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Kaidan eyes the stretch of blank wall, absent-mindedly scrubbing a towel through his hair. It’s not the first time he’s noticed it. Kind of hard to miss it, actually, even if he wasn’t spending most of his free nights in the room now.
A private bathroom typically has a mirror. And the set up suggests there was one, at one point. But now, it’s just empty wall.
And he hasn’t asked. Mostly because he generally hasn’t cared - it’s certainly not the weirdest thing that’s happened lately. But tonight it sticks in his head, and doesn’t seem to want to let go.
“So,” He’s turning back to the bed, even as the thought half-forms in his head, “do I ask about the mirror?”
“What mirror?” Shepard doesn’t look up from the datapad he’s scrolling through, and Kaidan snorts.
“Yeah, that.” He still doesn’t look up, and if Kaidan didn’t know better, he’d assume this conversation was flying completely over his head. He’d stopped actively reading as soon as Kaidan had asked though - eyes flicking here and there and anywhere but him.
He doesn’t get a response to that, but he’s already got an idea going. Dropping the towel on the floor - and that gets him a reaction, a raised eyebrow, because of course it does. He just grins, taking that moment of distraction to steal the datapad and toss it onto the bed behind him as he drops into Shepard’s lap, bracketing his hips and settling quite comfortably into the man’s space. To his credit, Shepard lets him have the datapad without fuss, hands curling around his thighs as soon as he’s settled - fingers gripping at the soft fabric of sweats he may or may not have stolen.
It’s a simple enough movement that Kaidan could forgive it - but Shepard’s not as subtle as he thinks.
Reaching down, he carefully grabs his hand - his left - coaxing it up until Kaidan can press a kiss to tense knuckles. From this angle, he can see what he'd suspected he'd find: thin pale lines, meshed in with thicker, more recent scars, and fading into sun-scorched skin. Any further back, and they were almost invisible. Another year or two, and they'd likely be little more than memories.
"So."
And Casey sighs. But he doesn't take his hand back.
"...I tell you how I woke up?"
'Woke up'. Interesting way to put it. But, Kaidan just nods, "Middle of a firefight." And he definitely still sounds as pissed as when Casey first told him, if the quirk of Casey's lips is anything to go by. The shadow of a smile is gone as soon as it had appeared but Kaidan would take what he could get.
"Yeah, that. Didn't really…get a chance to stop. Take stock. Look. Until Joker rolled in and we had the Normandy again. And even then, it was a couple days before everything started feeling...real. And when it did, well…next thing I knew, Chakwas was bandaging my hand, and Miranda was… 'not impressed' were the words I believe she used. I wish I remembered the fight that led to when Chakwas heard her, but I think I faded out a bit."
He shrugs, weakly, and doesn’t make to take his hand from Kaidan’s grip - he doesn’t know when he started rubbing his thumb gently over his knuckles, but he has no plans of stopping anytime soon. “And...yeah, so. Never really wanted to put another up after that.”
Kaidan stays quiet for a long moment, considering the man in front of him. Takes in the cut of his tense jaw, the downward curve of his mouth.
Raising his free hand, he lightly traces over what used to be raised, puckered skin, trailing from the corner of his right eye to just under his mouth. A moment of consideration before he gently releases Casey’s hand to trace along the other side of his face as well, recalling a once ragged tear from his temple to a snarl that had tugged his lips up on one side.
Casey’s watching him, eyes dark and guarded, hands having dropped back down to his thighs where Kaidan can feel his grip - a touch too tight, yet almost careful, hands too tense to curl, but too sharp to let go, like Casey’s afraid he’s going to disappear any moment.
“...little weird seeing that pretty face again, huh?” He doesn’t know why he puts it that way, but there’s a sharp, startled sound, not unlike a laugh, that Casey lets out as he turns his cheek into Kaidan’s palm, so he’s pretty sure he didn’t fuck up too badly.
“Yeah, something like that.” Casey presses a kiss to his palm, eyes sliding closed as he does. His shoulders seem to slump as the tension leaves him - though Kaidan doesn’t particularly like the hunch they gain either.
There’s something he’s not saying, something Kaidan can just about see on the tip of his tongue - remembers one more thing. Raising his hand a little further, he gently sweeps his thumb from his temple back into his hair, where he knows a thin scar, faded with time and clearly grown into rather than just healed over, used to be.
The sound he gets in return is much softer - hurt - even as Casey reaches up to carefully grab the hand cupping his face. “It wasn’t fair.”
And now Kaidan’s the one laughing - he thinks. Some kind of sound scratches up his throat anyway. “Which part?”
He expects a couple answers - any answer really - except what he gets. “I walked away.”
Another kiss to his palm, one that has Kaidan curling his fingers and pressing in closer - shrinking the space around them to nothing but the breath between them.
“No one else got to walk away. Home, Akuze...I shouldn’t just get...get a clean slate. Those scars were...yeah, reasonably, they were just shit luck at shittier times but... something happened. They proved something happened. It’s not fair for me to...forget.”
It’s jumbled, and almost panicked, and Kaidan curls his hand around to the back of his head, pulling him in close to lean their foreheads together. “It felt like a betrayal.” He murmurs softly, and feels more than sees Casey nod in affirmation, even if it wasn’t a question.
“You’re not going to forget. We won’t forget.” Kaidan mutters, turning enough to press a kiss to where the ghost of one scar used to curve around his eye, feels Casey shudder under him even as he almost melts against him. Pulls back enough to see the last of the tension finally leave the man’s frown.
“Though…” dropping one hand down he runs a finger along where he knows a new ugly curve follows the sweep of his ribs, “maybe we could slow down on replacing them too?”
The smile’s not quite there, but it exists, and Kaidan finds himself smiling back. It doesn’t fix everything - the mirror’s still gone, and after this, Kaidan’s pretty sure it’s not coming back - hell, it likely doesn’t fix anything, but it’s...it’s a start.
He jumps slightly when he feels a hand slide under the back of his shirt - warm, calloused fingers unerringly finding the razor-thin web of cuts along the back of his ribs that he hasn’t quite got around to exploring himself yet - when a hardsuit cracks, he found out the hard way the types of marks it leaves - “Yeah, we definitely could.”