Dragon Age Addiction

His knee hurts. And his hips hurt. And his hands hurt. And he knows he ought to go see Dr Chakwas and get his meds tweaked. But he doesn’t because he can’t stand to see that little red flag on his medical records.

Grounded. Medical observation. Security clearance revoked.

Then plays Kaidan’s recording again, because there’s nothing left to Joker that matters as much as the soft, scratchy sound of Kaiden’s voice.

***

Joker marks the anniversary of Shepard’s death alone.

Liara had tried to arrange a small gathering in Shepard’s honor, but the Normandy crew –– those that survived –– were too scattered.

After Shepard’s funeral, Wrex had left for Tuchanka, Tali had returned to the Migrant Fleet, Garrus had stuck it out on the Citadel for a while, but now, he’s gone too. Most of the Alliance crew has taken up postings on new ships or stations, and some, like Kaidan, are unreachable. But Joker exchanges messages back and forth with the few he can reach. Pleasantries. Memories. Everyone expresses the same sentiment; they can’t believe it’s been a year since Shepard died.

Joker disagrees. He can’t believe it hasn’t been two hundred years since she died. It feels like a lifetime has passed. And nothing is as it was.

A year ago, Joker had woken up at the helm of the greatest starship in the Alliance fleet, surrounded by friends, madly in love with his Commander and her Staff Lieutenant, certain of his purpose and the path of his life.

And then everything had—literally—blown up.

(But one thing hasn’t changed. He’s still madly in love with Shepard and Kaidan.)

Joker takes the bottle of champagne he’d bought for Kaidan up to a secluded spot on the presidium. It’s near the rooftops and has a partial view of the starport. It’s also separate from all the nonsense and commemorative reports recounting the destruction of the Alliance’s prized frigate and the death of her Commander. It’s all speculation because the real story is solidly classified, and no one seems to know a single detail of what actually happened.

He remembers the strangest details of that day. Gardner had made a passable attempt at bagels, and Joker had held one in his mouth so he could ascend the stairs with a cup of coffee and still have a free hand for the railing. Garrus and Tali argued over which dextro-equivalent was closest in taste to strawberry jam, while Wrex provided wildly inaccurate descriptions. Shepard had come down to breakfast, hair still damp, plaiting the long red strands into a single braid over her shoulder, while three drops of water trailed down her neck. A normal morning on the Normandy.

If Joker had known that was going to be it, he would have appreciated it more.

He takes a long drink of champagne directly from the bottle, bubbles fizzy and overly cheerful on his tongue.

He misses Shepard. He’s missed her every day for an entire year, but right now it feels like an open wound. Some raw thing inside him that cuts so deep the bone is exposed, and he can barely breathe around the pain. He knows what it is to break into pieces, but he’d fall to the surface of Alchera a thousand times if it meant Shepard could be in the escape pod with him, just once. Just once.

Just…

He runs his palm over the top of his hat. Over and over and over and over, hoping the familiar tactile sensation will distract his hands and mind the way a flight screen once might have.

But it doesn’t help.

Not today.

He leaves the bottle of champagne on the bench, only half drunk.

He means to head back to his apartment, but when he gets there, he walks straight past it and doesn't stop. He walks from ward to ward along the Citadel. He walks until he can feel every old break in his bones, until sharp aches race up his legs and hips and span across his ribs and shoulders, and it hurts to even breathe.

Until he finds himself standing at Kaidan Alenko’s door.

He wipes the sweat from his forehead in the crook of his arm, winded and more than a little drunk. Kaidan had given him the address to his apartment weeks before he deployed, but they always just met at Joker’s place. He doesn’t— he knows Kaidan’s not there, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

A wave of dizziness hits him, and he reaches out to steady himself, fingers inadvertently brushing over the access pad. The door slides open, and Joker tumbles through with a startled cry, flailing out. He catches his fingertips on the door frame, barely saving himself from a fall.

“Holy shit,” he pants, heart pounding.

Two thoughts jangle around in his brain: that he really doesn’t want to have to call Dr Chakwas to scrape him off Kaidan Alenko’s apartment with a broken hip, and holy fucking shit, Kaidan gave him full access to his apartment.

Even Joker hadn’t done that.

He’d thought of it, sure. But it seemed too intimate a gesture, and a part of Joker was just scared that he’d chase Kaidan away if he ever left the smallest crack of what he really felt show.

And then Kaidan just does something like this, and doesn’t even tell Joker.

Ship’s rules. You belong in any space you can access.

So Joker belongs in Kaidan's apartment. Full stop.

Something inside Joker twists painfully. Maybe it’s the champagne, or the queasiness of a near-fall, or the fact that he misses Kaidan so goddamn much right now it hurts to breathe, but he steps inside the apartment so he doesn’t cry in full view of everyone.

Kaidan’s apartment is perfectly neat and clean, and the kind of put-together that makes Joker question his own life choices. Nothing in the apartment looks like it belongs to a career marine, except for a pair of standard-issue boots lined up neatly by the door. The space is small and comfortably furnished, with little touches of sentimentality all over the place. There’s the red cup on the counter stamped with a white maple leaf, the tiny stack of coffee-table books printed on real paper, a set of antique pots hanging from a rack in the kitchen.

Out of curiosity, he peeks inside the fridge, which, like the rest of the kitchen, is fully stocked, contents double wrapped for long-term storage.

“No lube.” Joker mutters to himself and shuts the fridge door. “Figures.”

Further in the apartment, Kaidan’s bedroom is as neat as the rest of the apartment, the dark bedding neatly made up, corners tucked under the mattress with military precision. Joker shakes his head, annoyed and fond all at once. Then he catches sight of Kaidan’s bedside table, and his legs collapse out from beneath him. He sits down hard on the bed, swamped by a wave of dizziness.

It’s a picture of Kaidan and Shepard. They’re smiling at each other, caught mid-moment under a pinkish spray of light. It was taken at the Flux not long after Shepard was made a Spectre. Joker remembers that night, drinking and dancing. For all that she moves like smoke over water on a battlefield, on a dance floor, Shepard is all stiffness and sharp angles and whatever the hell she always does with her shoulders.

That night, Shepard and Tali had danced for nearly an hour before pulling the crew onto the dance floor. They’d grabbed Garrus first and then the others, one by one. Wrex didn’t really dance, but he seemed to enjoy aggressively body-checking anyone who drifted too close to Joker.

Kaidan had been one of the last to join them on the dance floor. He’d been nursing a beer at the bar, pretending he wasn’t falling for Shepard. And she'd been busy dancing, pretending she wasn't falling right back. But then she’d grabbed his arm, sweaty and smiling, and they'd both stopped pretending when they'd smiled at each other.

Joker picks up the picture on the nightstand. He thinks it was taken right around that moment. A heartbeat of softness frozen in time. Ten minutes later, Shepard would be dancing on the bartop.

He grins, tracing the curve of Shepard’s face with his index finger. The sweep of dark lashes, the coil of bright red hair. He does the same with Kaidan, mapping the sharp edge of his jaw and the dark waves along his brow.

There’s a folded shirt on the table, too. Joker reaches for it. Dark green, the fabric old, and soft, and full of holes. It’s the shirt he’d lent Kaidan their first night together, back when he was certain Kaidan was going to panic and bolt. Joker hadn’t realized he’d kept the shirt.

A wave of loneliness swamps him. Joker hopes that Kaidan doesn’t realize what today is. He can’t bear the thought of Kaidan marking the first anniversary of Shepard’s death alone in the bowels of some giant fucking ship full of strangers.

Joker folds in on himself, exhausted. Too physically and emotionally wrung out to stay upright. He brings up his omnitool and taps on the recording from Kaidan, hearing that warm, scratchy voice he loves so much.

“Hey, Joker. Sorry for just leaving this morning.”

He pulls the picture of Kaidan and Shepard to his chest with one hand, and drags his old shirt up against his face with the other. It still smells like Kaidan, even beneath the sharpness of the laundry detergent he uses.

“I know you didn’t get any sleep last night, and I just… I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Last night… I meant to tell you… I’d planned to tell you…”

Joker closes his eyes, and a tear slides down his cheek. He lets the familiar cadence of the recording wash over him. The words lose their shape until the husky rise and fall of Kaidan’s voice is all that remains. As Joker drifts off to sleep, he barely registers the end of the recording or the way the evenness of Kaidan’s voice is broken by a tiny hitch.

“I’ll see you soon. Take care of yourself, for me.”

***

The months tiptoe by.

Nothing changes. Nothing shifts.

Joker never goes back to Kaidan’s apartment again.

He grows out his beard. Then he shaves it off again. He switches to a cheaper brand of beer. And then he switches back because it’s Kaidan’s favorite brand, and it reminds Joker of his kisses. And then he drops his medications one by one.

It’s not even a conscious decision, not really. He skips a few doses from simple absentmindedness, and when he tries to go back to his usual schedule, they make him so nauseous he spends a couple of weeks trying to weed out the pill he can no longer tolerate, but it feels like every combination makes him feel wretched. So he just... stops.

He knows he should go see Dr Chakwas and have her review and reset his meds… but he can’t. And with each month that passes, his meds matter less and less to him, even if some days it’s hard to get out of bed, and that scratchy pain in his hands never seems to leave.

He grows out his beard again.

And then he shaves it off.

***

There are rumors that Shepard is alive.

It’s not the first time he’s heard that Shepard survived. For a while, every redhead with a gun was trying to pawn themselves off as the Commander once word got around that the Alliance never found her body.

The first time he heard that Shepard had lived, he spent nearly a year's worth of credits to book passage to some backwater system, only to find some half-assed phony impersonator and definitive proof that he's still head over heels in love with Shepard.

He’s a connoisseur of Shepard rumors now. There’s the one where she’s been recruited into Turian high command; the one where she’s working as a stripper in the terminus systems; the one where she’s in a Krogan prison; the one where she’s pregnant with the Asari councilor's love-child; the one where she’s being held hostage by Batarian slavers; the one where she was being held hostage by Batarian slavers, then broke out, killed half of them, and took over command.

There are even worse whisperings. Nightmare stuff. Stuff about what oxygen deprivation does to the brain, or what rapid decompression does to the body. Once, Joker had to listen to a detailed explanation of what it might be like to suffer an arterial bleed while free-floating in space, and how the force of your own blood leaving your body would actually propel you backward. As it turns out, there are a helluva lotta ways to experience truly awful things in space.

There are your conspiracy theorists, with their endless, infinitely detailed explanations, and unshakable certainty that Shepard was in league with Saren, or indoctrinated by him. They can go on for hours about how Shepard had orchestrated the whole attack on the Citadel for the chance to take out the entirety of the Council and place a human in the highest seat of galactic power. That one just hurts like a gut punch. Joker would be lying if he said that none of his nightmares of endless screams and weightless bodies were of the Destiny Ascension.

Every now and then, you get your assholes. Mostly young, plastered marines in dive bars with the world’s most punchable faces, explaining how it’s a good thing that Commander Shepard is dead. They’re usually surrounded by squad mates trying desperately to get them to shut-the-fuck-up. On more than one occasion, Joker’s gotten into shouting matches because he doesn’t seem to have any self-control anymore. But at least guys like that help him find the teeniest-tiniest silver lining to it all: the bitter thought that the Reapers can't come fast enough.

So he doesn’t pay any attention to the latest crop of rumors.

But then, someone sends him a set of coordinates and a lock of red hair.

And in one instant, Joker feels what’s left of the tiny shelter he’d rebuilt around his heart crumble away.

He tries Ryncol for the first time that night and ends up puking into the Presidium Lake. He spends the rest of the night on the floor of his apartment with his head in his hands and just aches for them. For Shepard. For Kaidan.

He stays in his apartment for six days. Six awful days where he’s frozen between hope and grief and a cluster fuck of what-ifs.

(And bouts of every one of his internal organs turning inside out from the Ryncol.)

(Super do not recommend.)

The next morning, Joker leaves his apartment at dawn, unable to sleep, unable to go a minute longer without answers, heading to the one person left in his life.

In the almost 19 months since the Normandy blew up, Dr Chakwas has never returned to a naval posting; instead, working on an Alliance R&D lab on the Shalta ward, focused on xenobiology. One or twice, Joker’s tried to convince her to head back to the skies, but she always waved him away, flatly unwilling to engage in that topic at all.

He has a visitor’s pass that Dr Chakwas has arranged for him, so when he reaches the lab, he lets himself inside, belatedly remembering that even though they’ve kept up their weekly calls, he hasn’t seen Dr Chakwas in person in almost five months.

She’s alone in the lab at her desk near the back, dressed in a white coat, neat, chin-length grey hair framing her face as she works.

“Hey,” Joker says, smiling a little despite everything.

“Jeff?” Dr Chakwas rises, looking more alarmed than surprised. “Are you alright? What are you doing here? Are you in pain? Did you break anything?” She lowers her voice, but just barely. “Did you kill anyone?”

The rapid-fire questions are as familiar as they are annoying. Joker hunches his shoulders. “No, I didn’t kill anyone, Karin. Is that what you think of me? I’m just— I’m fine.”

She looks very unconvinced. “You look absolutely terrible. Sit down.”

“Uh, thanks?” Joker glares a bit, but he sits because it is so not worth arguing with Dr Karin Chakwas. About anything. She looks affable and even-tempered, but she’s utterly fearless and more stubborn than Wrex, which is fucking saying something. “I’m fine. I just… haven’t really been sleeping.”

“And?”

“And I haven’t eaten much today.”

“And?”

“And I drank Ryncol.”

Dr Chakwas doesn’t say anything in response, but based on her expression, Joker is a thousand percent sure she’s killed someone. Or is about to.

“A little,” Joker adds hurriedly. “I threw it up. Repeatedly. Whatever. That’s––it’s not even why I’m here!”

She doesn’t ask, she just presses her mouth into a thin line and waits.

He stuffs his hand in his pocket, fingers brushing against the lock of hair for the ten thousandth time. It can’t be Shepard’s. It has to be Shepard’s.

Joker takes a breath. “Can you get something tested for me?”

“Of course,” she says at once.

“Off the record? I mean it, Karin. Off off. No one can know you even tested it.”

Dr Chakwas is silent for a while, a frown on her face. “I’m perfectly capable of discretion when the situation calls for it.”

“You still have access to your data from the Normandy? All of it? The genetic sequencing from the crew?”

Her eyebrows raise nearly as high as they can go, but she nods once.

“Okay,” Joker exhales. He digs a hand into his pocket, but can’t make himself draw out the lock of probably-not-Shepard’s hair right away. He feels foolishly protective of it, as though what he carries in his pocket — what’s been tormenting him for days — is the tinder that will ignite a fire far beyond his ability to control.

Stupid, stupid. The simplest answer is that it’s a prank.

He takes a breath and folds the lock of red hair carefully into Dr Chakwas’ palm. It’s like a tiny handful of fire.

Dr Chakwas looks at him sharply, all softness gone from her face. “Jeffreson Marcus Moreau, what on earth is going on?”

“I don’t know.” Joker buries his face in his hands. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t even think straight anymore. Just––tell me it isn’t her so I can go get some sleep.”

She stares at the lock of hair for a moment, glaring, as though she could unlock all its secrets by force of will alone. Then she rises and disappears into the back of her lab without another word.

Joker paces around her office until he can’t do that anymore. Then he sits in the corner, perched on the world’s most uncomfortable stool and chugging cups of stale coffee from tiny paper cups because he has to have something to do while he waits, or he’s going to explode.

His stomach is churning, sharply unpleasant. He knows the combo of anxiety and Ryncol is messing with him. Anxiety, Ryncol, and poor medication adherence. What a trifecta.

The door to the back of the lab slides open. One look at Dr Chakwas’ face and Joker knows.

It’s hers.

The lock of hair belongs to Shepard.

Joker makes a sound he doesn’t recognize, something between relief and dismay, a tangled, broken sort of sound.

And then, embarrassingly, he bursts into tears.

Kaidan looks at the floor. “I put it in so long ago, but I hadn’t heard… I just assumed…”

“Sure. Yeah,” Joker nods mechanically. “What… Um, what ship?”

“The SSV Trafalgar.”

Joker’s brows raise. He knows the specs of every ship in the Alliance fleet. He researched them all, trying to decide what he wanted to fly before he heard about the Normandy — more of a whisper than a ship.

(A half-built prototype, with the majority of her blueprints classified, and the Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy up to their eyeballs in arguments and red tape about how to even talk about her, and yet, Joker had known. Instantly. He’d sent request after request through formal channels before running down every Alliance Captain likely to get command of her. He got sanctioned with disciplinary action twice for talking about the Normandy before the rest of the Alliance was comfortable openly acknowledging the project. Then he’d stolen her straight out of her dock about two hours after Anderson was formally selected for her command because she was the ship he was born to fly.)

The Trafalgar is not at all like the Normandy. It’s a cruiser, not a frigate. Built for heavy weaponry, air-borne battles, and moving massive amounts of ground forces to deal with a variety of combat and non-combat situations. Joker’s only helmed a one a couple of times during flight school, and while his fellow pilots creamed themselves to fly the Alliance’s largest and most powerful model of starship, Joker was massively underwhelmed. The thing handled like an enormous kidney bean in space. All lag and blunt angles. And Joker had read dozens of flight logs of cruiser missions, and it’s just straight lines and pre-programmed flight paths. They use the pilots mainly for docking and relay positioning.

(Fucking yawn.)

But worst of all, cruisers are like tiny cities. Each individual strike squad is huge — two or three times as large as the Normandy’s entire crew — and whole teams exist just to man the comms during missions. Evac is done through a dozen shuttles, typically not enough for the entirety of the ground crew. Marines on the ground are routinely left behind when missions go sour, to ensure the cruiser’s retreat is covered.

No Commander of a cruiser would ever mourn the loss of a single soldier— how could they? They would have never spoken to the vast majority of the crew on their ship, never even known their names before they showed up on some KIA list.

A single marine can get swallowed in a place like that.

A single biotic marine graded at Asari levels can too easily become a pariah, soundly rejected by their squadmates.

On the Trafalgar, Kaidan would never be seen as anything close to what he was to the Normandy crew—capable and trustworthy, a man fit to be the right-hand of the Commanding Officer. He’d just be seen as a liability.

Or… disposable.

It is the absolute wrong place for Kaidan.

“I should only be gone two weeks,” Kaidan says, frowning. “Maybe three. It’s just standard crew rotation and training. Nothing serious.”

“No, it’s great,” Joker forces a smile. “I’m happy for you. A new ship. A new posting. That’s... that’s amazing! Yeah. I wouldn’t be here a second longer than I had to, if I were you.”

Kaidan frowns again.

Joker turns away and starts rummaging around in his fridge just to have something to do with his hands. He grabs a beer and splits it into two glasses, handing one to Kaidan. He clinks his glass against Kaidan's, the sound bright but hollow, and downs his half of the beer in three long swallows before noticing that Kaidan hasn’t moved an inch. He’s just watching him with his brows all scrunched up and that stupid, serious, thinking-too-hard look on his face.

Wordlessly, he snags Kaidan’s glass out of his hand and finishes the rest of the beer while Kaidan watches with a silent frown.

Joker turns and starts to wash both glasses in the sink, trying not to notice how his hands shake. It’s a good thing. It is. Kaidan needs to get on with his life and stop pretending that this is a sustainable solution.

But Joker’s been so focused on getting his wings back, he never imagined what might happen if the Alliance did clear him to fly. A new ship. A new posting.

And then what?

Joker braces himself on the sink and shakes his head helplessly.

Hope Kaidan is still interested in coping every couple of years when they manage to run into each other? Live on scraps until Kaidan falls in love again and Joker starts getting holiday cards featuring a couple of kids with their Dad’s biotics and crazy good looks and —

“Hey,” Kaidan wraps his arms around Joker from behind, one hand low on his belly, the other pressed against his pounding heart.

Joker stills, breath locking up the way it always does when Kaidan touches him like this, like he wants him. And Joker feels a part of himself melt even as he makes a noise that’s fraying all along the edges.

“I put in my reassignment as soon as we were rescued from Alercha. I walked off the landing dock and went straight to Alliance HQ.” Kaidan’s breath is warm against the back of Joker’s neck, voice low and ragged. “At that point… Well. Shepard was dead, and Dr Chakwas wasn’t even sure you were going to pull through.”

“Oh,” Joker says, voice strained. A part of him had wondered… assumed, maybe, he’d done it after they’d started together. It doesn’t change anything, not really, but it lessens the sting.

At least Kaidan hadn’t been trying to escape him.

“You have to understand, I… I was a mess, Joker. The entire time we were on Alchera, you kept trying to die on us. We had no supplies, and Dr Chakwas was a wreck, and I—” he takes an unsteady breath. “So when we got to the Citadel, I just— I—”

“You wanted a piece of your life back. You wanted to be a Marine again, if nothing else,” Joker says quietly, mouth kinking up into a humorless smile. “I get it,” he says sincerely. “Believe me, I do.”

“I didn’t know I was going to have this with you,” Kaidan whispers, voice full of broken things. “I didn’t know I was going to— ” He makes a frustrated sound and scuffs his lips against the back of Joker’s neck, a kiss by only the strictest definition. The rasp of his stubble scrapes a little. “You can’t even file for a joint posting unless you’re married.”

“Yeah, well, I keep telling you the Alliance is run by a bunch of assholes, but you never listen.”

Kaidan laughs. It’s small, not much more than a bubble of air, but it’s genuine.

And Joker folds his arms around himself and squeezes Kaidan's arms. It’s the closest he can get to hugging him back from this angle.

Don’t go.

Joker feels the plea in his heart falling over and over like rain. But he can’t ask that of Kaidan. Joker may be selfish and stupid and completely in love with the man, but he’s still an Alliance officer deep down, and he can’t blame Kaidan for wanting to go back to the war Shepard died fighting for. Even though the Alliance gives precisely two fucks about the Reapers.

(It’s probably less than two. A solid fuck-and-a-half at best.)

(As soon as the Sovereign-shaped hole in the Citadel was patched up, the Alliance and the rest of the Galactic Federation started denying the existence of other Reapers. They claimed Sovereign was a singular threat, defeated.)

Kaidan squeezes Joker back. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Me neither,” Joker sighs, and turns around in Kaidan’s arms until they’re facing each other again. “But this… it isn't really about me. And I don't want to make this harder on you,” he cups Kaidan’s face and kisses him squarely on the forehead. “It’s not… the end of the world,” he says, even though it feels like it.

“Yeah,” Kaidan sighs and just presses his forehead against Joker’s briefly. “I just wanted…” he trails off, grimacing.

“Hey,” Joker says. “I want you to feel good about this. Really. Even though your pilot is gonna suck compared to me, it’s not gonna make any difference because a toddler could pilot a cruiser. Just make sure your pilot isn’t Jim Ambrose. I went to flight school with that asshole, and if it’s him, you’re all screwed. He’ll fly straight into the first mass relay he sees, and not even on purpose. The guy’s a major fucktard.”

“Okay,” Kaidan chuckles before his expression turns serious. “You’ll be okay, won’t you?”

Joker leans in and kisses Kaidan softly, sweetly, and with his whole heart. “Only if you promise me one thing about this next week?”

“Anything,” Kaidan breathes.

The little bouquet of flowers is still sitting on the counter. A promise, unfulfilled.

“I want to have as much sex as is humanly possible.”

Kaidan’s expression softens and shifts into something wedged perfectly between a smile and a smirk. “I can do that,” he says, picks Joker up, and carries him straight to the bedroom.

***

Joker doesn’t see Kaidan much the following week. (Or the week after that, because the deployment keeps getting pushed back because cruisers are as inefficient as they are stupid.) As an Alliance officer, Kaidan has to oversee certain aspects of the deployment, and on a cruiser, everything is ten times slower and ten times more complicated than it should be.

In the time it takes for the Trafalgar to prepare to leave, the Normandy would have already flown to Artemis Tau, interrupted some Cerberus bullshit, put down a pair of Thresher Maws, picked up a mineral shipment, and still had time to sneak in a couple of bar fights back at Chora’s Den on the Citadel.

God, cruisers suck so much.

Kaidan has to muster at dawn and usually doesn’t get back until late, or very late, or ridiculously late. Most nights, he climbs into bed fully naked, pulls Joker against him, and falls promptly asleep.

Some nights he doesn’t fall straight to sleep. Some nights, he comes home smelling like biotics, and when he climbs into bed, he’s already hard, and Joker is treated to the kind of ride he only used to fantasize about. The kinds where they don’t even bother with speaking, Kaidan just rolls him on his front, and fucks his ass with a quiet determination, like he wants to make sure Joker can feel it the next day. (Which he always does.) And Kaidan doesn’t even pull out after he comes. Joker drifts off just like that, messy and full and wrapped up in Kaidan’s arms.

They are together nearly every morning. Mornings with Kaidan are full of sweet nothings whispered between kisses and gentle touches, and not at all like the focused urgency of their nights together. Some mornings, they make it all the way to the shower, but mostly Kaidan keeps Joker in bed, pins his hips down, and makes him come with his mouth.

(Usually more than once.)

(One time, more than twice.)

Kaidan always draws out the sex until the last possible moment, until he has to skip showering and is scrambling for his boots so he’s not late. And Joker watches him from the bed, grinning, quipping that it’s good that Kaidan's already had a hearty breakfast, and Kaidan grins back and blows him a kiss before he’s out the door. And then Joker gets to stay in bed and fall asleep for another hour like a good stay-at-home coping mechanism with fuck all else to do.

But with each day that passes, there’s a heaviness that starts to bloom beneath their touches. An aching melancholy undercutting the joy and closeness of their intimacy.

Each day Kaidan reports for duty is one day less that they have together.

And Joker doesn’t know what he’s going to do when there aren’t any days left.

***

The night before Kaidan ships out, Joker has a surprise bottle of champagne chilling in his tiny fridge. Real champagne from Earth. He doesn’t even know if Kaidan likes champagne, which is stupid because it cost him a solid paycheck-and-a-half, and it’s by far the most expensive thing in the whole damn apartment.

(If there was a fire, he’d grab the bottle and leave all the rest to burn.)

It was a romantically stupid, ill-informed idea. It doesn’t even make any sense. Kaidan going away is not something he wants to celebrate in the least.

Aside from the swooping emptiness at losing Kaidan, even temporarily, there’s the bitterness in the back of his throat. That Kaiden is going back to a world that looks and sounds and smells just the way the world ought to — and Joker isn’t. And probably will never be.

The Alliance will never let him fly. Not a shuttle. Or a transpo-barge. Not even a fuel tanker. He should quit the Navy. He’s sure they would accept some medical discharge bullshit, even if Dr Chakwas would never put her name to such a thing. He’d be free, and then he’d find someone, somewhere, who’d let him pilot.

And it’s tempting, it is. Especially on days like today. He could have the stars again, and that’s no small thing.

But Joker has had the best of the best. The greatest ship ever built. The best Commander to lead her. And the best—

"Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, Alliance Marines."

Joker straightens instantly, a huge grin splitting his face despite everything. He slides open the door to his apartment. A startled: “Hey—” and Kaidan tumbles into his arms.

“Migraine,” Kaidan says tersely through clenched teeth.

Joker staggers under Kaidan’s weight, gets him a couple of steps into the living room, then gives it up as a bad job and just slides down to the floor with him. Then he kills all the lights in his apartment as quickly and quietly as he can.

“Shit. Kaidan, you didn’t have to come over.”

“Wanted to see you,” he mutters.

“So stupid,” Joker’s heart flips a little even as he’s privately certain he’s not worth this. He slides his leg under Kaidan’s head in lieu of a pillow — probably should have bought a couch instead of the champagne.

“Sorry to… to…” Kaidan presses his face into Joker’s knee, and the rest of the sentence dissolves into a strangled groan.

“Jesus.”

Kaidan is quiet for long, agonizing moments, fingers digging into Joker’s thigh. Then, “Sorry to—”

“Just shut up already,” Joker rubs the back of Kaidan’s neck, trying to distract him from the pain. He digs his thumbs in as hard as he dares — not very hard, truth be told, but Kaidan groans softly and writhes against the touch.

“Sorry to b-bug… Sorry—”

“Bet you say that to all the girls,” Joker says, voice exasperated, but fond. “There we said it. Now just be quiet for a bit, okay?” He slides his hand down the curve of Kaidan’s spine over and over again. He flings an arm out for his datapad, but it’s just out of reach, and he doesn’t want to disturb Kaidan just yet. He doesn’t really need it; he’s memorized Dr Chakwas’ care plans for managing Kaidan’s migraines, and he’s familiar with how they can unfold.

“T-took something,” Kaidan says. “Should kick in soon.”

“Yeah? Fucking better.”

“Feels like lightning in m-my skull.”

“Shhhh. Easy, easy,” Joker rubs below Kaidan’s ears where his jaw is tightly clenched. He mutters endearments and soothing nonsense, stroking rhythmically at Kaidan’s temples and jaw.

It’s a solid hour before the headache starts to loosen its grip and another two before the sharp crease between Kaidan’s brow eases and he manages to fall asleep. By then, Joker’s leg has lost all feeling, and the pins and needles are racing up his hips and back, but there’s no way he’s leaving Kaidan alone on the floor as he crawls off to bed.

(Plus, if he tried to carry him, his spine would probably snap from the weight of all that Canadian beef.)

Joker settles himself around the bulky marine passed out on his floor with a sigh. Big spoon to Kaidan’s little. His shoulders are so broad Joker can barely get his arms around him. He squeezes in as close as he can, breathing deeply.

Their time is running out.

Two weeks, or three, Joker reminds himself like a mantra. That’s all. That's it. That’s doable.

But Joker knows that without Kaidan, there’s just the black hole of Shepard’s loss, and a million empty regrets and what-ifs.

What if something happens?

What if this is really it?

What if he never sees Kaidan again?

Joker closes his eyes.

Fuck it.

If this is his last moment with Kaidan, he’s not going to waste it.

“I love you,” Joker breathes into the dark waves of his hair. “Shepard… I never told her. And then it was too late. So I thought I should say it out loud once. To you. Just… just to say it.”

Kaidan doesn’t reply. There’s just the quiet of the night and the easy rise and fall of his chest.

Joker wraps his arms around him with a sigh, and pretends this can last forever, that this is a perfect world with no death, and no deployment (and no Reapers), and everyone, even gorgeous biotic super-soldiers way way way out of your league, loves you back just because you want them to.

***

In the morning, Joker wakes in his own bed. His back is so stiff he can barely stand, and Kaidan is gone. He does three full turns around his apartment, just in case, but he’s no fool. Kaidan was due to report a full two hours ago.

There’s a message on his datapad, so the swooping emptiness of being abandoned by a lover doesn’t last for long. Joker’s eyes widen as he taps the icon.

It’s a video message. Kaidan, still in Joker's apartment, freshly showered, shaved, and dressed to report to Alliance HQ.

“Hey Joker,” he says. “Sorry for just leaving this morning. I know you didn’t get any sleep last night, and I just… I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

A long pause where Kaidan turns his head towards something off-screen, and Joker is forcibly reminded how handsome he is. Profile all sharp lines and angles, even if his expression is soft and fond.

“Last night… I meant to tell you… I’d planned to tell you…” A one-shouldered shrug. “Well… you’re the only thing that’s been holding me together these last couple of months, and I… Well. Thank you seems crass, but anything else I should probably wait to say in person. But there are… things I want to say.” Kaidan flashes him an awkward smile, eyes cutting away almost shyly.

“I’ll… I’ll see you soon. Take care of yourself, for me.”

Right now, Kaidan is in his kitchen, butt naked, rooting around in the cupboards for food, which requires much bending over while Joker, equally naked except for his hat, looks on as disrespectfully as possible and thinks that Kaidan Alenko probably has the world’s most gorgeous taint.

“We’re probably going to starve to death.” Kaidan sighs and stands back up. “I think we are down to crackers and this random sweet potato.”

“One day,” Joker says, grinning. “I am going to run my tongue down the crack of your ass.”

Kaidan raises his brows and chucks the sweet potato over his shoulder. “Food can wait. Back to bed.”

Joker makes an incredibly undignified noise that’s part laugh, part squawk as Kaidan sweeps him literally off his feet and barrels straight into the bedroom. Kaidan deposits Joker on the bed, on his back, and grabs him by the ankles, dragging him closer to the edge of the bed. He wrangles Joker into a pile-driver position, raising his legs up and over until he’s nearly curled into a ball with his ass in the air, and only his head and shoulders are against the bed. Kaidan scoots closer until he’s wedged tightly behind Joker, keeping his body braced, legs splayed, hips resting against Kaidan’s chest.

The position spreads Joker wide open, bringing his exposed hole nearly to Kaidan’s eye level. And Joker’s brain instantly dissolves into a puddle of mush. For half a minute, he stares up at his own hard cock dangling down in his face and can’t quite piece together what’s happening.

And then Kaidan licks Joker’s hole with one long stroke of his tongue. "Mmmh." The sound Kaidan makes is all delight and appreciative rumble.

Heat floods Joker’s face, and the breath bursts out of him in some embarrassingly needy sound, but Kaidan just grins and does it again.

Joker manages a breath of startled laughter. “What? Wait, wait. This was my idea!”

“Me first,” Kaidan says firmly, and licks him again.

The last time someone did this for him, Joker was practically a teenager. A few exploratory swipes of a tongue, and it was over. Kaidan Alenko appears to have a very different approach to ass-eating. Much like any task assigned to him, he’s thorough, competent, and focused on getting the job done.

And, as usual, he seems to thoroughly enjoy everything he eats.

His tongue circles Joker’s hole relentlessly, scuffing back and forth before jabbing teasingly at his rim. And it feels so fucking good that Joker wonders if it’s some sort of biotic trick. Maybe Kaidan is licking lightning and pure sensation directly into his hole because he’s never felt anything like this — an aching heat that keeps spiraling higher, and higher, and higher inside him.

He presses a hand over his own mouth, but can't quite hold back the noises he’s making. One of his legs starts to shake.

“Like that?” Kaidan asks, pausing to grin smugly like Joker’s dick isn’t right there and so hard it’s about to snap off. “You want to come, don’t you?”

“Yep,” Joker says, laughing weakly. “So bad.” Of course, if he comes like this, he’s just gonna nut in his own damn face. Which, given the situation, would be a great problem to have.

“Mmmn.” Kaidan makes a growly sound of appreciation and starts to eat him out in earnest, mouth in constant motion, kissing and sucking, all that steady building heat shot through with flashes of near-electric sharpness as Kaidan tries to spear him on his tongue.

Joker moans, tries to slip a hand between his spread thighs, but Kaidan grunts and grabs Joker’s cock himself, which is super awesome until he doesn’t jack him off. He just keeps that big, calloused hand around him perfectly. fucking. still.

Joker makes a series of noises wedged between frustration and despairing laughter. He can see the tip of his cock is between Kaidan’s fingers, slick with precome, and tries to fuck himself into Kaidan’s hand, which isn’t really possible given the position and his overall lack of leverage.

He’s not used to this at all. That heat and needy tension all coiled up inside him. Usually, if he gets at all close to feeling like this, he’s already coming—blowing his load the very instant he wants to, at the mere whisper of warmth. But now it’s like he’s been thrown into a fire and all he can do is struggle and squirm as the heat blazes through him, unquenched, while Kaidan cheerfully eats the absolute bejesus out of his ass.

"Nnnf," Joker moans as a slick of precome drips from his cock. Most of it catches on Kaidan’s fingers, but a few droplets fall against Joker’s cheekbones, hot and slick.

He struggles for a moment, and his cock shifts in Kaidan's grip, a little. An extra tiny layer of sensation. Arousal eclipses everything, hot and sharp and fuck, he’s not sure how much more of this he can take.

He makes a broken sound. “Wait, wait. Fuck… wait.”

Kaidan pauses, which is the absolute opposite of what he should be doing.

“No, don’t stop. It’s… good, Kaidan. So good, my God,” Joker pants. “It’s just…” He moans and shifts his hips, trying to coax Kaidan’s mouth back on him. “I don’t… I don’t think I can come from just this. I need… something. I need you. Kaidan, please...”

Kaidan makes a breathless sound. “I’m not used to hearing you beg.”

“Usually… usually I can come in like nine and a half seconds…” Joker pants. “Kinda miss that…”

“Yeah?” Kaidan swirls his thumb around Joker’s hole with a tantalizing pressure, but doesn’t press inside. “I didn’t realize it would be so hot, seeing you like this…” He leans forward a little, tongue returning to its primary post halfway up his ass.

Joker moans helplessly, tries to shift his hips, seeking more, seeking friction, seeking something. His hole feels hot and over-sensitive and plain empty. Kaidan hasn’t even put so much as the tip of a single finger up inside him since they started this, which is wild.

The past three days, while very tender, have also been intensely sexual. Each day, Kaidan has spent longer and longer fingering him, often not stopping even after Joker comes. Sometimes he keeps pumping his fingers in and out of Joker’s spasming hole until he can't take the over-stimulation. Sometimes he just keeps his fingers in place, still, but there, and Joker has to sit with that aching, relentless fullness.

And right now, Joker is so very not full.

He bites his lip. “Kaidan… please, please. I need you. Just — fuck.”

Kaidan licks his way across Joket’s taint and presses a sucking kiss directly against his hole before looking up, expression difficult to read. “I’m trying so hard not to just—” Both of Kaidan’s hands tighten reflexively, the one on his ass and the one on his cock, and Joker moans brokenly under his breath.

“Please. Please. Please, please, please, please.”

Kaidan’s hand pumps Joker cock, just once. One aching slide that has Joker fisting up the sheets, shaking and swearing breathlessly.

“You’re making it impossible not to just jump you,” Kaidan all but growls.

“Fuck,” Joker gasps. “Please jump me, yes. That. God, Kaidan, do that.”

Kaidan rears up to his knees so abruptly Joker nearly topples over. The move brings their hips in alignment, and the base of Kaidan’s hard cock rests against Joker’s hole, just fucking there. He looks up, meeting Joker’s eye.

Joker stills, breath catching.

“I want to be very clear what I mean by that,” Kaidan says, voice low and husky. “And what I want is to fuck you properly, Joker.” His hands hold Joker steady as he thrusts his hips in demonstration, cock sliding pointedly across Joker’s hole and up over his balls. “No fingers. No tongue. Just my cock, in you.”

“'Kay,” Joker manages.

Kaidan thrusts again, dragging the head of his cock back and forth over Joker’s opening. Then he stills with a groan and pulls them both down on the bed, so they’re lying flat together, tucked against each other's side. And Joker has a sharp moment of panic that Kaidan had changed his mind, before he takes hold of himself, maneuvering his cock between Joker’s legs, holding it there, all hardness and heat, even if he doesn’t press forward.

“I…” Kaidan frowns and tucks his forehead against Joker’s shoulder. “Biotics… We don’t have a reputation for gentleness. I don’t. Not when I lose control.”

Ah.

In his fantasies, Kaidan just plowed him straight into the mattress for hours on end. Super hot, but maybe not super reflective of the reality of living with Vrolik’s Syndrome. And he knows Kaidan still has nightmares about the weeks trapped on Alchera, and Joker was in pieces, his hips quite literally cracked in half.

“I refuse to hurt you,” Kaidan whispers, running fingers up and down Joker’s spine. “I won’t. Doesn’t matter how much I want this — how long I’ve wanted this.”

Joker would bet a mountain of credits that he’s wanted it for longer. He’d started fantasizing about getting dicked down by Kaidan all of ten seconds after meeting him.

The Normandy had been dry-docked at the Citadel and awaiting her first wave of crew. Joker had read through the posting, but hadn’t recognized any incoming crew except for Karin Chakwas, whom he was convinced had just signed on to babysit him. Joker had been in his dedicated bunk in the senior officers' shared quarters when Kaidan Alenko had walked in, all broad shoulders and huge biceps, a duffel bag slung under his arm.

“Any of these free?” he’d asked, gesturing at the bunks.

“Take your pick,” Joker had said, panicking on the inside because he already had the hots for his Commanding Officer, and it seemed very uncool of the Alliance to staff the ship full of crew this insanely bangable.

“Great,” Kaidan had cracked a stupidly handsome smile and slung his bag on the bunk above Joker’s. “I’ll be on top.”

And then they’d shaken hands in introduction while Joker had a private, horny meltdown about it all.

Nothing has changed much from that day until this, except that right now they’re lying naked in bed together and the head of Kaidan’s cock is notched tightly against his ass.

And Joker is having a private, horny meltdown.

(Still.)

(Always.)

And Kaidan is having an existential meltdown that he might accidentally fuck Joker to death.

(Which, truth be told, would not be the worst way to go.)

“I’m not gonna break,” Joker says. “Or, I might, but I promise I’m not gonna be mad about it.”

“I refuse to hurt you,” Kaidan says again, butting his head into Joker’s shoulder.

Joker can hear the stubbornness in his voice start to settle into place, but his cock is still rock hard, and he hasn’t moved it away from between Joker’s asscheeks. So. Hope.

“Okay, okay. I don’t want to be hurt either,” he says, threading his fingers around the hand Kaidan has slung across his chest. “But I know how to live around this disease. I mean. You can’t take me ice skating, or anything, but we can have this. Together. Just—We can go slow, and I’ll tell you if anything hurts, and then... You can stop.”

Kaidan drags the head of his cock over Joker’s hole again. “We can go slow,” he mutters almost to himself and scuffs a series of kisses against Joker’s shoulder blade. “I can do slow.”

“Just not too slow, maybe. I still really, really, really wanna come,” Joker laughs weakly.

“Yeah?” He can feel Kaidan smile against his shoulder, feels him press a kiss to the side of Joker’s neck before he disentangles himself, and stands up. “Don’t move,” Kaidan says and dashes out of the bedroom, leaving Joker flat on the bed, cock pointing to the sky, and reappearing a minute later with the huge bottle of lube Joker keeps in his fridge.

He pours some into his hand and slicks up and down the full length of his cock, hissing a little at the chill. It’s a little mesmerizing watching Kaidan prepare himself. It makes a deep bloom of want unfurl in Joker that goes beyond the solid need to come. This is some ache that sits at his core, lingering beneath every breath, every heartbeat. A want so huge he can't put his arms around it, or even see the edges.

Kaidan drips more oil into his hand and sets the bottle on the nightstand before sitting at the edge of the bed and gesturing towards Joker. “Come here.”

Joker takes an unsteady breath as he slides off the bed and moves closer, straddling Kaidan’s lap so their cocks are pressed together.

“Ready?” Kaidan asks.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Joker says.

Kaidan slips a hand beneath Joker’s hips, painting the cold lubricant over his hole with his fingers, before slipping first one, and then another inside, pumping gently. Joker moans at the stretch and hot-cold slide of it. It’s intense, and the promise of more — more length, more thickness — leaves him breathless. Kaidan cups Joker’s buttocks and raises him up, lifting until his ass hovers above Kaidan’s cock.

Joker gasps as Kaidan’s cock notches into place, perfectly on target. He feels almost dizzy.

This is it.

Kaidan kisses slowly up Joker’s neck, along his jaw, and across to his mouth. And Joker gasps again as he feels Kaidan lowering him slowly down. Resistance. Pressure. And then the head of Kaidan’s cock pops through his ring of muscle, almost all at once.

He's vaguely aware that his breathing is noisy and ragged.

“Easy,” Kaidan murmurs between kisses. “Easy, easy.” He lowers Joker slowly onto his cock, swallowing each and every one of the broken sounds he makes.

Kaidan's cock feels a lot bigger than it looks, and it looks plenty big. Joker tries to relax, tries not to tighten up or clench as he sinks down on it, but he isn’t used to the sensation of being stretched open and cored out millimeter by millimeter.

Then suddenly the head of Kaidan’s cock scuffs forcefully against Joker's prostate, and he shudders, crying out. The need to come coalesces into a single point of bright sensation, and the balance of too much/not enough leans sharply, abruptly leftwards.

“K-Kaidan!” He struggles for a moment and slips down faster, taking a few inches all at once.

Kaidan groans raggedly and grabs his ass to better control his descent. “Almost there,” he husks. “Almost there…”

Joker presses his forehead against Kaidan’s, breathing hard. They’ve passed the point of that relentless grinding into his prostate, and it’s—not easier, but less impossible.

“I’m almost… Almost all the way in…” Kaidan says, voice low.

Joker nods, so brimful he feels like he’s going to burst because there simply isn’t space inside him for more —physically or emotionally.

“There,” Kaidan breathes against his cheek.

The instant he’s fully seated, something unlocks in Joker, and that ball of heat and tension bursts out of him. The sensation is less like something building up inside him and more like falling from a high place—the liminal space of free-fall before abruptly shattering apart on impact. Joker makes a helpless sound, coming violently, back arching, ass clamping down hard. Feeling blown apart and anchored in place all at once.

“F-fuck, Joker…”

He collapses against Kaidan’s chest, arms shaking, legs shaking, mind scattered into pieces. He didn’t even register spilling across Kaidan’s belly and chest, but he can feel the slickness of his spend between them.

Kaidan holds him steady, hands rubbing up and down his spine, mouthing breathlessly at Joker’s collarbones like he’s the one who’s overwhelmed. Muttering broken things like hot, and tight, and so fucking good, and Joker nearly spirals apart again.

And then Kaidan starts to move, and Joker just shivers through the over-sensitivity, gasping, hanging on for dear life.

After several minutes, the aftermath of arousal thins, and Joker can feel everything he couldn't previously process. The thickness of Kaidan’s cock, driving deeper than his fingers had ever reached. The way Kaidan keeps his hips still, dragging Joker’s whole body up and down his length with the strength of his arms. The broken noises Kaidan makes between kisses—a tender counterpoint to the way his gut feels pretty churned up by it all.

“I’m gonna come in you soon,” Kaidan promises.

And Joker chuckles weakly, thinking that if he hadn’t just come, those words alone would have made him blow, for sure.

All at once, Kaidan stands and flips them, laying Joker carefully on the bed, managing to keep their hips together, and himself, inside. He takes a minute to reposition them, ensuring that Joker’s bent legs are supported before reaching over to the bottle of lube. He pulls halfway out and drips a generous amount of the still-cold lubricant directly onto his cock before pressing in again.

Kaidan runs a hand up and down Joker’s flank. “You have no idea how good you feel,” he groans quietly, and starts to move his hips, thrusting in and out in tiny motions.

Joker moans, back arching. The angle is different. It feels deeper, and there’s more pressure at the base of his balls from the way Kaidan grinds into him at the back of every thrust. He starts slow, but little by little, the pace of Kaidan’s hips picks up until he’s surging back and forth, cock sliding nearly all of the way out before driving in again. Joker fists up a handful of the bedsheets, breathing hard.

And then Kaidan slips a hand between them and takes hold of Joker’s cock, squeezing firmly. Joker's still floating in that post-orgasmic haze, cock only half hard, but Kaidan doesn’t seem to mind at all, just starts jacking him off with sleek, purposeful movements.

Joker’s skin is tacky with drying come, and the friction is over-bright for how recently he’s come. His hands fly to Kaidan’s hips, pushing back against them as Kaidan thrusts into him.

“I’ll be gentle, I’ll be gentle,” Kaidan pants brokenly, but it’s not his hips Joker’s worried about. Kaidan’s grip on his cock is like a vice, and all he can do is whine brokenly as Kaidan strokes him, a bolt of sensation just out of sync with the cock sliding in and out of his ass.

“Joker… God… the way you‘re clenching down on me…” Kaidan husks, scrubbing his thumb over the tip of Joker's cock before returning to that firm, base-to-tip slide of his hand. “I want… I want you to come before I do.”

Joker makes a noise wedged between a groan and helpless laughter. Kaidan almost never makes him come so close in succession. He arches, overstimulated as Kaidan’s hand pumps, and pumps, and doesn’t stop or even slow, hurrying him to the edge of a precipice he wasn’t ready for.

He moans Kaidan’s name over and over until the litany of it stoppers up in his throat as he comes again, harder and longer than before, spilling liquid heat into Kaidan’s hand. Sensation pings from his cock to his ass and back again, in rapid succession, like lightning strikes of pleasure so intense they’re nearly edged with pain. He’s never come this hard before, and wonders if it’s the biotics after all, and if Kaidan’s cock is lit up inside him, all day-glow blue and wreathed in biotic energy.

Then Kaidan makes a sound so guttural for a moment Joker worries he’s been gut-shot. He shudders, one hand braced against the bed to keep from collapsing, and thrusts home one final time. Joker can feel Kaidan’s cock pulsing inside him as he comes, the thick heat of it filling him up and spilling over. And everything, everything is messy and raw and over-bright.

The world stills.

Neither of them moves, save for breathing heavily. The front of Kaidan’s chest is slick with sweat, and a fall of dark waves spirals down across his brow. Joker wants so badly to reach up and brush his hair back into place with his fingertips, but he doesn’t want to disturb the moment. Wants to live in this heartbeat of time, forever.

Kaidan blinks. “Joker… are you… How…?” He frowns, shakes his head as if trying to clear it. He looks dazed and still heavy with that full-body repletion found at the end of a life-altering orgasm. He moves his hand away from Joker's cock.

Joker smiles and runs his hand over Kaidan’s hips. “Still not back yet, huh?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither.

“Joker, that was…” Kaidan takes a breath and shakes his head again, this time like he can’t find the right words. He looks down at Joker like he wants to touch him, but neither of his hands are free to do so. “How are you feeling?”

“Like there’s a giant dick in my ass. So… pretty perfect. You?”

Kaidan chuckles. “Yeah. Perfect is a good word for it.”

A quiet happiness blooms in Joker’s chest. He reaches up with a smile. “Kiss me?”

Kaidan leans down, keeping his weight braced on his elbows, the shape of his smile against Joker’s lips. “Always.”

***

Joker knows that Kaidan has been putting off reporting to Alliance HQ. And even though Kaidan’s lack of an official posting allows him some additional flexibility, Joker also knows that the Alliance wants their officers visible to the rank-and-file; working out, running simulations, or at target practice—basically showing off the skills that got them promoted in the first place. So he’s not surprised when he finds Kaidan getting dressed the next morning.

“I have to,” Kaidan sighs, by way of explanation.

Joker grins. “I don’t mind. I’d just kinda forgotten how hot you look with clothes on.”

Kaidan smirks a little and leans in to kiss him goodbye. “I’ll make dinner tonight.”

“You make dinner every night.” He says and feels a perfect bubble of happiness rise up inside him. “I’ll get some groceries delivered. Yes, delivered. It’s not a crime,” he laughs and makes a shooing motion at Kaidan. “Besides, what if my arms snap off from the weight of all the Canadian stuff I’m going to buy you. What then? Canada will be so disappointed in you.”

Kaidan tries to shoot Joker a look of annoyed disapproval, but the smile ruins it, and he ends up just looking like a doofus.

A handsome doofus.

Alone in his apartment, Joker replays their night together over and over and over in his mind. Every kiss. Every caress. Every inch of that magnificent cock drilling into him.

Joker has seen porn—like, a lot of porn, my god, so damn much—even if his personal experiences are thin on the ground. He’s had a couple of truly awesome weekends, but this is already his longest and most serious whatever-the-hell it is. Certainly, the most sex filled. He knows Kaidan didn’t really fuck him that hard, even in the moments where it kinda felt like he did, he was restrained. It's just that Kaidan’s dick can be rightly classified as a heavy-class weapon.

Joker rolls over and presses his face into the pillow, overwhelmed and overheated by the mere memory. He likes the way his ass still feels cored out and sore in a way it never does in the mornings after Kaidan just fingers him.

“Goddamnit,” Joker swears breathlessly, unable to stop the way his face grows hot with embarrassment, and his dick gets hard, remembering. He rolls onto his back, breathing hard, refusing to jerk himself off because there’s probably a limit to how many orgasms a person can have in a 72-hour period before they straight up die, and that’s not what he wants Kaidan to come home to.

Instead, he showers, takes his meds, and trims his beard neatly down to regulation length. Then he flits restlessly around the apartment and thinks about visiting Dr Chakwas, but decides against it in favor of doing laundry because even though he and Kaidan haven’t been wearing many clothes, they’ve gone through all the bedding and every towel in the place, and maybe Kaidan doesn’t want to spend the day out and then come home to the smell of sweat and spunk.

(But if he does, Joker knows a way to quickly restore the apartment to its former glory.)

The groceries delivered in the afternoon include a small bouquet of tiny blue and purple wild flowers. They’re from a planet Joker’s never heard of in the Faia system. There's no discernible scent, but the fragile blossoms are gorgeous in the light of his holoscreen windows, even if he has to stick them in an empty beer bottle since he doesn't own a vase.

He tries not to think of them as thank-you-for-the-great-sex flowers, but they're not not that either.

The flowers are stupid and sentimental –– Joker is stupid and sentimental –– but he smiles whenever he sees them perched on the counter.

And he feels… peaceful. As though the smell of smoke is finally, finally, finally clearing from his head.

***

It’s bad news.

Joker can always tell when it’s fucking bad news.

Something about the line of Kaidan’s shoulders when he walks through the door that evening, and the slow, deliberate way he takes off his boots, has Joker bracing himself for the worst.

“What is it?” he asks.

Kaidan hesitates, and the worry in his gut spikes tenfold.

“Tell me,” he insists.