Chapter Text
“So, what happens now?” Shepard asked. His large hands bracketed Alenko’s, not quite touching.
Alenko had spent the last three days thinking about this meeting, but he hadn’t actually planned on anything beyond getting them to Apollo’s, and his grand confession.
Above them was the artificial daylight of the Citadel’s atrium, with a million souls going about their business. Here, sitting across from Alenko at a too-small table in this bustling café, was the one soul that mattered.
The moment had arrived at last, and Alenko was flying by the seat of his pants.
He’d always been the soldier with the mission plan. Orders from Command to take out the enemy base? He’d have run through different routes with his fire team at least three times before boots touched the ground, mapping out the safest way to get across the room, from crate to covering crate.
He’d gotten even better at strategizing over the last two years. He’d had to, with the Reapers on the way, and the leader of the war effort killed in action. When he’d finally pulled himself together, he’d mapped out his career plan — the way Shepard hadn’t gotten the chance to — and put it into the wind.
All things said, that approach had worked out pretty well. The Alliance had promoted him twice in as many years, given him a whole biotics division to command, and now a seat at the galactic table as the second human Spectre.
“Well deserved, Major. It’s been a long time coming,” Hackett had said as he’d pinned the ceremonial bars to Alenko’s uniform. Even that traitor Udina had agreed.
Did the same strategy work on asking out his commanding officer? Alenko had certainly tried to leave nothing to chance. He’d practised his speech in front of a mirror, even though that meant dealing with the awkwardness. Anything this important was worth the planning it took to make it right.
Asking Shepard out had definitely been a long time coming. Two months of longing, two years of grief. He’d told Shepard the night before Ilos: If you keep me waiting much longer, it damn well better be the end of the galaxy. Two months later, leaving Shepard behind on the first Normandy, it had goddamn felt like the galaxy had fallen apart.
He'd never planned on falling in love. Not while on board ship; not with a war on. Certainly not with his commanding officer. He’d always played by the book, and the Alliance’s had come with an entire section on fraternization. Saving the galaxy? It was more important than one marine’s private life.
But what he learned this year, after Shepard’s return from the dead, was that some things could be just as important as the galaxy.
Or maybe now that the galaxy was coming to an end, there was finally time for them.
Now that he thought about it, he’d been holding back all this time. Ever since Ilos, after Horizon, after Mars. Unquestionably after the coup on the Citadel. He’d always played by the rules. But when he’d returned to Shepard’s Normandy, it was like trying to hold back the tide, or rewriting gravity.
Alenko had paced the halls of the new SR-2, had sprinted for hours on its elliptical track — for so long that Joker teased him about not sleeping and Chakwas had started to ask how bad his headaches had gotten. He’d tried to outrun it, until he couldn’t. Until he’d finally decided the galaxy could goddamn take care of itself for once.
Then he’d made a plan, and put it into action.
That’s what I want. What do you want?
He didn’t let himself think about what Shepard would say in response.
Maybe that was why he hadn’t planned this next part. The part that came after Shepard said, “It feels right,” and, musingly, “After all this time,” as if it had been a long time coming for him, too. After he’d leaned across the table and kissed Alenko softly on the mouth.
Maybe it was a good thing Alenko had gone off-script, because it was so much better than he’d expected. Surprisingly gentle — the merest brush of lips, from a man who’d been the Butcher of Torfan — and over too soon.
Alenko had been in love before — at Brain Camp with Rahna, if not afterwards — but he couldn’t remember the last time a kiss had taken the breath from his lungs and brought all the eezo in his body to life.
He hadn’t planned this part, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. After all, Commander Shepard never stuck to the plan.
“I don’t know,” Alenko admitted. His hands were shaking, and it wasn’t just because of the eezo. “But I’d like to find out.”
“I like the sound of that.” What did you know, Shepard’s hands were shaking, too. “Let’s get out of here.”
They stayed to eat the decent food and drink the lousy wine, because they weren’t complete barbarians. Then they walked back in the direction of the Normandy. Alenko wondered if he should reach for Shepard’s hand, which seemed like the natural follow-up to one person saying: You and me? I’d like that. A lot.
What happened after a first date with your commanding officer? Once they got back to the ship, maybe they could steal a private moment to themselves … But Alenko didn’t let himself plan that far ahead.
In any case, today’s timetable didn’t allow for that kind of private moment. They were both carrying a full load that afternoon. Alenko had agreed to give a briefing to C-sec regarding safety measures at Shalmar Plaza; Shepard had an appointment with Chakwas to discuss the medical supply situation at the refugee camp, and the turian ambassador wanted to talk to a Spectre about what was really happening at the volus embassy.
This was the sensible plan. They’d head back to the ship and take care of business. And, like grown adults who knew the meaning of self-discipline, they’d make an appointment to see each other during the next free slot in their schedules.
Overhead, skycars traced neat, predictable patterns across the synthetic sky of the Presidium. The Citadel’s billboards hawked luxury cargo and commodities and solicited contributions for the war effort. The vidscreen on the side of the Citadel NewsNet tower played a constant capture from the front lines, so citizens could watch the world coming to an end in real time.
“Would you look at that,” Alenko said, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the newsfeed from Thessia, where the ground crews were holding their own against a Sovereign-class dreadnought.
He turned to Shepard and found the man staring at him, with the kind of unparalleled focus he usually reserved for an enemy target, the red scars on his face like tracking lasers.
Shepard didn’t miss a beat. “I was gonna say the same thing,” he said, deadpan, and Alenko felt the blood rush to his cheeks as if he was really back in BAaT.
It was hard to look at Shepard at the best of times. Impossible, when Shepard was looking at him like that: a hostile caught in the merciless cross-hairs of his Hurricane.
He looked down, instead, at where the backs of their hands brushed against the other, not quite touching. The crackle of dark energy was never far from either of them. He called it up now, a glaze of blue, and watched an answering flare skate over Shepard’s knuckles.
They stopped at a nearby railing. Through the viewing windows of the observation deck, the Citadel’s ward arms stretched out to the edge of the horizon. A million lights, a million homes, a million people coming and going, as far as the eye could follow.
“We’ve seen bigger places, since,” Shepard said, gravelly and amused.
Alenko glared, sidelong, but it was true. Three years ago, visiting the Citadel for the first time, he’d been green as grass. Since then, he’d been stranded on the deceptive vistas of Virmire, had his heart broken on Horizon at the far reaches of human space. At Shepard’s side, he’d seen a hundred different worlds, each one bigger than the next.
Alenko reached back in his memory to that first time on the Citadel. Before Shepard had become humanity’s first human Spectre, the soldier whom the Council was counting on to save the galaxy. Before they’d been told that the Reapers were coming, and all the Alliance’s best-laid plans would come to naught.
“Oceans, beautiful women, the emotion called love?” They’d seen them all, all right. Even that last one, though they’d both been blind to it until now.
“Nothing more beautiful than what’s right here,” Shepard remarked. His voice was casual, but when Alenko stole another look, that ice-blue gaze remained locked on target. The scars left by Cerberus technology glowed red with unmistakable intent.
Yeah, not blind, not any more. Alenko wasn’t sure his face could get any hotter.
He reached for Shepard’s hand. Their fingers slid into place, a clasp as familiar as the grips on their shotguns. Their biotics flared briefly as their hands pressed palm to palm, energy signatures lacing together, before Alenko damped his down, staying in complete control.
Shepard kept his corona alight for a moment longer. It limned his red-haloed eyes with a wash of blue, a dangerous riptide that could pull Alenko under if he wasn’t careful.
Maybe the time to be careful was over.
“When you put it that way, there’s every reason to like you,” Alenko murmured. What did you know, that line was much less awkward this second time around. “How are you even real?”
Shepard snorted. “Happy to demonstrate, Major, if you let me.”
They walked hand in hand through the upper wards back to the ship. Alenko was past caring about blind items in the evening’s newsfeeds or scuttlebutt in the gossip rags. Hackett had more important things on his punch list than hauling up a major and his commanding officer on protocol charges in the middle of a war. Also, technically, they hadn’t yet crossed the line into actual fraternization.
Time to change that.
The plan was to say goodbye to Shepard at the elevator door with a kiss like the one Shepard had planted on him at Apollo’s. Soft, closed-mouthed, barely there, with just enough pressure to make Shepard’s skin tingle. With enough intent to hint at more, but brief enough to leave the both of them an out. Maybe they’d make a date for that night; maybe he’d get some wine and flowers. Do this properly. See where it led.
Alenko shouldn’t have been surprised when this part didn’t go to plan, either.
The elevator counted upwards toward Deck One, in time with his pulse. When they reached Two, Alenko made his move. A soft, closed-mouth kiss, barely there. Just enough pressure to make both their skins tingle, not enough to pressure anyone into doing anything more.
Shepard inhaled in surprise against Alenko’s mouth. His fingers clenched around Alenko’s convulsively, and a shockwave jolted through both their bodies, sparking their biotic fields to life.
Their coronas sizzled. The gravity well pitched beneath their feet. Alenko staggered, and Shepard caught him in his arms.
“What the actual —?” Alenko was starting to say, when Shepard’s tongue slid into his mouth, and Shepard kissed the rest of his words away.
Their biotic fields clashed furiously together. Alenko exhaled harshly and Shepard drank it down; there was no oxygen in his lungs that didn’t belong to Shepard. Their bodies pressed closer, already half-hard under their fatigues, rapidly getting harder as their lips and chests and thighs crushed against each other’s.
They didn’t realize they’d reached the cabin deck until the lift doors opened and shut a couple of times. Finally, someone said, "Holy sh—! Sorry! Nothing to see here!”, and, galvanized, they stumbled out of the lift into the corridor in a tangle of limbs and biotics.
It was the damndest thing. Self-control had always been more important to Alenko than scratching that itch. Even a reckless maniac like Shepard managed to tread on the brakes of the Mako once in a while. But now, in each other’s arms at last, they couldn’t bring themselves to stop. They kissed like the world was ending, and like this time would be their last.
Weaving like drunks, they finally made it into Shepard’s cabin, where Shepard pulled off for long enough to punch the comm and tell Traynor to reschedule his meetings with Dr. Chakwas and the turian ambassador.
“Also, cancel Major Alenko’s 4 PM C-sec briefing, while you’re at it,” Shepard added. He hit the comm again, presumably to secure it, though Alenko had no idea if EDI could be shut out so easily.
Then he paused. Under the low lights of the improbably vast room, framed by the glow of that equally improbably vast fish tank, his mouth was red and swollen from Alenko’s stubble.
Alenko tore his gaze from Shepard’s mouth. The lack of oxygen in his brain was making him light-headed. The lack of blood, too. Funny thing: in the course of that elevator ride, it had all relocated south of the border.
Alliance BDUs couldn’t hide everything. Alenko was fully, painfully hard, and now they were hip to hip again, there was absolutely no mistaking Shepard’s response.
Belatedly, he damped down on his corona so he could look into Shepard’s dilated blue eyes.
“I should’ve cleared our schedules when you said yes to Apollo’s,” he muttered. “Hackett told me I need to work on my follow-through.”
Shepard snorted, extinguishing his own corona. “What, you didn’t plan for this to happen?”
“Well, that depends on what’s actually happening,” Alenko pointed out, and had to suck in his breath when Shepard took a step back and began to tug open the snaps on his BDUs.
“This clear enough?” Shepard inquired. He shrugged his vest and shirt off, the lean muscles standing out in stark relief. Alenko had seen Shepard’s bare body before, of course, in a hundred jump rooms and communal showers on the first Normandy, but he’d never seen it like this, all laser-focused intent and directed at him.
He had to swallow. “Yeah. I mean, I’d hoped, but didn’t want to expect...”
Shepard had taken hold of Alenko’s fatigues. Now he stopped, raising a red-scarred eyebrow. “Kaidan Alenko. You didn’t expect me to put out on a first date?”
Alenko snorted and put his hands over Shepard’s. “Just didn’t want to move too fast,” he said, quietly.
Together, they unfastened Alenko’s vest, fingers lingering, raising little sparks of static against the metal of the snaps. Shepard whispered into his ear, “You too much of a gentleman to want to climb into my pants?”
“Enough of a gentleman to ask first,” Alenko managed. The thick bulge in Shepard’s BDUs was making his mouth water.
“Good enough for me,” Shepard said. “You’ve kept me waiting for long enough, Kaidan.”
“I’ve kept you waiting?” But Alenko knew what he meant. It almost felt like everything had all started on that first Normandy mission. That near miss on the crew deck. That night in Shepard’s cabin before Ilos, where they agreed there’d be time for them when this was over. Time that, in the end, they hadn’t gotten, that Alenko never thought they’d have again. Until today.
A very long time coming.
Shepard tugged Alenko’s shirt off and sucked in a breath as well, a gratifying spark heating his eyes. “Shit, look at you, how are you even real?”
Alenko had trained harder than ever over the last two and a half years; he liked to think it showed. Still, he huffed, “Hey, now, that is totally my line.”
He reached out to grasp Shepard by the belt buckle. The gravity well crackled with Shepard’s arousal, the blue flickering over his taut nipples and the hard planes of his chest.
Alenko ran his palm across the unblemished skin. Shepard’s old scars had been eradicated by the tech that had brought him back from the dead. The same tech sizzled underneath his flesh, painting him in a red that clashed with his corona’s blue.
“Well, you know how real all this is. Top-of-the-line Cerberus overhaul.” Shepard said it lightly, but the growl of his biotic aura told a different story.
Alenko felt his gut lurch. Shepard had come back different, and so had his corona: fiercer, darker, tinged a shade of blood-red that hadn’t been there before. Death and the technology of resurrection had left their mark on his biotics as well as his body.
Alenko was different, too. The last three years had changed him, in some ways beyond recognition. They’d never have it back, that innocent time before the Reapers and needing to save the galaxy, when they’d been two young marines, trying not to fall in love.
They’d never have it back, but who was to say what they had now couldn’t be even better?
“It’s real enough for me,” he murmured, and leaned up to make the case with his mouth.
The greatest combat strategists in the world — Winston Churchill, General Adrien Victus, Alexander the Great — couldn’t have planned this. There was no recommended strategy for seducing your commanding officer, no manual on how to get into the pants of the Savior of the Citadel. Alenko was just glad he was managing to undo the regulation belt and harness and kiss his C.O. at the same time.
His pulse was pounding in the way it never did in the field. The gravity well snagged hold of them, energy spiraling over their bodies, fanning the flame of their biotics to life once more.
With his superior dexterity, Shepard managed to get Alenko’s own belt and gear undone. Now he gently bit into Alenko’s lower lip as he shoved the fatigues down Alenko’s hips. Alenko panted and writhed, trapped in place by Shepard’s teeth, so helplessly hard it hurt. Shepard’s biotics traced burning lines down his pecs and abs, and then Shepard’s hand was squeezing him through his briefs.
Alenko hissed into Shepard’s open mouth, and Shepard eased off, hands and lips both.
“Too much?”
“No,” Alenko groaned. His lower lip would be blue tomorrow and he didn’t care. “It’s just — damn it, let me —”
He wrenched Shepard’s own fatigues and briefs down and took hold of Shepard’s erection for the first time. It was thick and hot, and slotted into his hand like his sidearm of choice. Shepard’s turn to groan, raising goosebumps across Alenko’s skin. His fingers grasped the nape of Alenko’s neck, hard enough to bruise.
“Fuck, that’s good.”
Seizing the advantage, Alenko brought up his own corona and shoved Shepard backwards into the transparent wall of the fish tank. It was stronger than it looked; a hundred kilograms of reinforced super-soldier didn’t make so much as a dent.
Alenko took the chance to trap Shepard, pinning him to the wall with hips and thighs and an arm bracketing his face. Pressed against the cold glass, the Commander’s bare ass was undoubtedly giving the fish a free show.
Shepard cursed as Alenko held him in place and began to jack him off. His cock was rock-hard, already leaking from the slit, the skim of Alenko’s biotics subbing for the lube neither of them wanted to pull off and go get.
“I’m done keeping you waiting,” Alenko murmured, putting his mouth close to Shepard’s sweating face.
Shepard struggled and swore, though Alenko wasn’t sure if he was trying to regain the upper hand, or to wrestle Alenko physically even closer to him. “Good to hear it,” he panted. “That — fuck — that goes for you, too. Wanted this for so long, Kaidan.”
With his pants around his ankles, he spread his legs as wide as he could to give Alenko more room. Alenko leaned into the taut vee of Shepard’s groin muscles, and lined himself up so he could take both of them in hand at once.
“Oh, fuck,” he heard himself say. The slide of Shepard’s hot length against his was unbelievable, so much better than the cautious dreams he’d allowed himself after Ilos.
He felt rather than heard the high-pitched noise Shepard made in response. Then Shepard’s large hand clamped around his, reinforcing his grasp on both of their cocks.
“Don’t stop,” Shepard breathed. He pressed his mouth to Alenko’s cheekbone, seeking purchase. His fist tightened over Alenko’s as Alenko began to stroke, as they started to stroke themselves off together.
Shepard’s corona swept over Alenko’s, fierce and blue and blood-tinged. Alenko’s rose to meet it. Dark energy swirled around them, the force of moons that moved the waves and tides. The gravity that kept them from shooting off into space, that kept them rooted here, with each other at long last.
Shepard’s grip on the both of them was his characteristic grip on his Phalanx, his no-holds-barred command of the gravity field. His fingers jacked a mnemonic against Alenko’s, taking control of their rhythm as if aiming incendiary fire down a battlefield.
Shepard’s hands never trembled like this in combat, though.
He was shaking, they both were. Abdominals twitching, pelvic muscles straining, shaft and foreskin sliding hot and slick together, groaning as they thrust into their conjoined fists. Trying to get a grip on the eezo surging in their bodies, trying to stop each other from flying off into space.
Shepard panted as if he was unraveling from the inside. “Wanted this for so long. Wanted you.”
“Wanted you too,” Alenko admitted. Three years of wanting, of waiting, and it came down to this. Moving together, caught in the gravity well, waves of dark energy crashing over them. Finding each other, falling into each other, flaring alight.
Shepard was the first to cry out, his muscles seizing, crushing them both together in that almost-painful grasp that was indistinguishable from pleasure. Alenko couldn’t hold back, either. Choked moans spilled from him as they fired off one after the other, filling Shepard’s cabin with a blaze of blue.
It took an eternity for them to finish, and even longer to come down. Alenko’s heart hammered urgently in his chest, as if he’d gone three rounds with a thresher maw. Shepard’s heartbeat, too, thready and fast, a world away from his usual ice-cold metronome.
They held each other up against the fish tank glass, as their sweat cooled and their biotic fields dissipated. Little sparks of electricity ran along Shepard’s forearm and flickered across Alenko’s cheek.
Struggling to catch his breath, Alenko remembered he’d vaguely planned to take this slow. Well, this was yet another plan gone FUBAR thanks to Commander Shepard.
As gravity slowly resettled itself around them, Alenko reclaimed his hand and stepped back, though Shepard seemed in no hurry to let him go.
This post-sex stock-take wasn’t a pretty one. They were a mess, covered in sweat and semen, pants and underwear bunched around their ankles, gear strewn over the floor. He’d even managed to rip Shepard’s briefs in two. Cleanup would be a real bitch, to say nothing of the walk of shame later.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, that went … well.”
“No kidding. It was incredible. You were incredible.” Shepard paused, focusing with some difficulty on Alenko’s face. In surprise, he said: “Wait, you were kidding? You mean you had a plan that … I dunno, involved champagne and rose petals and mood music, something like that?”
Alenko felt his cheeks heating again. “Well, at least a plan that involved a bed. And maybe some lube instead of biotics. Not—” he gestured helplessly downward, “— not even getting our boots off.”
Shepard looped his arms around Alenko’s neck. “Who has time for boots? We’ve waited for long enough.” A smirk stole across his kiss-swollen mouth. “Besides, this isn’t over. We’ve got all night for whatever you want — bed, lube, mood music. And more biotics; I could tell you really liked that.”
“All night, huh?” Alenko said. He found himself smiling, too. Shepard had been so grim after Cerberus brought him back, he’d missed this side of the Commander that could tease and flirt and enjoy being human. “I just, you know, didn’t wanna presume.”
“You’re not presuming,” Shepard said quietly. “We’ve got all this lost time to make up for.”
Alenko shook his head, trying not to grin like a besotted idiot. He was starting to hitch his briefs and pants back up when Shepard stopped him.
“You know it’s just gonna come off again.” Shepard’s voice slid casually lower. “In fact, why don’t you take it all off and get in the shower? I’ll ask Traynor to cancel the rest of our appointments. Then I could jump in and join you for round two.”
Alenko had to swallow. His spent cock actually twitched in interest, as if it belonged to a lovesick teen and not this sleep-deprived old soldier. They were definitely making up for lost time.
“That sounds like a plan,” he said, and started to strip himself of the rest of his clothes. Shepard leaned back against the fish tank and took in the view.
Casually, Alenko added, “You seemed to like the biotics, too. I could show you a thing or two with the gravity well when we’re back in space again.”
Shepard paused. There was uncharacteristic hesitation in his eyes, in a man whose M.O. was to charge into combat guns-first without a battle plan. “That sounds like you’re planning to stick around,” he said, slowly.
Damn straight he was. The time for self-control, for rules, for careful strategy, it was over. Alenko was riding this ship to the very end, whatever that end might be.
“Not going anywhere. You and me, John. As long as it takes.”
Shepard’s turn to swallow. His eyes were blue as the tides, as deep as gravity. He said, slowly, “I like the sound of that. A lot.”
Alenko grinned and gave himself up to another kiss: to the tides, to gravity, to the sweat-sticky static of Shepard’s skin against his. To throwing caution to the wind. All of this had been such a long time coming, and there wasn’t a moment more to waste.