Work Text:
Glue
“Stop that,” says Kaidan, softly. He’s not angry yet.
Shepard grits his teeth against another wave of pain, tightening around him like a belt. All of his joints feel rusted, locked up. Some mornings are worse than others. This one is a bad one; it’s the rain. Still, fighting through the stiffness in his muscles and the ache in his bones, he forces himself to his feet. He steadies himself with one hand pressed against the bedroom wall.
“Shepard,” says Kaidan. He’s a little more urgent now. He still calls him Shepard – he says his first name sounds like someone else, and Shepard agrees.
“I’m fine,” Shepard insists, voice graveled with pain and sleep.
There goes Kaidan, lips pursing in a displeased line. Shepard drags himself along the wall, one creaking step after another. They had offered him replacements, of course, especially on his shoulders, which were the worst of him, but Shepard had wanted to remain at least half-human. Or whatever amount of human was left, anyway, when he had woken up in the coma ward four years ago.
The effort of standing makes his legs tremble and his palms sweat. His grip on the wall turns slippery.
Kaidan is tense, but he knows that Shepard won’t want to be touched. “You’re being ridiculous,” he says. “Just sit down and take your medicine.”
“I will,” says Shepard evenly. “Once I make it downstairs.”
“You’re not proving anything by doing this. You’re just being stubborn and hurting yourself.”
“Yep.”
Heaving an enormous sigh, Kaidan puts his hands up. He’s not going to go anywhere.
It takes ten long minutes for Shepard to hobble his way across the bedroom, down the stairs, and through the living room to sit in his favorite spot – the loveseat that sits diagonally with a view of the fireplace, the smaller aquarium, and the window overseeing the city. On slow days, he likes to sit there with his feet in Kaidan’s lap, listening to Kaidan read out loud whatever, anything – anything, advertisements and news articles and history books and romance novels. Just the sound of his voice, the heat from the artificial fire, the slow aquatic movement of the fish, the steady glitter of the city lights. It calms him down to the very core. Feels like home.
Once he had settled down, sweaty hands gripping handfuls of his sweatpants, Kaidan brings him a glass of water and his assembly of pills. Shepard takes them.
“Was it worth it?”
Shepard doesn’t answer straight away. He finishes off his glass of water. “No,” he says.
Kaidan laughs. “At least you’ll admit it.”
It’s a bit before the drugs kick in. Kaidan putters around – he gets sore, too, especially with his headaches, but (as he loves to point out) he takes his medication and mostly stays above it. So, as Shepard sits and recovers, pain softening in layers, Kaidan puts together breakfast. It’s his usual, almost too comforting – eggs and bacon and plain toast with cinnamon sprinkled over it. When he brings Shepard a plate, Shepard reaches for him with tired arms that felt like lead and pulls him into a soft and lingering kiss.
But Kaidan’s expression is still drawn.
“Sorry,” says Shepard.
Kaidan cocks his head noncommittally; he must be really annoyed.
“I feel better now,” Shepard offers.
“That’s good,” says Kaidan, and at least he sounds like he means that. He sits.
Together, they eat in silence. Companionable, but also a little tense. Kaidan daubs his toast in the runny yolk of Shepard’s eggs. He is still in his plaid pajama bottoms and black undershirt, hair speckled gray and growing a little shaggy from being off duty for so long, face a little rough – handsome, Shepard thinks. Shepard is in his ratty sweatpants from the day before and one of Kaidan’s shirts, too big for his frame. He’s gotten thinner, frailer, over the years. One of the biggest adjustments has been coming to understand that he simply isn’t cut out for combat anymore. Maybe it’s why he has started fighting with himself. Welcome to the club, Joker had said. We get good parking.
Shepard teases, “You won’t hold a grudge against me all day, will you?”
“I’m not mad at you,” sighs Kaidan. “You make me worry.”
“I’m not going to get shot just walking across the house, Kaidan.”
“You don’t have to get shot. Look – you – you don’t even have to fall down the damn stairs, or break anything, although you might. It’s enough that you’re in pain. You know?”
And all at once, Shepard does know. Regret settles icy cold in his stomach. It hadn’t occurred to him that, when he was deliberately hurting himself, he was hurting Kaidan, too.
“Shit,” he says.
That makes Kaidan smile a little, knowing that his meaning has hit home. “There you go.”
Part of Shepard wants to explain, wants Kaidan to understand the need to rally against the pain and push forward. To spite the limitations of his body. To know that he can still go beyond. There was a time when he had dragged himself, battered and broken, for miles without complaint. It seems an insult that now he can’t walk down the stairs of his own house without help.
But Kaidan is right, of course. It’s stupid. He’s not proving anything, not to himself or to anyone. Everyone knows what he has done. All he is doing is upsetting the love of his life and giving himself headaches.
“I just hate it,” he says finally. “I hate being so weak.”
“You’re not-”
“I know. But it feels like it. What good am I if I can’t get out of bed in the morning?”
“A lot of good,” says Kaidan. “You know that.”
They’ve both set their plates aside, half-finished. The eggs are cold. Shepard thinks longingly of the doughnuts from the shop down the alley on the level above, just for a second.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“You never do.”
“Ha ha. Thanks.”
In the corner of his eye, Shepard spots the way that Kaidan rubs at his knees. They’re both hopeless when storms hit, which fortunately isn’t often. The local atmosphere is too arid, but there is a rainy season that lasts a single, miserable month. Some mornings, they have to lie starfished beside each other, just waiting for their medication to kick in, listening to the sound of rainfall battering the windows. Kaidan’s knees give him the most trouble, swelling like grapefruits. He’s considering surgery, slowly and with great purpose, as he does most things.
“Give me your legs,” says Shepard quietly, patting the sofa.
“I’m okay,” says Kaidan, but he complies without hesitation. Shepard can tell by touch that they must ache badly, perhaps worse than he is letting on. As Shepard massages up and down his calves, Kaiden hisses under his breath. What a pair they are, Shepard thinks. Not old, not yet, but falling apart together.
When he looks out the window, he sees the flicker of shuttles passing back and forth, blurred by a sheet of rain. The colors blend together into shades of gray and blue. The purr of engines is soothing.
“Thanks,” says Kaidan.
Shepard works down to his feet. “Just trying to make up,” he jokes.
Kaidan makes that sound, that patent Kaidan sound, and waggles his feet. “Just promise you’ll do better. All right?”
“Yeah,” says Shepard. If that’s all it will take, he’ll do it; he has no excuse not to. “I promise.”
Kaidan looks at him for a long moment. His expression is thoughtful and fond, a good combination, a good sign. “You are,” he says, “so unexpected, sometimes.”
“What did I do now?”
“I was just thinking I love your sincerity, that’s all.”
Shepard laughs. “How else would I be?”
“Nothing. You’re just you.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“A very good thing.” He pauses, making a show of thinking it over. “Most of the time.”
“You make me better,” says Shepard. Kaidan is always full of comfort, assurances – not to appease, but because it’s what he truly thinks. He is incredible that way. Shepard has never met anyone so capable of love. Shepard tries to give back what he gets, as best he can. “You’re the best person I know. You know that, right?”
Kaidan has to break eye contact for a second, but his smile can’t be reigned in. “Thanks, Shepard.”
He’s too far away to kiss without serious rearranging, and Shepard is getting uncomfortable from sitting in one spot. He nudges Kaidan’s legs off of him and gets up to put their unfinished breakfast in the compost chute. Standing is much easier this time, almost thoughtless. The medication is just like his implants, he thinks, or armor upgrades. It’s a tool, not a way out. “Sorry about breakfast,” he says as he dumps the plates in the sink, a chore for his future self.
“Yeah,” Kaidan agrees. “It happens.”
“Hey, want to get doughnuts?”
“Somehow I knew you would ask that.”
“Yes?”
“Fine, fine. Just let me put on some pants, would you? And some shoes. Put on your shoes.”
“Is that an order?”
“As if giving you orders has ever meant anything. I’m asking nicely.” Kaidan pauses to frown at his reflection in the window, at his hair sticking up wild. “Why didn’t you tell me I look like this?”
“Handsome?” guesses Shepard. He doesn’t have enough hair to worry about, keeping it buzzed as usual. He likes that Kaidan lets his grow, likes to toy with it when they kiss, bury his fingers deep, the mild clean smell of his shampoo.
Kaidan grins as he dons a baseball cap with a beer-drinking krogran on it. It was a gag gift from James and Steve, who think they are being subtle despite showing up everywhere together, shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Very good,” says Shepard.
“Thank you.”
While they wait for the elevator at the front door, Shepard stretches his neck with a resounding crack. Feels better. “One day, I’m going to just pop apart at the joints like a toy. Arm over here, spine over there. And you’ll have to sweep me up into a pile.”
“That’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever said, and you predicted the apocalypse,” says Kaidan. He tucks his arm through Shepard’s, easy, practiced. “But if that happens, you don’t have to worry. I’ll put you back together again.”
--fin