#liamxscott

“I think I’m in love with you, and I’m terrified.”

Scott’s not sure how it started. He knows it was sometime after the Archon’s flagship, but drinking with Liam wasn’t always like this.

At first, it’s little things—“I stole from Vetra’s stash”, “I sent around the joke about Tann”—but after the flagship, Scott opens his beer and looks down at the rim of his can and says, “Sometimes I wish my father had lived instead.”

There’s no response, not verbally. Liam knocks his knee against Scott’s and doesn’t say anything.

And that’s the start.

It only escalates from there. Liam tells him, not long after, when the vid’s over and Scott’s thinking he’s just going to sleep here, curled up at Liam’s feet. Liam exhales, heavy, and says, “I really wish I hadn’t come to Andromeda.”

They’re not always the soul-baring truths that leave them feeling raw and wounded. Scott tells Liam about Reyes, and for the first time, doesn’t feel like an idiot for liking his attention. There’s the night Liam tells Scott it wasn’t just cultural information he and Jaal shared.

But it’s quiet, and it’s secret, and it’s safe—and Scott doesn’t, not once, think that Liam’s going to tell another soul.

Then, after they’ve finished watching a vid from early twenty-second century filled with romantic cliches and terrible overacting, Liam takes a breath and brushes his fingers over the back of Scott’s neck.

“I think I’m in love with you,” Liam says, and Scott feels his breath catch in his throat. “And I’m terrified.”

It’s not quite a rule that they don’t talk about it, but Scott just nudges his knee against Liam’s, an unspoken encouraging, ‘it’s fine,’ and not five minutes later Scott’s entire world resets.

He thinks, for a minute, he’d missed his opportunity, that now Liam’s left the secret in the past, and a potential has come and gone—but the next time they have beer, after Scott weathers the blow of the turian ark, Scott doesn’t mince words. He reaches for Liam’s beer and sets it aside with still hands, from determination and the confidence of knowing there’s a net to catch you when you jump off the ledge.

Andromeda doesn’t give the familiarity of the Milky Way, most of the time. It’s dark, and unknown, and weird. Scott’s not just saying that because he’s homesick, either—it’s just all around kind of a different experience all together.

Even the people that like Andromeda, that ran away from the Milky Way in the hopes of finding something for them—Scott’s talked with enough people to know it exists beyond just himself.

So there’s not a lot of simple pleasures in Andromeda—no ice cream, not in the way Scott remembers it, not enough coffee for a hundred thousand humans, nothing like there was back home. The stars are different, the seasons are different—

Except Voeld. It’s storming on the better days, still, since Scott still hasn’t made his way to the vault, and even the grumpiest of the crew gets out and smiles.

A little.

At first.

Then there’s the wet armor, the smell of sweat from too-hot suits. Scott considers incinerating a perfectly good set of underarmor because it smells that bad.

But it’s good, familiar. Scott especially likes how easy it is to get a rise out of Liam, who huddles close to him and frowns across the snowy landscape.

“Wanna make snow angels?” Scott asks, smiling. Liam just makes a noise. “All right. Snowmen, then?”

“I’m already soaked through,” Liam says, finally looking at him. “When can we go back to the Tempest? Got a few ideas to warm up.”

His voice goes a little sensual, and Scott has to focus his attention on anything else just to get through it. “Come on, when was the last time you played in the snow? Built a snowman?”

“Probably when I was a kid, Ryder, and—what’s that look?”

Scott’s already backing away, though, and he reaches down to grab a handful of snow. “Last time you had a snowball fight?”

“No,” Liam says, firm, and holds his hand out. “No, I mean it—“

“Come on!” Scott laughs. “Little harmless fun! Destressing’ll do you good!”

The snow’s perfect for packing. The ball fits nicely in the palm of his hand and it crumbles easy. No ice, no rocks. Just snow.

Scott lifts his arm. In his helmet, Scott hears him say, “Don’t you dare.”

“What’re you gonna do to me if I do?” Scott asks.

“I’ll… make you sleep alone?”

Scott grins. Liam can’t help himself with that, so Scott lets the snowball fly, and catches Liam in the stomach. The snowball explodes into a flurry of snow that scatters into the wind and falls at Liam’s feet.

Liam brushes it off. Through the comm, Scott hears him sigh.

His entire body feels alight with excitement.

“All right,” Liam says, “you’re in for it now.”

He’s faster than Scott expected him to be, and he yelps, surprised, when Liam’s fingers barely grip at his armor.

He gets a few good shots in—one even hits Liam right on the visor of his helmet—and deals with a few well placed blows himself, until Liam loses interest in the fight and tackles Scott into the ground.

“Not quite what I had in mind for a warm-up,” Liam says, staring down into Scott’s eyes.

“Hey, I never said this was the main event,” Scott responds, running his hand along the side of Liam’s chest. “Maybe it’s just the first part of my plan.”

For a few seconds, it’s just the sound of their breathing, until Liam adds, “I really want to kiss you.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“…Any questions?”

Blank faces. All of them. Scott’s pretty sure all of them are speechless, which he’d always thought was impossible. Still, the pride dissipates into fear quick, because if he doesn’t have his team, he can’t do it.

“You know, the whole renegade thing? Not your style. Shepard, though. He had the expressions for it,” Liam says, but his eyes are kind and Scott just chuckles at him, dropping his head.

That’s all it takes, and the rest of them are on board.

Later, though, Liam corners Scott in the same room, staring down over a map of Heleus. “Got a minute?”

Scott’s shoulders drop, and he nods. It’s been a long day—checking the Tempest is in order for the flight, checking they have enough supplies.

Checking no one’s going to mark him for arrest.

Liam presses his body against Scott’s back, rests his head on Scott’s shoulder. “Hey, Ryder?”

Scott hums.

“This is a stupid plan.”

Scott groans.

“It’s half-cocked. No idea where the quarian ark is, and you want to find it. That’s good, noble, but we’re not a fighting ship. The Tempest can’t take fire, and we’re like sitting ducks.”

“No one else wants to look for them,” Scott says. “And it’s been—fuck, how long has it been since we heard from them?” He tenses, shakes his head. “I don’t like the idea of leaving people behind.” Liam doesn’t say anything, just draws circles over Scott’s skin on his hips. “So, if you want to hang back, keep a safe distance to whatever I’m going to fuck up, then—“

“Do you trust me?” Liam says, holding his hand out. Scott barely sees it in his peripheral vision, because he’s staring down at the valley beneath them instead. There’s a horde of rampaging creatures behind them, and Scott’s trying to figure out if it’s a better idea to turn around and fight, or to test out what’s left of the jump jets—which seems to be Liam’s plan.

In the back of his head, SAM’s saying, ‘Your chances of survival increase exponentially with Liam’s plan,” but zero times 100 is still zero.

“I can’t dance,” Scott says, laughing as Liam holds out his hand and makes eyes that would put a puppy to shame.

He’s standing in the middle of their empty apartment on Eos, actual, hardwood floors under his feet. A small stack of boxes line the wall behind him, and Liam’s ratty couch from the Tempest is the only other furniture in the room.

“Neither can I,” Liam says. “You don’t see that stopping me.”

So Scott shakes his head and accepts his hand, curling the other down to Liam’s hip and behind his back. “The things you get me into,” Scott says, smiling.

“Hey, I think you have me beat on that. Wild goose chase across the galaxy for a mysterious hostile alien leader?” Liam grins. “A little domestic slow dancing in our new home seems tame.”

There’s a soft song playing from Liam’s omni-tool, with a simple enough melody even Scott can keep track of it. “Can you believe it?” he asks, as Liam traces his fingers across the top of Scott’s shoulders. “New home on a new planet in a new galaxy…”

“Kind of like a dream, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Scott says, but then a lot about being with Liam is like a dream. “You know, I worried for a long time if I’d regret this. Moving to a new galaxy, even with Sara and Dad, just felt like I was making the wrong decision the entire time.”

Liam doesn’t move his feet much, just keeps them more or less swaying—hardly dancing, but probably the better choice since Liam’s wearing socks. “For what it’s worth,” Liam says, his expression open and honest, “I’m glad you came.”

He thinks, for a second, what it’d be like back in the Milky Way—miserable, lonely. Unemployed, more than likely. He’d lost his standing in the Alliance because of his father—and it’s unlikely he would’ve survived the Reapers—if anyone did.

But that’s not what matters. That’s not what makes the decision feel right in Scott’s mind. It’s not that he’s respected here, or that he was allowed to do a job here that did, in time, pull him from his father’s shadow.

It’s Liam—honest and loyal and determined, and so damned intent on making Andromeda work he inspired Scott to make Pathfinder something people could hear and sigh in relief.