Chapter Text
It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours.
--Buddhist proverb
This mission was meant to be a simple one-and-done, just cleanup. The Alliance had found a Blue Suns base where one wasn’t expected, the fighting had all been finished a week or so before and Shepard was only supposed to grab some neglected additional data from the consoles on her way to something more important. EDI assured her that there was no sign of any remaining mercenaries. “The air is breathable and contains no known parasites, the temperature is within comfortable standards for humans, and as it is not yet the warm season the climate is mild. The main thing to be aware of is that you are going to be down there for approximately sixteen hours. The base is at the bottom of a canyon, and there are no satellites or communication towers erected here. It was meant to be secret. So until the Normandy regains line-of-sight with the canyon, or you climb to a higher elevation, we will be out of communication with you.”
“Hanging around directly above us will be suspicious to anyone passing by, right.” Shepard agreed. “Well, it shouldn’t be any problem. Breathable air, we won’t be down there long enough to need more than MREs...this is a camping trip.” She smiled crookedly at her crew. “And it’s nice and dry!” she said. “This is quick enough that it’s just going to be me and backup. Zaeed, since they were Blue Suns…” she began, then shook her head. “No, never mind. You keep working with Garrus to get your hands on those mods for the cannons. Thane, you’re coming down with me. Everyone else, you know what you’re supposed to be working on.”
The room cleared out, with Thane following Shepard like a shadow. “EDI, can you forward the briefing document to Thane, please?” Shepard asked the air as they walked. “Right away, Shepard.”
She turned to the drell. "I'm good to go in an hour. Is that enough time?"
He gave that half-bow that seemed to be reserved for only her, his eyes never leaving hers. "Of course." he said.
***
Shepard watched the shuttle go, then turned to Thane. He’d tilted his face up into the early afternoon sunlight, nictating membranes sliding closed in pleasure. He looked about as peaceful as she’d ever seen him. Something twisted in her chest, a helpless appreciation, which she smothered ruthlessly before turning to the “base” they’d come to rob of data.
The installation barely deserved the dignity of the term. There were only two prefab buildings, neither of them top of the line; one was perhaps sixty feet across, the other less than twenty. There were dried splashes of blood dark in the sandy soil beside the door of the larger one, and a couple of char marks on the exterior wall. “I’m going to guess that one has what we need, and the little one has supplies or something.” Shepard said. She walked up to the door--her omnitool still assured her that there were no people here but her and Thane--and opened it.
Instantly she smelled cadaverine. The indoor air was thick and cloying, rank with the stink of death. “Oh, ugh. On top of not getting all the data, they just left the bodies where they fell? Somebody’s getting a dressing-down when I get in touch with Hackett.”
Thane didn’t make any response, but she could feel his similar disapproval radiating cold behind her. “This is just unprofessional.” Shepard said.
The main room held eleven bodies, all of them still where they’d been dropped. The side rooms--barracks, toilet, small kitchen, storeroom--had a few corpses between them, but it seemed like most of the mercs had joined the fight in the main space.
“Shepard, I fail to see any main computer.” Thane said, frowning, as they left the kitchen. “Was it camouflaged?” Shepard scanned around the center room again. In the far corner there was a pile of storage crates. Closer examination revealed a telltale flicker behind them. Shepard pulled a couple of the crates aside with ease--”Huh! They’re empty.”--and there was the door. More of a hatch, really, short and too small for her and Thane to walk abreast. It was the work of only a moment to override the locks, and the entryway sprang open.
Several things happened all at once.
There was a quiet clapping noise, or maybe a popping noise, like an old-fashioned balloon on the other side of a birthday party, and with it the whumph of displacing air. Immediately the little room filled with dark, noxious vapor. The suction of the opening door blew it outward into Shepard’s face. “Siha!” One of Thane’s arms snaked around her waist and he propelled them both backward, past the crates and away from the trap, his other hand simultaneously slapping down over her mouth and nose, cutting off her gasp. But Shepard had already gotten a lungful, and then Thane was coughing, half-choking.
The air stank of black pepper and cantaloupe. I’m never taking my helmet off ever again . Shepard thought. Her throat burned. Her eyes burned. The whole world tilted, and she was thrown off of it into darkness.
* * *
Shepard woke as ungently as rolling out of bed. Her mouth tasted awful. She was lying on the ground, stretched out on...leather? Protective mesh? Through the pepper-and-melon smell still clogging her nostrils she could smell something like incense from the fabric. Thane’s coat. Swallowing down a rush of fondness that she didn’t want to investigate, she turned her head. She was in a prefab shed, and the door was open to the outside air. The sun was lower now, shining through the doorway, shadows beginning to stretch across the rocks, and Thane sat on the floor with his back to her, between her and the door (between me and any attackers, she thought), shoulders stiff. She could hear him murmuring a prayer too softly for the translator to catch.
His voice trailed off as she sat up. He didn’t turn to face her. “Shepard. How are you feeling?”
Shepard thought about it for a moment. “Weird.” she said. She was feverish, and her tongue felt too big in her mouth. “I feel hungover. What a stupid, rookie mistake.”
Thane sighed. “As you say.”
“I didn’t mean you .” she protested. “I was first through the door, I should have been more careful.”
He didn’t respond. His spine was ramrod straight, and his stillness was not the usual predatory watchfulness she was used to seeing in him. “Thane? Are you all right?”
“Yes.” His voice was clipped and unmelodic. He’s angry. she thought. She’d only rarely seen him in a poor temper, and it had never been pointed in her direction. She knew how to handle most of her crew’s bad moods--Garrus would be given something mechanical to fix or something to drink, Tali got the latest extranet tabloid gossip, Jack and Grunt got a trip into a hot zone--but she didn’t know what to do with Thane. No one else’s unrest felt as personal to her as his.
She scooted off of his coat and dusted it off, pulled it up with her as she stood. “Thank you for this.” she said as she walked over to return it. His head half-turned, and then he visibly stopped himself from looking further and returned his gaze to the door. “It was nothing.” he said, reaching up with one hand as she lowered the coat. It fell down over his arm and his shoulder, and he sighed again. “Shepard--” he began, just as she said “Are you sure--”
They both stopped. “Si--Shepard.” he said, giving her the conversational right of way. There was something plaintive in his voice, and the earlier terrible fondness rose up in her again. She cleared her throat. “How long was I out?” she asked.
“A little over two hours.”
“That long! I didn’t get more than a lungful of whatever that was. Is there any word from the Normandy?”
“Nothing yet. Either we can wait for them to come back into range, or we can hike out of the canyon and try to get a direct line to the communications satellite.”
Shepard considered that for a moment. “My body feels very odd, but I don’t think there’s any injury.” she says slowly.
“You are not injured.” he agreed. Drell voices didn’t present the wealth of subharmonics that turian speech required, but there was something beneath his words, a burr of unease. His hands locked together, fingers twitching. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him fidget before.
He still wouldn’t look at her. Shepard was suddenly hotly frustrated, surprised by the strength of her own reaction. “What’s going on? I need an actual sitrep, Thane, not whatever this is. Are you injured? I remember--you were coughing.” The frustration was overtaken by a swell of awful fear. “Thane! Are you really all right? Who knows what that shit did to your lungs. I’ll go back, try to get a residue swab off of the walls or floor for Chakwas, and then we can hike into communication range. Have you taken a general antitoxin?” Did you get one into me while I was out?
“No need. I know what it is.” That uneasy undertone was stronger now. “It has not harmed us, and will not. And the antitoxin would not have helped. And will not.”
“What was it?”
He didn’t answer her for the space of a long, careful breath. He said a word that neither she nor her translator recognized. “It’s favored by some batarian groups; evidently the Blue Suns have started using more batarian tactics, or at least this group was among their number.” She got the feeling he was choosing his words with immense care. “It is meant only to disable, not to injure. It causes...certain responses. Emotional, physical. One needs only to be exposed to very little of the substance for one’s response to be overpowering. It will clear from a nervous system in twelve or fourteen hours, so ten to twelve hours from now. There will be no lingering effects.”
Shepard couldn’t stand the set of his shoulders, the way that still he spoke only to the door. She needed to see his face. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He turned from her as she came around. “You and I--” he closed his eyes, she could see from the side. His jaw tensed, teeth gritting, and she thought he might be biting his tongue. When he was finished riding out whatever memory, he said “You and I were exposed to very little, but that does not affect the strength of the response, merely the time to onset of symptoms. I have been experiencing the first effects for the last half hour. I do not have any deep understanding of human physiology, but I can hear frustration in your tone, and concern that you would usually attempt to hide from me. Already you have less control than you normally might.”
Shepard stopped dead before she could get all the way around to see his face. “Um.” She had no idea what he was about to say, but still she felt the horrible sense that she knew where this was going. He barked out a laugh at her hesitance, but it didn’t sound amused. “It is designed to incapacitate through sexual arousal.” he said finally, his voice lowering. That buzz at the bottom of it ran right up her spine, and she resisted a shiver. “It is not merely distracting, but disabling; victims of the toxin find that they must act on the smallest of lusts.” There was a growing static between her ears, an inability to think. Thane continued “While theoretically not impossible to resist, most find it very difficult.”
Shepard’s tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Thane paused, waiting for any response, then said “It might be for the best that I wait outside for the Normandy to return.” He finally turned and looked at her. His face was filigreed in gold from the late afternoon sun, every scale picked out in light. The angled sunlight slid through his irises, igniting the green against the black. Shepard remembered, all of a sudden, walking home late on a summer night, a neighbor’s motion-activated security lights blazing out at her through a tree’s branches. The way that the leaves glowed had stopped her feet in awe. She hadn’t ever known that a color could be so beautiful. She noticed now, too late to hide it, that she’d stopped breathing. Hell, she wasn’t sure her heart was beating.
Thane’s face went loose and hungry at the sound of her little gasp, and he rose up on his knees, reaching for her. “ Siha… ”
She was instantly all thoughtless need. Her blood roared behind her eardrums. She grasped his hands and the two of them drew together, him half-standing, her half-bent, and his eyes were wells deep enough to drown in. As he came to his feet she collided with him clumsily, and his arms pulled her in tight; he was too strong for her to escape if she had wanted to. His hand couldn’t possibly be burning--his temperature was usually lower than hers--but might as well have been made of fire for how easy it was to track the passage of his fingers as they coasted across her scalp. Her own arms closed around his waist. She couldn’t seem to get enough air. She leaned out against his embrace just a little, not to get away but to tilt her head. His mouth was so close to hers that she could feel his breath on her lips. She went up an inch on her toes, desperate to close that last little distance.
She didn’t see him move. He was so fast she barely even felt it. By the time she realized he’d pulled away her arms were empty as he collided with the wall on the other side of the room, eyes very wide, hands held out a little as though to ward her off. “My apologies.” he said, sounding sick. “It seems my condition is...rapidly advancing. I will be outside.” He flickered out the door and was gone.
She let him go without protesting. She was a grown woman, not a teenager, and she had never been in the habit of lying to herself; he was clearly not wrong about her control. There was something in her keening with need, demanding that she follow him out, and her mind was abruptly full of visions. Knock him down, take him in the dust. As if she could. Beg. She could still smell him in the air around her. If he needed distance from her, she would give it to him, because she plainly couldn’t be trusted.
She sat down again on the cheap prefab flooring that was still warm from his body heat. The coat lay on the floor beside her, abandoned in Thane’s hurry, and without thinking she lifted it to her face. Twelve more hours. She could feel her pulse in her hands, and taking a deep breath did not soothe her. I can do twelve hours standing on my head.
***
Forty-five minutes later, Shepard had no idea how she was going to make it another eleven hours. All her joints felt like they were coming unhinged. She was having trouble maintaining any sort of train of thought. Her blood felt carbonated in her veins, she was full of a restless electricity. She was doing her best to avoid even thinking about the ache in her core; her best was not enough. She was torn between being glad that she couldn’t feel her own wandering fingers through the plates of her armor, and wanting to rip it all off.
She couldn’t remember feeling a lust this physical before. Sure, she’d been aroused plenty of times, enjoyed a lot of sex casual and otherwise, but this feeling was hungrier and more desperate than she’d ever experienced even in early adulthood. It was as if her whole body wanted him, as if even the nerves in her ankles were transformed into erogenous zones.
She paced the little shed. Seven steps from one corner to the next. And there were crates in the way--well, that was a thought. She spent half an hour cataloguing the contents of the crates, and arranging them to one side of the room. Mostly junk. A handful of weapons (a shitty pair of handguns, one decent rifle, a surprising number of knives for people who wore body armor), two crates of expired MREs, off-brand heatsinks and four or five mods that she didn’t recognize. Might be worth handing to Tali or Garrus, I’ll remember to bring them home.
Behind the last of the crates was a digital pad with a password lock, and Shepard spent a distracted fifteen minutes breaking the encryption only to find it was nothing more than a series of novels in Salarian Common. She opened one of them in the middle and read with a frown until she couldn’t keep the names straight anymore. It seemed to be either a romance--did salarians have romance?--or a math treatise, depending on whether she was supposed to be paying more attention to the equations or the carefully-explicated lines of maternal descent. Or possibly it was a comedy. Whatever it was, it wasn’t for her, and she put it on top of the crate with the mods.
Still, the distractions had given her what she needed to feel a little cooler. Calm enough to start doing some real work to process this bullshit. She pulled her feet up under her, sitting properly in seiza, and took a deep breath.
She’d started sitting zazen as a young teenager, when it became clear that if she didn’t find somewhere to put all the rage she felt it would consume her instead. She had a lot of practice examining a thought or feeling, accepting it, and letting it go. But this defied those years of practice, defied even Samara’s more recent attempts to give her some stronger method of control. She breathed in deep, held it, breathed out. In, hold, out. She felt her muscles unclenching. The soul is a mirror, the soul is a lake, emotions are distractions that pass like reflected clouds and are not themselves the soul. In, hold, out.
There was an insect or something chittering outside, rhythmic. She followed the sound for a moment then let it go. In, hold, out. All the other aches of her body began to make themselves known, her slightly sore throat, the ache in the shoulder muscle she’d torn last week, a warning heat in her knee. She let them go. In, hold, out. She thought of Thane’s fingers, shockingly strong on the back of her neck. Her body blazed into awareness again and she struggled to regulate her breath. She wanted him so badly. Deep breath. She wouldn’t pretend that she didn’t. Hold. But she was his commander, and neither of them could be considered sober. Out.
Thoughts drifted uncontrollably through her mind. Memories of the softness of his face during their late-night talks in Life Support, of the iron set of his shoulders when he pulled the trigger, of his low, breathy chuckle when she managed to surprise him into humor. She picked the thoughts up, let them have their space, put them down. In. Hold. Out.
Time passed. It was helping, little by little, enough that the lust felt now like a bad sunburn on a naked shoulder. As long as she wasn’t prodding at it she’d be okay. Now to figure out how to not prod at it.
The sky through the open door had gone all to greens and lavenders, and stars began to pick themselves out through the waning light. Night was coming on quickly. When she realized what she was looking at, one of the thoughts that drifted through her clearing mind finally caught hold, a sentence from the written briefing about this installation: “The facility’s perimeter barrier was destroyed in the fight. Recommend any nighttime excursions be taken in groups, to deter nocturnal fauna from attack. Multiple large predators, both solitary and pack hunters, are known to exist in the local area.”
Of course Thane would remember reading that if he thought about it, but it had taken Shepard an hour of active meditation to be able to stop thinking about his hands. She paused again, breathed deeply, wrestled herself back to calmness. If he’s half as distractable as I am …She got to her feet and walked out the door.
He was only forty or fifty feet away. He’d taken a more active form of meditation than Shepard, and was punching and kicking and tumbling, flowing from one form to the next with all the ease of thirty years of practice and twenty-five years of application.
An inside crescent kick with the right foot transitioned to an outside with the left, then he threw a series of short, rapid punches before tumbling into a handspring and from there into an airborne pair of kicks simultaneous in two directions. The instant his feet touched ground, one hand blocked and unbalanced his invisible opponent while the other hand punched. Shepard was transfixed; she’d seen him fight, but she didn’t usually get the opportunity to actively admire it, since she was always in the thick of it with him. She’d only rarely seen Thane without his coat at all, never actually gotten to study the play of muscles in his arms and shoulders. She didn’t immediately call his name, just watched, and breathed. The air was like wine.
A cool breeze toyed with Shepard’s sleep-loosened hair as she approached him. She could feel one of the bobby pins go cold against the back of her neck. She didn’t pretend to herself that that’s why she shivered. It didn’t seem possible that Thane could hear the brief chatter of her teeth from that distance, but he stopped dead at the end of a punch, head snapping to face her. She swallowed and walked a little closer, still keeping ten feet between them. He folded his hands behind his back and waited.
“We should probably both get inside.” she said. “It’s almost dark, and there are reports of wandering nocturnal predators. I don’t think either of us wants to deal with whatever it is that hunts the herbivores here.” He tilted his head, clearly thinking about the massive herd animals the drop shuttle had passed over on the way in. “No.” he agreed. “That would be one more problem than we should have to deal with, tonight.”
“Right. So.”
He smiled at her gently. “After you.” he said. Feeling clumsy, Shepard turned and walked back into the prefab shed.
Thane watched her go, feeling a terrible trepidation. Even from twenty feet, the smell of her on the breeze was so enticing...he tried to relax, dragging his eyes away from the precision of her slim feet in the sand. Arashu protect us each and both. He prayed, helplessly, and then he followed her into the shed.
***
Shepard walked through the door without looking back, and didn’t turn until she was nearly at the wall. The shed wasn’t very big--maybe fifteen feet on a side--but she was going to give him as much space as she could. There was a wryness to the flat set of his mouth as he stood in the doorway. He sighed and closed the door behind him. “Siha.” he began, faltering. “My apologies for my...abruptness. Earlier.” She shook her head, not sure how to reply. “It was probably a good idea.” she said. “I wasn’t in control.”
He folded his legs beneath him and sat with his back against the wall, as far from her as he could get. “I will sit here, and meditate; you should do whatever you like to keep your head clear.” Shepard’s mouth quirked; he’d never given her an order before. She doubted he realized he had done so now.
He’s not wrong, though. She settled back down into seiza, not quite letting her back touch the wall. It was more difficult than it had been before. He was so close. She focused on her breathing. Bit by bit, she thought hopefully, it really did seem like she was getting better at carrying the burden of crushing lust. I mean, he’s right there and look at how good I’m doing! Ignoring the shape of his jaw, and the tiny rubbing noises the side of his shoe made on the floor when he shifted his weight a fraction. And how bright his scales seemed to be today, even under the insufficient electric light that hung only in the middle of the shed. And the-- In. Hold. Out .
Slowly Shepard gave herself over to timelessness. An hour dragged by, then two. She was fine as long as she was able to forget that she wasn’t alone in the room, then something would remind her of Thane’s presence and she’d be set on fire all over again.
She was starting to feel like one of those stupid trick birthday candles that won’t stay blown out when the air split with a weird cry, starting sharp and high but ending gutteral. The walls of the shed vibrated like drumheads. Shepard startled and laughed at herself, and Thane’s lips turned up. They both listened for a long minute, but the sound was not repeated. “Those herbivores.” Shepard said. “Probably too big to domesticate.”
“I daresay so.”
“I’m reminded of a story one of my teachers told me,” Shepard began, her tongue feeling a little strange. “There’s this food animal from Earth called a chicken; a small, nearly-flightless flock avian bred for its meat and eggs. We’ve been raising them for food for ten thousand years or so. Anyway. A master of meditation wanted to test his disciples’ control. He would start off the group meditations, all his students together in a big, quiet room, and then when everyone had settled in to the practice he’d sneak outside, grab a chicken from the yard, and then throw it through the window into the room. The chicken would walk around the students, making noise and pecking at the floor, at their clothes, generally making a nuisance of itself, and the students were supposed to be advanced enough in their meditation that it wouldn’t bother them. That they could recognize it existed and was making a mess without that knowledge interrupting their practice.” Shepard rolled her shoulders, snickering. “I’ve never considered myself to be very advanced, so it’s just as well, but damn was that a big chicken just then.”
Thane smiled at her. “I confess I have a little difficulty imagining you as a monk.” he said. She laughed louder. “Oh, god, no! I never wanted that. I just wanted a little bit of self-control. I was a pretty angry kid.” Something in Thane’s posture had begun to relax as she spoke. His fingers uncurled as his face went fond. “I appreciate your self-control, siha.” he said quietly. “This might be more difficult, if it were someone other than you.”
“But who else would it be? Samara would probably be fine, I’m not sure she even feels desire anymore. But could you imagine if it were Tali?” Her smile faded as her stomach turned over at the thought, even though she was the one who had voiced it. Sweet, wicked Tali, here alone with Thane, with no fraternization concerns, and no human cultural hangups about sex? Her suit had built in vibrators, for God’s sake.
Shepard forced down the images the thought summoned, shaking her head. Thane’s lips had gone very thin, his eyes narrow. “You nearly chose Zaeed for this mission.” he reminded her, all the warmth gone utterly from his voice. “You would have had to kill him hours ago.” There was no kindness in him now, and she caught her breath as his voice lowered. “Or I would have done so, later.”
Shepard swallowed, determined not to examine why that protective sentiment made her ache. She felt a nearly physical pain through her whole self, rising and ebbing like a tide. “Well. I’m glad it’s you.” she said. He sighed, mastering himself. “Yes.” he said. Shepard’s mouth moved without her seeming to know in advance what she was going to say, one more bit of proof that she was not quite herself. “Even if. We don’t make it all the way ‘til this burns out. I’m glad it’s you.”
Thane’s gaze leapt back to hers, his face something like fearful, something like hungry. He held his breath for a long moment. His eyes fluttered closed, and he lifted one hand in warning. “Thank you.” he said. “But you had better stay over there.”
Shepard couldn’t help laughing again. “Yeah, I think so too.”
The wandering whatever-it-was had quite broken Shepard’s peace, so after a few fruitless minutes she reached into a pouch for dinner. “MRE?” she asked, tossing one to Thane. He caught it neatly. Shepard watched him glance over the label.
“You know...I have no idea what drell MREs are like.”
His glance flicked up to hers, and she ignored the little zing of pleasure at the eye contact. “The hanar are very concerned with artistry.” he said. “They see no sense in doing something if it can not be done beautifully, and so even the military’s meals are asthetically pleasing and balanced in flavor. For me--as a weapon, food is fuel, and it is not particularly important. But I must admit that Alliance soldiers’ food is...uninspiring, by comparison.” he said.
“Hey, what’s wrong with--” she looked down at the label on hers-- “ Mild pumpkin chile soup with crackers? Are they kidding with this ‘mild’ shit? It’s gotta be like nutrient paste. Least they could’ve done would be throw in some real chiles. What did you get?”
“Varren stew with rye toast.” He opened the packet. “And a chocolate cookie.”
“Oh, I’ve got berry cobbler in mine.” Shepard said, pulling her gauntlets off. “Lucked out.” She managed to get a fingernail beneath the edge of the zip-strip on the soup can and pulled it sharply to start the heating process. The room filled with the familiar scent of vegetables in too much preservative.
Thane rolled his can of stew between his hands for a moment, then set it beside him on the floor. “Not hungry?” Shepard asked. She thought for a quick moment--what had she seen him eating, in the past? “Or--Thane, are you a vegetarian?”
He shrugged. “I do not typically enjoy consuming varren, but I have no religious or moral reasoning behind it.” he said. “Nor am I so demanding as to require specialty meals in the field. I am simply not very hungry.” he said.
Shepard watched him, unsure. “Okay--you think it’s all right if I come over there?”
He blinked at her, two sets of eyelids flicking in and out one after the other.
“I’m coming over there. You have to eat, who knows what that shit is doing in your body other than--other than the stuff we already know it’s doing. You can have the pumpkin soup. Y’know what a pumpkin is?”
He peered at the soup through its clear lid as she lifted it in two fingers, mindful of the temperature. “A root vegetable? It is the same color as the battered vegetables served at that Japanese restaurant on the Citadel.”
“No--though it does look like it’s made of yams, doesn’t it? This vegetable grows on a vine. There’s a Western holiday that involves cutting faces into them and making them into lamps to scare demons away.”
“And then you eat them? Does this ritual impart some sort of spiritual protection?”
“Well, no, we don’t eat those exact ones, they dry out too much and we throw them away. But there’s a smaller variety. Makes good soup, not that this is an example.” She passed it to him, careful not to touch him, and then took a few steps back and sat heavily on the floor. “Varren stew for me, then!” she said. He scooted it along the floor toward her and then likewise retreated until they were about five feet apart. “You can keep the cookie if you want, but if you wanna go halves you can have some of the cobbler.”
They ate in a companionable silence, not looking at each other, the false solitude broken only by Thane leaning over to put half the cookie on her rucksack. She replaced it with the dish of remaining cobbler.
What had cooled to a gentle ache in her core was all at once fanned up to a stinging heat in every part of her. Her whole body felt like a stubbed toe. “Ow! Fuck! What the hell?” As quickly as it had come, it passed. “That was weird.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Everything hurt for a second. Kind of like getting shocked.”
“That is...concerning.”
Shepard shrugged. “Seems all right now.” She cleared up her MRE trash, stuffed it back into the bag. “Maybe I should go back to the zazen. Or stretch? I have been sitting still a long time.”
“Perhaps.” his carefully-controlled voice sounded dubious.
“I guess I can’t really stretch in the armor.”
Silence overtook the shed for several long seconds. Finally Thane said “It would probably be best if you kept it on.”
Shepard felt her pulse rev up, and she had to moisten her lips before she could reply. “No problem.”
They retreated to the opposite sides of the shed. Shepard busied herself going through a couple of the crates again, but nothing had mysteriously appeared in the last few hours. She chose the worst-looking of the handguns and started stripping it down to clean it; there probably wasn’t a single useful piece to the damn thing, but it was comforting to be able to focus on it, and it didn’t hurt to keep in practice with weapons she didn’t generally use. It didn’t seem likely it had ever been oiled, and she dug through her own kit for oil and a file then leaned on a crate to work on the thing.
Forty minutes later the pain came again, sharper this time. Shepard’s hands jerked. A spring flew in one direction, a dented O-ring in the other, and the air sang with the sound of the loose barrel hitting the concrete floor. “Shit!” she collected the pieces, swallowing hard. “What the hell. Ow, ow, ow ow…”
Thane, concerned, looked over at her from where he sat with the salarian romance novel. “Are you all right?”
Shepard shrugged. “I guess? Felt like getting belted one. Like if the whole body could be smacked at once, but it’s lingering a bit this time. Really weird.”
“That sounds worse than it was before.” He’d turned the pad down into his lap, all his attention on her now.
“Yeah.” she bent to grab the barrel from where it had rolled away. “Nothing to do but ride it out, though.”
He picked the book back up again, but his eyes were on her at least as much as the text.
She reassembled the gun, much the better for her efforts, and moved to the next one. “Shameful.” she said, holding it up where Thane could see. “This must jam two shots out of ten.” It took more effort than the last one to get apart, and she’d started to fool herself that the being-slapped sensation was surely the last of whatever weird thing was happening to her when she felt again a rising swell of pain. Like the tide coming in. “Thane…” she tried not to make his name sound like a whine. “You said the drug was ‘very difficult’ to resist. Do you know anyone who’s done it? Have you heard about anybody who has?”
She wouldn’t look up, she fixed her gaze on the half-disassembled gun in front of her, but she heard the strain and worry in his voice. “No. Not without chemical intervention.” he said.
“So, theoretically--” there it was, the warning turned into a keening of nerves now, and she she hissed through her teeth, kicking the crate with one booted foot to collect herself. “--theoretically, is it possible that this is actually dangerous?”
“Siha…”
She bit her tongue and groaned as a larger wave of pain rolled over her. All her muscles tensed, the way they might if she’d vomited. Her fingers clenched automatically, and her shoulders rolled in tight.
“I don’t know how human bodies work.” Thane said, sounding tormented. “Can your people die of the mating urge?”
Shepard laughed despite her discomfort. “No. As much as a teenager might insist otherwise, it’s harmless.”
“Then...unless the toxin itself has an adverse effect on the circulatory system, it seems to me…” he trailed off.
Shepard, smiling crookedly, started to say “This is the worst case of blue balls--” and then a firestorm engulfed her. Every vein was flushed with molten lava, every nerve shot through with lightning. She would have screamed but she didn’t have the breath, and fell to her knees. She couldn’t catch herself, she fell onto her side, sobbing, her arms and legs drawing in tight like a dying bug. She’d inadvertently turned on the side that faced him. He was on his feet. His eyes met hers for the instant before her vision blurred with a stream of tears, mercifully blinding her to the misery in his expression. “Sorry, sorry, sorry--” she choked out. “This--isn’t--what you signed up for--” It’s only pain . She thought desperately, scrabbling for composure. Accept its existence and let it pass. My soul is not the pain .
The sensation rolled back out again, still like the tide, and she sucked in a deep breath. Her hands and feet were tingling, her face was tingling, her lips as numb as if she’d been running and didn’t have enough oxygen. Her eyes slipped shut as all the tension in her muscles released. “Sorry.” she murmured again, and for the second time that day, she passed out.
Thane scrambled across the room too fast for a human eye to track him, had there been any human conscious to do so. His mind was flooded with memories: Irikah so still on the floor, her goldenness gone dim ; a hundred commissions, every one of them as motionless as Shepard was now. No! He threw himself to his hands and knees beside her, hauled her upper half into his lap, his fingers desperate at the pulse point on her throat that had distracted him so many times in the last few hours. Her heart beat strongly, if a little unevenly, and she blew a sleeping breath out through her lips. He sagged in relief.
Her face was drenched in tears, and the corners of her eyes were still tight with pain. He braced her a little more comfortably, her head in the crook of one of his elbows, and brushed the hair back from her cheek. “Siha, what am I to do with you?”
* * *
Shepard swam unwillingly to consciousness. Hell of a hangover this is. She had only that instant of confusion before she registered where she was. He held her like he knew how, and something in her shivered happily even as she knew the pain would return in a moment.
“Thane?” she hated how weak she sounded.
“Shepard.”
“How long was I out?”
“Not long. A couple of hundred seconds.”
Her lips curved a little at that. “Oh, I’m getting good at this. Next time, you won’t even notice.”
Thane chuckled despite himself. But before he could reply, she was wracked by another wave of pain. Her fingers clutched at his upper arm as she hissed. All he could do was hold her until it passed. “That one...was a little better? Maybe?” she gasped. “It’s hard to tell. But, hey! Still conscious!”
Thane closed his eyes for a moment, unmoved by the humor. They both knew that it was masking fear. “There may be something I can do for you.” he said. His voice was quiet, conflicted. Shepard shook her head. “I don’t want you doing anything you’ll regret.” she said. “If this is just...I mean, humans really don’t die from arousal.”
“Your pain is sufficient impetus to me.” he said. “And as for regret, be assured that any unwillingness on my part is more about the venue than the company. But rather what I meant is…drell secrete a substance that humans find--”
Another wave of pain, and this one was not better. Shepard turned her face into his chest and sobbed. “Siha, siha…” he crooned, stroking her cheek. She panted in the moments between pain, unselfconsciously seeking comfort. When she came back to herself she pulled away in embarrassment. “Sorry.”
“No apologies.”
“You were saying?”
“Your people find it hallucinogenic, but more to the point, in higher doses it is a fairly powerful analgesic. There is a good chance that in this case it could be sufficiently strong to mitigate the discomfort.”
“And you just--make this?”
“On my skin and in my saliva, at a low level, yes, constantly. But I can control it, in a small way, and increase the concentration.”
“And how do you--” another fifteen seconds of choking down a wail, and Thane held her tighter while she writhed. Her heels drummed uselessly against the floor. Her hair had come completely loose of its last pins and draped over his elbow. When the pain moved on she fell completely limp, exhausted from the fight. Her eyes were only half open now, and her breath came in short little gasps. “ God, this sucks . How is it, we’ll say, administered? I’m not sure I could hold still enough for an IV.”
Thane took a breath and shifted her a little higher in his arms. He worked his jaw a couple of times, not quite as if he meant to speak. And then he lowered his head and kissed her.
He tasted like burnt sugar. Caramel. A little bitter, but it only set the sweetness off. His lips were firm but tentative against hers, somehow respectful despite the surprise of the kiss. His tongue darted deep into her mouth, bringing more of the bitterness with it, and she reached up to keep him from pulling away. She was still on fire, but all the pain was transforming into something complicated and nearly good. She was engulfed but not consumed. She felt his jaw working again under her hand, opening and half-closing a dozen times as he kissed her. The bitter sugar flavor was stronger every moment, almost overwhelming, but she couldn’t get enough of it.
In the (several) times before this mission that Shepard had idly considered kissing Thane, she hadn’t imagined he’d be so thorough. One of his hands cupped her head, his other arm angled from her hip to travel up along her spine, his hand flat between her shoulderblades. Shepard couldn’t help grinning. He made a little noise deep in his throat, a helpless growl. Shepard’s eyes were closed but her vision was spangled with colored light that danced at the vibration of his voice. Like the confetti of firepit sparks on a night breeze, or the blade of morning sunlight on seawater...she pulled back with a gasp. Thane let her, relaxing his grip on her instantly. His face was full of a complicated concern. Shepard knew that at least some of it was fear that he’d overstepped. “Thank you.” she said. He watched her carefully, and behind him the room spun like the hands on a clock. She counted down seconds, waiting for the next swell of pain; they’d been coming closer and closer together, surely it should hit by now?
He was too far away. She pulled him down to her again. His jaw was still beneath her questing fingers, and his lips were hungry on hers. The bitterness was fading. She realized that now he was kissing her because he wanted to, and she hmm ed happily into his mouth. When she opened her eyes he was wrapped in light, streamers radiating all around him like the corona of a star. His eyes glowed darkly down at her. “Thank you.” she repeated. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. You weren’t kidding about the hallucinations, though.”
“Oh? What do you see?” The undertone in his voice sounded like music, and for a moment she could only follow the rise of it. It felt like the wind in a sail, buoying her. She wanted to hear it with an orchestra, she wanted him to talk and talk as long as it took until she understood its meaning.
“You’re all golden.” she said, when she was able to come back to herself a bit. He caught his breath. She nuzzled against him, smiling as freely as a child. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”
Distantly, Thane realized that the garrote-wire tension he’d been under all day had snapped. Whether it was his terror at seeing her fall, or the shock of the kiss, the hunger had left him and was replaced now by a quiet sense of correctness. He knew she was under the influence, but still, to see her smile like that…he bent again and pressed his lips to hers, chastely now. The coals in his blood were cooler, manageable even with the berry taste still lingering on her mouth. She sighed happily and curled comfortably around him, her eyes drifting closed. Her breathing was steady, regular, and when he was able to loosen a hand to check her pulse, it thrummed regularly, neither too quickly nor too slow.
He let himself continue to hold her for a shamefully long time after he was certain she was sleeping. Almost of their own volition, his fingers smoothed the hair from her face, tucking a lock behind her ear as he’d seen her do unconsciously a thousand times. Her eyes sailed back and forth beneath her eyelids as he gently, carefully stretched her limbs out more comfortably and rested her head on his lap, and then he turned his face to the door and waited for dawn.
***
“Copy, Normandy. We will be at the pickup point when you arrive. Please have Dr. Chakwas and Ms. Lawson on standby.”
There was something right about Thane’s voice being the first thing that she heard upon waking, Shepard thought, as it had been the last thing she heard before sleep. She stretched and allowed herself the luxury of a long yawn, and then she opened her eyes.
Memory came rushing in.
Oh, fuck.
Thane’s lips on hers. His fingers in her hair. The low, growling note he made for just an instant when she kissed him the second time.
The way his face softened when he really looked at her.
And what he’d said while she was wracked with pain, that had gone un-commented on. “ As for unwillingness, be assured it is more about the venue than the company.”
Well.
There wasn’t any putting it off, and she wasn’t a coward. She finished her interrupted stretch and sat up. “Good morning.” she said. Thane was once again sitting between her and the open door, which admitted a cool, gentle breeze, but all the previous day’s tension was gone from his shoulders and spine. He smiled at her with precisely as much warmth as usual; friendly, but composed. “How are you feeling?”
Shepard thought about it a moment. “Pretty sore. Like I had a set of fitness qualifiers yesterday. And I think I’ve pulled a muscle in my knee again. But it’s not concerning.” She looked at the floor. “I slept well.” she said. No nightmares, she thought.
“I am glad.” For a moment he looked as though he’d say something else, then the corner of his mouth quirked up. “I secured the data we came for.” he said. “The toxin should have dissipated, but I kept my breather on this time.” Shepard laughed. “Efficient! Good thinking. That’s why I keep you around.” she said.
“Is that why?” he asked, his voice velvety and amused. Shepard’s face blazed.
He didn’t leave her in awkward silence for long. As if he hadn’t teased her, he continued “If you were not quite awake enough to hear clearly, Joker has been in contact. We’re to be ready for extraction in twelve minutes.”
“Thank God.” Shepard said in real relief. “Enough of this place. I want a painkiller, and I want a massage, and I want a bath, and at least I can have the first of those.”
Thane paused. “I imagine that the good doctor will need to sign off on any...additional application of drugs to your system. For now.”
Shepard snickered. “Then I’ll ask Miranda.”
***
Shepard pinned her hair back up, then pulled her gauntlets on. There were no real belongings to pack, even last night’s dinner trash having been neatly put away, but the two of them looked around the room for anything that might have been missed. Shepard grabbed the loose handful of mods, and Thane took the pad of salarian novels, smiling wryly at Shepard’s raised eyebrow. “Perhaps Mordin can find some use for it.” he said. “Sure.” said Shepard, drawing out the vowel into something sweetly mocking.
The air above them howled with shuttle engines, and they left the shed without looking back. Thane’s face was as impassive as ever, and Shepard schooled her own expression into its usual gentle interest as the shuttle door opened. To her surprise, Tali sat inside. As Shepard climbed in, the quarian waved a hand that held a medical-looking box. “Shepard! Since I’m the one who always wears a suit, I figured I could do the ride along. Chakwas wants you decontam wiped before you get to the shuttle bay. I can’t believe it. You got drugged ? You got drugged? You understand Joker is never going to let you live it down.”
Shepard buried her face in one gauntleted hand. “Yeah, yeah, give me the wipes.” she said, holding her other hand out without looking. From the opposite side of the shuttle, Thane’s chuckle was nearly inaudible as the shuttle door closed. Tali whirled to look at him. “You too, Krios!” she said. “I’m sure you’re already beating yourself up, so I won’t explain in detail how embarrassing it is that both of you breathed in an airborne poison when you both had your breathers right there. I’ll just let you know that we’re all thinking it.” she shoved a second package of wipes at him. “And this stuff is hell on scales, so you’d better hope that Shepard is nice enough to let you use her shower later.”
Both of them went absolutely still. “Tali.” Shepard said. “What the fuck are you talking about.”
Tali tilted her head, the picture of innocence. “Is that not something that you do?”
Thane pulled a wipe from his container and used it on the salarian novel pad with a flourish, then shoved the pad unceremoniously into Tali’s hands. “I thought you might appreciate this.” he said.
The rest of the shuttle ride was quiet, except for the zipping sound of wipes being pulled from the containers one after the other, and an occasional giggle from their quarian teammate as she scrolled through a novel. Shepard turned so that Thane could run a wipe down the armor plates on her back, and then gestured so that she could return the favor. The muscles of his back jumped under her hand. Knowing her body blocked Tali’s line of sight, Shepard rested her palm flat between his shoulderblades for a long, unnecessary moment.
And then the Normandy hailed them, and the moment was over.
***
The medical exam was as tiresome as ever, though--as ever--Shepard was grateful to have Chakwas and not some asshole for a doctor. “I’m not going to ask to keep you overnight, since EDI can keep an eye on you wherever you are.” Chakwas said. “But you are going to have to get bloodwork every day for the next week.” Miranda, sitting in for a consult, hadn’t raised an eyebrow at Shepard’s description of the situation, but had been silent for a few seconds. “I think…” she’d started, then shook her head. “Yes. Bloodwork. Expect to be in and out of here multiple times in the next couple of weeks, Commander.”
***
The crew were normal in their treatment of the situation--that is, Shepard thought sourly, they were a bunch of fucking gossips worse than any flock of aunties she had ever met. She was reminded of this as Jeff came into the mess that evening, sporting a grin so broad you’d have thought he’d won two weeks at an asari resort.
“So I hear you got got by alien sex poison and didn’t even get laid . You didn’t get laid so hard that you nearly fried your implants. You had an excuse! You could have just gone for it! Seriously, Commander, you are the only person I have ever met who would not-get-laid herself to death.” Joker said. Shepard glared at him across the table. “Thin ice, Moreau.” she said. He held up both his hands in surrender. “It’s not an insult, I’m impressed.” He turned to Thane, where the drell sat further down the table quietly finishing his dinner. “I mean, no offense, Krios, but you go walking around in pants like that , with an ass that Amy Hsu in Communications has repeatedly, publicly, called the ‘platonic ideal of male asses,’ and the Commander still resists you? Gotta up your game, man. You should hang out with me, I can teach you some shit.”
“Oh, my god, Joker, I am gonna space you.” Shepard said around the last bite of her sandwich.
Thane was still. Shepard feared Joker had gone too far at last, before the drell leaned over the table and looked directly in his face. Joker’s eyes went wide. Thane’s voice was very, very dry when he said “Amy? In Communications? Perhaps I shall have to walk by more often.”
Shepard burst out laughing and took her tray to the sink, delighting in the sound of Joker’s sputter. Everything was normal. Everything was going to be fine.
She felt Thane’s eyes on her back the whole way to the elevator.