Angsty Shenko drabble.
She didn't say anything when he walked in on her packing. She didn't say anything when he asked what she was doing. She didn't say anything when he grabbed her by the arm and tried to get an answer out of her. She turned away, unable to face the man she'd given so much of her life. She zipped her suitcase and turned to lift it off the bed. He was getting angry. She hated it when he was angry.
She put the suitcase on the floor and pulled the handle from the back. He immediately took it from her hand and pulled it away from her. He was in her face, demanding an answer, trying to figure her out. Always trying to figure her out.
She'd been getting more and more distant as the days went by. She was struggling with the losses, no longer rolling with the punches. The end of the war brought a start to the healing. A stunt to the growth. Neither of them knew what to do or how to react. Neither of them knew anything about getting better. So they slept and drank and made love and watched the vids and cooked dinner for each other but the nightmares kept coming and the pills weren't working. They'd hit a wall. She stopped opening up to him, and he stopped pushing her. He stopped sleeping, she stopped eating. Kaidan spent much of his time smoking on the porch, looking out over English Bay, wondering where he'd went wrong.
"Where are you gonna go?" he breathed, holding her forearm. She shook her head vehemently. She wouldn't look at him. "Baby, please. Please stay."
"Don't call me that," she said, barely audible. He cringed. His hand slid up behind her neck and pulled her close to him, his lips pressing to her hairline.
"Shepard," he said. Tears burned in her eyes. She hadn't felt so at home in weeks.
His hands grabbed for hers and he embraced her, clutching her to his chest. They were trapped somewhere between togetherness and loss, between stability and the unknown. He tried to speak but he couldn't.
"Don't do this, you can't… You can't leave me. Not now," he reasoned, nealry suffocating her. She squirmed against him, trying to let go. He could feel the conflict in her muscles.
"I have to. I'm killing you," she said finally. He'd never heard a voice so empty. He felt a pang of guilt in his stomach. All his fault.
"You listen to me," he hissed, grabbing her suddenly by the chin. He spoke with terrifying conviction. "Listen to me, right now. You see this? Me? This goddamned house? These things, this life, this time, it's not worth anything to me if you're not here. You leave, I leave. This life is yours. I'm yours. Take me or leave me."
"Kaidan, please…" she pleaded, tears starting to stream down her face. "Please."
"Don't Kaidan me!" he cried, shaking her by the wrist. "This is all I've got left to live for. If you go, I go. It's over if you're not here. What's mine is yours."
She stared at him for the longest time. They shared a painful silence full of the words neither of them were brave enough to say. So they remained unspoken, some sort of understanding passing between the two of them that only they could ever have.
"I love you so much, Shepard." He'd barely gotten the words out before she kissed him.
It was a maddening rush to see who could get to their point first. She alternated between kissing him deeply and stopping to cringe away tears. "I'm sorry—" she choked out between jagged breaths. He turned her and pressed her back to the wall. "I just don't know how…"
"You think," kiss, "I knew what I was," kiss "doing when I told my," another kiss, and another, "Commanding officer I had," kiss, "feelings for her?" He pushed her against the wall, moving his hands down over the front of her shirt.
She didn't answer. He stopped above her, breathing. Taking her in. He wiped away the tears on his face. "We don't have to know what we're doing. We just have to… be."
She wrapped her arms around him and closed the space between their bodies. "I love you," she mouthed against his lips. He nodded.
"Let's unpack," he said, pressed to her forehead. She nodded.