Duke glanced at him between their combing fingers and reached for the console in the wall. They tapped a panel, and the massive window went as dark as the wall around it. “Yeah,” they answered, twirling a brown lock around an index finger. “Haven’t had time to get it cut. Don’t know if I want to.” They pulled their finger away, letting the hair fall back into a semblance of place, tumbling past their shoulders with the rest.

“I didn’t know you let your hair down on duty,” Cade said, seating himself on one of the barstools.

Duke gave him a strange look from where they leaned against the wall. “Cade, I’m not on duty.”

“What? I thought we had the same schedule these days, since…”

“Cade, you’re not on duty either.”

“Huh,” he muttered, reaching for a bottle and a tumbler from behind the bar. “Commander Shepard is always on duty.”

“And yet you reached for that drink as soon as I told you you’re off. Don’t get all moody and Shepard-y with me just ‘cause you missed your clock-out time.” They nudged him as they slid onto the stool next to his. “I’ve known you too long.”

“There’s people who’ve known me longer than three years.”

“Yeah, and I’m one of them, remember? Elysium, asshole.” Duke grabbed their own glass from behind the bar. “What’re you having?”

“Vodka.”

“Ugh. Asari brightwine for me.” Duke had to get fully up on the bar, wriggling forward inch by inch on their stomach, to snag the bottle of multicolored liquid. They pushed themself back onto their stool with a small grunt of effort and gave a swift glare to Cade. “Don’t you dare laugh.”

“Laugh? Me? Never.” Cade poured himself a shot, but he could still feel Duke’s eyes on him, and he set the bottle back down with a sigh of, “What now?”

“Your hair. You haven’t bleached it.” Duke went back to pouring themself their multicolored drink. “The natural look is good on you.”

“My hair is always good.” Cade raised his glass, but Duke put their hand over it. “What?”

“Cade…look at me?”

He did so, even if he made it a glare of let me drink my fucking vodka, Duke.

Duke moved their hand to his arm as they said, “I meant it. About not getting all moody and workaholic and, well, Commander Shepard on me. The galaxy needs Shepard. And sometimes I do too, but…mostly I need Cade. So does everyone else in our squad. And I know it’s usually just your girlfriend—and now your boyfriend too—who can coax that out of you, but…y’know…I think you need Cade more than Shepard at this point.”

“Sucks that they’re both me, then.” Cade lifted his glass and tossed back the shot, grimacing to get it down his throat.

Duke chuckled and released his arm, leaning in to give his cheek a kiss before sitting back and raising their own glass. “To good hair and being off-duty.”

Cade laughed as he touched his glass—still empty—to Duke’s. “To Duke Wilder and their fucking weird way of trying to cheer people up.”

Duke snorted just before they drank. “To Cade Shepard and being a moody fuck.”

“To being six foot five.”

“I didn’t realize the mighty Inquisitor descended from on high to say farewell to agents.” She turned to see him, still holding the reins of her horse. She had that small, irritating smirk on her face, the one that used to make him shove her face into the pillow and fuck her hard from behind.

“Don’t play coy with me,” Spiridon warned as he stopped less than a pace from her.

“Coy is what I do best,” Halla answered, her smirk growing into a grin that was slightly more tolerable. She paused, and her smile softened a little. “I’m gonna miss you, Spiridon Lavellan.”

“You’ll miss my cock is what you’ll miss.”

“Well, of course, but I think I’m gonna miss the rest of you too.” Her free hand twitched toward her abdomen before she thought better of the movement. “And if this little monster comes out white-haired and white-faced, I’ll know just who to write to about it.”

“Leliana,” Spiridon replied. “Not me.”

“You’re going to know, Spiridon,” Halla told him. “I’ll respect your wishes and not tell the child about you, but you’re at least going to know if you have a son or daughter by me.” There was a stubbornness in her voice that Spiridon could have argued with, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

“I’m not going to miss you,” he said instead.

“Of course you’re not.”

“Lady Trevelyan! We should be going; we want to be out of the mountains before nightfall!”

Halla looked around at the agent’s call before turning back to Spiridon. “I suppose I’ll likely never see you again.” She paused before leaning forward and pressing a momentary kiss to his scarred mouth. He allowed it, and she broke it after a second. “Goodbye, Inquisitor. Good fortune go with you.”

“You are a terrible, awful, mean person, Duke Wilder,” he said as he recovered and Duke laughed so hard that they had to grip his table to stay upright.

“I think you just set a new record for the highest noise to come out of your mouth since you hit puberty,” Duke snorted, pushing themself back to standing up straight. “What are you working on?”

“I’m not going to tell you now,” Noel answered, turning pointedly back to his project.

“Aw, please?” Duke stuck out their bottom lip, leaning their butt against Noel’s worktable.

“No. You wouldn’t understand it anyway; you suck with tech.”

“Ooh, cold.” Duke leaned down to put their face right next to Noel’s. “Please?” They drew out the vowel to a deliberately irritating length.

“Fine.” Noel was making an effort to sound more exasperated than he was. “It’s an upgrade for the Duchess.” Duke’s face lit up at the mention of their treasured shotgun, and Noel continued sharply, “And now I’m reconsidering ever finishing this for someone who sneaks up on innocent engineers.”

“Even someone who loves their engineer very much?” Duke wheedled, putting their arms around Noel’s shoulders and rocking him back and forth with them.

“Prove it,” Noel said, but he didn’t put a real challenge in the words.

“I’ll tell Cade it was me that switched his cologne for Ash’s perfume.”

Noel grinned at the memory of that one. “You didn’t even do that; he just claimed one of us did because he doesn’t want the whole Normandy crew knowing he’s sleeping with her.”

“I know, but it takes the blame off you.”

Noel laughed. “Deal.”

Duke kissed his cheek. “You’re the best, Noel. Duchess loves you very much, and so do I.”

With a soft groan, Nansa untangled himself from Han’s hold and pushed himself out of the bed. He padded to the bassinet that a refugee child had outgrown and peered into it to find his daughter red-faced and squalling. “Hey. Hey, Mars, it’s okay. You’re okay,” he murmured as he gently picked her up. He continued to coo and she continued to fuss as Nansa headed for the door, with a glance back at Han and Raf still curled up in blankets. He headed down the stairs with the baby in his arms, talking softly all the while. “Gonna wake up Papa and Babae if you keep yelling like that, da’len. Wouldn’t want that, hmm? You know Babae gets cranky when he’s woken up. Well, not at you. He’d never get cranky at you, sweetling.”

The crickets were singing their midnight song when Nansa stepped out into the courtyard with Marta. The grass was cool, nearly cold, under his feet, and he breathed in deeply, savoring the chill night air. He checked Marta’s bundle of blankets to make sure she stayed warm before he started out around the garden.

Night cast a blue darkness over the flowers. Most of them were closed, waiting to bloom when the sun rose. “The opposite of you,” Nansa mused. “You scream all night and then sleep like a—well, like a baby—come morning.” He smiled down at her as her screaming subsided to whimpers. “Maybe you’ll be awake for sunrise today. It’s always so beautiful over the mountains.”

“Nah,” yawned someone behind him. “She likes to sleep late. Takes after me like that.”

Nansa turned to see Han padding toward them, still with no shirt and only cloth breeches. He shivered as he approached, rubbing his arms and hugging himself. “Wondered where you’d got to with the kid.”

“See, Mars, Babae’s here,” Nansa murmured, pushing back the blankets on one side of Marta’s head so she could see Han. She abruptly stopped fussing as she turned her head, confused about the sudden lack of warm on one side. But her blue eyes saw Han, and as he leaned down to brush her cheek with a finger, something about his red vallaslin triggered her months-old memory, and she gurgled happily at him.

“Hey, Marta,” Han murmured, kissing her forehead. “Woke your Da again, I see.” He straightened to see Nansa again. “Raf says it’s time for her to have a meal, so you should bring her back upstairs.”

“Let’s stay a while here first,” Nansa invited. “The crickets and the wind and the smell of the grass…it makes me miss aravels.”

Han stepped closer, still shivering. “Aravels were warm, Nansa. Inside is warm. Bed is warm. Come on.”

Nansa chuckled and shifted Marta in his arms so he had a hand free to cup Han’s chin. “Let me warm you up a bit while we stay out here, then.”

Her eyes snapped open to find a familiar face with a familiar worried expression hovering over her. She managed her usual response to that expression: “Worry about yourself, M,” before she began to cough.

M-21 backed off as F-64 rolled over to prop herself up over the ground. The coughing fit subsided, she spat out the glob of blood she’d hacked up, and gasped, “What happened?”

M-21’s eyes darted away from her. “You…you fell. I…didn’t get to you in time.”

F-64 swore. “I lost my transformation while I was in the air, didn’t I?”

“Yeah. You did.”

F-64 pushed herself to sit properly, looking at M-21. His head was still turned away. “Hey,” she said softly.

“No.”

“What?”

“I know what you’re going to say—that it wasn’t my fault.”

“M, it wasn’t—”

“It was!” Finally he looked at her again, and there were tears welling in his eyes. “I attacked you again. While we were transformed. Whatever part of me that knows you’re my ally—my friend—was overwhelmed by—by this heart I didn’t want. The—other part of me—decided that you were an easier target than Karias, and—I hurt you again.” His voice was very quiet by the time he was done, and he moved to stand.

“M.” F-64 grabbed his arm before he could leave.

“What?” The word was flat.

“Did you really just call me your friend?”

“What?” This time it had more life, and he looked at her again, the tears surprised away.

F-64 smiled at him, pulling him closer again. “Come on; I’m more than that, M, or have I been reading everything completely wrong?”

That shocked half a laugh out of him, and F-64 picked up the sound with her own. “There’s my M. Come here.” She tugged at him and laid on her back as he crawled up over her. “It’s okay,” she told him, pushing his hair back so she could see his face. “I didn’t even know I was hurt by the time I woke up, see? Come on. Kiss me, you little shit.”

M-21 leaned down, and F-64 closed her eyes—

“Wait.”

Her eyes flew open again. “What?”

“If we kiss with blood in our mouths, Frankenstein will kill us for endangering ourselves by exchanging blood.”

“So we be careful. Come on, I need to reassure you I’m okay.”

“So long as we’re careful…” M-21 still sounded doubtful, but F-64 waited as he leaned down inch by agonizing centimeter…

She always forgot how nice his mouth felt on hers. Kissing was always the gentlest thing it did. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around him to enjoy it—

“There you are!”

M-21 rolled off F-64 in alarm a split second before she sat up. “I lost track of where you went down when M-21 went after you!” Karias continued, picking his way through the undergrowth. “Come, come, no time to waste! Back to it!”

M-21 and F-64 shared a glance and an eyeroll before standing back up and following Karias as he turned resolutely back to the clear part of the island. “Back to it,” F-64 repeated in a sarcastic mutter.

“He and Felran left with Oray’s squad to investigate that report of lingering Venatori in the Western Approach,” Nansa answered, stepping into the room. “Gods know why they’d stick around there. But it’s just us for a while.”

“And I’m still on my shift,” Raf cautioned.

“You’re making beds, vhenan.” Nansa grinned. “I’m sure Frances won’t mind if we mess one up, so long as we make it again.”

“What’s gotten into you?” There was a laugh in Raf’s question.

“You know me,” Nansa answered, getting close enough to reach out and slide a hand along Raf’s cheek until it cupped the back of his neck. “Being alone makes me sad.” He leaned in and breathed, “Cheer me up?” as his eyes slipped shut.

Raf whirled them around and pushed Nansa down to sit on the bed he’d just made. “Alright, but only after I’m done here.”

Nansa made the most ridiculous pout, but Raf turned resolutely way and moved to the next cot, taking another set of sheets from the pile and starting in again on making the bed. Still, now that Nansa was here, maybe bed-making could be a little more fun…

“Now you’re teasing,” Nansa groaned the third time time Raf’s ass came tantalizingly into reach for just a second.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Raf answered airily, moving on to the next bed, making sure his hips swayed just so as he walked.

He drew three more noises of frustration from Nansa before he was done making the last two beds in the ward. “Impatient man,” he huffed as he headed back to Nansa. “I have half a mind to—mmf!”

Nansa had grabbed his wrist as soon as he could, yanked him forward, and tugged him down to kiss him hard. Any thought of protest flew from Raf’s head as he stepped into Nansa’s arms, bracing his own hands on Nansa’s shoulders before, all at once and with a noise of contentment from the back of his throat, his arms wrapped around Nansa’s neck, pulling them flush together.

One of Nansa’s hands slid down, stopping for an appreciative moment at Raf’s ass, before nudging at the back of his thigh, urging him gently to put his knee on the bed. Raf decided he wouldn’t let Nansa dictate everything about this kiss. He placed his knee on the bed—right up against Nansa’s crotch. Raf was delighted to find him half-hard already.

Nansa let out a deep groan before he broke the kiss to breathe heavily. “So long as we make the bed up again?” he panted.

Audiences were taken by surprise during last night’s performance of Hamilton. During the number “Yorktown,” after the Marquis de Lafayette (Haskel Becket) bids farewell to Alexander Hamilton (Halla Trevelyan), Lafayette planted a kiss on Hamilton’s mouth!

—

They laugh about it, later. A prank on the rest of the cast. An impulsive move by two old friends. Halla snickers, her legs tossed over Haskel’s lap in the greenroom, about the look on the face of someone she saw in the front row. “Éponine finally got her kiss from Marius,” she comments.

“And there’s no way that Hamilton was straight.” Haskel continues explaining his reasoning to a room already convinced and chuckling. “So we thought—hey, why not have a little fun with it?”

Halla leans over to kiss his temple. “I got to kiss a cute guy, the audience got a show, and it might have been a little more historically accurate.” She grins at Haskel. “What could be better?”