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Shepard reaches left and right, grabbing bottles and flasks and scooping them into a rather wobbly pyramid in her arms, amid a clatter of glass and plastic... Hoping that the mixture she is concocting will not be toxic for a Prothean.
Javik half-scowls, but alcohol has mellowed him enough not to protest any further than that. And when the water swirls and rises into a heap of fragrant, glittering foam, he even leans forward and sniffs at it with mild curiosity.
"You will need to take off your armor," she says.
"Never!"
He whips around, ready to incinerate her with an appalled glare, but loses his balance and has to grab at her forearm instead, his feet skidding comically on the tiled floor.
She helps him stand steady and encourages him with a nod. There is little room for him to recoil. And his attempt to do it is rather feeble at that. All around him, the scent and warmth rise from the bath in gentle billows. Beckoning.
"You can't take a bath in full combat gear, that will defeat the purpose."
"I am quite adept at defeating anything in my way."
"You know what I meant. Please trust me. You will feel better for it."
Again, Javik curls his lips... But his hands do move, uncertainly, to his breast plate.
"You always plead with me, Commander. It is beneath you."
"No, I say 'Please' because you are my friend and I am polite to my friends... And I want them to take care of themselves. Or take care of them, if they are being… pouty."
Usually, he would have protested that they are not friends, that he is only here because their goals align, that he expects everyone and anyone to stab him in the back at any moment; and that he is certainly not “pouty”. But tonight, all he musters is a low grunt... And then, a brusque "Turn away, Commander. I will not have you examine my body for weak spots."
"That's not what I usually go for when examining naked bodies," she cannot help but quip back. She did have her go at the bar, after all. To her surprise, she can swear she hears a small, throaty chuckle.
She does end up obliging him, and does not turn back to the bath until she hears the telltale splash. When she looks at Javik again, he is fully submerged into the warm waves, which have been tinted a sunrise pink by a bath bomb. The bubbles lap softly against his bare skin — what little she can see of it. Islets of hardened dark gray and vibrant red and turquoise peeking out of the foam.
He's spread his shoulders, resting the back of his head against the edge of the bath, and is contemplating the popping of the bubbles with a kind of languid, half-lidded laziness that makes Shepard smile. This is what she was going for.
A few moments later, though, he springs alert again. Of course he does.
"I mustn't be doing this! This is wrong; inappropriate! This will weaken my body!"
Shepard shakes her head.
"This will make it stronger.”
She sighs and goes on to tell him what has been on her mind almost since he first leapt out of his stasis pod. It seems that sort of night.
“You always carry so much rage, so much pain; your every day is a battle. You have to stop and take a breath every once in a while, or you will break. I know I almost did. And do not —"
He stirs, kneading the water in outrage, but she jabs a warning finger ahead of her.
"Do not give me your favorite primitives speech. Just because my civilization advanced later than yours, doesn't mean you are not made from the same flesh and blood and bone as I am. Well, chemically not quite the same, but our essence is not that different. We've both been fighting, and losing, and falling and getting back up again, far longer than any normal living being should. We deserve to rest. *You* deserve to rest."
"The Reapers never rest! While I... luxuriate here, they —"
"Breathe, Javik. Let the tension go. You will wake up tomorrow, and go to battle again. But for now, just breathe."
She isn't saying anything new. All of this, she's heard from others. After the Blitz; after she returned from the shattered husk of the first Normandy, dog tags clasped in her shaking hands; after she hurtled into the bleeding skies, away from Earth; after more and more planets went up in flames.
The past few years have been hell — and for Javik, the hell lasted his whole life. His skies were already a mangled wound when he opened his eyes for the first time. Much as she butts heads with him, whenever she stops to think about this, it makes her blood run cold.
Caught in a sudden flood of compassion for this fierce, stubborn, bloody impossible alien, she swerves around the bath and settles down on the floor right behind his head rest.
Javik's smaller pair of eyes rolls up and scans her suspiciously.
"What are you doing? "
"Like I said. Taking care of you."
She places each palm on his shoulders and gently begins to palpate the lumps of tension underneath his skin. She is not quite sure what she's doing: she's only ever given a massage to a couple of people, none of them aliens. But the general... configuration of his muscles looks similar to a human's. Ish.
She is very slow, very cautious — maybe more than necessary, but she has to overcompensate for not being entirely sober — and eventually, her efforts are rewarded. The circling motions of her hands smooth the tension away; Javik sags into the rippling water a little, exhaling.
His bliss flows into her in honeyed waves, probably through the Cipher’s connection. She can feel what he is feeling, can almost sense the tickle of the bubbles... And then, there is an electrifying jolt, and her mind is swept up in a whirlwind of images. Imprints of memories, vibrant like a rapid-fire slideshow.
She sees herself. A lot of herself. Ploughing a path through a squirming, squelching sea of mutated rachni. Leaping onto the broad, hunched back of a brute, hanging on rodeo-style, just long enough to sink her omni-blades into its eyes. Backing into a ledge on Rannoch, a Reaper in her laser sights. And just... standing there. Hands on her hips; arguing with Javik about evolution; parrying each of his snide comments with a retort of her own, as if they were sparring... Sometimes doing that *while* actually sparring, with the blue blasts of her biotics barreling into his green.
The images of her sparring outfit, a simple sports bra and leggings combo, keep resurfacing again and again. All those glistening sweaty highlights on her arms and abs... She figures that Javik, oh so superior, would scoff at her primitive pores and sweat glands. But no; these memories cycle repeatedly for some other reason.
There is an undercurrent of a peculiar sensation behind all these mental snapshots, and the sparring ones in particular. A heady warmth, like the embrace of the scented bath.
She freezes.
"Javik..."
"Commander."
He cranes his neck, all four eyes looking up at her, pupils wide. His throat is exposed, vulnerable, in a way he’d never have allowed under different circumstances.
She can see him swallow.
"I knew this... bath would weaken me. I let my guard down, and my mind revealed things that should never have been spoken of. But it would be foolish to pretend that you saw nothing just now. I..."
He swallows again, harder, with a muffled noise at the back of his throat. A... moan?
"I desire you. I have for a while now. To my great shame."
A spike of metal seems to skewer her like a would-be husk. She releases his shoulders and balls her fists.
Again with the primitives.
She's tried, time and again, to be patient with him, to make allowances for his culture shock — but now he's making it personal. And to think that she found his voice attractive; to think that she occasionally fantasized abou...
"You misunderstand."
He must have read her thoughts like she read his. When he continues to explain, his voice is almost… wistful.
"In my cycle, copulation for the sake of procreation was given absolute priority. Our numbers were dwindling; for every new child born, ten were taken, killed or indoctrinated to use against us. Each generation crumbled more and more as the Reapers advanced, yet we desperately tried to make certain that there would be more generations. At least to hold out before the Crucible was complete. Where cloning failed us, we attempted to continue reproducing biologically. Any other act of intimacy was... selfish; a waste of time when we were meant to be fighting. Bordering on treason."
She cannot hold back a grimace of distaste.
"Of course whenever I learn something new about the Protheans, it ends up being something horrific. So not only you subjugated other planets, you policed your own bodies. Should have known."
"It was a necessity!" Javik cries out. "In times of war —"
"Yes, yes, I know!"
She's raised her voice too. She's still angry, but that anger, like the lotion and bubble bottles off the bath shelves, is mixing into a sizzling concoction with... with so much more.
"You've known nothing but war all your life, and now you are fighting a whole new war with a bunch of weird new species! It broke you so much that you can't even be…”
She flails her arms helplessly.
“Can’t even be horny without getting angry with yourself! Oh, you have no idea how much I want to both slap you and hold you in my arms and tell you it will be all right!"
"…Do it then. Either. Both."
Javik lifts himself up a notch out of the bath, his gaze still dark and intent. Devouring her.
"You are many things, Commander, but you have never been hesitant. That is what makes me —"
She does neither, in the end. She throws herself forward, and wraps, ivy-like, over Javik's torso. And kisses him.
Perhaps it is the heat of the moment, coupled with the warmth of the bath; or perhaps it's the Cipher again... Either way, his heartbeat resonates through her, as if their chests had merged into one. There is a little pause at first; and then, a triumphant drumming hymn, as he kisses her back, forceful, relentless, voraciously greedy after fifty thousand years.
The bubbly waves turn into a tsunami, which spills over the edges of the bath, drenching Shepard in seconds. Her clothes cling to her, dripping perfumed water -– but not for long. Javik tugs at them, in a nearly feverish hurry to get them off her.
"I think you mentioned that Prothean foreplay is telepathic," Shepard remarks, scarcely hearing her own voice, as his long fingers stroke her breasts. His species' women probably had none, but he appears to be really, really enjoying himself.
"Yes," he breathes out, before diving in for a new kiss. When he re-emerges, his expression is... Her bleary mind struggles to find the right word for it, but if it were anyone else *but* Javik, that word would definitely have been "mischievous".
"But with the Cipher, you can learn. For now," he flicks a dark, moist tongue over his lips, "This will do. This will do very well."
His teeth, inhumanly sharp, graze the tender skin over her collarbone. It makes her want to cry out, wildly, gleefully... But when he stops for breath again, she smiles softly instead, cupping his cheek in her hand.
"Not such a waste of time, is it? Come on, there is a bed in the next room."
"I could have you right here," he growls, returning her smile with a hungry grin.
She bites her lips, blood singing in time with his.
"It *is* a splendid bed. A treat for us both. You deserve a treat."
"So you keep saying... Shepard."
He straightens up and steps out of the tub, lifting her up as he does so. Pressing his whole body into hers. Shuddering when her legs lock over the small of his back.
"You have a bizarre obsession with making me... happy."
She laughs and slips out of his arms. A dangerous stunt, with so much water and her head spinning giddily... But he helps her stand steady, this time.
After a few more kisses and a casual stroke down his abdomen — a promise of things to come — she pulls him out of the bathroom and into the master bedroom.
"And I will complete that mission yet."