#banter!

2. From “The Words That Change Us”

Kaidan falls silent. Fuck his implant. Fuck the faulty wiring in his head. Fuck not remembering to bring his own damn meds. If only Anderson could see this. Keep Shepard on his feet my ass. Can’t even keep myself on my feet.

“Anderson thanked me today,” Kaidan says, cracking an eye open. Every ship in the Alliance is practically a darkroom. Why the hell is Arcturus so bright? He sucks air in through his teeth. “Can’t figure out why.”

Shepard gives him a bemused look. “No wonder you have a migraine.”

“Stop trying to be funny,” Kaidan grunts. “It gives me a migraine.”

“I’m delightfully funny,” Shepard informs him, “which you might notice if you weren’t so busy thinking yourself into a migraine.”

Kaidan tries to laugh, but immediately regrets it. Shepard tightens his grip on Kaidan’s arm.

“See? Funny.”

“You’re deflecting.”

“Quit noticing."

“Shepard.” It comes out as a mumble, and the way Shepard’s fingers dig into his forearm before relaxing suggests he’s listening now. “He said I keep you on your feet. Why would he say that?”

Shepard’s brow furrows. Instead of answer, he gets to his feet and pulls Kaidan back to his. “How about we get the icepick out of your head, and then talk about this.”

“No. If we talk about it now you’ll take pity and actually give me an answer.”

Shepard huffs, grips Kaidan’s arm and resumes course, footsteps slow and steady.

“I didn’t do anything to help you earn this,” Kaidan persists. “Why does he think I did?”

More silence. More steps. Each footfall ricochets off the deckplates, pricking at the base of Kaidan’s skull. Where the fuck is the airlock? It feels like they’ve been walking for hours.

“You’re stable ground,” Shepard says at last.

Stable ground. Maybe if his head wasn’t throbbing so hard he could figure out what the hell that means.

“You don’t…want anything from me,” Shepard continues. His voice is small, uncertain, as though now that he’s voiced the thought aloud he might find out it isn’t true.

It isn’t true.

You. I want you.

3. From Sonata, Chapter 10 - Unsteady

There are more well-dressed people in this one room than Joker has seen in his entire lifetime. It should be his worst nightmare, but he’s actually having fun. Turns out Tali has an exceptional gift for making unbearable social occasions bearable.

“And what about her?” Joker asks, pointing to a woman who looks like a canary covered in taffeta.

Tali leans against the table beside him and tilts her head, the purple and black sequined scarf that Mrs. Alenko had given her for the evening catching in the bright lights of the ballroom. 

“Hmmm. A widower. Discovered her husband of more than thirty years had gambled away their entire fortune, leaving her penniless. She is here to mourn—not him, but his brother. The man she was truly in love with. She thought he did not love her back, but the truth is that he was too afraid to tell her. After his brother’s death, he swore he would, but he went down with the Cairo before he had the chance.”

“Damn, Tali, that’s dark,” Joker says with a chuckle. “You got a happy one? How about that guy?” He points to a random stranger who’s sipping a glass of wine and laughing too hard.

She swirls the liquid in her glass. Forget the geth. This is where she really shines.

“He professed his love to…” she scans the room. Eventually she points at another well-dressed man, who looks absolutely no different from any of the rest as far as Joker is concerned. “That man over there. They are desperately in love, but he,” she points again at the new guy, “is afraid of his feelings. He has a dark past, and doesn’t want to drag his true love down with his demons.”

“Happy, Tali. I was looking for happy.”

She raises her glass. “A few spins on the dancefloor and he’s going to realize that pushing him away will only snap them back together. Like quarks.”

Joker clinks his glass against hers. “That’s my girl.”

4. From Fugue, Chapter 4 – This Hole You Left

But while most of the galaxy is preparing to mourn Commander Shepard, the soldier standing next to him might be the only person he knows who’s grieving for Sam. Anderson swirls the remaining liquid in his glass.

“He was the most reckless SOB I’ve ever met,” Anderson says, watching a hanar drift along one of the intact pathways below them. “I’m pretty sure half the shit he pulled over the years was just to piss me off.”

Alenko raises an eyebrow ever so slightly in surprise, but doesn’t turn his head. “He’s always at his best when the plan goes to hell.”

“Since he was a kid,” Anderson agrees, not missing the fact that Alenko had referred to him in the present tense. “First time I ever laid eyes on him he was four. He’d wandered away from Daniel on Arcturus and he called in the cavalry to look for him. You know where I found him?”

Alenko shakes his head.

“In a fountain, playing with a model ship. I asked him what the hell his spaceship was doing in the water. He said, ‘I’m about to find out.’”

Alenko’s mouth curves in a brittle smile. “I didn’t know you knew him that young.”

“I doubt he remembered,” Anderson says. “His father and I were good friends. I dropped in on occasion while he was growing up.” Before Shepard was a soldier. Before he was the Butcher of Torfan or the Savior of the Citadel. Back when he was still Sam, all knees and elbows, so desperate to please he couldn’t sit still.

Anderson still misses that kid.

5. From “The Way Back”

“You have a gun, Shepard, and it shoots mass-accelerated projectiles a hell of a lot more efficiently than you can shoot yourself. That was a titanic amount of energy you put out. How in the hell do you justify the cost of that on your own body?”

“Because it saved your life,” he snaps, dropping the barrel extension onto the bench with a clatter. “She had your head in her crosshairs, and I put her the fuck down. So yeah, it was worth the cost.”

Kaidan falls silent.

Shepard shoots him a reproachful look. “You know, I didn’t miss your fucking lectures.”

Kaidan holds his gaze, retort right on the tip of his tongue. Shepard shouldn’t need a lecture to know that fucking with his own mass as a combat tactic was reckless, stupid, and above all, unnecessary. But he did need one. And someone willing to get in his way long enough to do it.

Wasn’t that part of what had always made them so good together? Shepard charging into a china shop like a bull, with Kaidan standing at the door waving his arms? Shepard would run through him as often as he stopped or swerved, but no matter how it ended Kaidan was there to help him pick up the pieces.

He softens. “Yeah, well, I did miss what a complete idiot you are sometimes. You could have, just, I don’t know. Knocked me to the ground. Or knocked her to the ground. Using her own mass.”

Shepard’s brow furrows and he opens his mouth to protest before he sighs in defeat. “Yeah. Ok. That probably would have worked, too.”

Kaidan’s smile deepens. “You always did prefer theatrics out in the field.”

“Me?” Shepard huffs and pokes at the pieces of the Carnifex, chin low to hide his own smile. “Okay, maybe I occasionally enjoy a small flair for the dramatic.”

“Small. You call turning yourself into the most impractical mass-accelerated weapon I could conceive of small.”

Shepard’s smile turns into a smirk. “Say whatever you want. But just imagine being that sniper getting an eyeful of me coming right at her. That’s the kind of fear of god she’s not going to forget anytime soon.”