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Wake up. Still dark. Day-cycle on the Normandy is still an hour off. Treadmill for 45 minutes. Cold shower. Breakfast is a paper cup of almost hot black coffee and a pack of crackers he found laying unclaimed on the counter in the mess. Rush to the armory for the weekly weapons inspection as the day-cycle ramps up and lights start to blink on and crewmen trickle in.
Finish up sending the report just as the first pangs of what will become a midday migraine start to make themselves known. Sit in the dark quiet armory for a while longer. Knees up, back against the wall. Head down. He takes a painkiller from the ever present plastic bottle in his pocket and swallows it dry. Waits for the pangs to turn into waves that start to recede as lunchtime comes along.
Mess is loud, bright, crewmen laughing at a joke someone has just told as he walks in, grabs a ration pack, walks out. Eats on the way down to the cargo bay to grab the latest report on Mako upgrades. Reviews last week’s requisition requests, inventories the new chestplate armor pieces, swallows another painkiller as the implant on the back of his head starts to twinge again in warning.
Back up to crew quarters, to the daily inspection of the control panel for the sleep pods. Passes a hand over his eyes, mind blank, waiting for the meds to kick in before allowing another thought to pass through him.
“You okay?”
Cracks an eye open. The Commander, standing at a distance. He straightens up and salutes. He hasn’t seen her walking around in a day or two, since Eden Prime and the Citadel, since she became a Spectre and the Normandy became hers.
“At ease." Her eyes are slightly narrowed as she considers him.
He relaxes. “Is there anything I can help you with, ma’am?”
“No, I just saw you from over there--” she points to the kitchen. “And you looked like you were in pain.”
“Just a headache, ma’am.”
“You can call me Shepard.”
“Just a headache, Shepard.”
“I didn’t see you at dinner.”
He suddenly notices the dimmed lights. Night-cycle has crept up on him again. “I had a lot to do today,” he mutters.
“Make sure you get something to eat tonight. I can’t have you passing out during a fight.”
He’s about to apologize when he looks up and meets her eye, and he realizes he isn’t being chastised by his Commander. Her eyes look warm, a small smile is tugging at the corners of her lips. Her hands are at her sides, open, her posture calm. She isn’t chastising him. She’s just concerned.
He doesn’t know what to do with concern. He feels himself nod his head once, up and down. She walks away, back into the mess, and sits down at a table by herself. He stares down at the control panel for the pods. It takes a moment to settle back into his routine.
Later, lights out. Sleep. Maybe dream. Maybe breathe through another headache, maybe touch the back of his head where the implant is and wonder if he can just rip it out and be done with it forever. Maybe think back to Shepard’s mouth as the edges curved slightly upwards, then shake the thought from his head and fill it with thoughts of the mission instead.
He wakes up. Goes for a run on the treadmill for 40 minutes. Takes a shower, not so cold today. He lingers, watching the water pool at his feet, then get sucked out all at once by the recycler. Breakfast is rehydrated eggs today, and a paper cup of black coffee. He starts at the sleeper pods, not sure if he had performed an adequate inspection because of the distraction the day before. She finds him again as he’s holding his hand up to his face, waiting out another twinge of pain.
“There you are again,” she says. She’s standing just a little closer today, and a wrinkle creases the skin between her eyebrows. “Do you ever take a break?”
“I have a lot to do, ma’am. Shepard.”
“So do I,” she says.
“I didn’t mean to insinuate that you don’t, too,” he says hastily.
She steps forward. Her mouth curves around a smile. He tries to keep his eyes on hers but they slide down, almost against his will, to fall upon her lips. He forgets his headache. He can only focus on her presence right now.
“Kaidan,” she says. He feels a thrill when she says his name. Her voice is soft. This isn’t anything he’s heard on the battlefield, or in the debriefing room. “Relax.”
“I…” he trails. He doesn’t know how to respond. So he just nods, and she nods, and he stares back down at the control panel but she doesn’t leave. Instead, she starts asking questions.
He’s seen this before, on the field. She asks a lot of questions, gets people talking. It’s always with an end game in mind, one he sees play out in real time as someone folds and gives her the detail she needs to solve a problem, or she presses and charms people into doing something her way. But he’s always standing a little behind her as she works. He hasn’t had this turned around on him before.
He finds himself talking. About the mission, about Brain Camp, about the cold dark of his room back at Jump Zero on the far edge of the solar system. She listens, her eyes on him, and smiles when he manages to crack a joke, and frowns when he tells her how much he missed sunlight both then and now.
“I miss it too,” she says. “Next time we’re on shore leave, let’s try and find some sun.”
He smiles. “Okay.”
“Okay.” She stares at a point over his shoulder as someone, probably Joker, talks into her ear. “I have to go. Take a break today, Lieutenant. That’s an order.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He starts to salute her but she’s already turned away and walks back around the corner to the command deck.
He tries to continue his inspection of the sleeper pods control panel. He tries three times, from the top, but stops at the very first line in his mental to do list each time. He can’t stop thinking about shore leave on a garden world somewhere, sunny and warm, and she’s beside him sipping a cold drink, and they aren’t wearing their uniforms, and her skin is tanning and her soft smile is aimed at him and they’re talking. How is it so easy to talk to her? It’s so easy to forget about the mission and the implant and the mind numbing routine of every day and just talk.
The rest of the day is thrown off balance. He stumbles through inspections, reports, checking only one out of every four things off his to do list that day. Night cycle interrupts his third attempt to review the damage to the ground team’s armor from the last fire fight, the one he had to sit out when a migraine suddenly struck. He grabs dinner--freeze dried lasagna, he had no idea they had this stuff on board, it’s actually not that bad--and heads back to his room. He bumps into her in the hall. She’s walking past quickly, her Omni-Tool casting an orange glow on her face, but she slows down to smile at him.
His stomach is in knots. He stares at the ceiling half the night, tosses and turns the rest of the night, and crawls out of bed and into a hot shower when the morning cycle starts up again but he isn’t tired, he’s wired.
Breakfast is a bowl of cereal, with powdered milk added to cold water and sweet flakes of something that tastes like wheat but can’t be, this far from home. He eats a whole bowl and then fills up another, eats that too. He adds a spoonful of powdered milk to his mug of coffee and watches as it dissolves, takes a sip and feels the warmth trickle down his throat and pool in his chest. He glances down at the mug in surprise. Has he really never noticed before that the coffee here isn’t actually that bad? He pours himself another mug as she walks in and beelines for the coffee maker. She has her hoodie zipped halfway up her undershirt and smells like sweat. He realizes he’s missed his morning jog but can’t bring himself to care as he struggles not to let his eyes linger on her collarbones, the skin just above them slightly pink from her workout.
“Morning,” she says. “We’ve got a request from Hackett to stop over at the Hercules system and probe for a missing freighter. It’s on our way to Feros. I want you to come with me on the shuttle.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am,” he says. His heart has started beating just a little faster. “Right now?”
“Yes, now. I’m guessing you’re done with breakfast,” she adds, eyes on the two empty bowls in front of him. She’s smiling. He’s smiling too, like a fool. “Meet me downstairs in 5.”
He’s only a little surprised when he finds out they’re the only ones going on this mission. She has him pilot the shuttle, and she sits behind him and asks more questions. He talks and talks. Stars blink in and out of existence around the shuttle as it speeds along until they're hovering over a gas giant and watching the whorls of gas swirl around and swallow the probe they drop in, and as they wait for the probe's results, he looks across the console at her and asks her about Eden Prime.
It’s been eating at him, the memory of the press of her palms on him as she threw him out of the way of the beacon. The blank look on her face as she hovered in the air, the panic he felt as she dropped like a rock back on the ground, the endless wait for her to wake back up in the Medbay. Routine distracted him, the reports and inspections and calibrations, but she’s been so present at the forefront of his mind lately that he can’t hide from the one question he’s been dying to ask.
“How did you know you would be okay when you pushed me out of the way of the beacon?” he asks.
She thinks for a moment, considers him as the glow of the console, the only light in the cabin, illuminates both of their faces in soft yellow light. “I didn’t,” she says. “I was only thinking about you.”
He stares down at his hands, clasped firmly on his lap, and bites his tongue to keep from smiling.
It doesn’t work.
They locate the missing freighter, hidden under the colorful clouds of the gas giant, and head back to the ship. She bumps him with her elbow as they take off their suits in the airlock and he bumps her back as they try to stand still for decontamination. He stares at the back of her head as they walk up to crew quarters, watches as she weaves her fingers through her hair to shake out the helmet-head. They part ways and he heads back to the control panel for the sleeper pods, and she goes up to the comm room for a call.
He flies through his to do list and finds his way back to the crew deck to grab dinner. She’s on her way up the stairs and he’s on his way down. The back of his hand touches the back of hers as they squeeze past each other. When her eyes meet his, the exposed skin on his arms prickles with goosebumps.
They pause there, on the stairs, hands almost touching. It’s easy to talk to her, but there are still some words he can’t bring himself to say just yet.
“Goodnight,” he says, and she says it back and continues on her way.
He dreams about shore leave, about the way her skin would look in sunlight. He wants to know her in civvies, without the weight of command on her shoulders. Would she walk the same way she does through her ship, with purpose and authority? Would she talk more, instead of focusing on listening?
He wakes up and stays in bed for a little bit, looking out the window on the other side of the room at clouds of stardust, listening to his crewmates breathing and shifting in the quiet right before the morning cycle begins. He can’t remember a single time when he hasn’t jumped out of bed to start his duties the moment he wakes up. It’s calming, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, knowing that for the next few minutes there is absolutely nothing expected of him. He can just lay here and daydream, be at rest for just a little while.
He makes his way to the kitchen, pours himself another bowl of cereal, stirs powdered milk into his mug of coffee, and takes a sip. His head twinges in warning. He closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths. When he opens them, she’s there, standing at the counter, watching him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Glad to see you’ve finally taken a moment to slow down,” she replies. Did her eyes just dart down to his mouth, or did he imagine that? “I usually take my coffee black but I think I’ll try it your way today.”
He sets his mug down and pours her one, stirs milk into it, and hands it to her. She takes a sip and sighs. He watches some tension leave her shoulders and neck as she leans against the counter.
“Tastes like a treat,” she says. “Thank you.”
“I had no idea we had powdered milk on the ship,” he confesses.
“I would be surprised if you did, the way you carry on around here. You’re very focused. Always in motion.”
“I guess I just needed an unbalanced force to stop me,” he says without thinking.
She raises an eyebrow at him, her lips pursed together as if keeping back a laugh.
His cheeks burn up. “Newton’s first law of motion,” he mutters under his breath.
The laugh seems to burst out of her, quick and sharp, and his hands tingle with the effort it takes not to reach out and touch hers.
They drink the rest of their coffee in silence. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye and catches her looking away suddenly. Once their mugs hit the counter, it’s off to work, her upstairs to the command deck, and him to the armory to inventory their heat sinks.
She comes back down and asks him more questions about his past, and he tells her more secrets. He feels like there’s something fluttering in his chest, like his heart is suddenly filled with helium and is floating around inside him, weightless. And he decides he wants to tell her.
It’s been years since he said the words aloud. Sometimes, his time at Jump Zero feels like a bad dream. Every once in a while, a smell or sound will jar him back to Brain Camp and he’ll need a moment to ground himself in the present. It’s like an old bruise, still a little tender but mostly healed. He can forget it’s even there, until it’s poked too hard.
His confession of murder doesn't rattle her. Her eyes stay on his, her hands remain open at her sides. Her relaxed posture relaxes him too.
“You never let yourself lose control,” she says, nodding almost to herself as if this explains something.
“Maybe you have a point,” he says, and then, hastily, “You don’t have to worry about me. Fully functional human being. I won’t be a burden on you. Or the crew.”
Her face softens. “It’s okay to have weaknesses. Just means you’re human.”
“Yeah,” he says, quietly. “I know that. I just… Sorry. I’m no good at this. I don’t usually think of much beyond the job.”
He thinks she gets it, thinks she knows what he’s hiding behind those words. That routine was as much a comfort for him as it was a prison. That he’s been trapped in day to day, task to task thinking like he’s been under a spell, a spell she’s broken. That he’ll go to sleep tonight thinking of her and wake up thinking of her, rush to the mess hoping to catch her, wait by the control panel where she always finds him, because the heat he feels on his face and the way his heart throws itself against his chest when he’s near her makes him feel human.
He thinks she hears the words behind the words. He can see it in the way the lines of her face soften. Has she stepped closer since they started talking or has she always been standing close enough for him to see freckles dotting the bridge of her nose? He thinks about kissing her, entertains the thought for just a fraction of a second. A thrill runs through him, a reckless and rule-breaking thrill.
She steps back, her hand hovering by her ear, listening to the disembodied voice that always interrupts them to pull her back into her role and him into his. He straightens up, ready to go back to work, or try to.
“I’m, uh, looking forward to some shore leave,” he says, as casually as he can. He’s thinking of her in sunlight again, watching the way the bright morning-cycle lights in the mess hit her skin and wondering if it’ll compare to the real thing.
She laughs. “We’ll talk later, Kaidan.”
“I’d like that.”