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There were so many pamphlets. Cambridge, Brown, UBC, McGill, Columbia, UC Berkeley—more names that Shepard recognized mostly from movies or TV. Things you overheard and absorbed without understanding what they meant, or sometimes even where they were. The stack had been accumulating since Fall. Sometimes—like now—when Kaidan went downstairs to make popcorn or grab them some granola to snack on, Shepard pushed the pamphlets around, skirting the edges with his fingers. He never opened any of them and he always pushed them back into place before Kaidan came in.
Two of the pamphlets were white at the creases: UBC, with a campus not more than twenty minutes by bus from where Shepard was standing in Kaidan’s bedroom, and Cambridge, which was whole continents, oceans and plane rides that Shepard couldn’t afford away. He’d never even been on a plane.
At least, if he had, he didn’t know about it.
“I’m gonna travel,” he’d told the guidance counselor when they had their mandatory meeting at the start of second term in twelfth grade. It was part of some personal development class where everyone was supposed to choose a career and learn to budget and do their taxes. You also had to get thirty hours of work experience.
At least Shepard had the work experience angle covered about a hundred times over.
Spring was slow to come but April hit regardless of the weather and that was when the official letters started turning up. “Hells to the yeeeah high-five BCIT buddy,” Joker said to Garrus when they got their acceptances to the aerospace tech school the same afternoon.
“We’re not going to be on the same campus,” Garrus said. He gave him the high-five across the cafeteria table anyway.
Shepard shoved too many french fries into his mouth to avoid talking. Nobody said anything to him. He spent a long time chewing.
“You know the botany department at UBC is quite well-respected,” Liara had said the day after her letter came. She was busy putting candy-colored sticky notes in the pages of a hardcover textbook full of seaweed diagrams. Kaidan told Shepard later that the university was giving her advanced standing and about three scholarships. Another sticky went into the seaweed book. “I’m very excited about the research opportunities there,” Liara added. “Have you seen any of their gardens?”
Shepard had climbed into the Japanese garden on campus once, alone, at three am. It’d been one of those restless nights when he’d zipped up his jacket and hopped on the Normandy and driven like wildfire to Kaidan’s, only to realize when he got there that he didn’t have the heart to wake Kaidan up.
So Shepard said, “Yeah. Pretty nice.”
Everybody had a direction all picked out. Plants, planes, jet engines and research papers. Candy-colored sticky notes and plenty of pamphlets.
But Shepard could hear Kaidan coming up the stairs. He slid the pamphlets back into their tidy stack and took two steps to the left so he was in front of the balcony doors when Kaidan came in instead, staring out into the tree branches he was so good at climbing.
“Hey,” Kaidan said. He had a bowl of popcorn in one hand and a box of granola in the other. “Something up?”
“Nah,” Shepard said. The popcorn smelled good, and it reminded him he was hungry.
In spite of the white crease on the Cambridge pamphlet, Kaidan was going to UBC. He’d been given all the same honors as Liara—minus one because he wasn’t focused on a specific science.
There’d been a letter, though. All the way from England. When Shepard asked about it Kaidan had just shrugged and said, “I dunno, it’s kinda far. My dad wanted me to go, but...”
But.
Shepard didn’t know what to do with that.
The ‘but’ lingered like a piece of popcorn stuck between Shepard’s molars. There was this one spot they always managed to find and getting them out wasn’t something Shepard could do on his own, poking the hard kernel with his tongue the same way he went after cuts on the insides of his cheeks. Something he couldn’t let go. Something that wouldn’t let go of him.
He was still hungry, just not for popcorn. Kaidan licked his thumb and Shepard focused on the shape of his mouth, the stubborn curl of hair over his ear, the way his chest rose and fell and the bowl of popcorn resting on his stomach—not to mention the way he was smiling, his mouth twisting at the left corner but not the right.
He looked happy. It wasn’t something Shepard had any hand in but he felt it all the same, that tight punch of pleasure colored by actually feeling proud of him.
“Is there something…” Kaidan wiped the corner of his mouth with the knuckle of his forefinger.
“Nah,” Shepard said again.
“’Cause you were staring.”
“Yeah,” Shepard said.
It was just one of those nights. The sky was dark with rain and there was plenty of wind. Shepard listened to the branches clatter against the window and the glass pane of the balcony door, shaking his head at the idea that people ever thought about it like it was a scary thing.
“I’m just gonna put the bowl in the sink,” Kaidan said. “Are you gonna…” He bit his lip, warm and settled, starting to tense up, not wanting to get out of bed for anything. Shepard didn’t blame him. It was comfortable, no future, no past, the smell of popcorn and the warm spots they’d only leave behind by moving. “You thinking of staying tonight? It looks pretty nasty out there, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Sure,” Shepard said.
It was always worth it when Kaidan grinned. “See you in a bit,” Kaidan promised, and left the door open an inch behind him.
Shepard found an extra pair of sweats and changed into them, the same old routine. It’d be too warm in the middle of the night, Kaidan practically burning up next to him, but that was how he knew where he was—in Kaidan’s bed instead of his own, Kaidan’s neighborhood and Kaidan’s garden and Kaidan’s treehouse practically changing the sound of the wind. Some things were supposed to be universal, but not this. Shepard toed his backpack to the corner of the room so Kaidan wouldn’t trip over it coming back in, then padded out into the hall for the bathroom—to take care of the popcorn problem before turning in.
The stairway light was still on, even if it was dimmed. Shepard could hear Mrs. Alenko’s voice, muffled but still clear, two long shadows snaking along the wall. Kaidan’s tousled hair, the sharp angle of his glasses dividing his profile, warped and elongated. Mrs. Alenko’s shadow-shoulders bobbed like she was shrugging.
“…and I told him: not Cambridge,” Mrs. Alenko said.
Sound traveled. That was science. Shepard wasn’t listening—or, at least, he wasn’t trying to listen.
“Okay,” Kaidan replied. “Thanks, Mom. I mean it.”
“You could always do a semester abroad, though.” Mrs. Alenko didn’t sound like she was smiling. There was a yawn in there somewhere. Sometimes, she did these things, and all Shepard could think of was Kaidan. “The campus really is beautiful there. And it’d be so…far away, all right, and maybe I’d shrivel up and die a little, but it’d be good for you, Kaidan. I mean it.”
Shepard clicked the bathroom door shut before any more sound traveled.
He leaned over the sink and jammed a finger into his mouth to pry out the popcorn that was wedged between his molars. Then, he had to deal with the weird feeling that came when you finally freed whatever’d been stuck—like even though it wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place, once it was gone it felt like it was missing.
This particular popcorn kernel was stubborn. Shepard opened a drawer in the bathroom cabinet and pulled out a length of floss. The orange-handled toothbrush Kaidan had given him back in the fall was still there, tucked in next to Kaidan’s blue one. Shepard flossed, then brushed his teeth.
He avoided eye-contact with the guy in the mirror. That guy needed a haircut, and there was a set to his jaw lately that Shepard didn’t like: something underneath all the freckles and the early beginnings of a beard that he couldn’t trust.
Even Anderson saw it. He’d come up to Shepard’s bedroom and knocked, three solid taps, about a week ago. That knock was how Shepard knew it was him and no matter how many times Jack tried to mimic it to barge her way in and borrow whatever she was after, Shepard could tell. Anderson’s knock had another cadence, a weight behind it that a skinny teenage girl, even a tough as nails wildcat like Jack, couldn’t fake.
“Everything all right with you these days, son?” Anderson had asked. His arms were crossed, one thick biceps pressed against the doorframe.
Shepard swallowed. Then he’d said, “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
Anderson didn’t usually ask twice. Shepard gnawed at the inside corner of his mouth. “Yeah,” he’d repeated.
Putting another cadence, a weight behind it.
One of Anderson’s big hands had come down on Shepard's bony shoulder and squeezed. “Okay, Shepard,” he’d said. He’d walked away and disappeared downstairs, back to his personal living room—where he always sat in a worn-in chair, huge and green, and read the newspaper, or watched hockey and sometimes soccer on a small-screen TV.
Shepard splashed some water on his face and went back to Kaidan’s bedroom, where he nearly collided with Kaidan coming out the door.
“Oh,” Kaidan said. “There you are.” He touched Shepard’s side as he slid by him, ruffling up the hem of his t-shirt, fingertips finding a hint of freckled skin. “I’m just gonna brush my teeth.” His glasses were already off and he was in his favorite pajamas: a pair of blue sweats and an old t-shirt with a dinosaur on it. It was from some museum in Alberta, somewhere Kaidan had gone with his parents one summer when he was younger.
Kaidan’s bed was still warm when Shepard climbed into it. He flopped down on the far edge, as close to the wall as he could get. He lay on his back and thought about how his brain felt as blank and empty as the bare ceiling. Even the skylight was covered. If Shepard hadn’t already known there were stars up there, he’d never have believed it. He didn’t turn his head when he heard Kaidan come back in; the light went out, the blankets rustled, and finally Kaidan was huddled next to him, chin on his shoulder.
“What’re you doing way over here,” Kaidan asked.
He was warm and he smelled so good. He reminded Shepard of things like nutella on toast, hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. Sweet and comfortable, getting you hot from the inside out.
Shepard turned onto his side and slotted his arm under Kaidan’s pillow. Kaidan nuzzled up against his chest and sighed. Their legs bumped, so Shepard stretched himself out straighter to give Kaidan more room to curl. They fit better front to back but spooning always got Shepard hard, regardless of which side of it he was on.
“You working tomorrow?” Kaidan mumbled.
“Yeah,” Shepard said.
“Early?”
“Not really. Ten thirty.” It’dbe a typical Saturday with Donnelly, as long as neither of them had to go anywhere near the meat-slicer.
“You can stay and have some breakfast, then?”
Kaidan’s voice was getting softer and softer. Words were blending together. But Shepard was pretty fluent in Kaidan sleepy-talk these days and he picked up the meaning.
“Yeah,” Shepard said. “Sure.”
“Mm,” Kaidan said.
Shepard kissed his hair. Kaidan drifted off, body settling into the heaviness of sleep, and Shepard lay wide awake, almost like they were in two different rooms. He wondered if being without Kaidan would be like unsticking that popcorn kernel from between his teeth—that kind of weird shock, and then... Nothing.
It wasn’t the most flattering comparison, but losing something you were never supposed to have in the first place wasn’t the prettiest thought to begin with.
There were just so many pamphlets. So many opportunities for someone that smart and hardworking and dedicated. And instead, Kaidan was here, with Shepard, already asleep. No stars.
And Shepard knew that here—whatever his here even was—wasn’t anywhere that mattered. Here was nowhere, and he was going nowhere fast. No matter how much he sped on the Normandy, no matter how quick he could sprint the high school track, he was just spinning his wheels.
He blinked and breathed Kaidan in. Some things were inevitable while some were just a long time coming. Others were too good to be true; eventually, you looped around to the long-time-coming again. It’d always been there. Shepard tensed his hand under Kaidan’s pillow.
Everybody had their directions all picked out.
It took him a long time to fall asleep.
*
There’d been so many pamphlets. Kaidan had started to dream about them, folding and unfolding, a Seussian montage—like a twisted mash-up of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Five Thousand Fingers of Dr. T.
Always doctors, Kaidan’s sleeping brain thought. The subconscious knew more about his issues than he could put into words without half-hearted—and nerd-related—metaphors but, well, that much was true for everyone. His particular brand of anxious had manifested in the form of informational brochures and the first piece of mail he’d received from Dad in years, glossy and scenic, giving him the run-down on a real University with a capital U.
Kaidan dreamed about that, too. That he was walking across the campus and it was a lot more BBC’s Downton Abbey than it was Dr. Who. He didn’t have nightmares about forgetting his work or not studying for a test or even being in the front of the class naked. But the apprehension was there, this sense of being lost for good, turning all these corners past buildings that felt older than time, and not recognizing any of the faces when he looked closer—even though, at first glance, he thought he knew everyone.
Okay, so the pressure’d been getting to him. But making the choice wound up being a lot easier than he’d planned, and it was only followed by a few self-questioning alone-time sessions with his headphones on, listening to Mumford and Sons and feeling like a tool, wondering meaningfully if he was doing the right thing.
Liara, Kaidan reminded himself. That was the start of his personal mantra explaining exactly why this was the Best Choice, at least for him. Liara brought out the best he had. She challenged him and—her words, not his—he wouldn’t be able to live without her homemade hummus during midterms.
She was probably right about that.
And there were incredible science programs at UBC. Mom wouldn’t be alone. Kaidan wouldn’t be alone, either. He’d turn the corner of a familiar street and run into people he knew, even if they weren’t people he liked or who liked him. He’d have all the awkward half-wave and Neanderthal half-hellos he could wish for, not knowing if his face was seizing up or approximating a real almost-smile, before moving on with a cringe, wondering how other people executed those simple social procedures without being weird.
Maybe they didn’t.
Maybe it was all one big lie.
And that was why people had nightmares: because they kept assuming everybody else had it together more than they did when the truth was, nobody knew anything, except that faking it wasn’t easy. It never had been.
The last on Kaidan’s list was Shepard. He should’ve been the beginning and the end, a Shepard sandwich of reasons, but that wasn’t fair to Shepard. It wasn’t fair to either of them.
“I’m not doing this because I want to stay with Shepard,” Kaidan had told Mom one night, maybe unexpectedly, over two Banh Mi sandwiches.
“I know,” Mom had replied. “You’re too smart to do something that stupid.”
Kaidan had laughed. I don’t know about that. But Mom was smiling and so was Kaidan, for the first time since the first pamphlet showed up.
But it’d still be nice to wake up like this on late mornings: curled around Shepard’s waist, an arm slung around his hips, face pillowed in his chest.
Kaidan’s first impulse was to apologize, but he was too sleepy to form the words. He pressed his face deeper into Shepard’s chest until he was trapped by his own warm breath and a too-big yawn. Shepard, whose heartbeat always gave him away, was awake already. Kaidan had no way of knowing how long it’d been.
“You should wake me,” Kaidan managed, before remembering to clear his throat. “You can wake me, Shepard. I want you to wake me.”
“Nah,” Shepard said.
His monosyllabic lifestyle had only intensified now that there was no teacher to insist he respond to any unexpected in-class questions. Kaidan smushed his face against Shepard’s collarbone until his hair tickled Shepard’s throat—all stubbly, pretty hot—and then Kaidan’s mouth was moving over Shepard’s t-shirt, pressing kisses to the cotton, slow and damp and uneven. Shepard’s body tensed up, tight and lean. When Kaidan splayed his fingers over Shepard’s stomach, the line of pale hair under his navel did the shivering thing and it was fine; Shepard didn’t have to bust out the sentences; all he had to do was be there.
It was the perfect morning.
Kaidan was doing the right thing for himself.
And he was kissing Shepard’s scratchy throat, sucking on Shepard’s jumping pulse, rubbing his fingers over tented sweats.
“Morning,” he said, hoping sleepy and sexy would sound like the same thing.
Shepard’s lips parted and he let out a quick breath. “Yeah,” he replied. His voice was deep and airless and his dick twitched under Kaidan’s fingers.
Kaidan hummed a quiet laugh and rubbed him harder. Shepard cleared his throat and lifted his hips into the touch, and that was all the encouragement Kaidan needed.
He nosed one of Shepard’s nipples through his t-shirt and then slid overtop of him, where he nestled down against Shepard’s erection, settled his own in next to it. Kaidan nipped at Shepard’s throat and Shepard curved his neck, angling for a kiss.
“Nn, Shepard, ‘ve got morning breath,” Kaidan said. He buried his face under Shepard’s jaw.
“Me too,” Shepard said into Kaidan’s cheek. “S’ok.”
Kaidan kissed him. Shepard’s palms slid under the waistband of Kaidan’s sweats and over his ass, where they squeezed, and it made Kaidan hitch forward. He moaned. Shepard licked his lips.
His eyes were so blue, even in the half-light of morning. Xena: Warrior Princessblue. Kaidan scoffed at himself when he thought it but it was the truth—they were that intense. They were so blue it was startling sometimes when they were on you, even when you knew Shepard. If it was possible to know Shepard.
Kaidan liked to think he did, at least a little.
Maybe better than anybody else in some ways.
Kaidan started a downward trajectory. He rucked up Shepard’s t-shirt and kissed along his abdomen as he went. He got to his navel and then Shepard’s hands caught him under the arms and tugged at him. He stopped.
“Hmm?” Kaidan asked. Another light tug, urging him up Shepard’s chest. He crawled back to look Shepard in the eye.
Shepard pressed their lips close. “Just, want... you here right now,” he murmured. His hands were pressed snug against Kaidan’s sides. He was panting. It was incredibly sexy and Kaidan kissed him, hard, and rocked his hips down hard too.
He still couldn’t believe sometimes that the two dumb kids they’d been had managed to figure out how this was done—and to do it well, so well, whenever they wanted to. It was theirs. They had something. A pulse. A superhero kind of super-power. ‘Special’ was a word that’d always been used on Kaidan in terms of the quantifiable, after intelligence quotient tests, like it could be measured and graphed and charted and stored next to blood type and date of birth and a full name. But ‘special’ was actually something else. Kaidan couldn’t give it a definition. It was the color of Shepard’s eyes and also the way his fingers tightened around Kaidan’s hips, that wrinkled space between t-shirt and bare skin when Shepard had the hem and pushed it up even while he held it in place.
A contradiction in terms. Like how light was a particle and a wave. Kaidan, breathless. He wondered if he could make Shepard come just by riding him like this, sweatpants and sweat, Shepard’s hair all sticky on his forehead, his eyes open and staring straight up at the skylight.
It was shut. Kaidan couldn’t remember why. He thought he could tell what Shepard was seeing anyway—the stars, even though it was morning—and Kaidan steadied himself against Shepard’s shoulders, which held him up, holding Shepard down with his thighs and his rocking hips. The bed squeaked, but it was quiet, just a gentle bump of the frame against the wall. Shepard’s fingers twisted in Kaidan’s t-shirt. He was hard in the groove of Kaidan’s hip, knuckling under the waistband of Kaidan’s sweats, rubbing after his ass again. Squeezing.
Kaidan could get used to this. Waking up in the morning, rolling over, Shepard’s morning breath and Kaidan’s morning breath only the vaguest of factors in the back of his head. Kaidan mumbled something, “Want you too,” he thought, and hoped that was actually it, because Shepard was so hot, and Kaidan burning up with him.
It was right. He’d totally made the right choice. Elation, relaxation, and arousal all at once—it was practically euphoria. He got it now, the physical and emotional manifestation of a few letters he’d only ever understood in context that wasn’t his own. Shepard’s hands on his ass. Shepard’s skinny chest rising and falling. Kaidan’s legs spread wide, so wide, his balls hitting the length of Shepard’s dick.
They were so good at this.
“So good,” Kaidan said. Kind of, sort of, what he meant.
“Nn,” Shepard said.
It was his one noise, and Kaidan lived for it. Shepard’s barely audible Nn, his little answer that hit the bottom of his throat and rarely traveled much further. Sometimes Shepard made it more than once; sometimes he didn’t make it at all. Whenever he did, it got into Kaidan’s stomach, into his pelvis. He felt it right down at the base and it made him bite his lip.
Shepard said “Nn” again and Kaidan gasped. He rocked faster and the bed frame creaked louder. He was past caring. He leaned forward and rubbed his fingers up Shepard’s chest, scrubbing over a nipple, then pinching it. Shepard sucked air in through his teeth and his hips bucked. His thighs were tensed, tight muscle over hard bone, and Kaidan could tell he was digging his heels into the mattress.
Kaidan leaned in closer, stomach tight, hips rolling. Shepard was forgetting to breathe, the way he did, lost somewhere inside himself where he didn’t need oxygen. When Kaidan drew in a deep breath at the same time as Shepard, their bellies bumped together.
One more Nn from Shepard, this time next to Kaidan’s ear, and Kaidan moaned. He ground down against Shepard before speeding up—until everything narrowed to a single point and he was only hot breath and writhing, only seeing stars and blue, blue eyes. “Shepard,” he panted.
Shepard’s hands dug into the back of his thighs and that was it. Kaidan came. His body jolted once, twice. He whimpered against Shepard’s jaw and kept thrusting, lazy strokes to keep up with the flood of pleasure.
He let his cheek fall onto that skinny chest, let his belly press down against Shepard’s. Kaidan stretched himself out and settled on top of Shepard’s stomach and he’d already started to slide into the warmth of afterglow when he realized that Shepard hadn’t come yet. His breathing was still thready, fingers still tense where they’d settled on Kaidan’s back. Shepard’s hips were canting up, the underside of his hard dick pushing against the inside of Kaidan’s thigh.
“Mm, Shepard,” Kaidan said. It was an apology, the best he could manage under the circumstances. Shepard was usually long gone by the time Kaidan came, damp spot darkening his sweats well before Kaidan’s hips stopped rolling. Kaidan shifted so he could slip his hand between them, and he made it to the rough trail of hair on Shepard’s lower abdomen before Shepard intercepted.
Shepard set Kaidan’s hand back on his pointed hip—the left one, which had a cluster of freckles just above it that Kaidan had memorized, one of the many Shepard freckle constellations in the galaxy—and reached under his waistband himself.
He held Kaidan close with his free hand. His fingers were digging into Kaidan’s shoulder blade, leaving marks. Kaidan kept moving the way Shepard kept moving for him after he’d already come. He sighed into Shepard’s chest and hummed a few little noises. Contentment, mostly.
“Shepard,” Kaidan said again. “Shepard...” This is perfect. This feels so good. You make me feel so good.
Shepard’s breathing snagged; his muscles snapped tight. There were two quiet Nns in a row against Kaidan’s temple and Kaidan wondered if he’d heard that before. If he’d ever been in the position to listen for it.
Then they were kissing, and kissing, Shepard’s mouth hungry and soft like it always was after the fact. He didn’t kiss like he looked. There was no judging a book by its cover with Shepard. And anyway, Shepard was written half in Braille and half in ancient runes and, some days, like smoke signals. There was translation involved. Kaidan braced himself, damp sweats on damp sweats, all tongue when Shepard parted his lips. And Shepard took him inside, sucking the tip, the kind of kiss that was an echo or a reflection or even a complete microcosmic analogy for sex.
It left Kaidan panting again, grinning.
“Hey there,” he said, then had to clear his throat. “Hey, Shepard.”
Shepard didn’t say anything. His eyes were shut and two spots of color had risen to the hollows of his cheeks, on his sharp cheekbones. He swiped his tongue over his bottom lip like he was still tasting Kaidan and Kaidan went boneless—had to, because Shepard did that to him.
“Yeah,” Kaidan agreed. He rubbed his cheek over Shepard’s chest, feeling his heart still racing, spots of sweat on Shepard’s t-shirt. “Mm.”
Nn, nn. The noise echoed through Kaidan’s blood, practically. If he hadn’t been so comfortable, he might’ve pushed his hips against Shepard’s hard, slim thigh, rubbing himself hard again. But there was breakfast to think about and the graduation party Mom was letting Kaidan throw that night and they’d already made enough noise that Kaidan’s embarrassment came filtering back in over the white noise that was the twenty-four seven Shepard channel.
Shepard’s silence wasn’t an anomaly. It was a fact of life. Kaidan told himself he’d heard everything he needed to—Shepard, in his most vulnerable moment, not bothering to hide anything, coming because of the way Kaidan moved. Those little fingerprints on Kaidan’s shoulder blade that’d be nothing more than shadows soon enough, not even as noticeable as freckles, but he’d know they were there, and that was everything. Kaidan knew he was grinning but he felt like grinning, didn’t feel like stopping it. They lay there for a long time like an open-faced sandwich until Kaidan said, “Probably crushing you, right?” and rolled off.
Shepard let him.
Kaidan fit against his side, elbow crooked over his navel, Shepard’s t-shirt riding up. There was that dark spot on his sweats and he tugged at the waistband with his long, skinny fingers.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kaidan said. “I’ll get ‘em into the wash. It’s no problem. You… wanna stay for breakfast?”
Of course, Mom’d know, and Kaidan wouldn’t be able to stop staring at Shepard across the kitchen table, bowls of granola emptied out fast because they needed to replenish a depleted system. But they were used to it by now. It was one of those small but easily-navigated embarrassments they could live with.
Shepard scrubbed his knuckles against his eye. “I’ve gotta…” He wasn’t gonna stay for breakfast. “I should go,” he said, and Kaidan nodded, kissing his chest again. “It’s a big day. You’ve probably got… preparations.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Kaidan said. “So I’ll see you later, right?”
“Yeah,” Shepard replied.
Kaidan made a last pass, hands swiping over the ridges of Shepard’s back as he sat, the Braille of his vertebrae. His spine was like a sentence. Kaidan flopped back against the pillow, which smelled like Shepard, and watched Shepard get dressed in the sunlight, trying to fold the sweatpants, and eventually leaving them in a half-ball on the desk chair.
Just like Shepard, he didn’t say goodbye.
*
Shepard spent the afternoon restocking the cereal aisle. Loading boxes, unloading boxes, lining shelves; the repetitive tasks were mechanical and practiced enough that they kept him from thinking.
Especially from thinking about Kaidan. The way Kaidan moved, the way he sounded, the way he smiled. And the way his shadow looked on the wall. The echo of his voice carrying from another wall.
Shepard winced. Don’t think about Kaidan.
Just don’t think.
He’d skipped breakfast, so he stopped for a break around one o’clock and split a giant deli sandwich with Donnelly. The two of them hunched on milk crates behind the store by the loading docks, where a group of crows and one seagull always hung around waiting for somebody to put the garbage out. Altogether, they were a winning collection of gawky scavengers.
At least the birds could fly off whenever they wanted. Shepard tossed them a hunk of his sandwich and they fought over it, wings and screeches, and he felt bad for doing it.
Afterward, Shepard and Donnelly headed into the dairy department to weed out old expiry dates. While they were there, the entire girls’ track team trooped through the store, still in shorts and jerseys. There’d obviously been some kind of end of year tournament.
“Hey Kenneth,” one of the girls called out. “Nice apron!”
“Gabby,” Donnelly said to her with a curt nod. After she’d passed them by he rolled his eyes at Shepard and mouthed she likes me.
Shepard said, “Yeah, I bet.”
Even Shepard barely liked Donnelly.
At the end of his shift Shepard hopped on the Normandy and raced over Lions Gate to meet Garrus at the outdoor paintball field. They kitted up in silence; Garrus had his warpaint on, the geometric blue marks standing out harsh across his cheeks. He said he felt naked on the field without it. His visor covered most of it, so Shepard had trouble seeing the point, but at least it didn’t give away his position. Garrus would never let anything give away his position.
Tonight the place was running a team exercise—and that meant Shepard might be able to get away without Garrus’s trademark blue paint all over his shirt for once.
It was Shepard’s lucky break.
Two other teams of three were eyeing them up already. Most of the faces were vaguely familiar, guys they’d duked it out with before on any given weekend. Garrus ignored them and Shepard kept his eyes on Garrus. They’d beaten worse odds. Plenty.
“Would you like a third?”
A thin boy with big dark eyes had stepped up to them. He had a still, serious face, and his gear was the same brand as Garrus’s: the expensive stuff, not something pieced together from thrift stores and hand-me-downs and, occasionally, presents from a concerned boyfriend.
Shepard looked at Garrus and Garrus gave him the nod.
“They call me The Assassin,” the boy said, and held out his hand.
Garrus took it. “Archangel,” he said, “and that’s the Commander.” Shepard always felt like an idiot when Garrus used their paintball names out loud, but there it was, sounding better than just Shepard, anyway.
The Assassin bowed his head at him. All three of them snapped their masks on and set out into the field of play. They huddled together at the blue base, flag slotted in the customary spot.
“Tactics?” Garrus asked.
“Stealth,” The Assassin said.
“Good.” Garrus held up his rifle. Shepard knew he liked it best when he could play sniper. “Shepard, you stick with me for now.”
Shepard did whatever needed doing. Odd-job Shepard. Jack of all trades Shepard. Vanguard charge, hang back and cover, rogue soldier. He had no roots, no fall-back approach, no direction picked out. All he knew was that he’d end up dirty and probably shot before the end of it.
All three of them marked the starting signal.
The Assassin slipped away into the trees and Shepard lost him almost immediately. He could tell Garrus hadn’t, though. “This way,” Garrus said. He headed for one of his usual nests, and Shepard crouched down a few yards off next to a different nest in hopes of being a mislead.
“Get your head out of the clouds, Shepard,” Garrus’ voice rumbled, barely a whisper, across the dry ground. “You have that look. You’re in space today.”
Shepard said nothing. Space cadet Shepard—they could add that one to the mix.
Garrus sighed. “Okay, I can already tell it’s one of those nights. If you pull a running man, you know I’ll have your back, but... Shepard?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re only going to make it so far before your luck runs out. Make sure it counts.”
Shepard swallowed. Luck was something Garrus didn’t believe in. Not for himself, anyway. But he did believe in synergy and he believed that Shepard had a knack for beating the odds—at least to a point.
That point was the problem. Shepard said “Yeah” again and they fell into silence.
When the time came, Shepard made it count. He dashed out straight down the middle of the field of play to pull the heat off of Garrus. He was fast, at least. He could make sure it counted, if he could only get so far. His heart pounded. He leapt, he dodged, he hit the ground rolling and made it back to his feet. When he came to the tree line he took a crimson paintball dead center to the back, but the maneuver had given Garrus the opening to take down the last standing member of the red team.
The Assassin had managed two flag grabs in that time. He rejoined them at the end without a mark on him.
Off the field, Garrus shook the kid’s hand a second time. Free of their gear, they went through a second round of introductions.
“Thane Krios,” the slim guy said. This time he reached for Shepard’s hand first.
“Shepard,” Shepard said.
When he left, Garrus and Thane were still talking shop about their equipment.
Shepard had the Normandy. Most days he had the rain, which—if he was lucky—waited until he was wheeling his bike into the garage to start falling. Tonight he had a clear sky instead. Garrus only texted when he had something to say. Kaidan had texted once, Thinking about you, and the crazy thing was, Shepard knew it was true.
The spot between his shoulder blades ached. They were just paintballs, but they left their bruises. Shepard hung his helmet on the Normandy’s handlebar and headed inside, only there was nobody home—not the sound of Jack’s subwoofer pounding, or Grunt in the common room playing bargain bin video games, or Anderson’s oldies station turned on while he worked on the pipes under the kitchen sink. They were leaking again. There was a puddle forming under the cabinet down there. Shepard found the toolkit and opened the door and the water dripped onto his face, rusty and brown.
He couldn’t get the damn thing to stop leaking. He didn’t have the right angle or something; no matter how hard he tried, if he couldn’t figure that out, the wrench’d stay stuck, slipping out of his cramping hand.
Shepard grabbed a couple of old dishtowels and wrapped them around the pipe. Like sticking a Band-Aid on something that wouldn’t stop bleeding, it was a stop-gap measure, something to bridge the in between. It’d all come off in the wash eventually. Sooner rather than later, knowing how these things worked.
Shepard had dirty dishwater on his face and he needed to clean that up before the party. He almost went into Jack’s room—almost, but without a real suicide wish, he wasn’t going to chance it—to turn on some music, get the floorboards rattling. At least he’d have some time to himself in the washroom without somebody knocking the door down because he was taking too long.
All Shepard needed was some water, but for some reason, he picked up the soap. He scrubbed his face twice until the skin was pink and stinging and his knuckles stinging from the stubble he’d been rocking since the beginning of the week. He’d left Kaidan’s mouth razor-burned because he hadn’t shaved. All that kissing, and Kaidan came away from it with swollen lips because Shepard couldn’t take care of himself, so how was he supposed to take care of Kaidan?
Shepard ducked his head under the tap. When he shook the water off his hair, droplets splattered the mirror. The water was still running—the noise in the place Shepard needed, though he didn’t know how to quantify it. Just… sounds of life, mostly. Making a mark on the old place, but again, it was the dirtying kind.
And Jack’d be pissed if there were splashes all over the mirror. She needed that to put her makeup of the damned on; without that precision, she wouldn’t look like a sexy zombie all the time.
Shepard wiped the mirror down. Through the streaks, he could see his face. He rolled his eyes to look away, but he could still see that unclear, filmy reflection. Even that didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to be.
Shepard scrubbed harder. He wondered if Garrus and that Thane guy were playing another round. Their heads were in the game. They were good. They’d run a pretty awesome operation out there. The glass squeaked and the mirror rocked and Shepard dropped the washcloth onto the faucet, hair dripping down the back of his neck, onto his shoulders. He could see his eyes through the flop in the front, weighted down by the water, beading on his lashes.
He needed to shave.
The razor was right there; the only shaving cream they had was Jack’s and Shepard didn’t want to use that. Too fruity. It had coconut or something in it. Shepard grabbed the razor and headed into Anderson’s bathroom, where there was shaving cream that smelled kind of like deodorant and motor oil and bleach. The mirror was clean, too, and Shepard could see himself in it without any warping or distortion. He could see everything that he was and everything that he wasn’t. And everything in between, which was most of it. Not one thing or the other.
His hair was too long.
He nicked his jawline a couple of times, nothing too bad to bleed. It just stung, that was all. And it felt good, the whisper of the stubble against the blades, kind of scraping like a butter knife on toast.
Shepard finished his cheeks and stuck the razor under the tap to rinse it off. He rubbed the raw skin with his fingers, trying to figure out if he’d missed any spots. When he shoved his hair back off his face and held it down it flopped forward again as soon as he took his hand away.
It wasn’t enough. It was still wrong. He was still wrong.
He gripped the edge of the sink and stared at himself, right into his eyes. That guy was there again looking back at him, someone he knew better than to trust. He stared unblinking into clear blue rings until they became something else, something outside himself. Then he stared into the black pinpoints of his pupils until his breathing changed and they dilated. Just a fraction.
In that fraction, that sliver of black, there was fear and old, buried anger. Ghosts. Ghosts that Shepard didn’t know and couldn’t ever know, that he’d never understand. There was this hot and cold thing snarled inside of him that’d been there for as far back as he could remember, and he could feel it tightening in his guts. It made the corner of his lip twist.
Kind of like the way the corners of Kaidan’s lips twisted.
Shepard’s knuckles went white where he was gripping the edge of the sink.
He had to do something. There was nothing he could do.
But something had to give.
Anderson’s electric trimmer was on the shelf next to the mirror. The ex-cop still wore his hair regulation short and Shepard had been listening to the sound of the trimmer run at exactly nine a.m. on the dot every Sunday morning for the past seven years. He’d even watched Anderson do the job a few times when he was younger. He’d been curious, then. Hopeful, on his better days.
Kids were just so, so stupid.
Shepard picked up the clippers. He turned them on and the low whine echoed around the room. The hum of the electric razor buzzed from his palm to his elbow, and he looked up to meet his eyes in the mirror.
His hair fell into the sink. It drifted down and blanketed the linoleum. It came in huge clumps first, then in smaller ones. It covered his shoulders and got under the neck of his shirt and made him itchy. When all his hair—save a spare quarter inch of it—had been buzzed, he shut the clippers off, blew on them, and put them back in their stand.
The scar on his forehead was there to greet him, jutting out sharp and white like a fault line. That much was his; it was him. Years had gone by but that rift was the same, the permanent mark of being just dumb and defiant enough to end up in someone else’s fight.
He rubbed his hand over the top of his head. He was still dumb but, somewhere along the way he’d lost the heart for defiance. He’d given his heart over to something else he’d known he would eventually have to give up, and now that he needed it back, it wasn’t his anymore to take.
No heart left.
He swept Anderson’s bathroom until it was spotless, like the hair’d never existed to begin with.
*
“So, do you want to do the honors, or should I?” Liara asked. “Just keep in mind, the answer should probably be you, at least in terms of ceremony. Everything coming full circle. …I know, I know: they’re just pamphlets from colleges begging you to be their student so they can brag about you later. But they’re also a metaphor.”
“Or an allegory,” Kaidan replied.
Liara shrugged. “Or both.”
She’d come over to help with party stuff—cleaning up and heating up the food and putting the lights up in the backyard, but mostly to keep Kaidan calm and focused. Which he was, surprisingly, and might even have managed without her. But in terms of ceremony, everything coming full circle, Liara had to be there before everybody else because Liara had always been there before everybody else.
“…But mostly just a metaphor,” Liara added. “I’m actually hoping there are no allegories tonight, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not really sure if I do,’ Kaidan replied.
Thanks for coming over, it meant. And thanks for being my best friend, and thanks for that promise we never had to make about how you always will be.
Liara smiled. Her hair was parted off-center and pushed over one shoulder and in the sunlight coming in from the open balcony, Kaidan could almost see an auburn hint in the brown. That officially meant he was getting too nostalgic, wasting too much time in his room when he needed to be putting out—Mom’s words, not his—non-alcoholic beverages that wouldn’t send his friends home drunk and land her in the local news the next morning as a corruptor of youth and innocence.
“But seriously,” Mom had added, “have a good time, as long as it’s sober. Harder? Yes. Easier on me? Absolutely.”
Kaidan took a deep breath and picked up the pamphlets, all five million of them, that’d been cluttering his desk for way too long now. It felt like a lifetime since he’d received his first one in the mail, even though it wasn’t. The gesture did feel like a metaphor, even though it wasn’t that, either. Liara’s eyes swept over the collection like she was counting, comparing Kaidan’s haul to her own, but there was no need for that, since they both knew by now that Liara’d been sent one or two more, all told.
“I feel like there should be music,” Liara said.
“There’ll be music tonight,” Kaidan replied. “Actually, I was hoping you’d help me take the weird stuff and the embarrassing stuff and the still-in-high-school stuff off my playlist.”
“Can I put some retro stuff on?”
“If you were anybody else, I’d say no. But… sure, go ahead. It’ll be fun.”
“I Will Survive and It’s Raining Men it is,” Liara said, leaning over Kaidan’s laptop. “If we open the party with that, it’ll be like burning all our bridges to the past.”
“Metaphor?” Kaidan asked.
Liara shrugged. “Or allegory. This time.”
A few weeks ago—maybe even a couple of days ago—Kaidan would have bought that. He’d been worried about burning his bridges for so long that realizing it wasn’t real, that the whole thing was a construct inside his hyper-speed head, felt amazing. A meteoric moment.
He dumped the pamphlets into the recycling. They thunked at the bottom, all of them but one. Simple acts of gravity changing pretty much everything.
“UBC,” Kaidan said. “It just… feels right, you know?”
“That is why I chose it,” Liara replied. “And here I thought you were copying me.”
Kaidan laughed, leaning against the desk. “Sure. Maybe a little. I mean, I thought about changing everything up, and making Dad happy with the… you know. Cambridge thing. Seeing what it was about the place he likes so much, anyway. More than what’s on the postcards.” Kaidan sighed. It was melancholy, but it wasn’t the chasm of uncertainty he’d been expecting. It was a fact of life. Distance made it a little less unhappy, strangely enough. “But that would’ve been stupid, because I’m not him.”
“And you’re not stupid,” Liara said.
“At least I’m not stupid about everything,” Kaidan replied. “…You’re not really putting that stuff on my playlist, are you?”
“Kaidan,” Liara said, “don’t be stupid.”
Downstairs, everything was laid out on the kitchen island. Heaps of snack foods, mostly, along with paper plates, plastic cups, and bulk packages of biodegradable cutlery—everything you needed to feed a bunch of hungry, excited teenage misfits.
“Hey, were you serious about the library study group people?” Kaidan asked, putting out napkins.
“Quite,” Liara said. She was loading bottles of pop into the fridge. “And I can say with some certainty that Jeff invited the anime club as well.”
That sounded about right. Joker still played D&D with a bunch of those kids on Sundays.
Kaidan had never meant for his party to be a huge thing, but word got around and he was too much of a pushover to say no to other social outliers. “Alenko’s party” had somehow become the catch-all for the school’s awkward elites.
At least, he hoped, that meant his guests would be less likely to bring loads of booze and get rowdy. With this crowd, chances were higher someone would bring a seven dice set and start up an impromptu roleplay in the backyard.
That would be awkward. About as awkward as when If You Leave inevitably came on after someone—again, inevitably—fooled around with Kaidan’s playlist and set iTunes to shuffle.
Kaidan had no excuse for that. Sometimes you just wanted to pretend you were in a John Hughes movie. At least, Kaidan did.
Maybe that explained why he was the awkward top dog.
“No If You Leave,” Kaidan said.
“Hm,” Liara replied, around pursed lips.
Joker turned up early with his laptop under one arm and a flat of energy drinks under the other. “Those are for everybody,” he said. Then he produced a bottle of Fireball from his pocket and shook it, grinning. “I’m flying solo on this one though.”
“Just… don’t let my mom see that,” Kaidan said.
“No problemo. I am so outta sight.” Joker saluted—then disappeared into the basement to set up his skype link with Edi.
“We need new friends,” Liara said.
People started to trickle in once the early evening light started to fade. Nobody was afraid of being too early—that was the deal with the awkward kingdom—and the house filled up fast with acquaintances and half familiar faces. Nobody too weird, and definitely no strangers, which meant mom’s biggest fear—crashers—was at least, so far, not an issue.
Things were going well, minus two factors. One, everybody seemed to have boarded the same train of thought as Joker, and there was a lot more alcohol stacking up in the fridge than Kaidan—well, than Kaidan’s mom, and by extension Kaidan—had wanted. And two, Shepard was late.
Like, really late.
When Garrus came in, Kaidan expected Shepard to pop out of his shadow, hair all messed up and possibly still wearing his paintball clothes. That would be a Shepard sort of thing to do. Instead, it was just Garrus carrying a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand and a six-pack of Stella in the other—because Garrus had an incredible fake ID he’d engineered himself to be the least remarkable ID anyone would see all day. It worked every time. Shepard had one too, same style and make, but his said Hans Olo on it and he had about a fifty percent failure rate, even when he faked a northern European accent.
Garrus offloaded the beer to Liara, who kissed him on the cheek, right over his scar.
Kaidan raised an eyebrow at her from where he was standing in the kitchen. There was a sea of bodies between them, people laughing, drinking, eating, but Liara’s eyes caught his right away. Like magnetism. She left Garrus mingling in the living room and joined Kaidan behind the island.
“Don’t you eyebrow me, Kaidan Matthew Alenko,” she said. She had that coy look, the one she always used when she knew she was in trouble. Kaidan suspected he’d seen it more times than almost anyone else. She nodded at the six-pack. “Half of them are for you anyway.”
He checked his phone. No missed calls, no messages. No answer to his afternoon text, but there was nothing unusual about Shepard letting those stack up without a response.
Well, one beer couldn’t hurt, to take the edge off waiting. And, technically, celebration was in order. After all, they’d survived high school. They were graduates now. In a couple of months, they’d be university students. That was crazy. Crazy good, Joker would’ve said. Crazy like a fox.
Liara held an opened bottle out to him. Kaidan smiled, shrugged, and took it. “Yeah, okay—Liara Marie.”
She gave him a playful swat on the shoulder and they both laughed. “To summer,” Liara said.
“To summer,” Kaidan agreed. They clinked rims and drank.
Two more beers, no messages from Shepard and too many jokes for Kaidan to remember later, and Kaidan had forgotten—but only in a casual way—to look for Shepard in the crowd. There was a reason people drank; Kaidan didn’t do it often, and Mom’s favorite red wine always gave him a killer headache when he tried it with dinner, but the nice thing about being held back a year in kindergarten because of health reasons meant he was the only one at the party who could actually, legally drink. And he’d been saving up his allotted time for a while now. He’d done his time, paid his dues. His house was full of nerds getting wasted. He deserved to feel good and so he did, cheeks flushed, getting to the embarrassing-but-awesome section of music on his playlist at exactly the right time to really appreciate it.
“This is going well, right?” Kaidan asked, an arm around Liara’s waist.
“Joker’s still in the basement talking to Edi instead of up here driving people crazy, so yeah,” Liara said. “I’d say it’s better than we usually do.”
Kaidan kissed her temple, smelling her shampoo. “You smell really good,” he said.
“I could say the same to you,” Liara replied, “only I’m not going to, because it’ll go right to your head.”
Across the room, Garrus reached into the back pocket of his jeans, tugging out his phone, checking it briefly. If that was some kind of signal—Shepard to Vakarian, a special bro code Kaidan hadn’t been briefed on and had finally made peace with knowing he never would be—then that meant Shepard was on his way.
Finally.
Remembering Shepard, how badly he wanted to see Shepard, made Kaidan a lot dizzier than three beers. It always got to him in the gut, low, centered but throwing him off center. That kind of gravity could only be found in deep space and between two people who actually worked well together, despite all the odds.
Just like that, when Kaidan looked up and over to the doorway, Shepard was there and shouldering his way in. If it’d been anyone else, Kaidan might’ve needed a moment or two to recognize him—because Shepard’s hair was gone, all buzzed off, the scar that Kaidan knew by heart visible to everyone now.
But Kaidan knew Shepard. He didn’t need a double-take, even if he was staring.
“Did you know he was going to do that?” Liara asked.
“It looks good,” Kaidan said, then, “no—but it looks good.”
Everything looked good on Shepard. Kaidan swallowed, mouth dry, hands not-so-dry, wishing that for once Shepard could do him a favor and walk in when Kaidan was in the middle of laughing, or talking, or doing anything other than waiting for Shepard to show up.
Except Kaidan was pretty much always waiting for Shepard to show up. He smiled, pointing to his own head, mouthing Hey and Wow, maybe at the same time, words bleeding together because of the three beers and also the Shepard effect.
Shepard nodded, once, tense, rubbing the back of his neck. He was in a seriously Shepard mood and Liara nudged Kaidan in the side with her elbow, enough of a shift in gravity to give Kaidan some momentum.
After that, it was easy to get sucked into Shepard’s magnetic field. Kaidan set a crash course straight for him. Shepard waved at Garrus and he wasn’t looking up and he was so hot, even without the hair; Kaidan’s fingers twitched to rub the curve of his scalp, to know how it felt. Probably like stubble. He licked his lips, the corner of his mouth, remembering the way Shepard’s stubble had burned his skin that morning.
Shepard had shaved that too. It’d be smooth kissing him now and there’d be nothing for Kaidan to tangle his hands in, but there’d be nothing to fall over Shepard’s eyes and hide them, either.
Kaidan would take it. It was new, but they could work with that.
“So,” Kaidan said. Braver than usual, probably because he was happier than usual, he reached out and tugged at the front of Shepard’s t-shirt, pinching the cotton over his stomach. “Did I know you were going to do that? Because I’m… pretty sure I didn’t know you were going to do that.”
Shepard shrugged. His mouth worked sideways, mirroring the slight up and down of his shoulders. That meant I dunno. Or sometimes I didn’t really think about it.
Kaidan stifled a laugh and hung his arms around Shepard’s neck. “You look good,” he said into his ear, or as close to it as he could get on tiptoe.
Midway through his third beer he’d cruised into the affectionate zone, and by the bottom of the bottle he was downright starving to touch and be touched. It was how he knew when he was teetering between tipsy and drunk. He rubbed one palm over the buzz on the back of Shepard’s head and it was soft. Not what he’d expected. Something more prickly—but it didn’t matter now.
“You’re pretty late, though,” Kaidan added. “Something happen at paintball?”
Not even a shrug this time. Shepard’s body was stiff, unbending; only the blunt tips of his fingers grazing Kaidan’s side. He wasn’t standing straight but he wasn’t folding over to make them fit together, either. He felt the way he did when he was listening for something—tensed up, rabbitty.
Maybe Shepard didn’t like parties. It occurred to Kaidan that they’d never actually been to one together before, so he didn’t know.
Kaidan let go of his neck. His needy death grip probably wasn’t helping anything. “Hey, you want me to grab you a beer?” There were extras accumulating in the fridge, abandoned or forgotten. That’d help.
Shepard shook his head. “No, I... I can’t stay.”
“Oh.” Kaidan said. Disappointment was cushioned by the alcohol in his system but also, somehow, magnified by it. A weird kaleidoscope of opposite but equal feelings. “D’you have an early shift tomorrow?”
“No, I just. I should go.” Shepard was looking around the living room like he was running out of time before the walls closed in.
“Okay. That’s okay,” Kaidan said. It had been a while since he’d seen Shepard’s deer in the headlights face. It was at maximum intensity tonight—full on three point buck caught in the beams of a speeding semi. Maybe he needed some fresh air. “I’ll walk you to the Normandy.”
Shepard walked in front of him and out the door. He traipsed down the steps and toward the curb, hands shoved in his pockets. He stopped in front of the motorcycle and lifted his head, staring off down the block.
“You wanna do something tomorrow?” Kaidan asked.
Shepard pulled his leather jacket from where he’d left it slung over the ignition. It was the new jacket, the one he’d scrimped and saved and worked extra shifts to afford. Kaidan had thought about getting it for him for his birthday back in April, but he hadn’t because he knew all too well the look Shepard would get when he opened the box: guilty, frustrated, like he couldn’t accept it. Like it’d be a weight on his shoulders, this thing that he’d wanted.
It was a lot like the look he had on his face right now.
“I’m leaving,” Shepard said.
Kaidan blinked. He almost smiled—because he was supposed to be the drunk one saying goofy stuff and Shepard was supposed to be laughing at him. Instead, Shepard was the one stating the obvious.
“It’s cool, Shepard,” Kaidan said. “Just… call me tomorrow or something, all right?”
Shepard’s mouth worked sideways again. “No, I mean I’m leaving.”
Oh. Leaving, Kaidan thought. Like, leaving town leaving. Shepard inflection had to be inferred from cues like the kilter of his left hip, or the jut of his chin. Or the flop of his hair.
That last one was forfeit, and for an uncomfortable second—like one of those flickering moments of self-awareness out of the blue that made you remember you were alive, that you existed, that everything else existed separately and perceived you as no more than ambient light—Kaidan felt like he was looking at someone he didn’t know at all. He’d lost one of his signposts and he’d had no idea how important it had been until now.
“Leaving. Like, on a trip?” Kaidan asked. It hit him all of a sudden that there were bags strapped to the back of the Normandy; two of them. They weren’t full but Shepard didn’t have that much to take with him.
Shepard didn’t answer and Kaidan’s felt something heavy turn over, like a key in the ignition, inside his chest.
“Well, it’ll be good for you to get away for a few days,” Kaidan said. “Things have been kind of crazy lately...” He didn’t know what to do with his hands. With nothing to take hold of, they balled into fists against his thighs. “Where are you going?”
Another shrug.
“I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter. We can still text and stuff.” Kaidan knew his voice was getting higher. He hated it. But the churning in his stomach was getting heavier and as it sank the panic rose up to replace it.
No answer. Shepard put his jacket on. “I dunno, I might not really have any reception, so...”
Kaidan flattened his palms against his jeans. His skin was clammy; it caught on the denim. “Okay, but I... You’re coming back, right?”
Shepard turned away from Kaidan and rubbed at the nape of his freckled neck. He kicked a pebble out of the lawn and into the street.
“Right?” Kaidan swallowed. That sounded desperate.
Shepard looked up into the sky, at the stars. His brows were pinched. He watched something, a plane or a satellite or an invisible sign only he could see, but he didn’t blink and he didn’t look at Kaidan after he was done staring at everything else.
“Shepard. Are... Are we breaking up?”
Kaidan barely recognized the sound of his own voice.
Shepard’s eyes came back down to earth. He stared at the gutter, at the pebble he’d kicked. “I guess,” he said.
Kaidan thought of a planet, knocked off its axis like it was nothing more than a pebble. A world spinning out, slowly, into the dark expanse of space. Oceans spilling all wrong, gravity blown, everything fractured.
“I don’t understand,” Kaidan said. “Is it something I did? Shepard, I don’t—I don’t understand.”
Shepard grimaced and shook his head, but it wasn’t an answer. Not a denial; not a confirmation.
He knew it was the wrong thing to do, but Kaidan reached across the space between them and grabbed the hem of Shepard’s t-shirt where it was sticking out under his jacket. He didn’t grab tight. Just loosely, just to hold on to something.
“I love you,” Kaidan said. It caught in his throat and came out small and unfinished, missing something. Closer to a whimper than words. It was desperate.
He was desperate. He was knocked off his axis; fault lines along his chest rupturing, his lungs crushed under the sudden weight of his ribs.
Or he was caught in a car wreck, suspended in the half second before impact when time telescoped and everything got close and far, and even though you knew what was coming the only option was to hold on. Not Einstein’s theory of relativity. But it was all relative.
Physics. Rotation, inertia, velocity. Ricochet and whiplash.
Shepard pulled away from Kaidan’s grip. Not jarring, not rough. It was blunt and it happened, the old cotton sliding out of Kaidan’s fingers. Shepard swung himself onto the Normandy, slammed his helmet over his head, turned the ignition and squeezed the clutch. He geared into first and gunned away down the street, heading east.
Kaidan stood there, listening to the sound of the Normandy’s engine until it blended into the other night sounds. Then he sat on the curb. His saliva suddenly felt too thick for his mouth, and he knew he was going to puke. It came up fast, and he was left gutted and empty on the side of the road.
Everything was stardust. Everything was lost causes. His glasses had fallen off onto the concrete when he threw up, and the lenses would probably be scratched. His eyes were watering.
“There you are!”
Liara’s voice. She sounded happy. He had no strength to turn and face her.
Her fingers grazed his shoulder. “Kaidan? Oh my god, are you okay?” She leaned down and picked his glasses out of the gutter for him. “Where’s Shepard?”
Kaidan stood up. He stared into the stars. Then he said, “He left.”
Liara got it. The way her face fell told Kaidan she got it. She was smarter than he was. She didn’t need to hear it a second time to understand. Her arms cinched around him and as soon as his forehead hit her shoulder he forgot how to breathe.
That’s when he noticed he was already crying. That was when he really started to cry.
*
There were so many pamphlets. Tourist stuff. Destinations, plenty of them, next to the magazines in the gas station. Shepard bought some jerky and an energy drink, not the kind Joker brought with him on late night campaigns. When Shepard saw them behind the glass in the cooler, he had to look straight through them. It didn’t slow him down, although the familiarity came at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
He’d disconnected his phone. Left it on the kitchen table at Anderson’s. He’d sent Garrus a text that Garrus would understand; it said ‘You can have my good luck,’ which wasn’t like saying good luck to a guy who didn’t believe in it. But it was the only thing Shepard had that’d ever been his, and what little there was left should belong to somebody before it ran out.
Before Shepard ran out.
He paid for the jerky and the caffeine in a can. That was breakfast, leaning against Normandy in the parking lot after filling her up on gas. He figured he’d make it all the way across the country. He’d pick up odd jobs here and there and sleep under the stars.
Or something.
He still didn’t know.
He’d thought it’d get easier out on the road—that, once he was moving, his plans would crystallize. That movement itself would imply a direction. It had to. And he wouldn’t be stuck in the same Thrifty’s stocking the same shipments in the same shelves. He’d be going somewhere.
Literally, but also…
The other thing. He’d even written a paper on it. Metaphor. Jack Kerouac. It was good stuff. On the road.
But he had to live something in order to get it. He bit into the beef jerky and chewed until his jaw was sore. Kaidan hadn’t cried, so that was good. Shepard had wondered the whole way over if Kaidan would cry—but Shepard had never seen somebody cry for him, never. And it might’ve been enough to stop Shepard in his tracks if Kaidan had, to keep him from turning the key in the ignition and driving off. He didn’t know. This was new ground. Unexplored.
Intrepid voyager Shepard striking out for—and he knew this by heart—places no man had ever gone before.
Boldly. This was the definition of bold.
Star Trek and an old sofa and fancy granola and fresh-squeezed orange juice and the smell of fabric softener and expensive shampoo. The heat turned on to comfortably warm as early as September. Wearing an extra pair of Kaidan’s sweatpants.
The definition of complacent, as scary as it was sometimes.
Shepard bit the inside of his cheek by accident. He could taste blood alongside teriyaki flavoring. It all mixed together into one big non-flavor.
He swallowed it down.
Then, he got moving again.
Most of the road was the same old, same old. He passed signs and exits and other gas stations he didn’t bother stopping in. Nothing buzzed in his back pocket, no new messages, and that meant he was free. There was nothing tying him down or holding him back. Even the jacket he wore wasn’t something he had to return. All he’d left behind was a note and a party he didn’t belong at—people celebrating the future when he hadn’t figured out what his was going to be yet. Or even what it could be.
Right now, it tasted like beef jerky. It smelled like shabby motel rooms, the kind where smoking and non-smoking rooms were so close together that there was no point in choosing one over the other. The difference was in signage only and that didn’t mean anything.
Shepard only thought about riding. About the road. About the signs that didn’t mean anything because he wasn’t turning off. Not yet. He had so much farther to go. There were hundreds of miles between him and another coast, the point where he had to stop driving because the was nothing left to drive on. The water. A different ocean. He didn’t wonder if it would look different because the sea was the sea.
He was two days in and smelling like cheap soap and sweat and beef jerky and more sweat—and a lot of truck exhaust—when he pulled into another gas station for more beef jerky. More caffeine in a can. There was hot coffee and Shepard got some, then burnt his tongue on the first sip. It didn’t feel like anything. He asked himself if he felt anything, legs sore from all that riding.
There were so many pamphlets. Scenic this, summer in that, try this other thing. There were some for Vancouver, too, and Vancouver Island, and the littler islands surrounding it.
The station attendant was watching Shepard. He probably thought Shepard was going to try to lift something. A pamphlet of his very own.
But Shepard didn’t get pamphlets. He’d already paid for his shitty coffee. There was some loose change left in his pocket, a couple of Loonies, but that was it and he was holding on to it. He didn’t owe anybody anything.
By the third day, Shepard had left the mountains far behind him. The landscape he traveled was all flat scrubby farmland and low creeks now, miles upon miles of billowing grass. His body vibrated at night in the lumpy motor inn beds like he was still driving. He saw highways when he closed his eyes.
Highways—and sometimes Kaidan. Those big dark eyebrows pulled together in the middle of a soft, sad face. When that happened, Shepard grit his teeth. It felt like hitting a stone going too fast—that rocky, uncertain, gravity-defying millisecond when everything threatened to get away from you, and the panic of knowing that if it did, you could kiss your brief, dim existence goodbye.
Those flashes only seemed to hit when Shepard tried to hold still.
So Shepard didn’t hold still much.
He was somewhere in the middle of the middle, the prairies, and he’d never seen the sky so big. It was all-encompassing. The earth stretched out flat in front of him like it was his, like it was there for him to fly across in the sun and the dry, under big white clouds so perfect and fluffy they looked painted. There were no high peaks fencing him in, nothing to stop him or hold him back or even interrupt his sight lines. It was exhilarating. The distance became his future and he was rocketing toward it wearing hope like a set of wings.
Movement was the answer. He should have known that all along. When he was moving, the world was easy. He was always going forward, always making progress. Everything clicked into place as soon as he had his fists around the Normandy’s handlebars.
He’d just crossed the province line into Manitoba, marked by the giant blue Manitoba-shaped sign at the side of the road standing tall against the horizon, when he started feeling strange.
It was nothing specific. The feeling was familiar but different enough to confuse him. Not nausea or a headache or anything he could name. Just a tightness in his chest, a shortness of breath. Like falling flat backwards off a skateboard only slower, and without the crack to the bottom half of your skull when you hit the pavement.
He slowed down, thinking that’d help. His last meal was a few hours behind him, and that had been nothing substantial—toast and eggs and about five cups of coffee from a tiny roadside diner full of long haul truckers. The waitresses had looked like extras in a movie from the fifties and not because they were dressed up. That was just the way it was at this little diner, five minutes north of some anonymous exit along the Trans-Canada Highway.
But the feeling got worse and Shepard could tell it was going to turn dizzy. Even he wasn’t dumb enough to try and tough that out. Lucky for him there was a rest stop only a kilometer away.
Yeah. Lucky.
He pulled into the rest stop exit just as the vertigo hit him. He had to skid to a halt in the gravel along the shoulder and the maneuver nearly caused a wipe out. By sheer dumb luck—the only kind of luck Shepard had for sure—he didn’t crash. He keyed off the ignition and staggered away from the bike, ripping his helmet off with a gasp. His fingers clawed at the zipper of his jacket; he yanked until it went down and parted. He was panting. It made no difference how hard he heaved his lungs. He couldn’t get enough oxygen into them.
His vision went noisy like TV static and he sat hard in the dust because if he didn’t sit, he was going to fall. He set his elbows on his bent knees and hung his head.
He stayed that way for a long time, concentrating on breathing. It came back to him slow but steady. Eventually, a pick-up crawled to a stop in front of him, and a woman called out the passenger window, “Everything okay down there?”
Shepard lifted his head. He had to squint against the light. He tried to speak, but the word got stuck and came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and answered, “Yeah.”
“You sure? We can give you a lift into town if you’re hurt.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m okay.”
He said it, and as he said it he knew it was a lie. It was the worst kind of lie, the kind you wanted so badly to believe that you’d do or say anything to convince yourself it was true, and he’d been convincing himself ever since he’d pulled away from the curb in front of Kaidan’s house. Since he’d pulled away from Kaidan.
The woman in the pick-up waved at him as she rolled up her window and by then, the truck had merged back onto the highway.
Shepard rubbed his face with both hands. He looked up at the sky. It was just so big and so blue, and the clouds stretched out like caps on the ocean. He was surrounded on every side by all this open air and, somehow, it was smothering him. There was no difference between east and west or north and south, no towering old hills covered in evergreens to set his internal compass by. He’d always believed he’d know which direction he was facing because it was instinctual; something he knew without trying. Now he knew that was a lie too.
Without the mountains at his back, Shepard was lost. He was lost and he wasn’t okay.
He knuckle-scrubbed his eyes until they stopped watering. He zipped up his jacket and pulled his helmet over his head. Then, he followed the road signs and merged back onto the highway.
West. He was going west, at least for a while. He told himself he’d go west until he could see mountains.
Maybe once he had that guidepost in his mind, he’d know what he needed to do. North might be the right balance. He could go north. He’d go to the icefield, up in Jasper and see the Rockies for himself. He could sink his hands into the meltwater of a glacier and know that the world was old and that it didn’t hate him, really, or even know he was there at all, and that it could never belong to him no matter how many stones he picked up or how much air he breathed.
Jasper was a temporary direction, something he could point toward and choose. Jasper made sense.
In every gas station Shepard had been in while he was on the road, from the cleanest chain to the grungiest one pump mom and pop shop, the nicest looking pamphlets had always been for Jasper.
Fuck the pamphlets, he thought.
Shepard was going to see the real thing.
END