his Spectre trials.” Shepard brought Kaidan’s attention back to the two of them, a gentle hand on his cheek.

“Um, yeah,” Kaidan kissed Ben’s palm. “First couple times that’s what he talked about. Then I guess he figured maybe something more was bugging me. He knew I felt like I left you behind. Maybe he knew more. Hell, everyone… everyone seemed to,” he chuckled and let his head fall back.

“He had a picture of you,” Shepard smiled.

“He what?”

“On his desk, in his Council office.”

“…oh.”

Shepard laughed again.

“I guess maybe you were important to him, too. Didn’t have a picture of me.” He poked Kaidan in the ribs.

“There’s gonna be a whole chapter about you in his autobiography, Shepard,” Kaidan said, voice thick with irony.

“Only because I’m sensational,” Shepard sighed lightly, dissolving into a laugh when Kaidan elbowed him. He sobered after a minute and hummed, pressing into Kaidan’s touch.

“Still. It was… good to see him again,” Kaidan concluded. When Shepard said nothing, Kaidan pressed forward quietly. “Are we going to talk about the Echo Shard, Ben?”

Shepard’s body seemed to tense for a moment, but he controlled his breathing.

“Yeah. I just don’t know what there is to say.”

“I think… I don’t think I’ve ever just talked about how weird it was. Overwhelming.” A dried leaf that had been caught in a tangle of branches high above drifted down, and Kaidan’s eyes watched it fall. His voice was a whisper. “Looking through your eyes, Ben. Getting to feel what you felt. An… it feels so much like I was there, in that moment with you. Like those are my memories, too.” He shook his head, “But they’re not. I know I wasn’t there… I know I wasn’t because, if I had been…” He swallowed again, “I dunno. I know I wasn’t there because I saw you lying in that bed when I got back. Saw the look on your face. I know because I’ve got my own memories on the Normandy, alone. I can’t forget those memories, either.”

Shepard closed his eyes. Fingers combing through the brittle grass: hardcoding. He gingerly took the fallen, browned leaf in his hand, pressed against the veins with his thumb until it cracked. He closed a palm around it, powdering it into papery bits that crumbled from his fist until the crumpled skeleton of the leaf was all that remained.

“…they are your memories, now, Kaidan,” he said at last. “I wish you could’ve been with me on the Citadel, but I had to see you safe. But now, nobody else is going to understand what happened the way you do. So…” The wind caught the tangled remnant. “They’re our memories. We’re together now. You said when I died, you were afraid you’d lose pieces of me in your memory over time. I choose to remember being with you, your hand on mine helping me grip that gun.” When Kaidan leaned forward to brush the dirt from Ben’s palm, Shepard breathed into his ear. “What’s even more important, you were there when I woke up. That’s all I ever need, Kaidan. They’re going to write my story however they want. But that’s all I ever need: you came back to me.”

Kaidan’s hand in Shepard’s, the scarred scribbles on Ben’s skin making it rough even after so long without a gun in his hand—a thousand little scars from a thousand little fractures in his childhood, like streaks of stars on his fingers. He turned Kaidan’s hand over, the current of the white scar laid across the lines of his palm.

“Thinking about my father—and about Anderson—“ Kaidan cleared his throat, watched Shepard’s chest rise and fall, instead of his face. “There was something else Anderson said to you, and something I saw in the Echo Shard.”

“Oh?” Ben said, not seeming to understand.

“’You’d make a great dad,’” Kaidan said carefully. “That’s what Anderson said to you. Something about how proud your kids would be telling people their dad was Commander Shepard.” He chuckled to himself. “And… I saw a memory of you telling me something when I was asleep. Thinking about the future. About family?”

“You… you saw that, huh?” Ben smiled, sinking down into himself a bit. “I was think about that… after Anderson was gone. I was waiting. Thought about that night, telling you that in bed. There were so many things I wanted to say to you, things I should have said to you. But I waited till the war was over.”

The scorched earth around the hospital campus was little more than muddy puddles ringed in blackened grass. In Shepard’s hospital room, Kaidan’s dress blues waited for a formal occasion he was to appear at that evening. The Citadel still glowed overhead, and Dr. Chakwas’ team was still treating untold dignitaries for indoctrination symptoms, even as the Council was just re-establishing connection with a few outer survey worlds freed from Leviathan’s control. There was a dead Reaper in the Thames. Many of the picture-films of lost loved-ones tacked to the tree had faded in the sunlight.

“War’s over,” Kaidan breathed.

“Still, ‘people going through hell in a million ways,’” Shepard recited quietly. He added, before Kaidan could speak up, “But now they’ve got hope, at least.”

“You did that.”

Shepard seemed not to have heard.

“What I said to you that night,” he shifted in Kaidan’s arms. “I meant that. There are things that feel… possible, when you’re with me.”

Kaidan didn’t try to disguise the grin that lit up his face.

“Good thing you’re stuck with me, Shepard.” He held Shepard tighter when a thin shiver ran through Ben’s body. There was a moment of laughter from the two until Shepard needed to shift of his bad hip and experimented with a few different ways of settling into Kaidan before eventually leaning back against the tree beside him, head on his shoulder. Kaidan continued, drawing Shepard even closer, “Y’know, thinking about my dad, it’s funny: I’ve done a lot in my life my dad never imagined. But you idolize a man so much, you start to think that the stuff you’ve done must not be as important as what he did.” He scrunched up his face, “I mean, I made ‘major’, led a black ops team. But. Guess I still don’t feel like half the man he was, sometimes.” He nudged Shepard with a sly look, “Can’t imagine how I’d feel if my dad had saved the galaxy.”

Shepard actually laughed.

“They won’t have to save the galaxy!” He let his head lean to one side, “I’m sure there’ll be plenty of things the world needs from them. Different things than for us.” He took Kaidan’s hand. “Different world, different rules. Not easier. Just different.”

Kaidan gazed at his lover’s face.

“You would be a good dad, Ben.”

Shepard only tucked his chin to his chest, allowing himself a little smile.

“And I’m sorry I never got to meet your father,” he met Kaidan’s gaze. “But I’ve never met a man with more integrity. More honor. More love than you, Kaidan.”

Kaidan kissed him, then. The shade and the sun and sounds of the distant water, dry leaves and the cold earth underneath them beneath Shepard’s fingertips—now raised up to clutch Kaidan by the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. Hardcoding.

Kaidan was smiling when their lips parted. Only enough breath left for a whisper:

“We’re gonna be alright.”

++

The ribbon of clouded blue bathed the Presidium in a perpetual afternoon, but it was nearly time for the brief, six hour night cycle to begin. An illusion of day and night gave the dignitaries and high-profile merchants still scuttling back into their shops and offices a sense of the passing of time, the rebuilding of their homes. Closing shop just in time for the holographic sky to slowly ripple from clouds to stars helped convince everyone that it was time to rest. Another calendar day had come and gone. Things were better than they were yesterday.

In a newly commissioned Presidium park, a 15 meter-tall sculpture of Benjamin Shepard carved from stone loomed on a plinth rising from one of the lakes. A gold placard told, in a brief 40 lines, the importance of Commander Shepard, flanked by carvings of the Normandy SR-2. The figure was on one knee, and though he was in some semblance of armor, no weapons were in his hands or holstered at his back. Instead, his left fist was raised, and clenched within was a butterflied stone cord fitted with knots, one for each of the ‘worlds’ saved. Supposedly, each knot was unique. His right palm was stretched open before him, and water poured forth from it: classical volus iconography for the conquering hero.

Kaidan and Shepard had been present in dress uniforms for the unveiling, dedication, and ribbon-cutting. But they had come back tonight, in plain clothes, to look again. Shepard had insisted on not making a big deal out of it, so they ate at the Krogan noodle house down the way from their apartment before taking a cab to the Presidium.

People going from the Presidium to the Wards often reported a sense of lost time—plunging from the loping, committed calm of the ring into the never-quiet, neon coral reef of the Ward arms. There was no gentle melding of night to day.

When the night cycle on the Citadel began, the effect was similarly jarring. On most Council worlds, ‘day’ was said to begin and end with the appearance of that world’s sun piercing the horizon: an exact moment. Obviously though, the gradual change in light was the expected transition between night and day. In order to approximate this, the Presidium lights dimmed slowly over the hour preceding the start of the night-cycle, and a series of one to five chimes indicated how close to night it was. At five chimes, the holographic sky would turn from blue sky to starry night sky, and the lights would be cut dramatically. One segment at a time, the Presidium would snap to darkness.

As it so happened, the Shepard sculpture was placed in the first segment of the Presidium to go dark each night, and supposedly the spotlights the artist had installed to illuminate it made it truly breathtaking.

“We could be lying on the couch right now,” Ben said, frowning at the sculpture. “It better be breathtaking.”

He and Kaidan lay in the park a little ways from the sculpture. Ben sat on the grass, legs crossed, and Kaidan lay stretched out with his head in Ben’s lap.

“Nah! We had to see it!” Kaidan laughed, checking the time on his omni-tool. “Hard to get a good look at it during the ceremony with all those people shaking my hand.”

“I couldn’t even pose for it,” Shepard chuckled. “Pin Marlok had me assume the stance so she could get a few sketches, but it killed my hip. She said she would just use the Shepard VI instead.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I wish!” He laughed. “She was pretty nasty about it, too. Guess it was good to just be treated like a person for a while.”

“Well, you’re a legend, officially, now!” Kaidan laughed. He adopted a very serious tone, tipped his head back against Shepard’s belly to look up at his face. “Generations are gonna look at this magnificent sculpture and wonder ‘who was this man? What was he like?’”

“They can read my logs,” Shepard smiled, dryly. “They can watch the vids.”

“Boring,” Kaidan thumped his head into Shepard’s sternum. He continued his overwrought affect, “They’ll ask themselves ‘who was he, really?’ And kids will learn about you in school—and the school’ll be named after you, right?—and they’ll go home and say ‘Mommy, tell me a story about the Shepard!’ And then before you know it, everybody will be telling stories about you!”

“You mean other than the stories they’re supposedly telling about me at school?” Shepard tipped his head, smiled down into Kaidan’s face. Kaidan grinned back up at him.

“Oh no. That’s where they learn the boring stuff: what happened, and what you were!” He chuckled, barely maintaining his ‘very impressive’ voice. “Those are just all the ‘facts’. A stories gotta tell you all about how it happened and why! Facts are facts, but a story’s gotta have a beginning and an ending. That’s what the kids are gonna want!” He dissolved into a fit of laughter when Shepard poked him in the ribs.

“Guess I should remember that next time I’m telling a story, huh?” Shepard quirked an eyebrow sarcastically.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of practice.” He leaned up on his elbows and Shepard leaned down, and they kissed.

Five gentle chimes sounded, the signal that the night cycle was beginning. The panel of holographic sky above the sculpture snapped to stars, the whole segment of the Presidium ring darkening with it. At once, the lights which surrounded the Shepard statue shone upon it, casting Ben’s image in sharp relief, the glittering placard on the base receiving a special spotlight.

Kaidan and Shepard ‘ooed’ in polite, though unobserved, appreciation. Almost immediately, though, Shepard was smiling up at the fake stars, a bit dimmer now for all the spotlights glaring up from the statue’s base, almost as if they shone up through the holographic sky and out of the Citadel and into the universe.

Outside the Citadel, the Earth had spun the Atlantic Hemisphere away from the sun, as well, and the planet was projecting its own nebula of light into space. The millions of lights as constellations locked together and outlined the dark spaces between them: the Great Horn of Africa here, the Iberian Peninsula there, and the frame of the Mediterranean.

 “I’m going to remember this moment for a long time,” Kaidan said softly. The night cycle continued to roll up the inverted Presidium horizon, one segment of the ring at a time going dark, up and away from where Kaidan and Shepard lay.

“Why’s that?” Shepard spoke in a low voice.

“I don’t know,” Kaidan chuckled to himself. “I just know I will.”

“Yeah.” Ben let his fingers sink into the plush of Kaidan’s sweatshirt.

The false sky was meant to emulate Earth’s own night sky, though it was practically unrecognizable. The VI system which created the image used data of relative star positions from accurate Council astronomical charts, with no accounting for time.

Many of the familiar constellations were distorted. Many of the brightest stars were missing: the VI removing those stars which had died, but whose light still shown lightyears away on Earth. To peer into the fake sky was to look into a sky that would not be seen on Earth for 75,000 years. But it gave no sense of prescience, because, of course, the truth was that looking into the night on Earth was watching the past. It was configurations of stars bound together, named after classical myths, to map a night sky that was an image of an even more ancient age.

The darkness which the galaxy twisted itself around, and the void between stars, were all glutted with old light; like waves that build up on the shore. And all that old light shone off the very same waves and back into the night, and softer.

“Will you take me home to Vancouver, this weekend?”

“Of course. It’ll be good to go home.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

The Presidium segment on the horizon to their backs darkened as the night-cycle rounded the corner. They watched the glow in each other’s eyes at the end of the day.