Work Text:
Late night, come home
Work sucks, I know
She left me roses by the stairs
Surprises let me know she cares
- Blink-182, “All the Small Things”
--
It’s the small comforts, Kaidan thinks, that matter most.
The sound of ocean surf. The gentle heat of the sun. A warm breeze on his bare back as he lands prone in the sand. The thunk of a volleyball as it lands a good few feet away from his outstretched fists.
Maybe not that last one.
“That’s game, human!” comes the nasally salarian voice from the other side of the net.
Kaidan groans, resting where he landed after that last futile dive, the sandpapery grit on his cheek a fitting punishment. Dying of embarrassment has gotta be more humiliating than dying to a husk, right?
This was supposed to be a vacation. A well-earned vacation. A well-earned, relaxing, boring, “thanks for taking out the biggest threat to the galaxy in literal eons and somehow living through it!” vacation. All he wanted was to sit on a beach, hold Anna’s hand, and maybe sip some sort of tropical drink. Fruity. With a little paper umbrella in it. He was even willing to wear sunscreen to keep his pasty Canadian skin from turning the color of a krogan warlord. That’s gotta count for something, right?
“Woo! Good job, babe!” a slightly tipsy, dark-haired woman shouts from the sideline.
He rolls his eyes and tries to sink deeper into the sand.
“Eh, come on, habibi,” a warm baritone says, an outstretched hand appearing in his peripheral vision. “Best two out of three?”
Kaidan huffs, grabbing the man’s hand and allowing himself to be hauled to his feet. Sand is caked on the side of his face and most of his torso, and his hair feels like it’s been styled with an entire sand dune. He’s pretty sure he looks as pathetic as he feels.
The expression on his face must match his attitude, because his erstwhile partner chuckles and claps his back sympathetically. “Cheer up, Kaidan,” Mehtab says, surreptitiously wiping off his now-sandy hand, “you did pretty well for your first time!”
Kaidan, nonplussed, manages a half-smile. “Thanks. I think I’m, uh, gonna sit the next one out.”
“Aw, but we were just getting started, wasiim!” Mehtab says, looking Kaidan up and down and grinning.
Kaidan full-on blushes, drawing a delighted laugh out of the other man. What I wouldn’t give to hear a Reaper horn right now. “Next time, maybe.”
“Next time, then,” Mehtab says with a wink, before picking up the volleyball and cajoling the gathered crowd to produce his “next handsome partner to challenge these two unbeaten salarians!”
Kaidan, for his part, trudges his way back to the beach chairs and the tipsy dark-haired woman in the flowy sundress, stylish sunglasses, and comically oversized wicker hat. “Babe, you were amazing!” the woman calls out, clapping as he approaches.
“We lost by ten points,” he grumbles as he flops petulantly into his chair, scattering sand everywhere.
“Yeah, that’s because you were staring at that guy’s ass more than the ball, babe,” she teases.
He looks across the beach at where Mehtab has pulled some unlucky twink onto the court to be the salarians’ next victim, admiring his bronzed muscles and blindingly white smile. “What can I say? It’s a nice ass,” he says evenly.
“Second nicest one out there,” she muses.
He turns to the woman and arches an eyebrow. “Also, ‘babe’? Really?”
She peers over her sunglasses at him, eyes twinkling with unrestrained mirth. “What? We’re on vacation, it’s a whole tourist…thing, isn’t it?”
Kaidan just harrumphs.
“I could just call you Major,” she sasses.
“You know I still technically outrank you, right?” he retorts, placing a hand lightly on her armrest as he relaxes back into his chair.
She scoffs. “Maybe by Alliance protocol. I’m pretty sure ‘Savior of the Galaxy’ trumps most other positions, Major.”
He entwines his fingers with hers and gives a gentle squeeze. “Mm. I can think of a few positions to test that theory on, Shepard.”
Anna laughs and swats him with her hat, never letting go of his hand.
——
They walk through the local market later that day, Kaidan having washed off the sandy remnants—and sour mood—of his defeat. Anna leans comfortably on his arm, happily babbling about anything and everything that catches her eye. He chuckles at the right moments, and adds his own comments when (rarely) needed, but mostly he’s just happy to feel her weight against him.
The signs of the Rebuilding are subtle, though present, even here. The Reapers hadn’t touched this island—or rather, hadn’t gotten around to it before Shepard blew them all to hell—but the touches of the New Council is still everywhere he looks. Many of the market stalls are decorated with miniature versions of the New Council’s flag, the five-armed Citadel surrounding the spherical remains of the Crucible. Tourists of all species stroll past, courtesy of the shore leave system implemented both to keep the peace while efforts to repair the Charon relay continue, and to stimulate the economy of a battered, weary world. And if Kaidan squints at just the right time in just the right place, he thinks he can see the Citadel itself orbiting overhead.
So much of the last fourteen months has been fraught, filled with pain and fear and confusion. The first seconds after the Crucible fired, having to leave Shepard behind. The four months to get the Normandy back to Earth from where she crashed after The Pulse, assuming Shepard was dead, praying she wasn’t. Another four months at her bedside after they returned, the miracle of learning Shepard had been found buried alive under tons of rubble tempered by the fear she wouldn’t make it out of the coma. A deteriorating political situation among the vestiges of the various alien armies trapped on a planet not their own, solved only by Shepard herself waking up, giving one of her famous speeches, and becoming the leading face of the Rebuilding. At every turn, Kaidan’s thoughts have been consumed with Shepard’s health, welfare, well-being. And in spite of everything, she’s still here.
A warm breeze briefly blows the hem of Anna’s sundress awry, the shiny metal of her leg brace catching the light of the afternoon sun. He lets her lean on him just a little heavier.
“I’m sorry, do they just have a pile of krogan testicles for sale right there?”
Kaidan’s eyes widen as the question breaks through his reverie. He looks over at the little stand where Anna’s pointing, and laughs. “Uh, no. Those are coconuts.”
She stops and stares. “That’s a coconut?”
“What, you’ve never seen a coconut before?”
“Colony kid,” she says, smacking his chest, “remember? Gotta try one.”
“Also, wouldn’t krogan testicles come in packs of four?” he wonders under his breath as she drags him, half limping, to the stand. She snorts.
After a brief moment of haggling with the vendor—watching Shepard haggle with merchants never ceases to amaze him—she stands triumphant with a coconut in hand. “It’s hairy!”
“Yes.”
“And hard.”
Kaidan stifles a chuckle. “Yes.”
Anna peers at the fibrous fruit, turning it over in her hands. “Probably shouldn’t eat the outside,” she mutters to herself.
“Seriously?” Kaidan says incredulously.
“Colony kid!” she says again, emphasizing her point by throwing the coconut straight into his chest. “Open it.”
He cocks an eyebrow, sass on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he silently wreathes his arms in blue flame, concentrating on the coconut in his hands as it, too, is haloed in blue. He taps his fingers in a silent mnemonic, lightening the density of the coconut’s shell, and then pokes his thumb straight through. He grabs a straw from the amused vendor’s cart and, with a flourish, slides it through the hole. He holds it out for Anna to take.
“Show off,” she grumbles good-naturedly.
He bows low.
Anna laughs, swiping the coconut from his hands. “So, what, you drink—“ She stops, taking a sip through the straw, eyes wide at the taste. “Kaidan!” she exclaims. “It’s sweet!”
He grins. “Can’t get anything past you, huh?”
She pulls a face and starts hobbling away. “Just for that, you don’t get any,” she says haughtily, nose in the air.
He just laughs and rushes to catch up, holding out his arm for her to deign to take.
——
The sun is getting low in the sky as they wander along the beach, further and further away from the little resort town that dominates the island. They’ve been talking about everything and nothing: the latest demands of the salarian councillor, that time Ashley made friends with a monkey on Eletania, why beaches aren’t like this in Canada, why hockey is far superior to beach volleyball. It’s…refreshing to be doing this, instead of running for their lives.
Kaidan doesn’t have the courage yet to hope the rest of the future might be like this.
They step around a bend in the beach and come upon a cove, small and sheltered from the rougher ocean surf. On the far side, sitting atop a rocky promontory, is a—
“Is that a lighthouse?” Anna says, interrupting herself in a hushed whisper. “A real, actual lighthouse?”
Kaidan furrows his brow. “Yeah, I think so. Have you never—“
“No, I’ve only read about them. Not a lot of lighthouses in the farms and fields of Mindoir,” she says ruefully.
He looks at the horizon, then back to the lighthouse. He gives Anna a grin. “Come on, let’s get closer.”
They meander along the cove to the far side, the small lighthouse looming larger with every step. Its painted white exterior has faded over the years, chipped and weather-beaten, but it’s no less majestic for its age. The lack of tracks or a footpath makes Kaidan think it’s been abandoned for a while, which makes sense—Earth ships have been steering by precise tide-specific GPS for decades now. Lighthouses are unnecessary, defunct. Relics of a bygone age, where the violence of hidden shoals and spears of rock has been replaced by the comfort of peaceful, uncomplicated travel.
He feels a spark run up his spine as a sudden hope comes to him, that he and Shepard, and their formidable military skills, might soon be relics of a bygone age of violence, too.
They come to the foot of the promontory and look up, the lighthouse dominating their field of view. “It’s beautiful,” Anna murmurs.
He squeezes her hand. “Not the only thing that’s beautiful around here.”
“It’s true, you are very pretty,” she says with a light-hearted smirk and a suddenly mischievous glint in her eye. “Bet you’d look even prettier up there.”
“Up…?”
“In the lighthouse,” she grins.
Kaidan blinks. “You want to break into a lighthouse?”
“Come on, help me get up these rocks,” she says, already trying to climb them.
He blows out an exasperated breath, his need to follow the rules warring with his need to follow Shepard.
As if there’d ever really be a contest there.
Kaidan scoops her up in his arms, Anna giggling with the sudden motion. He starts climbing the rocks that make up the promontory, one careful step at a time.
“You know,” Anna comments laconically, “you could just use your biotics to make me lighter and make this easier on yourself.”
“Shut up, I’m impressing you,” he replies lightly. “You’re very impressed right now.”
She laughs. “Yes, yes, you’re very scrappy and manly.”
“I am scrappy and manly,” he mutters.
In no time at all, he’s made it to the top of the outcropping and the base of the lighthouse. The door is unlocked, so Anna, of course, pushes her way inside. Kaidan follows her as she hobbles up a narrow, winding staircase, finally alighting on the platform at the top. As expected, most of the equipment has either been removed or scavenged over the years, leaving mostly bare walls, the empty casing where a light would go, and an absolutely gorgeous view of the sun just above the ocean.
Anna takes in a sharp breath when she looks out, and Kaidan can’t help but agree. The view is stunning, easily equal to the overlook of the Widow nebula from the old Citadel. Or the vast network of towers and buildings that make up the skyline of Illium.
Or the sight of a living, breathing Shepard in a hospital bed.
He puts his hand in hers, and she leads him around the small platform, commenting on various bits and bobs of hardware here, the nest a bird had made there. She stops at a carving some vandals had made on the wall long ago. She runs a hand over it, mouthing the initials as she does: RST+KJK.
Kaidan bristles a bit that someone would deface the wall of the lighthouse, but stops when Anna murmurs, “Who do you think they were?”
“Who?” he asks.
She runs her hand over the carving again. “RST and KJK. Who do you think they were?”
He shrugs. “Vandals, looks like.”
She turns and glares at him. “Such a rule follower sometimes. I mean, tell me a story about who they were. Like,” she screws up her face in a frown, “maybe RST was an old merchant, and KJK was his lost love, and he carved their initials up here to remember them for all time.” She waggles her eyebrows at him, trying to get him to play along.
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Alright, alright…hmm.” He thinks for a minute, tracing the letters with his own hand. “I don’t think that’s right. The initials are in two different depths, two different styles. I think maybe…RST was a young teacher, and KJK was a scholar and magistrate, and they’d meet up here for secret trysts.”
She laughs delightedly. “Magistrate! Good word. Let’s see…maybe RST—ooh, let’s call him Roy—was a pirate! And KJK—her name should be…Kallirhoe—she was—“
“Kallirhoe?” Kaidan says, his mouth trying to frame the unfamiliar syllables.
“It’s Greek, read a book, Earth boy,” Anna says affectionately, patting his chest. “Kallirhoe was the captain of a merchant marine vessel. And she and Roy would have epic battles at sea, and then meet up here secretly to consummate their forbidden love!”
Kaidan huffs. Over Anna’s shoulder, the sun is just starting to kiss the horizon, setting the ocean off in a blaze of oranges and reds. He gently takes her arm and turns her around so she can see the sunset, and she gasps, clutching his arm harder. He moves to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders so that they can both watch, and whispers in her ear, “Or maybe, one of them was an old soldier, weary from a life of war, wanting just a moment of peace. And the other was a spark of light, dropped from the heavens into his lap, full of joy and love that he never, ever wanted to let go of again.”
Anna turns toward him, smiling softly, and puts a hand gently on his cheek. “I like that one.”
There are many comforts to find in this world. The taste of a perfectly home-cooked steak. The click of an ammo block from your just-arrived backup. The reassuring, rhythmic beep of a hospital monitor. The grit of sand under your lover’s hand. And while none of these things is, individually, the thing that matters most, they might all together be enough.
Kaidan leans down and captures Anna in a kiss, the fading sunlight leaving them to this one, small comfort among many.